Shopify vs WooCommerce: What is the difference?
Shopify vs WooCommerce, the battle for the best eCommerce platforms. If you are looking to put your store online and struggling to choose between these two platforms. Here is your answer.
We will discuss the pros and cons of each online shop builder and you can decide which one is best for your situation. Alright, let’s get right into it.
Shopify
To start off the Shopify vs WooCommerce debate with the first contender. Shopify powers over 1,000,000 businesses worldwide! This platform is an all-in-one eCommerce platform for businesses of all sizes.
Pros
Ease of Use
Shopify has an abundance of themes for businesses to choose from. With new and professional designs, there is a theme for any type of business.
When a new online store is created, everything is set up within a few clicks. Also, the user doesn’t have to be a professional.
24/7 Support
Customer support is always a priority with websites in general. Business owners want fast responses from the support team. Issues like a checkout bug or a product aren’t showing on the site could really affect the business.
Luckily, Shopify has top quality support for those that need it.
Integration with other Channels
Recently Facebook has partnered with Shopify to allow businesses to sell their products on the Facebook & Instagram business pages with ease. This is great for business owners that have a large following on this social media. As they can advertise and sell through multiple sites.
Hosted eCommerce Software
Spotify plans come with hosting and security certificates. As well as, server maintenance. In case your website is overwhelmed with an insane amount of traffic or sales, the website won’t crash.
Cons
An understanding of Liquid
Liquid is a code language that Shopify uses. So, if a business wants to customise a template, some sufficient skill in Liquid will be required.
No email hosting
Although you can purchase a domain through Shopify, email hosting is not included in their packages. So any email communications that take place through your Shopify set might come from an external resource.
Free Theme Limit
Although Shopify has a huge variety of themes, there are only 10 different free themes. This could limit the choice for some businesses. To access the rest of the theme library, a higher, more costly package.
Price
In this section of Shopify vs WooCommerce, how much does Shopify cost?
Starting at $29USD/month and Maxing at $299USD/month, a business will receive a minimum of:
- An eCommerce Website & Blog
- Unlimited Products
- 2 Staff Accounts
- 24/7 Support
- Sales Channels
- Manual Order Creation
- Discount Codes
- Free SSL certificate
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Gift Cards
- Fraud Analysis
- Shipping Label Printing
- & more
WooCommerce
Next up on the Shopify vs WooCommerce battle. WooCommerce is an eCommerce solution for WordPress. This solution helps empower small and medium businesses to sell whatever and display it in whichever way.
WooCommerce is committed to democratizing commerce and putting you in control of your own livelihood. Our core platform is free and open-source, empowering anyone to sell anything, anywhere - WooCommerce
Pros
Store Designed WooThemes
There are a number of WordPress themes that work specifically for WooCommerce websites. Furthermore, WordPress is customisable. So, with some sort of experience, an online store has an endless amount of customisation.
Impressive SEO
Because WooCommerce is within WordPress, it takes advantage of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plugins, the CMS offers. These plugins provide helpful guidance to improve the SEO potential of the page.
Secure
This is a given with every WooCommerce site. This is super important because your website will be maintaining buyer’s confidential details like credit card details and shipping. If the security isn’t up to standard, users also activate other plugins to improve the security levels.
Cons
Customer Support
Although WooCommerce has a worldwide team, the support services aren’t the greatest. The support system is ticket-based, which is great but they don't have phone support. So users will need to read through FAQs and Documentation or send in a support ticket.
Steep Learning Curve
If you have never touched WordPress before, this might take a while to get used to. This could waste time and you could end up giving up. So if you are looking to use WooCommerce, we recommend learning WordPress first, then WooCommerce.
Site Performance Decrease
If you aren’t familiar with WordPress, the more plugins that are active, the slower the site could become. Although WooCommerce might only use a few plugins, the more you customise your website, the more plugins you might need.
Also, some plugins aren’t optimised which can really hinder the performance of a site.
Price
In this section of Shopify vs WooCommerce, how much does WooCommerce cost?
WooCommerce has made it harder to find package prices. Depending on the requirements of the page, the cost will vary. This can be due to the cost of extra plugins. So a WooCommerce site could range from $3 to $300 per month.
Shopify vs WooCommerce: The Alternatives
If you are looking at other alternatives, we have discussed some other comparisons for you. Leaning towards Wix or Squarespace. We have talked about the pros and cons of those platforms also.
Fonseka Innovations
Don’t have the time to create your own online store and need a little help? Fonseka Innovations are experts in creating quality and effective online shops and websites. If you are interested in our services, contact us now or learn more about what we do.