Considering starting an online business and diving into eCommerce? Or maybe you are thinking of branching your existing physical shop into the digital space. Regardless of the situation, you will require a good eCommerce website builder.
WooCommerce and Shopify are two popular eCommerce platforms. The platforms are both attractive and offer a variety of features. They both support adding product variations, offering various shipping rates, and multiple payment gateways as well as supporting easy integration with pre-existing WordPress sites. Each platform also offers online marketing and SEO features, plus a variety of add-ons.
But which one is best for eCommerce websites?
This post will compare WooCommerce and Shopify, explore their features, and help you choose which one is best for your business.
1. Cost and Pricing
- Shopify
Shopify’s major benefit is that all is taken care of for you from the get-go: domain name, hosting, SSL, etc. This comes at a price, obviously.
The cost of getting started with Shopify is about $29/month. Though it’s possible that this basic plan won’t provide you with all the features you need to keep your business running smoothly. You might have to upgrade to the higher plans in order to get the most out of Shopify.
The next step is designing your store. Your storefront will need pre-made templates (themes) just like WooCommerce.
There are free and paid themes, as you would expect. The premium themes for Shopify start at a price of $100. Professional Shopify designers can also be hired on an hourly basis to design your ecommerce store. As with WooCommerce, you need to pay for extensions (or apps in Shopify’s case). Those will most likely be needed.
- WooCommerce
WooCommerce is basically a free eCommerce WordPress plugin. Therefore, you can start using it without spending any money up front. But that’s not just it.
With WooCommerce, you will have to spend money on Web Hosting and Domains, Themes/Designs and Extensions in order to manage and create your online store successfully.
Hosting and Domain Name: Hosting typically sets you back about $4/month for WooCommerce websites, but the price can vary depending on the provider.
Themes: The free themes have their limitations; they lack uniqueness, may not have the features you want, and so on. Therefore, you may have no choice but to buy a premium theme. The cost of a premium WooCommerce theme can range from $5 to $100 per year.
Extensions and Plugins: Despite WooCommerce’s many tools and features, you will eventually need other extensions and plugins as your business grows. The solutions provided by these 3rd parties make online stores more functional and can help them rank better. Like theme extensions, some plugins are free, some aren’t. There is no standardized price for these plugins because their cost varies greatly.
- Conclusion
The WooCommerce platform seems to be more affordable than Shopify. It is possible to get your store up and running using WooCommerce without spending a penny if you know what you are doing.
2. Transaction fees
Regardless of the eCommerce solution you choose to use, you can expect to pay a certain fee for every sale you process. Taking this fee into account will help you decide which to use.
- Shopify
No fees are charged for processing transactions through Shopify. This applies as long as you use Shopify Payments. Transaction fees on Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans are 2%, 1%, and 0.5%, respectively, if you use other payment gateways.
- WooCommerce
WooCommerce transaction fees are largely determined by the country in which you reside. When you sell in the United States, the fee is 2.9% plus $0.30. If you sell outside of the United States, the fee is 3.9%.
Transaction fees are applicable only if you use WooCommerce Payments as your payment processor. Transaction fees for other payment solutions vary.
- Conclusion
Shopify is a lot cheaper to use than WooCommerce for processing transactions.
3. SEO
- Shopify
Shopify does quite well in SEO. The software comes with quite a few tools to help you optimize your website for search engines, including Google. Additionally, Shopify lets you add titles and descriptions to your products and pages. Additionally, robots.txt and sitemaps are automatically created for you.
- WooCommerce
In terms of SEO, WooCommerce is a strong contender. Simply because WordPress, the platform it runs on, is very SEO-friendly. In addition, WordPress runs many of the most powerful SEO solutions in the world. For example, Yoast SEO.
Your store and products will be accurately described by Google using Yoast SEO. Adding meta descriptions and alternative text to product images enables you to effectively market your product. As a result, your website will be more visible on Google.
Yoast even has a plugin specifically for WooCommerce. The platform provides every SEO solution to make your site perform.
- Conclusion
Ultimately, there’s no clear victor here. However, if you are looking for an eCommerce solution that focuses most on SEO, we recommend you use WooCommerce.
4. Speed
- WooCommerce
WooCommerce was built to be fast. Your website’s loading speed depends on various factors, such as your hosting provider, the number of plugins you use, the theme you use, etc.
It is therefore up to you to determine how to make WooCommerce load faster. There are several ways you can make your website load faster: using a caching plugin, optimizing your images, and using a CDN.
- Shopify
Shopify is no different. To make your website load faster, you need to take the necessary steps.
- Conclusion
It’s a tie!
5. Dropshipping
- Shopify
Dropshipping has always been a big part of Shopify’s business model. Thus, Oberlo, one of Shopify’s most popular dropshipping apps, was created.
You can import products from Aliexpress directly into your Oberlo store without any hassle. The best part is that Oberlo is free. So, dropshipping can be started on a low budget!
- WooCommerce
Dropshipping is not a native feature of WooCommerce. For this purpose, you must use a plugin.
You will be happy to know that there are quite a few free dropshipping plugins available. From the admin area of your WordPress site, you can search for them in the plugin repository.
Eventually, as your store grows, you will probably need to upgrade to a paid version of these plugins. Dropshipping businesses will also need to integrate Aliexpress Chrome extensions in addition to plugins.
- Conclusion
When it comes to dropshipping, Shopify beats WooCommerce. However, only by a narrow margin.
6. Ease of Use
- Shopify
On Shopify, everything is set up for you. Everything is taken care of for you, from hosting, to SSL, to SSL certificates, to backups, to payments, to payments processing, etc. Products can be easily added and optimized.
When trouble comes your way, help is always on hand. You can also set up advanced features easily. Use Shopify apps and plugins to streamline inventory and track statistics. Or, integrate Shopify with Google Sheets to improve reporting and data gathering.
- WooCommerce
Hosting your website is one of the things you will need to take care of when launching a WooCommerce store. You may struggle a little if you’ve never hosted a WordPress site before.
You need to collect payments from your customers once you’ve successfully set up your online store. This will also involve some learning.
In addition, you will still need to deal with updates, backups, and security for your website. Each of these tasks requires technical expertise on your part.
- Conclusion
Compared to WooCommerce, Shopify is a lot easier to use.
7. User Support
- Shopify
A good number of online retailers choose Shopify over WooCommerce because of the round-the-clock, personalized support provided by the company. As a result, you have easy access to the help you need.
In addition to documentation and support guides, Shopify offers a community forum as well. Having both is great.
- WooCommerce
You’re going to love WooCommerce if you are a DIY (Do it yourself) kinda person.
There is an abundance of support resources: blogs, guides, and extensive documentation. The WooCommerce technical team can also assist you. Getting a response may take some time, however.
Additionally, there are a lot of support resources available on the internet. For those who would rather speak to someone about their issue, it is necessary to purchase one of WooCommerce’s premium extensions.
- Conclusion
Support is better on Shopify than on WooCommerce. Period.
Wrapping Up
The eCommerce solution that best meets your needs should now be clear to you. However, if you haven’t decided already, it is no problem. You might have an easier time deciding if you know the pros and cons.
Pros of WooCommerce
- Provides greater flexibility.
- It’s free. Plugins and hosting are the only costs
- There is always help available online.
Cons of WooCommerce
- Support for WooCommerce is limited
- Its learning curve is steeper than Shopify’s
Pros of Shopify
- Customer service is excellent
- Easy to use for beginners
- Dropshipping platform of choice
Cons of Shopify
- It can be costly. Apps can cost a lot of money.
- There are a limited number of options available to you
