As of 2018, e-commerce constituted 11.5% of all retail spending worldwide, and it’s a number that is only expected to grow in the future. WordPress does not have e-commerce functionality built-in, but there are a plethora of plugins that add e-commerce functionality to WordPress. The most popular one is WooCommerce, which is owned by the company Automattic, founded by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg.
Other e-commerce solutions include Shopify, Magento and Big Cartel. Unlike WooCommerce, which is built on top of WordPress, all of them are stand-alone solutions built specifically for e-commerce. They might be easier to set up and get started with, but they don’t have the flexibility of a site built on top of WordPress.