Do you want to learn about Shopify vs Woocommerce to create an amazing online store for your business?
First of all, it’s really important to choose the right platform while building an online store. In modern times customers don’t visit your business physically. So, make sure that you can execute crucial and necessary information to your visitor, client and customers in an informative yet appealing way.
Shopify and WooCommerce are considered the best eCommerce platforms to start an online store. But despite being the top two eCommerce giants, Shopify and WooCommerce come with their own pros and cons.
Remember that what suits others’ business might not be suitable for yours. So, don’t just check out installations, ratings and reviews. Instead, check whether your eCommerce platform includes what’s necessary for your online store or not.
In this article, we will take a look at both platforms. Make sure to go through the entire article and analyze the features. Then choose one between Shopify and WooCommerce that will meet your website’s needs.
Overview:
Before beginning the comparison of Shopify Vs WooCommerce, let’s get to know about them in more detail. In this section, we will try to make you understand what these eCommerce platforms are and how they stand out from other platforms.
Shopify
Shopify is a hosted eCommerce platform founded in Ottawa in 2006. Initially, it started out as a simple market maker of eCommerce websites. Users can create an online store, accept payments, manage checkout flows, and work with JavaScript from a single platform.
The platform is the home for over 1,000,000 merchants selling everything. It offers three different plans for its users starting at $29 per month.
Make sure to get access to the powerful APIs of Shopify in order to bring your ideas to work. The owners of Shopify stores can sell their products in a physical location using Shopify POS.
You can customize your store or even build it from the ground up. Shopify is versatile so it will make you grow with you. This complete commerce platform lets you start, grow and manage a business in no time.
This eCommerce platform works by unifying all of your commerce into a single central command centre. The merchants can sell their online products in multiple places like social media, mobile, web, pop-up shops, online marketplaces and much more.
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress that is easily customizable from each and every aspect. It supercharges the Content Management System(CMS) and enables you to run an online store using the platform you know.
This platform powered 40,000+ sites since early 2015. Moreover, the number has always increased over the years due to its enriched features, advanced functionalities and consistent updates as per the user’s requirements.
It makes creating and managing an online store simple with a reasonable level of flexibility and many more amazing features such as secure payments and shipping integration, inventory, tax management and much more.
WooCommerce is developed as an extension of WordPress, the most popular website builder on the market. You can choose to build an eCommerce website from scratch or make changes to the existing settings, the choice is all yours!
It provides its users with the world’s best Content Management System(CSI) and publishing tools. Still, if you need to get something additional there are dozens of premium and free WordPress themes and plugins for WooCommerce.
Here we come to the end of Shopify vs WooCommerce overview.
Shopify vs WooCommerce
We clearly know what Shopify and WooCommerce platforms are all about. Let us clearly know which platform is a suitable option for creating your online store on the basis of the different features and services that they provide us with.
| Points of Difference | WooCommerce | Shopify |
| Plans | Provides Free Services. But, the service doesn’t include any kind of hosting | Provides 3 different plans for its users. |
| Installation and Setup | Intermediate | Comparatively easier than WooCommerce |
| Domain | Doesn’t offer any free subdomain | Offers Myshopify.com subdomain for all plans |
| Support | Support from Themes and Plugins Editors | Documentation, Chat, Email, Forum and Phone Support |
| Price | Installation is absolutely free. Also, the extensions are reasonably priced | Sum up with a comparatively expensive yearly bill |
| Trial | No trials available | Come up with 14-day trial |
| Secure Socket Layer(SSL) | Includes SSL certificate but it can only be owned when obtaining your own certificate | Includes SSL certificate along with its plans |
| Coding Knowledge | Requires comparatively less or almost no coding knowledge | Requires some coding knowledge |
| Number of Users | 3,300,000+ Users | 1,300,000+ Users |
1. Ease of Use – Shopify vs Woocommerce
WooCommerce is believed to have steeper functionalities while using it as compared to Shopify. But, despite this fact, eCommerce payment processing is comparatively simple in WooCommerce due to the availability of numerous options.
As Shopify is a self-hosted platform, it provides you with built-in online stores. Whereas while using WooCommerce you need to handle a couple of things like updates, installation, backups and much more.
2. Design and Templates – Shopify vs WooCommerce
Users can use almost every theme that’s available in the market while using WooCommerce. Select any WordPress theme and it will work with this platform due to its setup to cooperate.
Moreover, while using Shopify you will be provided with 73 template options. Even more is less as you’ll receive almost 100 different designs.
But, if the comparison is to be made, it’s clearly visible that WooCommerce provides its users with more design and templates than Shopify.
3. Build Time – Shopify vs Woocommerce
Shopify will let you get your online store built-in and made live quicker than WooCommerce. But, still, WooCommerce is more suitable for users who are not aiming to gain massive sales in a short period of time.
The setup process in Shopify is not manual, it stores almost everything that its user requires in a single place. One of the reasons for the amazing build-in time for Shopify is that it does not require any technical skills.
Shopify vs WooCommerce – which one of them do you think have good build time. The answer can be Shopify
4. SEO – Shopify vs WooCommerce
Shopify vs WooCommerce – Which SEO is Better?
WooCommerce’s absolute pros can be its SEO performance. While using this platform you can make changes in tags, description, meta description, slug, elements pages and much more.
Likewise, you can use numerous SEO plugins which will eventually increase the performance of your online stores.
The main pitfall of using Shopify is that you won’t be able to customize the URLs and subcategories while building your online store.
Moreover, WooCommerce provides numerous SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, SEOPress, W3 Total Cache and much more. Not only the SEO ones but it is also compatible with most of the WordPress Plugins to improve the functionalities of your store’s website.
5. Price – Shopify vs WooCommerce
| Shopify | WooCommerce |
| $25/month for Shopify Basic | $39/month for Merchants |
| $65/month for Shopify | Free for Developers |
| $399/month for Advanced Shopify | Free for Enterprise |
Shopify as a hosted platform provides different packages to build an online store according to your necessities. Its pricing is clear and straightforward and the packages inhold complete solutions.
WooCommerce itself is free but buying a domain, Woocommerce (Bluehost), theme ($59/month) and plugins & extensions (from $25 each) is where you might need to spend some extra money.
If you are planning on making an economic store for your business then WooCommerce might be the right choice as it offers various services at a reasonable price. Additionally, you just need to buy the ones which are necessary during the making procedure.
6. Inventory Management – Shopify vs WooCommerce
In this Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison article, willing to know which of it provides better inventory management?
For those of you who don’t know, an inventory is the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.
Both Shopify and WooCommerce provide their users with inventory management functionality. WooCommerce allows users to make changes in the attributes of available products and also create an inventory report. You can create and manage as many products as you want.
Shopify’s Inventory Management allows users to access and track the stock. Not only that, but you can also keep the purchase order and revenue report records which are saved for you automatically.
Hence, to conclude about Inventory management both platforms provide their users with unique and useful functionalities.
7. Features – Shopify vs WooCommerce
Shopify provides its users with all of the features they want without any kind of hassle. Build and manage your online store using these amazing features listed below.
Major Features of Shopify:
- Provides 70+ Professional Themes
- Intuitive Settings for Every Template
- Use your own Domain Name or Purchase One through Shopify
- Full-Featured Content Management System
- Includes a Free 256 Bit SSL Certificate
- Integrates with Over 100 External Payment Gateways
- Enables Customer Account Creation at Checkout
- Customize your Automated Store Email
- Capture Payment and Fulfill Orders Right from your Phone
- Lets Potential Customers Find your Store using Search Engines
If you want to check out even more features of Shopify, make sure to visit this page.
WooCommerce is a perfect eCommerce platform where you can launch a business, design sites for clients, get started quickly and build the store as you want using these amazing features listed below.
Major Features of Woocommerce:
- Offers Flexible and Secure Payments
- Build and Customizes without any Limits
- Compatible with Major WordPress Themes
- Do Proper Optimization and Grow your Business
- Provides Complete Ownership of your Store
- Provides Guidance Across the World
- Safe and Secure Online Payment
- Select and Display Products in Modular Way
- Use Jetpack to Secure your Site
- Make Store Consumer-Friendly with Multilingual Content
- Boost Sales by Listing Products in Different Places.
If you want to check out even more features of Woocommerce, make sure to go through this page.
8. Customer Support – Shopify vs WooCommerce
Don’t worry even if you are a beginner as both Shopify and WooCommerce provide their users with support to solve the issue and confusion that arises while building a perfect online store.
WooCommerce doesn’t provide its users with live chat, phone and email support. However, you can view the documentation, get help from a WooExpert, provide support policy, refund policy, FAQs, and much more.
But if you use Shopify to power your WooCommerce store you can receive amazing customer support.
With Shopify, you can receive 24/7 guidance through email and live chat. Moreover, you can also reach out to Shopify Help Center, view API documentation and free tools.
Shopify has an enormous amount of FAQs as well as a Forum that will offer you a helping hand whenever required.
We hope you were able to find out which platform between Shopify and WooCommerce is more suitable for you to build your website.
Disadvantages – Shopify Vs WooCommerce
Each and every online store platform has its own advantages as well as disadvantages. In this part of our comparison, we will try to point out some of the disadvantages of Shopify and WooCommerce so you will have a clear picture of both pros and cons of using them.
Cons of Using Shopify:
- Fees for Different Transactions: Shopify has its own gateway Shopify Payments. Only if you use Shopify Payments the transactions are free, otherwise, you need to pay a certain fee.
- Less Economical: Shopify provides its users with many costly apps. As they are better with providing services many users end up purchasing them. As a result, the yearly bill ends up being expensive.
Cons of Using WooCommerce:
- Requires Coding Knowledge: WooCommerce is not so beginner friendly as it requires some coding knowledge while building an online store. If you don’t have any coding knowledge you might get stuck and struggle.
- Managing Issues: While using WooCommerce you need to manage from hosting to maintenance, backups to security, sometimes it might turn out to be hectic.
Hence in this article, Shopify vs WooCommerce, we got to know both of them have their own cons.
Wrapping Up:
Both Shopify and WooCommerce are best in themselves, you won’t have much problem if you decide to choose any of them. But still, if you have to make a choice, analyze every feature and function we mentioned above so you can choose the one more suitable for your online store.
We hope this article helps you compare the advantages and disadvantages of Shopify and WooCommerce. So, what are you waiting for? Choose any of these platforms and build an online store right away! Happy Online Store Making!
If you have used any of these platforms, feel free to share your experience in the comment section below. This way the new users will have a better idea about the products.
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