Are you thinking of starting an online store for your business? Not sure about the best platform for your store? Well, there are several website builders in the market for eCommerce websites like WooCommerce, Shopify, magneto, WIX and open-cart etc. In this article, we will focus on the best and famous builders i.e., WooCommerce and Shopify. You may have read a lot of articles related to WooCommerce vs Shopify, and maybe you have made up your mind for selecting one builder for your website. But here, we will recommend you read this article till the end, so you can grab solid reasons to choose one builder.
Both are top eCommerce platforms, and both are good enough to use for your medium-size online store (with 10 to 50000 products). There is no comparison between the two of them, but if you are a developer or a store owner, you should consider a few points before choosing a platform.
WooCommerce Vs Shopify – A Comparison
Let’s discuss all aspects of both platforms:
1- Installation
WooCommerce is an eCommerce system in WordPress. WordPress is an open-source platform. It is free so you can easily download it from their website (WordPress). You must purchase hosting to host your website. The best thing about it, every hosting provider provides a one-click installation for WordPress. It is quite easy to install WordPress. Yet, you should have basic knowledge about cPanel, so you can easily install it. But still, various hosting providers will help you to install it.
On the other hand, Shopify is a paid platform, after paying them, you will get the dashboard of Shopify and there is no need to install anything.
2- Cost
As we mentioned before, WordPress and WooCommerce are free and open-source platforms, so there is no need to pay anything for your online store. But if you want some extraordinary features, you must pay a little amount for paid plugins. Shopify is a paid tool, and its price starts from $30 per month. Meanwhile, They will charge you an extra amount on various other features, like if you will enable credit card payments on your website, they will charge a specific percentage (about 2%) for each transaction. For extra features, they will charge you an extra amount per month on various apps (same as plugins in WordPress).
3- Themes
In WordPress, you will get 1000s of free themes and 1000s of paid themes that are compatible with WooCommerce. All themes are customizable and easy to use. But in free themes, we recommend a few themes in WordPress to use because they have fast speed and extraordinary features. In Paid themes (price starts from $19) you will get all features, complete documentation, and a responsive forum. With one click you can design a complete website (this feature is called demo import).
Shopify has only 12-15 free themes and all are not good enough for decent stores and have very few customization options. There are two types of Paid themes, one from Shopify store (price range from $150 to $200) and the other is from the third party, they have comparatively less price.
4- Page Builder (Designing tool)
In this feature, we will give all points to WooCommerce. WooCommerce is the eCommerce system of WordPress. And WordPress has a lot of known page builders like Elementor, Divi, fusion, WP Bakery, Gutenberg, site Origin etc. All page builders are very easy to use. All of them are free or you will get free with any of Paid themes. With just drag and drop, you will set up a whole responsive and attractive website. Shopify is not too good. Shopify builder is ordinary and with limited features. If you need more features, you must get a paid builder. But still, that builder is not as good as WordPress builders.
5- SEO
Once again WordPress takes all points in this feature. In WordPress, you must install SEO plugins like Yoast, all-in-one SEO etc. And they will help you to evaluate your ON-page SEO score. They have great documentation on SEO according to current google algorithms.
Shopify also has a feature to add all content for ON-page SEO. But unfortunately, it does not show the score for each page.
6- Marketing
Few people say that Shopify is better than WooCommerce. We agree with them, but unfortunately, we don’t agree with their reasons. They say that Shopify has pre-installed Facebook pixel system and various other systems. But according to our point of view, if you want various marketing tools, you can install them with one click and all are free. As we have mentioned, WordPress is fully customizable so you can customize it to any extent.
7- Customizable
Backend gets written in PHP for WordPress, and it is easy, and you can find a lot of custom developers for it. While liquid language gets used in Shopify’s backend, it is comparatively new. So, its developer charges more as compared to WordPress’ developer.
8- Scalability
Both are scalable to some extent. It depends on the structure of the database, how do both systems manage data. Both are good enough to handle up to 100000 products easily. But if you have a large store with millions of products, you have to update the complete database structure. Well, in this case, we will recommend not to use any of these systems.
9- Speed
Both have good speed. WordPress speed depends on the hosting provider. If you want to know the best hosting provider for WordPress, just click the link.
10- Security
Both are secure but, at this point, Shopify is better as it is handled by Shopify itself. So, their security system is better than WordPress. Otherwise, in WordPress, you can secure your website with few security plugins. The best hosting provider and keep your whole system up to date.
11- Customer Support
Both platforms have active forums. But if you want to ask any question, just drop your query in a respective forum. They will answer you within a day.
12- Documentation
Both are used a lot nowadays, so a lot of helping data is available for both platforms. However, we still will give one extra point to WordPress because WordPress has tons of more helpful material than Shopify.
WooCommerce vs Shopify: which one to select?
If we conclude WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison list, we will come to know, both are good. But your selection depends on you. If you are a developer or know basic things about the website, choose WooCommerce. If you are going to hire a developer and want a lot of customizations, WooCommerce is better. But If you have zero technical knowledge and don’t want to hire any developer, go for Shopify.
Get WooCommerce or Shopify Services:
If you want to hire any developer or IT team for WooCommerce or Shopify, Mindcob will provide you all these services. We are a web design agency in Canada and provide reliable IT services, for more guidance or consultation you can contact us.
