I’ve launched enough of these that the process is boring now, which is the point. Here’s the stack I install every time I need a WordPress store selling digital products, with the order I do it in and the settings that bite people.
Start with hosting and a clean install. You need PHP 8.1 or newer, HTTPS from the first minute, and a staging copy if your host offers one (most do for free). Install WordPress, delete the default plugins, and set permalinks to Post name. That last one takes ten seconds and saves you from broken product URLs later.
Theme first, then plugins. I use a block theme with no storefront bloat — Twenty Twenty-Four or a lightweight commercial theme. Avoid anything that bundles its own page builder plus a commerce layer; you’ll spend the weekend fighting two systems that both think they own the checkout page.
The commerce plugin is WooCommerce. Yes, it’s heavier than the alternatives. It’s also the one every payment gateway and tax service supports first, and when you’re a solo founder you want the boring choice. During onboarding, skip the product types you don’t need and turn off shipping entirely — Settings > General, uncheck ‘Enable shipping.’ Digital products plus a shipping calculator is the most common misconfiguration I see.
Payments: Stripe for cards, PayPal as a second option for the people who still want it. In Stripe’s settings, enable Apple Pay and Google Pay through the WooCommerce Stripe plugin — one checkbox, and it lifts mobile conversion more than any theme tweak. Turn on test mode, run a $1 order with a real card, then flip to live. Do not skip the real-card test; test mode hides address-verification failures.
Digital delivery is where the stack matters. Two options: WooCommerce’s built-in downloadable products, or a dedicated plugin that issues license keys if you’re selling software. For plain files, built-in is fine. Set download expiry to something generous like 30 days and download limit to 5. Customers lose files; giving them a re-download link in the receipt email prevents most support tickets.
For license keys, I use a small plugin rather than rolling my own. The setting you’ll forget: whether a license activates on a per-site or per-install basis, and whether expired licenses block updates. Decide that before your first sale, because changing it after 50 customers have keys is a mess.
Email is not optional. WooCommerce’s default emails are plain and fine, but they get caught in spam more than you’d like. Install an SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP is the one I keep coming back to) and connect it to a transactional service. Send a test order to a Gmail address and check the spam folder. If it lands in spam, fix it before launch, not after.
Caching and security are the last two plugins. A caching plugin with page cache off for cart, checkout, and my-account pages — most do this automatically, verify it. Then a security plugin for login limiting and file-change monitoring. That’s it. Resist the urge to install a page builder, a popup tool, an analytics suite, and a CRM on day one. You can add those when there’s traffic to justify them.
The settings people forget, in order of how much they hurt: currency position and decimal separator (a European customer will notice), guest checkout (turn it off if you’re issuing licenses so accounts exist), terms checkbox on checkout (many gateways require it), and the store address used for tax calculations. Get those four right and your first order will go through cleanly.
Finally, put a real product page together before you invite anyone. One product, a clear price, a short description, a screenshot of what they get, and a download button that works. Then buy it yourself with a real card. The whole stack takes about six focused hours. The rest of the weekend is for writing the product page, not for debugging plugins.