Many online businesses nowadays use e-commerce to sell their products. Selecting the right platform for your business is important for its success. Shopify and WooCommerce are currently the most popular platforms out there. They both offer distinct features that are tailored to various needs.
In this article, we will compare both platforms to help you choose the best one that will fit your business needs.
How Do They Compare?
Shopify
Shopify is a complete paid e-commerce solution. It’s fully hosted, easy to use, scalable and has a wide range of built-in features that can help you get started on your business quickly.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free plugin that can be installed on a WordPress website. It is an open-source platform allowing full flexibility and customization to transform a WordPress website into a fully functional e-commerce store.
Ease of Use
Shopify
Shopify is one of the most user-friendly e-commerce platforms in the market. It has a simple, straightforward interface, perfect for beginners and users with no technical background. Anyone can quickly set up and manage their store with no hassle.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a plugin integration with WordPress. Although it is highly customizable, this will require the user to have basic technical knowledge and understanding of WordPress fundamentals.
Customization and Flexibility
Shopify
Shopify produces plentiful customizable themes and gives a variety of options to design the layout of their unique online store. However, this platform is simple by nature. Customization is limited when compared to its competitor, WooCommerce.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce offers unlimited flexibility as part of the WordPress community. It has a wide range of themes and plugins to choose from to build your own one-of-a-kind e-commerce site. Users can style and modify any functionality to cater to their needs, with full control as it is an open-source platform.
Cost
Shopify
Shopify is a monthly or yearly paid subscription-based platform. It comes in four tiers: Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus, each one offering more features than the last. Although it is highly scalable, the cost can add up over time, especially with additional apps usually at a cost.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is free to use, along with WordPress but other costs should be considered such as hosting, and domain registration. While most themes and additional plugins on WordPress are free, some also require money.
Scalability
Shopify
Shopify is known for its scalability. It can handle any size store, from a start-up homemade soap store to an online fast fashion store. It also handles its own hosting and infrastructure. It is reliable and allows you to make upgrades to your existing Shopify store seamlessly.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is not self-hosted. Its scalability depends on the user’s chosen hosting provider. With the right hosting solution, WooCommerce can handle any online store of any size.
SEO Friendliness
Shopify
Shopify is an all-in-one platform providing built-in SEO functions. Basic SEO features such as meta tags, meta descriptions, title tags, sitemaps etc. will increase your search engine rankings. But its customizable options will be limited.
WooCommerce
As a WordPress plugin, WooCommerce inherits its renowned SEO-friendly structure. It can combine with popular SEO plugins such as RankMath to provide the best search engine rankings results. As it is an open-source platform, users have full control over optimizing their store to gain its full visibility potential.
Payment Gateways and Transaction Fee
Shopify
Shopify has payment integration with many popular payment vendors such as PayPal, Stripe, AfterPay, and many more. Although this may be convenient it will rack up plentiful transaction fees.
WooCommerce
With the use of additional plugins, WooCommerce can support various payment methods. This gives users flexibility in determining their expenses as they can choose a free plugin or ones with transaction fees.
Support and Community
Shopify
As mentioned previously, Shopify is a paid subscription, so it has 24/7 customer support via chat, email and phone. Due to its popularity, there is a huge community of users, developers and Shopify experts that can guide and provide you with resources.
WooCommerce
With WooCommerce you can expect a huge community where many collaborate using forums, shared documentation and resources to offer help and hacks to support your online store. Although there’s no official on-call support, WordPress has an ample community where many consult for assistance.
The End Game: Which Is Better?
There are pros and cons to both solutions. Shopify offers a simple interface, scalable, and 24/7 on-call support, while WooCommerece provides flexibility, customization and budget-friendly options. What you choose will ultimately be based on your business needs and priorities: site requirements (design and features), budget, technical proficiency, and long-term goals.
Leave Your E-commerce Web Design to the Pros
If you are still unsure, our team of experts at The Influence Agency can help you! As Toronto’s leading marketing company, we can guide you and your business to the right path. We offer design, development, SEO and much more to help you build your successful business.
Contact us today and let’s talk!