I’ve been thinking a lot about open source projects, and how empowering they are in the era of AI. The more AI is familiar with the code, the better outcome it will be.
Even with no coding knowledge, someone like myself can spin up a site and build something real.
I work in Woo support every day for the past 5 years (!), so I need to come clean first that I’m definitely biased. I believe deeply in the power of open source and in what WooCommerce enables.
But also… I have so many gaslighting experiences with the products.
Does WooCommerce gaslight you too?
You don’t know how shipping works? Too bad!
Let’s just put it out there. We know user experience of WooCommerce is bad.
But then I must also point out: the mess doesn’t actually belong to WooCommerce, and we are mostly projecting the day to day commerce struggles onto WooCommerce. Calling it out “Why can’t WooCommerce just work to make commerce work?”
Commerce is messy because human world is messy—and regulations built around commerce are messy.
Commerce is simply too complicated
I specialize in shipping and tax products within Woo as a support engineer.
UPS, USPS, FedEx, Royal Mail, Canada Mail, Australia Post… Not only the regional shipping carrier dynamic, but global shipping regulation wants me dead. That complexity is the reality merchants face day-to-day. No matter how much you try to simplify the tool, there are always new rules, edge cases, and regulations.
One time, Woo merchant reached out about the FedEx Shipping Method extension and asked:
“Why aren’t freight rates returning to Hawaii and Alaska, even though that’s possible?”
Well I had no idea, so I called the FedEx API support. Their answer:
- They supported it on SOAP (now legacy)
- But not on their newer API
- Then they said “We don’t know if we are gonna roll that out yet.”
Ummmmmmmm… okay…
Love and hate or mostly hate
It’s not WooCommerce that’s messy. In fact, WooCommerce is built to hold the complexities of human world.
There isn’t perfect tool, because every business operates differently. And there won’t be any platform that just works for every edge case.
Each business is operating with platform and tools in mind. People always adapt.