Start Your Own Amazon – Dokan Multivendor Plugin Review

 

Have you ever dreamed of building your marketplace online where other online sellers can sell their products and you earn a commission on every sale they close? If yes, then this article is for you.

Just like any other online sellers, and entrepreneurs, you probably visioned the long-term journey of your business too. You likely had the idea of building your online marketplace that will cater to the needs of the thousands of online business owners as your added passive income, like Amazon, Shopify, eBay, and more. And luckily, it can easily be done now with the help of the Dokan plugin. Dokan is considered one of the best multi-vendor plugin available alongside WCFM Marketplace and WC Vendor in the market. Join me as I discuss how Dokan multivendor marketplace plugin can help you with your visions, and earn more beyond being an individual vendor.

What is Dokan Multi Vendor Plugin?

Now that you have the idea in mind of how Dokan can help you, let us know further what it is and how you can use it. Dokan Multivendor Plugin is the first full-fledged multi-vendor eCommerce marketplace solution based on WooCommerce. Established last 2015, it is still the most popular open-source multivendor store plugin for your WordPress website. It provides the best front-end experience combined with the exceptional features that every multi vendor marketplace needs. It is made by WeDevs, who made WP Project Manager, WP User Frontend, WP ERP, and many other WordPress innovative tools and solutions tailored to empower your business and help you move forward as an entrepreneur.

You might wonder how Dokan became the best multiple vendors plugin for WordPress. And let me tell you how. The great thing about Dokan is it has all the necessary tools and features you need to have in a marketplace. Through Dokan, the creation of traditional, digital, and service-based marketplace is made easy. Its user-friendly interface can help you save time, and start your marketplace without you having a prior background in coding. And just like any other WordPress plugin, you just have to find it on the plugins page and hit the install button. Once it’s installed and activated, you’ll just configure the plugin according to your needs and you can start using it.

Pros and Cons of Dokan

Pros

Ease of Use

While you can use any WordPress theme with Dokan, they also do offer a free theme of their own that offers different stylish storefronts. Dokan has also presented its functionality in an easy-to-understand manner which anyone can honestly appreciate. You are not required to have prior knowledge about coding for you to build your website. Simply go to your WordPress dashboard and search for the plugin. Once you are done installing and activating the plug-in, you will go through the setup wizard. Your merchants can then easily set up their stores and sell their different products/services online including those of the virtual product type.

It also allows your clients the power to track Dokan vendor’s activities and commission, using the well-crafted and neatly organized admin dashboard. This makes your website more reliable and worthy of shopping. With Dokan’s handy features, you and a store owner can easily set a sale without making your website daunting.

Value for Money

Just like any other tools you’ve purchased for your business, you can always get what you need for the right price. Dokan Multivendor plugin has different pricing offers you can check into if you want to purchase it for your business. They also offer a free version called Dokan Lite with unlimited vendor access, order management, vendor withdrawal system, and so much more of the basic features you will need. They also offer pricing for annual Dokan subscription and lifetime license, with differences in prices and packed features. All the different Dokan plans include update and bug fix.

One more thing, Dokan also offers a fair refund policy if you feel that you aren’t satisfied with the plugin. There will be no questions asked and no more further interrogation. They are willing to give back 100% of your money within 14 days of your purchase. However, a refund is not applicable if you purchased the product at a discounted price, upgrades, and renewals.

However, reading the testimonials and reviews online, I doubt you’ll not be satisfied with the use of Dokan as your plugin.

Features

One of the things you should consider in building an online store or a marketplace for vendors is the packaged deal of the plugin you will use. Not only the price should be considered but the features and ease of use it has to offer. Note that not all of these aspiring entrepreneurs have background knowledge about building a website, thus the interface should be user-friendly.

Marketplace plugins take pride in offering the best features business owners and entrepreneurs might need. Inventory management, order management, SEO management, coupon management and Vendor Dashboard, are just some of the basic features each multi-vendor plugin has in common but what makes their consumers choose them is their innovative solution and customer support. Dokan PRO features the combination of Admin and Vendor Controls that will help create an effective and workable marketplace for you. You can choose to use the payment gateway solutions by WeDevs, WooCommerce or WordPress. As you read on, you will see the different features you will love with Dokan.

Earn in Multiple Ways

Of course, one of the main reasons why you’ve started an online business is to make a stream of income. But isn’t it great to earn in multiple ways? As a marketplace owner, I guarantee your profit will not only come from sales. You can also earn product-based and vendor commission plus charges from product uploads, product limits, and time.

Say, your vendors had reached the maximum number of product uploads for today or went beyond the product limits, you can earn a small income from them by charging them a small fee. Imagine how much you can earn through these little charges. This is good enough to be an added income for you.

Customize the Way You Want It

Your Dokan store will always attract good sales if it’s enticing and engaging to look at. Luckily, with Dokan you can easily customize your store and have full control over it through the Elementor Module for Dokan . You just need to get the customizer to fully customize the global outlook for vendor store pages.

This is most favorable for admins of the website since they have full control over their marketplace. They can easily enable/disable features, or options that they think are not useful for their website. They can also view and get access to their vendors’ sales and identify the top-performing vendor, best-selling product, and add featured widgets for your partnered merchants.

Cons

Customer Service

Because of time differences, developers and support teams can sometimes be a little difficult to get a hold of. However, when they are available, they can easily address the concern in 24 hrs. Although WeDevs is providing reasonable support during their work hours, I’m sure they could also look into having 24/7 support for their customers as well. Through this way, they can double the user’s satisfaction and loyalty over time. 

I suggest WeDevs should also invest in customer care to retain users’ satisfaction and loyalty over time.

Features

Dokan is the most complete multi-vendor plugin one can ever find. However, some features need to be added to help enhance the management of the vendors and commission. A breach in the code, a few WordPress errors, and some other concerns are common while installing the Dokan addons on the WordPress CMS framework. This is also because of the vulnerability of WordPress to such errors. However, this can be avoided if you will keep your themes up to date, and you are using protection for your plug-ins like WordFence.

Another thing, since it’s a WordPress solution, a lot of merchants and sales are coming in which easily fills up your database and slows down your site. Thus, frequent cleaning and backing up of databases should be taken into consideration as well by the developers of Dokan.

Features of Dokan

Marketplace with Independent Stores

Since you now share your website with other online store owners, it is recommended that your plugin can offer the service they need. Every seller in your store will brand their products the way they want them. And it is a must that your website can cater to this action. Say, one of your vendors sells clothes inspired by a pop band, while the other one sells essential oils. Both of them offer beneficial vendor products to consumers but they differ in the way they should be presented in the market. With Dokan, every seller gets their store with a unique URL and branding. There are also beautiful storefront styles available with contact details and widgets your vendors can choose from.

And just like any other multi-vendor website, a store location map on the storefront is available as well. Just go for the Dokan Pro plan to fully enjoy this feature.

Frontend Dashboard For Each Seller

Each seller can fully enjoy their control over product management, order management, withdrawal system, and everything that they need to get access to from site to frontend. Dokan’s dashboard is neat and easy to understand. You just have to install it and you can easily navigate through it. The number of vendors, amount of commissions, sales per month, number of withdrawals, and any other information that you need can be easily accessed in your dashboard.

Earn from Each Sale

If you think that earning from your shop is the only way you can have an income, let me tell you now that you are wrong. Apart from the sale from your shop, a sale value is also sent to the admin or you, as a commission. And you can customize each commission rate according to your liking. You can also override a percentage per vendor through the Dokan Pro plan.

Product Management

With Dokan, you can create and manage your product, orders, and shopping system from the front end. As vendors, you have the freedom and access to managing your product list, branding, and managing orders from start to end. As vendors, you will have the option to manage product attributes, and have support from Zonewise shipping management. You can create variable or downloadable products. And you can also manage downloadable product permission, expiry date, and download limit.

Detailed Reports

The sales world will always be organized and easy to manage as long as you have the sales report. With Dokan, you can see your sales reports, generate statements and overviews from the front end. You can analyze your product on what is the best seller and take into consideration what should be improved to generate larger sales. As for admins, you can overview orders and have them filtered by date, top vendors or sellers, or top earners.

Dokan also lets vendors switch from another marketplace to using import and export features. And you can also create coupons with advanced management features. Both of these are available on the Pro plan of Dokan.

Admin Controls

And of course, as an admin, you have full control over your website. You can view and manage the vendor’s list, and even the vendor’s earning reports individually. You can enable/disable the map, contact form, and sidebar from the theme of your website. It is your choice to also set the order status for withdrawal, set threshold withdrawal day for the vendor, change the vendor URL, and any other selling options.

Widgets like the Best vendor widget, featured vendor widget, store contact, store location and much more can be customized by admin too. And I suggest, for you to fully enjoy all these best features, you must go with the Pro plan.

Extended Features

Another thing that makes Dokan the best multi-vendor plugin is the presence of its extended features. It is built according to the idea that someone with great potential should not be restricted to grow and realize his/her dreams. Seller verification, Stripe Connect, Pdf Invoice, Geolocation, Live Chat, Subscriptions, Vendor review are just some of these extended features that Dokan has to offer.