Link WooCommerce to Amazon – plugin or integrator?

Are you looking for a way to link your WooCommerce product inventory and orders to your Amazon account? This is absolutely possible! There are practically two WooCommerce Amazon integration solutions. The first is connecting your WooCommerce store to your Amazon account by installing a WordPress plugin and the second solution is by using a multichannel integrator.

You might ask yourself which of the two is the best solution for you? In this article we will go through all the pro’s and cons of both solutions, so you can estimate which solutions fits your needs.

I have many years experience running a multi-channel business with 12 marketplaces and 3 webshops (two running on WooCommerce and one on Shopify). It once started out with one webshop, but for us to grow fast, it was a no-brainer to scale on marketplaces as quickly as possible.  You could consider this model of multichannel selling the modern way of selling online. You see it very often among online sellers.

Link with a WooCommerce Amazon Plugin

There are plugins that link your Amazon seller account to your WooCommerce webshop. We are trying to figure out if we need an integrator or a plugin to solve this. Based on this question, I ask yourself if you see yourself selling on other platforms in the future.  

If this is the case – which is most likely with all the new marketplace opportunities popping up – I would think twice about installing plugins.

The first reason is scalability

Yes there is a plugin that solves your need to link WooCommerce with Amazon, but what if a year from now you want to sell on Kaufland and maybe on CDON? These marketplace most likely don’t have a plugin.

Another point is that with many marketplaces it’s better to separate inventory management. You rather don’t do that in WooCommerce. It’s not built for this and it is for example not convenient to update stock levels or print shipping labels.

Consider your webshops performance

Personally I love WooCommerce, but with plugins I have a love/hate relationship. Plugins helped us grow and adapt to the market quickly, but when our business grew, issues grew. Especially the sites speed performance was very poor.

The solution was adapting an “only necessary plugin policy”. Nowadays we even outsource our search and product filtering with a solution offered by sellerzilla.com.

So I based on my experience only use a plugin, if I besides the WooCommerce shop only sell on Amazon and not have the ambition to endeavour other sales channels.

Pros

• Easy to setup
• Relatively cheap

Cons

• Plugins might slow down site speed
• Code can interfere between plugins
• Not all plugins are high quality
• Can become messy when you want to integrate other marketplaces

Link WooCommerce to Amazon using an integrator

An alternative to an Amazon WooCommerce plugin would be the use of an integrator. Integrators are made to do the job and it saves you from installing plugins!

At the core, an integrator let’s you connect your sales channels and keeps your stock levels up-to-date between them. But luckily many integrators offer more features that enable you to run many of your daily e-commerce routines from a single dashboard.

Personally I would choose an integrator that at least also offers a shipping label solution. For example Stockpilot comes with a warehouse management feature, which let integrate shipping services and let you print shipping labels in bulk in a matter of a few mouse clicks. A real timesaver!

If you are looking for an integrator solution it’s best practice to do your homework. For example request a demo and follow your gut. It’s almost like a marriage between your business and the integrator solution. If the marriage works, it’s great and it will enable you to grow your business rapidly!

With a solution like Stockpilot you get an omnichannel inventory management solution, with which you can run your warehouse and many more features. You might not need all the features today, but you know they are there and when you grow, you’ll find the solution you need in the platform. This makes the marriage work in the long run.

Pros

• Let you grow fast without headache
• If you pick the right solution, you get more then just an integrator
• Future proof when you have the ambition to grow
• A central place for all your sales channels (centralised data collection)

Cons

• Subscription fee (monthly)
• Dependent on a third-party (support)

‍