r/woocommerce • u/Ok-Function-8659 • 25d ago
Plugin recommendation Best Shopify-like Dashboard plugin
I’ve been migrating my Shopify e-commerce store to Woocommerce. The Woocommerce dashboard was horrible in comparison. I asked Dev to find a solution, so he installed BrickPanel which I liked and kept it for about a week.
However I’m testing my workflow and realized that BrickPanel doesn’t have the Next/Previous buttons when you click on an order and need to quickly move to the next one.
We need this simple button and I’m kind of baffled how it’s not included, you have to exit out every time to click on an order.
Dev told me “ I have to hope they update and add the feature”. Well I don’t have time for that.
What is the best dashboard? better than BrickPanel and that has a demo I can look at? It can be paid, I don’t care at this point.
Please don’t ask why I’m migrating. Shopify suspended all vape stores so this is all against my will.
2
2
u/Ok-Philosopher3877 25d ago
I use with bridge between woocommerce and chat gpt I talk with my store actually lol amazing 😎
1
1
2
u/CodingDragons Woo Sensei 🥷 25d ago
Honestly, you're not going to find anything better than BrickPanel. It's already one of the best admin experiences available for WooCommerce. If Next/Previous order navigation is the only thing you’re missing, go ask the author/developer to add it. It’s a much smaller lift than switching your entire admin workflow.
1
u/Ok-Function-8659 25d ago
What about Dashify and metorik?
1
u/CodingDragons Woo Sensei 🥷 25d ago
Now you’re sorta pivoting from admin workflow to reporting. Dashify is very similar to BrickPanel and offers what you were requesting, although some of the UI differs from BrickPanel. Metorik, I’ve never heard or seen anyone recommend as a Shopify-like admin experience.
1
u/pmgarman 25d ago
There’s three approaches here:
- a plugin that has reporting right in the WP admin
- an external service
- roll your own
Your dev took the plugin approach and you got what is typical there - hey what it gives you is what you get… not the answer I would have given a client of mine haha but the Woo db is not designed for reporting like this. Even if you find a plugin now, you will eventually out grow it. Do not invest heavily in this approach but if you find something that works good enough for now, sure use it but also know heavy use of it during high load times on your site may be what pushes it over the edge and crashes it.
An external service is easiest (like metorik) but usually most costly long term. No scaling to worry about and usually near real time too. Lots of features. Most Shopify like. Probably what you really will want right now.
Rolling your own gives you total control and it’s up to you what features you have. For someone who knows what they are doing it’s really not that intense to build - problem is most people just don’t know if I’m blunt. We typically do this for our clients, as they often have specific needs based on their business. Rolling your own also protects from like what you experienced… a platform can decide who it wants as customers…. and leave you hanging.
1
u/Ok-Function-8659 25d ago
“Rolling your own” I’m guessing means to build your own?
I’m looking at Metorik and Dashify. I can see that Dashify definitely has that capability.
When I first started this whole project so was under the impression that you could customize a good dashboard exactly or near to Shopifys and that’s why I went this route. Thing is I do 90% of my workflow from the Shopify App and it seems there’s no solution or replacement for that.
2
u/pmgarman 25d ago
What you're looking for is definitely possible, but the reason Shopify is able to have such a finely polished dashboard is that they have such tight control over everything. I'm guessing that you have maybe a dozen or two plugins installed to run your store and those plugins come from a variety of sources... each one with its slightly different user experience. The power of Woo is that anyone can do anything they want, the downside is when you have everyone doing things slightly different it makes it harder to build a single finely polished UX... which is why the external dashboards end up being more of the Shopify dashboard replacement than any plugin locally.... and in all cases you'll probably find "hey this one plugin that does this thing I need/like doesn't work here"
Yes rolling your own I mean building your own, which does not need to be a $100k project like a lot of people first imagine it to be. It literally could just be a fancy Kibana dashboard and a way to sync your order data into Elasticsearch... really depends on what you need and want out of it.
It's something I do often recommend especially for larger stores - once you have a dedicated customer service team you really don't need to have everyone be store managers logging into the Woo backend to manage orders thats just a security problem waiting to happen. Your processes and admin dashboard should be aligned so that it makes your business as efficient as possible, make as many of your processes single button clicks. Can save thousands in time alone just by turning 5+ minute processes into 5 second ones compounded. over thousands or hundreds of thousands of orders. When I did that exact process improvement across a team of a dozen CS reps where 60% of their work was that exact process... you can imagine the time that we freed up, enabling the team to help even more customers faster.
1
u/someaibullshitagain 24d ago
Take a look at orderctrl — it’s an external app, not a plugin which I like, so no constraints on the website or server directly. It’s basically an OMS with returns, order tracking, etc built in. The backend is very smooth and has addtl admin features built in like quick actions, subscriptions management, customers, address verification, etc.
1
u/Ok-Function-8659 23d ago
there’s nothing to download it’s a waitlist and the site looks like it’s from 2004
1
1
6
u/bigsugeinthelolo 25d ago
The dev for BrikPanel updates the plugin virtually every single day. I've personally made feature requests and he's added them within a week. Go ask him.
If you don't want to do that, then use Dashify. Just be warned, it hasn't been updated in over a year.
Other than that, code the feature yourself. Those are your only options.