8 Best WordPress PayPal Plugins

If you make purchases online, then you’re probably familiar with PayPal. This platform accounts for close to 22% of online transactions in the US. What’s more, the service boasts over 390 million accounts throughout the world. In other words, PayPal is everywhere, and if you sell products or services through WordPress, you’d do well to consider adding it as a payment processor.

In this article, we’ll introduce you to eight of the best WordPress PayPal plugins you can use to add support for this platform. They’ve been chosen based on their feature sets, rating and reviews, support, and pricing.

Let’s get to it!

1. WooCommerce

First and foremost, WooCommerce is by far the most popular WordPress e-commerce plugin on the market. This solution supports PayPal payments out of the box, and it enables customers to make purchases using their credit cards or account balances.

You’ll need a PayPal Business account if you want to enable integration via WooCommerce. Once you connect your account, you’ll be able to start processing payments via PayPal:

With WooCommerce, you can use your WordPress website to sell both physical and digital products. This plugin enables you to manage inventory, coordinate shipping, send email notifications, and of course process payments.

Key Features:

• Sell physical and digital products
• Process product orders
• Manage shipment options
• Send email notifications concerning orders
• Enable customers to pay using PayPal and other payment processors

WooCommerce is for you if…

…you want to launch an e-commerce website using WordPress. There are some e-commerce plugins that are more specialized than WooCommerce. However, none of them offer as many extensions or are as popular. Moreover, WooCommerce lets you enable PayPal payments in a matter of minutes.

Price: Free, with premium extensions available | More Information

2. WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

In some cases, you might not need an e-commerce plugin that can handle hundreds of products. Instead, you may prefer a solution that enables your customers to add specific products or services to their carts and pay using PayPal. That’s precisely what WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart does.

With this plugin, you can use shortcodes to create custom “add to cart” buttons that you can set up on any of your pages. You can configure as many buttons as you need, each one with a different price. Then you can add a cart and checkout section:

This plugin enables you to configure your shopping cart and add shipping costs to customer orders. WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart also lets you send purchase confirmation emails, and you can use it to sell any kind of product you want through your website.

Key Features:

• Create custom “add to cart” buttons using shortcodes
• Add cart and checkout sections to any part of your site
• Configure shipping and payment settings for your cart
• Offer coupons to your customers

WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart is for you if…

…you don’t want to use a full-fledged e-commerce solution for WordPress. This plugin is perfect if you just want to sell one type of product or service, or even a handful of them. If you’re planning on having a broader inventory of products, you’re likely better off using WooCommerce.

Price: Free | More Information

3. Easy Digital Downloads

If you need a plugin that enables you to sell digital files via WordPress using PayPal (among other gateways), Easy Digital Downloads should be your top choice. This solution enables you to create a catalog of digital products, each with its own page. You can use Easy Digital Downloads to sell e-books, digital copies of photos, software, and any other file you want:

Easy Digital Downloads enables you to process payments and track orders, and it can automatically submit the files that users purchase. You can use this plugin to generate sales reports and keep track of customer histories.

It also enables you to manage taxes with different rules for specific regions. Easy Digital Downloads can integrate with SendWP to send transactional emails, and it also supports the Recapture service, which can help you with re-targeting users who abandon their carts.

Key Features:

• Sell digital files using PayPal
• Process orders and send transactional emails
• Generate sales reports
• Keep track of customer purchase histories
• Set taxes for multiple regions

Easy Digital Downloads is for you if…

…you want to focus on digital files only. Easy Digital Downloads is very straightforward, and it supports PayPal payments out of the box.

Price: Free, with premium extensions available | More Information

4. Quick PayPal Payments

So far, we’ve looked at multiple WordPress PayPal plugins for e-commerce websites. However, none are as easy to use as Quick PayPal Payments. This tool lets you set up one PayPal payment form that you can display anywhere on your site using the [qpp] shortcode:

Quick PayPal Payments gives you plenty of customization options for your payment form. You can add images, modify the text within each section, and even add custom fields to your form. You can also use this plugin to set up recurring payments for customers.

Keep in mind that you can only set up one payment form using Quick PayPal Payments, however. That makes the plugin a great option if you sell only one type of product or service, but it’s less useful if you have a large inventory.

Key Features:

• Create a PayPal payment form for your website
• Customize your payment form’s style and the fields it includes
• Enable recurring payments

Quick PayPal Payments is for you if…

…you want to accept donations through your website, or you sell only one type of product or service. If all you need is one PayPal payment form, this plugin is probably perfect for you.

Price: Free, with premium licenses starting at $14.99 per year | More Information

5. PayPal Donation

You’ve probably seen a lot of websites that include PayPal donation buttons. PayPal supports donations to your account, and it enables users to create their own buttons to collect money. What PayPal Donation does is connect to your account and help you create that button:

PayPal Donation enables you to set a default currency for donations and a language for your button. You can also add pre-set donation options to your button. That way, you can suggest what amounts of money users might contribute to your cause.

This plugin lets you set up as many donation buttons as you need, and generates unique shortcodes for each of them. Finally, PayPal Donation keeps track of every donation that users make through your website. You can check donation history through your dashboard, and see how much each user paid (and when).

Key Features:

• Set up as many PayPal donation buttons as you need
• Configure a default language and currency for each button
• Add buttons to pages using shortcodes
• Keep track of donations through your dashboard

PayPal Donation is for you if…

…you want the option to set up more than one type of donation button for your website. If you’re collecting money for multiple causes via PayPal, this plugin should be a great fit for your site.

Price: Free, with premium licenses starting at $39 per year | More Information

6. WordPress PayPal

WordPress PayPal works similarly to the last plugin that we talked about. This WordPress PayPal plugin enables you to create multiple types of buttons, including options for payments, donations, and subscriptions.

When users are ready to check out, they can do so by clicking on a “View Cart” button. You can place that element anywhere on your site, and it will send users to PayPal to complete their purchases.

Although WordPress PayPal supports a broad range of PayPal operations, we can only recommend that you use this plugin if you’re comfortable with shortcodes. WordPress PayPal doesn’t offer any configuration options, and you have to read its documentation to check out all of the shortcode parameters it offers.

If you can look past that, WordPress PayPal enables you to create highly-customizable PayPal buttons. You can set up buttons that add multiples of any item, and include shipping costs, taxes, and much more.

Key Features: 

• Set up PayPal payment, donation, and subscription buttons
• Enable users to check out through PayPal
• Customize your PayPal buttons using shortcode parameters

WordPress PayPal is for you if…

…you want a plugin that supports payments, donations, and subscriptions via PayPal. However, we only recommend using this tool if you don’t mind configuring shortcode parameters manually.

Price: Free | More Information

7. Seamless Donations

If you need a solution that can help you collect donations for multiple causes using PayPal, you’re going to like Seamless Donations. This plugin enables you to set up a donation form that lets users choose how much they want to donate and to what causes. More importantly, it lets them pay using PayPal:

You can configure pre-set donation levels, and decide what information you want to collect from donors. This plugin lets you set up multiple causes or “funds” that users can select when they make donations, and you get to choose from two form style templates.

One feature that is lacking in the free version of the plugin is the ability to fully customize your form’s style. If you pay for the premium version, you can use a broad collection of pre-built style templates, but a lot of them look somewhat outdated.

Key Features:

• Set up a PayPal donation form for your website
• Create multiple funds or causes, and let users decide which one(s) to donate to
• Configure pre-set donation levels
• Choose what information users need to fill out to make a donation

Seamless Donations is for you if…

…you want to collect donations for multiple causes. This plugin lets you do that using a single form, which is perfect if you’re planning on creating a dedicated donations page.

Price: Free, with premium add-ons starting at $19.95 | More Information

8. Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is a full membership solution for WordPress. Using this plugin, you can create multiple membership or subscription levels and tiers. You can decide what content each membership gets access to and process payments, all using one plugin.

Out of the box, Paid Memberships Pro supports multiple gateways, including PayPal. You can set a default currency for PayPal payments, and choose whether to include sales tax or not:

On top of enabling you to restrict content to members, Paid Membership Pro also lets you set up a member directory and profiles. The plugin lets you restrict almost any type of content, including custom post types and WooCommerce products, on top of regular posts and pages.

Key Features:

• Create multiple memberships or subscription tiers
• Decide what membership tiers get access to what content
• Use PayPal and other gateways to process payments

Paid Memberships Pro is for you if…

…you want to run a subscription-based website. This plugin gives you full control over who can see what content, and you can set up as many membership tiers as you need.

Price: Free, with premium licenses starting at $297 per year | More Information

Conclusion

There are a lot of ways you can integrate PayPal with WordPress. If you plan on selling products or services through WordPress, most of the e-commerce plugins you can use support payments via PayPal. The same applies to tools that help you sell subscriptions and collect donations. Providing access to this key payment gateway is an excellent method for improving the customer experience.

If you’re planning to start an online store that accepts PayPal, WooCommerce is a top option. However, if you only plan on selling digital files, Easy Digital Downloads might be a better choice. For collecting donations, we recommend using the PayPal Donation plugin.

Do you have any questions about how to integrate PayPal with WordPress? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

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