Best WordPress Dispensary Plugins for 2018

1. Wordfence

FREE The main concern with using WordPress is security, and well-maintained security plugins like Wordfence prevent almost all brute-force and spam attacks directed at WordPress websites. With the proper plugins installed and kept up-to-date, WordPress is a secure, powerful and well-supported content management system (CMS) that is 100% free to use. Wordfence also allows administrators to enable auto-updates so that the most recent version is installed on your website to protect against current threats and ongoing cyber attacks.

The first plugin I install on a WordPress site is the Wordfence security plugin, and then I delete “Hello Dolly”. Wordfence also offers a Pro license with advanced feature and support, but a well-configured Wordfence installation will keep the bots and barbarians at bay. Depending on your situation, and website needs, the Pro license may be appropriate.

2. WooCommerce

FREE If you’re using WordPress and want a shopping cart on your website, WooCommerce is the obvious choice. WooCommerce the most popular, has a ton of extensions and third-party plugins like H32B’s WooCommerce Dispensary Plugin suite and a robust documentation for developers. Out of the box, WooCommerce offers administrators reporting, email notifications, stock management, coupons, order management, advanced product configurations: simple, variable, downloadable, expanded taxonomies (product categories, product tags, attributes), tax rate tables, shipping zones and a whole lot more!

Best of all, WooCommerce is a free plugin that drastically extends, the already pretty snazzy, WordPress functionality to support an e-commerce website for marijuana dispensaries. For medical marijuana dispensaries that do not offer an e-commerce shopping cart, WooCommerce can also be used to display a detailed dispensary menu; simply don’t input prices into the product data. Instead of “Add to Cart” buttons, you’ll see “More Details” buttons.

In our next article, we’ll outline how to use WooCommerce attributes to manage additional marijuana data like: strain, flavor, effects, medical benefits without the use of extra plugins.

3. Post SMTP

FREE Originally the Postman SMTP plugin, Post SMTP allows website-generated emails to be sent using SMTP relay. Website generated emails are almost always regarded as spam and are generally blocked from being delivered, but using Post SMTP sends website-generated notifications from an email address and not a server. Post SMTP allows you to authenticate with SMTP, Mandrill API and even OAuth 2.0 for Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail.

Post SMTP plugin is highly recommeded to ensure that your e-commerce email notifications are delivered successfully. Your website’s email notifications may still end up in a user’s Junk or Spam folder, the messages are being received instead of automatically rejected. Excessive and frequent emails being sent from a server can harm your IP reputation and result in blacklisting.

4. Yoast SEO

FREE Another amazing plugin that optimizes on-site SEO when website administrators manage meta and content geared towards focused keywords. Yoast SEO is another example of a powerful, free WordPress plugin that drastically enhances WordPress and WooCommerce functionality. One of the biggest benefits of using WooCommerce is how much it can improve a website’s page ranking when properly configured and used with keyword-focused: posts, pages, product descriptions, category/tag descriptions, titles, meta descriptions, etc.

Similar to Wordfence, Yoast SEO also offers a Pro version with extended features and additional support, but for our example we’re reviewing the free version of the Yoast SEO plugin. That said, the free SEO plugin is amazing and depending on your situation and goals the Pro version may be an appropriate expense.

5. Gravity Forms (Elite)

$259.00 USD Gravity Forms is a third party plugin, developed by Rocketgenius, Inc., to provide form creation and customization functionality to WordPress. We’re also recommending the most expensive license, Elite, not the Basic or Pro. The reason we recommend the Elite license is for the User Registration add-on. For medical marijuana dispensaries, additional information is required for user registration and users shouldn’t be able to make purchases before registering and being approved.

With the User Registration add-on you can create a custom user registration form with customized fields for drivers’ license and medical marijuana recommendation uploads, membership agreement acceptance and more. Enabling the User Activation feature will also allow website administrators to review and approve form submissions before a user account is created. For this feature alone, we recommend the Gravity Forms – Elite license which is money well-spent on security and compliance.

6. H32B Flower Inventory Manager

$149.00 USD Our most popular WordPress dispensary plugin is our Flower Inventory Manager which tracks bulk marijuana inventory, by strain and to the gram, with WooCommerce variable products configured using a Weight attribute. If your marijuana dispensary provides bulk flower to patients and customers, we highly recommend our bulk flower inventory tracking plugin for WooCommerce. For more details about our Flower Inventory Manager plugin for WooCommerce dispensaries, read the plugin tutorial and walkthrough.

Our Bulk flower tracking plugin also includes Auto-Inventory and Inventory Shift options that auto-populate variation inventories, based on dispersal settings, when flower inventory is being restocked. Bulk flower weight variations can also shift variation inventory to preserve inventory. Our next minor release, version 1.5, will include enhanced options for our Inventory Shift feature to provide even better automation for flower inventory management.

7. H32B Dispensary Delivery Driver

$119.00 USD For delivery dispensaries our Dispensary Delivery Driver plugin for WooCommerce is a perfect match! We’ve even sold our delivery management plugin to other delivery businesses not in the marijuana industry. Compatible for marijuana dispensaries in Canada and the United States, website administrators can designate users as Drivers, assign WooCommerce orders to Driver users, mark orders as “Out for Delivery” and allow WooCommerce dispensary delivery driver users to mark orders as “Delivered.”

Our marijuana delivery plugin for WooCommerce automatically redirects Driver users to the designated Driver page where their assigned orders are displayed in a responsive view, optimized for mobile devices. Our next minor release, version 1.4, will include the option to allow Drivers to assign orders to themselves.

8. H32B Disclaimer Pop-up Window

$59.00 USD Compliance with state and local laws combined with public health and safety ordinances can be rapidly implemented with our Disclaimer Pop-up Window plugin for WooCommerce marijuana dispensaries. Your fully-customizable HTML message can serve as an: disclaimer, age verification gate, terms agreement, sitewide announcement which must be accepted to proceed to the website.

Administrators can also schedule the disclaimer to be displayed. If your business has holiday hours, or you have a limited-time sales event the scheduling feature will give you control to display the sitewide takeover message to the exact minute.

9. WooCommerce Points & Rewards

$129.00 USD Marketing and promotion is important for any business, but with increasing competition it’s crucial in the recreational marijuana industry. With the WooCommerce Points & Rewards plugin, customers/patients accrue rewards points for purchases which they can later apply as a coupon discount. Points can be awarded for purchases, user registration and even leaving a product review.

Encouraging customer/patient loyalty through focused marketing and promotional efforts can improve customer conversions, increase your dispensary’s membership and add user-generated product review content. Even if you decide that the WooCommerce Points & Rewards plugin isn’t a fit for your marijuana dispensary, using coupons and targeted marketing campaigns makes good business sense.

10. H32B Daily Reconcile Report

$119.00 USD H32B’s Daily Reconcile Report – Flower plugin was designed for marijuana dispensaries offering bulk flower products to customers/patients. Our marijuana sales plugin for WooCommerce allows administrators to view detailed line-item product sales information for custom-set date ranges. The “Combine Flower Variations” option merges variation sales into a single marijuana flower strain list-item indicating quantity of grams sold.

Part of our WordPress Dispensary Plugin Suite, the Daily Reconcile Report – Flower WooCommerce plugin also lets administrators export sales information as a .csv so sales data can be uploaded to third-party accounting software. In our next minor release, version 1.3, we’re adding support for WooCommerce Cost of Goods plugin to better track marijuana product profitability.