E-commerce is growing and does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Most businesses are turning to E-commerce to increase their sales and revenue. Two of the most popular E-commerce services available today to host your own E-commerce stores are WooCommerce and Shopify.
In today’s post, we will compare the two different platforms for you to select the right choice for your E-commerce store.
These platforms have their similarities and differences between them. You will have to make sure you select the correct platform that suites your needs. This post will help you to decide on what platform ideal for your needs, it’s Shopify vs Woocommerce.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is currently the most popular standalone e-commerce platform available on the internet.
First, we will talk about why WooCommerce is so popular and the reasons for you to use WooCommerce.
Reasons to use WooCommerce
WooCommerce is free and easy to stup
WooCommerce is written in PHP and works alongside WordPress, which means it works on almost all hosting services. It’s completely free. All you have to do is install WooCommerce as a plugin inside your WordPress installation. And that’s just about it. You are ready to sell on WooCommerce.
If you have some basic computer knowledge, managing your WooCommerce store is easy, it has an easy to use user interface to add and remove items, and you can also manage your orders within the WooCommerce dashboard.
Good plugin ecosystem
There are thousands of themes and plugins, both free and paid, that you can use to improve your WooCommerce store, and with so many different themes, you can make sure your store does not look like any other store on the internet.
You can also integrate different payment gateways to your WooCommerce store. Popular payment gateways like Stripe, Paypal all have plugins to work with WooCommerce, so processing payments is easy.
Also, local third party payment processing platforms include their plugins to process payments. So you won’t have difficulty in processing your payments on WooCommerce.
Actively developed
WooCommerce is also actively developed with a large community behind it. Therefore, you are never short on support. With so many articles, questions, and answers available on the internet, you can solve almost all WooCommerce associated problems.
Since WooCommerce works with WordPress, you will have a better chance of improving your store’s SEO when you use WooCommerce.
Why shouldn’t you use WooCommerce?
Most addons are not free
Even though WooCommerce is free to install, it is not 100% free. You will be able to get basic features to sell your products on WooCommerece. However, for the proper functionality of your store, you will have to buy some addons from Woocommerce that will cost you money.
Even simple customization might require you to buy an addon from the WooCommerce website.
You will also have to pay for hosting and a domain name, which you have to purchase from a hosting provider and a domain registration service. So there is a cost in buying hosting and a domain name.
Not easy to customize without web development knowledge
To properly customize your WooCommerce store, sometimes you will require knowledge in PHP, CSS, and Javascript, installing and managing a WordPress website.
And if you don’t know these web developing technologies, you either have to hire a professional developer to design your e-commerce store or learn PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. And you might have to pay a large amount of money when you hire a developer.
In the end, it will take a couple of weeks to a month to properly have your online store up and running in WooCommerce.
Shopify
Shopify has become a popular e-commerce solution for small online businesses because of the simplicity of starting your e-commerce within a short time.
Reasons to use Shopify.
Create a shop within minutes
First, starting your e-commerce store is extremely simple in Shopify. All you have to do is signup for the service, and you can start selling straight away.
You don’t have to worry about installing WordPress and using a hosting service. Shopify will handle all the technical aspects of developing and hosting the platform, while you only need to worry about selling and marketing.
Simple payment processing
Shopify will also handle the payment processing for you, so you don’t have to signup and use a payment gateway plugin. All you need is a PayPal or a Stripe account. After linking your PayPal or Stripe account, Shopify will send money to you.
No domain name required
You can also use Shopify even without a domain name. Every shop will get a myshopify.com subdomain for free. You can also purchase a domain name for your store within Shopify.
Shopify also has a growing community, and you can easily find support to solve all your issues. Shopify is most popular among the drop-shipping community.
Reasons not to use Shopify
No free plan
The ease of Shopify comes at a cost. There is no free plan for Shopify. You have to pay a monthly fee to Shopify for development and keeping your store online.
The basic plan will cost you $29, and it can go up to $300 per month, depending on your usage requirements.
Even though Shopify doesn’t have a free plan, Shopify offers a free 14 day trial period for anyone to try out their service.
Therefore irrespective of you making any sales, you will have to pay a monthly fee to Shopify. Where in WooCommerce, you don’t have to pay once you paid for the hosting and your domain name.
No diverse plugin or theme eco-system
The themes and plugin eco-system on Shopify is not as diverse as that of WordPress or WooCommerce, and your customization options are limited, where on WooCommerce, you have unlimited customization options.
Because of the limited customization on a Shopify store, most Shopify stores tend to look the same.
Also, most of the Shopify themes and plugins are not free, and you will have to buy a theme and plugins for customization and full functionality.
Bad search engine optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Shopify is not as advanced as in WooCoomerce. WooCommerce is using WordPress, and therefore search engine optimization is more advanced and better on WooCommerce.
Therefore if you plan on getting traffic through Google, then WooCommerce is the best option. If you plan to get your audience from social media, then you can use Shopify because you don’t have to worry about search engine optimization.
Conclusion, Shopify VS WooCommerce
If you have some technical knowledge on setting up a WordPress website on a hosting service, and you can customize your website, a WooCommerce store is the best option for you.
If you don’t have the technical knowledge and want to start an e-commerce service quickly, then Shopify is the best option for you.
You also have to know where you are going to acquire your users. If you are planning on acquiring users from Google, then WooCommerce is the best option due to better search engine optimization.
