With the increasing popularity of online shopping, lots of people are looking to start online stores. Instead of doing it alone, making it a multi-vendor e-commerce store is much better. Multi-Vendor E-commerce platform means an online marketplace where you can have different sellers register on your platform and sell their products. That way, you can have more effects in your store and attract more customers to look for products while you sit back, relax, and enjoy the commission.
With everything planned out, the most challenging part is choosing the software where you want to run your multi-vendor e-commerce platform, as there are many multi-vendor e-commerce platforms out there, and you end up scratching your head if you haven’t done proper research. Every software out there has Pros and Cons, and it’s up to you to decide which one is most suited to your needs.
We will make things a little bit easier for you as we are providing a detailed review for, by far, the most economical multi-vendor solution. If you plan to build a multi-vendor store using WordPress, then Dokan, a multi-vendor plugin by weDevs, could be a great solution.
Dokan is a WooCommerce-based multi-vendor plugin for WordPress built by weDevs. It has been created to allow you to make a multi-vendor ecommerce marketplace. With an online store built using Dokan, users can register an account and begin selling their products at your marketplace, pending your approval.
In this review of Dokan, we will talk in detail about the features of this app-theme but first let’s take a quick look at its Pros and Cons.
Pros and Cons of Dokan
Dokan is a robust multivendor marketplace plugin for WooCommerce that offers many features to create and manage online marketplaces effectively. Here’s a concise review highlighting its pros and cons:
Pros
- Feature-Rich: Dokan is packed with features, making it a one-stop solution for building multivendor marketplaces. It saves you from the hassle of integrating multiple plugins.
- Free Version Available: Dokan offers a free version with essential features, allowing you to get started without immediate financial commitment.
- User-Friendly Interface: Dokan provides vendors with an intuitive front-end dashboard to manage their products, view orders, and track performance, enhancing the user experience.
- Versatile Themes: Dokan offers a variety of themes and seamless integration with WooCommerce, giving you the flexibility to create a marketplace with your preferred design.
- Admin Control: The admin dashboard allows for easy customization, vendor management, and announcements, simplifying marketplace management.
- Third-Party Compatibility: Dokan supports various third-party services, including multiple payment gateways, and offers a wide range of add-ons to enhance your marketplace’s functionality.
- Diverse Product Types: Dokan supports selling physical goods, digital products, and services, making it suitable for many businesses.
- Best Customer Support: Dokan is known for its exceptional customer support, assisting users through support tickets and ensuring you have help when needed.
- Best Customer Feedback: Positive customer feedback and reviews indicate that users are satisfied with Dokan’s performance and features, adding to its credibility.
- Most Popular: Dokan’s popularity in the market showcases its reliability and effectiveness in creating and managing multivendor marketplaces.
- Recommended by Ecommerce Experts: Being recommended by ecommerce experts highlights the plugin’s quality and suitability for online marketplace businesses.
- Super Easy Functionality: Dokan’s user-friendly interface and straightforward functionality make it accessible even to users with limited technical expertise.
Cons
- Cost for Multiple Site Licenses: Dokan can become expensive if you need licenses for multiple sites, which might be a drawback for businesses with extensive requirements.
- Multilingual and Multi-Currency Support: While Dokan offers essential multilingual and multi-currency support, some users may find it needs improvement, especially for global marketplaces.
- Limited Customization: While Dokan offers versatile themes and integration with WooCommerce, some users may find that it has limitations regarding extensive customization, especially for businesses with unique branding requirements.
Top Features of Dokan
It’s based on WooCommerce!
Yeah, you’ve heard it right. Dokan is based on WooCommerce (2.6+), which is hugely popular and feature-rich. Woocommerce is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms built with widely popular, open-source CMS, WordPress. It powers thousands of e-commerce websites, from individual stores to enterprise e-commerce solutions. That means Dokan can work in any WooCommerce-compatible theme.
Frontend Vendor Product Management!
Now, for some of you who don’t know about frontend or backend management, I’ll try to explain it. Usually, all control of your WordPress website is done from the backend of your site, referred to as the dashboard. And it takes some time to learn and get used to all the functions. And if your sellers are not tech savvy, they would feel lost if they have to play with complex settings, menus, and procedures. They’ll only like to add products, manage inventory, pricing, etc.
As Dokan is a frontend, it gives your sellers the comfort of managing their products from the front end of your site. The frontend option of Dokan can appeal to your sellers as their product management will be less scary and more accessible than ever.
Lots of Themes!
You can use any theme as the whole design is independent and adaptive. So, there is no binding on your imagination and creativity. The plugin is entirely open source, and the codes are well documented. You can even add features from your theme or make a new add-on.
Features for Sellers:
It offers a simple, straightforward dashboard to vendors, allowing easy product inventory management, including sales, discounts, and promotions. The seller’s dashboard provides a variety of features, such as:
- Independent & Customized Stores:
With Dokan, you can allow sellers to set up their independent stores. With excellent customizing capabilities, the sellers can match their stores according to their branding, similar to giants like eBay and Amazon.
- Easy Product Management:
Dokan allows individual sellers to manage the products listed at the store. They can view all the individual product pages like you would consider a list of posts in WordPress. Individual products can be added, or multiple products can be imported in bulk.
- Complete Reports and Statistics:
Every seller can see his/her sales report and see a birds-eye view of the sales they are making. The seller dashboard is designed with eye-catching reports that are generated automatically and provide:
- Quick clues about the number of products in the inventory
- The total number of orders
- Sales in a particular period
- Coupon Management:
The coupons management function allows every seller to manage their products and discounts. Also, features such as creating discount coupons for special sales, limiting coupon usage with time (date of expiry), and a fixed amount or percentage discount are available.
- Managing reviews:
Product reviews can be managed from the seller dashboard whenever the seller can approve, modify, or delete the product reviews.
- Orders Management & Product Publishing Review:
Managing orders can become relatively easy with Dokan. Each seller works their demands. Order status can be updated like completed, in-progress shipped, etc.
- Marketing & SEO Management:
Each seller can manage SEO for their store page. They can use custom SEO Meta and descriptions for their store page. They can also set and control.
Features for Admin
- The potential to earn from each sale:
Dokan allows you to charge your sellers a percentage for each order, giving them an e-commerce solution free of any monthly fees, or you can go by the old way of charging the membership fees from the seller.
- Complete control over selling capabilities:
Dokan gives you the power to control what is sold in your store and what is not. You can activate/deactivate merchants and select which can sell their products. This feature prevents merchants from selling any illegal product from your store. You also can promote merchants so that they can become a part of your “Trusted Sellers list” and can sell whatever they want without waiting for your approval.
- Managing User accounts easier than ever:
You can use Dokan to create a marketplace that supports multiple vendors. Each vendor has a separate dashboard where they take control of their products and other settings, making the job more accessible for the administrator. Admin can also set announcements for sellers from the back end, which then shows on the seller dashboard.
Dokan for Customers
With Dokan, you have the flexibility to design and manage a wonderful-looking store that will attract many customers. Visitors to the store can browse products listed in a nice and clean interface or search through the inventory. Products from all stores are displayed in front of them, so they can choose from many products without browsing each store individually. However, if the customer wants to view the individual seller’s stores, they can do so via the seller list.
Pricing is a pivotal factor in the decision-making process when selecting a plugin for your website operations. You should thoroughly evaluate the price vis-à-vis the features included in the paid packages to ensure you get the best value for your investment. Dokan, the most popular multivendor plugin, offers free and pro versions, catering to a wide range of user needs.
Customer Review of Dokan Marketplace Plugin
Dokan, developed by weDevs, has garnered consistently positive reviews across various platforms, showcasing its strong reputation in WordPress plugins and e-commerce solutions. On WordPress itself, Dokan boasts an impressive customer review score of 4.6, reflecting the satisfaction of users who have integrated this marketplace solution into their websites. Trustpilot, a trusted review platform, also reflects high confidence in Dokan, with a commendable rating of 4.7. This signifies the platform’s reliability and the trust it has garnered from customers for its features and capabilities.
G2 and Capterra, two prominent software review platforms, continue to echo the sentiments of satisfied users. Both platforms assign Dokan a commendable score of 4.6 on average. However, it’s worth noting that Capterra provides a slightly lower rating of 4.2, indicating a variation in user experiences. Overall, these positive reviews collectively emphasize Dokan’s strong performance, versatility, and effectiveness in empowering businesses to create and manage their online marketplaces using WordPress, making it a valuable choice for e-commerce entrepreneurs and website developers.
Modules of Dokan Marketplace WordPress Plugin
Dokan Multivendor WordPress plugin modules offer various functionalities to enhance your marketplace’s capabilities, from payment processing and customization to product booking and shipping flexibility. Depending on your specific marketplace needs and target audience, you can choose the modules that best fit your requirements.
Dokan WooCommerce Booking
This module allows vendors to create bookable products, enabling customers to customize their bookings. It’s great for turning your marketplace into a booking or appointment site, making it suitable for services like rentals, appointments, or event bookings.
Dokan Simple Auctions
With this module, you can provide your vendors with the ability to auction their products. This can be a unique feature to attract vendors who want to auction their items, adding excitement and competitive bidding to your marketplace.
Stripe Express
Stripe Express simplifies transactions by offering dynamic payment options. It ensures smoother payment processes for your vendors and customers, which is essential for the success of an e-commerce platform.
Request for Quotation
This module allows vendors to enable a price quote option on their products. This can be particularly useful for B2B marketplaces or for products that require negotiation before purchase.
Elementor
Elementor is a visual page builder that offers full customization cont over the default appearance of the vendor stores. This gives vendors the ability to create unique and attractive store pages without requiring advanced technical skills.
Table Rate Shipping
This module provides multi-vendor support for setting flexible shipping rates. Vendors can customize their shipping options, which is crucial for marketplaces with products of varying sizes and shipping requirements.
Product Advertising
This module allows vendors to highlight their best-selling products, giving them more visibility within your marketplace. It’s a valuable feature for vendors looking to promote specific items and increase sales.
Minimum Maximum Order
With this module, both admin and vendors can set limitations on customer orders. This is useful for controlling order quantities ensuring that vendors can fulfill orders efficiently.
Subscriptions
This module lets you create highly customized subscription packs for vendors and charge them accordingly. This can be a valuable revenue stream for your marketplace, as vendors pay for premium features and services.
Dokan Product Subscription
Vendors can create and sell subscription-based products using this module. This can be ideal for vendors offering subscription boxes, digital content, or any products with a recurring billing model.
Geolocation
Geolocation allows customers to search for products and vendors based on their location. This feature can improve the user experience, particularly for marketplaces with a focus on local or regional sales.
Dokan MANGOPAY Integration
This integration enhances your marketplace’s payment system by offering direct payouts to vendors. It can help streamline payment processes and improve trust among vendors.
Dokan Pricing Comparision
Dokan Pro offers the following annual pricing plans, each tailored to serve different purposes and accommodate diverse business requirements:
Starter – $149
- Price: $149 per year
- Modules Included: 3 modules
- Domain Usage: Valid for 1 domain
The Starter plan offers an accessible entry point for those looking to explore the capabilities of Dokan Pro. It provides essential features and functionalities reasonably priced, with 3 modules included and valid for use on 1 domain.
Professional – $249
- Price: $249 per year
- Modules Included: 22 modules
- Domain Usage: Valid for up to 3 domains
The Professional plan is designed for businesses and individuals who require a more comprehensive set of tools to manage their multivendor marketplace effectively. It includes 22 advanced modules and is valid for up to 3 domains.
Business – $499
- Price: $499 per year
- Modules Included: 40+ modules
- Domain Usage: Valid for up to 5 domains
The Business plan is ideal for scaling companies and ambitious entrepreneurs who need robust multivendor solutions. This plan offers an extensive feature set with 40+ modules and is valid for use on up to 5 domains.
Enterprise – $999
- Price: $999 per year
- Modules Included: 40+ modules
- Domain Usage: Valid for up to 20 domains
The Enterprise plan is the ultimate offering for large-scale enterprises and organizations with complex multivendor marketplace needs. It provides top-tier features and capabilities, including 40+ modules, and is valid for up to 20 domains.
What’s particularly appealing about Dokan Pro is its customer-friendly refund policy. All plans come with a 14-day refund window, allowing users to assess the plugin’s suitability and performance without risk. This demonstrates Dokan’s confidence in its product and its commitment to customer satisfaction.
Final Words
In summary, Dokan is a trusted solution for creating online multi-seller marketplaces with WordPress, backed by positive reviews on multiple platforms. It’s a reliable choice for both e-commerce entrepreneurs and developers.
Shahriar Hasan is a seasoned e-commerce expert and a full-stack digital marketer with a deep understanding of online business growth strategies. With a wealth of experience in content management systems (CMS), he excels in leveraging platforms like WordPress to drive results. His expertise in optimizing online businesses for success makes him a go-to resource for those looking to thrive in the digital marketplace.