Dokan

Dokan is a front-end ‘multi-vendor marketplace solution’ that helps turn WordPress websites into marketplaces that are similar to dedicated ones like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and Magento. Using Dokan is one of the fastest ways for businesses to start an eCommerce site and earn commissions from their vendors’ sales.

When using Dokan, vendors will be able to easily sell their subscription-based services and products through a website’s front end. Vendors can also appoint some employees to manage their stores, create and sell bookable products to customize their booking orders, and even use auction features to compete in the multi-vendor marketplace.

Dokan Features

Businesses using Dokan will be able to create the marketplace they want through the platform’s different features. This enables admins to have an easier time managing the various aspects of the business, vendors the functionalities they need to grow their businesses, and customers the best customer experience to entice them to continue shopping through the platform. Some of these features include the following:

Vendor management

Admins can access information on their vendors and manage their rights and capabilities. The data available includes the store name, store email, phone number, registration date, and status to enable or disable their selling capabilities.

Set up commissions

Admins can set up the commissions they will receive. This includes choosing commission types between “Flat,” “Percentage” and “Combine”; the amount of the admin’s commission per sale; shipping fee recipient; and tax fee recipient.

Admin reports

Admins can see the marketplace’s overall earnings for the day, year, and vendor in one place. The data available are monthly net sales, commissions, signups, and earnings.

Coupon creation

Both admins and vendors can create coupons to give discounts on a customer’s entire cart, on a fixed product, or on a percentage of the total amount of the order.

Announcements

Platform admins can send announcements to their sellers by using the dashboards. These announcements are useful to communicate with all sellers on topics ranging from World Health Day announcements to special platform-wide sales for Black Friday.

Automatic withdrawal disbursement

Admins can set up whether withdrawals are manual or automatic and schedule when disbursements will be paid. Admins can choose from quarterly, monthly, biweekly, and weekly payments on a day that suits them.

Product advertising

Admins can get vendors to advertise their products in the marketplace to try and increase marketplace earnings.

Shipping management

Vendors can manage both the shipping method for product delivery and the shipping fee. The shipping fee can be adjusted using dynamic settings.

Social login & registration

Users can register or log in to the eCommerce platform ‘eCommerce platform’ through their social media accounts when using Dokan. Different accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google can be connected.

Earning reports & statements

Vendors can get a real-time overview of their finances. They will also have access to breakdowns of their earnings on their dashboard.

Frontend variable products

Both admins and vendors can create variations of the same product listing from the front end. This is useful when selling multiple variations of one item, like a phone with different color options and internal specifications for the same phone model.

Independent store

Vendors can customize their stores to suit their needs and respective store themes.

Product bulk edit

Vendors can edit multiple products at the same time. This is useful for allocating discounts for multiple items and editing product statuses.

Order management

Vendors can manage customer orders, list them according to filters and statuses and add notes for tracking. When using the dashboard, sellers can view and process order statuses from order listings. It is also possible to complete orders from the dashboard.

Shipping status

Customers can track their items’ shipping status when vendors create shipments with tags. The shipping order statuses include “pending payment,” “processing,” and “completed.”

Customer email notification

Customers transacting with a site that uses Dokan will be able to receive notifications with updates on all detail and status changes. This ensures that people will be up-to-date with everything that happens regarding their orders.

Multiple product categories

Customers can easily discover the various products available in the marketplace by selecting different categories and subcategories. When selecting the “Fashion” category, customers will then be presented with additional subcategories.

Ajax live search

Dokan comes with Ajax live search functionality that allows customers to see display results as they type characters in the input box.

Follow store

Dokan’s “Follow” option makes it easy for customers to stay up-to-date with their preferred stores. They can keep track of when items are in stock or when certain sales and promotions are available.

RMA requests

Dokan allows customers to send RMA requests should their items arrive broken or damaged. Customers can request replacements, refunds, or store credits. The requests are only effective as long as they are still within warranty and they follow admin-set rules.

Geolocation

When using Dokan, businesses can have their customers view the products they can buy based on their geolocation to help them avoid high shipping rates from overseas. 

Product inquiry

Both customers and visitors can send product inquiries directly from the product page to determine when certain items will go back in stock. This does not require customers to log on to the platform.

Dokan Benefits

Using Dokan helps eCommerce businesses set up their ideal marketplaces. There are plenty of different benefits when using Dokan, including the following:

Simple platform

Dokan is a professional-looking and simple platform to use and is designed with “look and usability” in mind. Both admins and vendors will have an easy time using the front end and use different features, including managing vendors, checking reports, making announcements, setting up variable products, managing orders, etc.

Actionable reports and analytics

Both admins and vendors can have access to reports and analytics to see their respective performances. Admins can see how much they’re earning on the platform and the data can be sorted by day, year, and vendor to see how each vendor performs at any given time. Vendors can see the analytics for their stores and even keep track of their top pages and promotional activities to help evaluate the business’s performance. 

Affordable lifetime plans

Dokan offers five different plans with a varying number of features available. eCommerce businesses that want to take advantage of the more extensive features of the costlier plans can get the lifetime payment option and save up to 35% instead of paying annually. This is beneficial if a company intends to use the platform for at least five years. However, this option requires users to pay for the five years up front, making the initial cost high.

Dokan Pricing

Dokan offers five different packages for eCommerce businesses, including the always free Dokan Lite plugin, the Starter plan, the Professional plan, the Business plan, and the Enterprise plan. The Starter plan costs $149 per year, Professional costs $249 per year, Business costs $499 per year and Enterprise costs $999 per year.

Each plan gives users a wide range of different features, with the Business plan being the most popular one. This is thanks to the significant number of premium modules that users can use, including the support for PayPal, the geolocation feature, the license for five websites, and product advertising features. Cheaper plans have a lower number of premium modules and site licenses available and none of the other features are specifically mentioned in the Business plan.

Dokan offers a 14-day money-back guarantee for any user that finds that Dokan doesn’t meet their needs.

Conclusion

Dokan is a powerful multi-vendor marketplace solution that supports unlimited vendors, even on the free plan. Business owners can easily build their own marketplace, and vendors can easily take advantage of various features to help grow their stores.

The upfront cost for each paid plan can be quite high, but users have the option to get discounts for a higher one-time payment. Even the cheapest Starter plan includes the features available in the Dokan Lite plugin plus plenty of other features, including reports that eCommerce businesses can take advantage of to evaluate vendor performance and vendor management to enable or disable selling capabilities. The costlier plans offer far more useful features in addition to what’s included in the cheaper plans but it’s not completely necessary to immediately opt for the most expensive one, especially when they first compare the features and check how many premium modules they need to use.