About WooCommerce and its specific Plugins

WooCommerce is a free eCommerce software that makes it easy for selling products and services online and is developed as an extension of WordPress.
There are literally thousands of WooCommerce specific plugins that you can use to extend its functionality to add features like:

• Booking
• Subscription
• Shipping
• Platform integrations
• Sales Tax Collections….etc.

Plugins for Woocommerce’s Subscription Add-on

Woocommerce Subscription – Paid Option

• Have to purchase the product
• The method is easier.
• Allows to create and manage subscriptions products and create recurring payments.
• Create Monthly subscription boxes, yearly software packages …etc.

Add Woocommerce Subscriptions – free plugin

• YITH Woocommerce Subscription.
• Available in WordPress plugin store.
• Let you simply add subscriptions for simple, digital, or downloadable products.

Analyzing both plugins, the ‘Woocommerce Subscription’ has a product subscription option as well as a subscription option.

Subscription Product vs Subscription

Subscription Product

• Subscription products are an extension of Woocommerce Products.
• They are created by store managers via the Edit Product Screen.
•  They are displayed to customers in your store via the front-end of your website.
• A subscription product has all the same data as standard WooCommerce products, including:
  • Price
  • sale price
  • tax class and status
  • virtual and downloadable flags
  • attributes (optional)
  • inventory (optional)
  • shipping weight, dimensions, and class

Subscriptions

• A subscription is an agreement between your store and a customer for future transactions.
• Like an order, a subscription can contain one or more products as line items.
• This is how subscription products are associated with a subscription.
• Subscriptions are an extension of WooCommerce Orders. They have all the same data as an order, including:
  • status
  • customer
  • payment method
  • billing/shipping address
  • downloadable product permissions
  • product, fee, and shipping line items
  • notes
  • Totals
• As well as subscription specific metadata like:
  • billing interval and period
  • next payment date
  • trial end date
  • end date
  • related orders, including the original order used to purchase the subscription, renewal orders, and switch orders