Introduction
If you want to open an online store for your business and have no idea which one is the best, then this guide is for you. In this article, you will know a showdown between two e-commerce giants Shopify vs Woocommerce. Shopify and Woocommerce are the top e-commerce platforms in the world.
This guide is trimmed to see which one could be the better option for building your online store Shopify or Woocommerce. And to compare these two platforms there has a Quick Comparison Table to get an overview of what these platforms are like to use.
Quick Comparison Table
Ease of Use: Which one is more beginner-friendly?
Shopify: Getting started with Shopify is supper simple because you literally just go to Shopify’s website and all you need is an email address and create a password to get started.
You can then go through and take out the free trial and try Shopify for yourself. It’s super simple to get started. The dashboard of Shopify is very very simple to use.
Woocommerce: To get started with Woocommerce as kind of already mentioned, it’s on you to get it set up and it is a much more involved process. Because it depends on the web host you’re using, as how much input they have on the setup process.
You have to install the first WordPress properly then you have to get Woocommerce installed, it’s a much more involved process. If you’re brand new to building e-commerce websites this can be quite daunting.
Build Time: Which one has a faster setup time?
Shopify: Shopify provides all features at the ready, so your store can be ready faster. If you want to grow your business and you haven’t time on your hand then go through with Shopify.
Woocommerce: With woocommerce you have to decide every detail of your online store so your store can be ready slower. Woocommerce is a WordPress-based plugin and custom theme so the process is manual process.
Design and Themes: Which has a better selection of stylishly-designed themes?
Shopify: If sign up with a Shopify account you gain instant access to over 7 free themes and several paid themes.
Shopify has a more curated, stylish look than WooCommerce. offers more customization. More paid themes.
Woocommerce: WooCommerce offers over 100 designs and themes. That is automatically programmed to be responsive to mobile. Looks are very important to the website world and Woocommerce gives your store a professional look.
Sales Features Which one makes selling a breeze?
Shopify: Shopify is the biggest name in the world of hosted e-commerce. It comes loaded with a load of features and it comes with a really good selection of e-commerce tools.
You get some really good marketing and SEO tools. There are also reported analytics available and you get a good selection of payment gateways. Just be aware that third-party payment gateways. Those incur that transaction fee.
Shopify has its own app store and here there are over 3200 apps to choose from which makes it the largest app store of any hosted e-commerce platform.
Woocommerce: Woocommerce is very very basic when it comes to features as standard because it adds a very basic shopping cart to your WordPress tool. It is very basic and really as standard, it’s not really good to go.
The kind of core options is there. But if you really want this to work properly and basically rival what Shopify can offer out of the box.
You are gonna have to install plugins because basically, it’s just not there. The functionality is very basic.
Plugins and Integrations: Which has more to offer?
Shopify: Shopify has its own app store with over 3,200 paid apps. If you use it, your expenses will increase.
Woocommerce: Woocommerce has its own app store with over 50,000 plugins that rely heavily on customize. In this section, Woocommerce is better than Shopify.
Marketing Tools: Which one helps to raise your profile the best?
Shopify: Marketing tools help your business be a success and every business needs it to grow up. Shopify has Amazon, Facebook, eBay, and Pinterest as built-in features. Which helps your business to grow up.
Woocommerce: In woocommerce, all marketing tools will be available through plugins and extensions. You can customize them and this could be more difficult than Shopify. But it is also convenient to grow your business.
Payment Options and Transaction Fees: Which one makes taking payments simple?
Shopify: Shopify offers over 100 payment gateway. You can use a third-party payment gateway but there is a transaction fee. If you’re using things like PayPal or Amazon pay, you have to pay an additional transaction fee and it depends on the packages you’re on as to what this transaction fee is.
Now the transaction fee on Shopify basic is 2%, On Shopify standard, it drops to 1%, and on Shopify advanced it drops to 0.5%.
Woocommerce: Woocommerce offers over 100 payment gateways. WooCommerce does not have transaction fees for third-party gateway payments.
SEO: Which one is better for climbing the search engine rankings?
Shopify: Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process of attaching customers to your website virtually. SEO features are decent But not as strong as Woocommerce because Shopify has a ready design and theme which is used by many websites.
Woocommerce: Woocommerce offers customized themes, plugins, and designs, WooCommerce is code-optimized for SEO. So you will get a great experience to grow your store.
Security: Which one offers the most protection?
Shopify: For any website, it should be a priority for high-level security. Shopify provides high-level security. It offers SSL Certificates and is PCI-DSS Compliant by default.
Woocommerce: Woocommerce works with WordPress and it is self-hosted. So, you will have to acquire all the relevant sales certificates yourself.
If you need any security you will be handled yourself or contact your host provider.
Customer Support: Which one is there every step of the way?
Shopify: Shopify is a fully hosted platform so you get support directly from the platform. You can access it in a variety of different ways they’ve got live chat over the phone, and email, and also got a community support forum as well which is a great place to find out information.
The only thing Shopify supports is actually contacting the support because you have navigated your way through the help center which isn’t the most straightforward thing to do. But once you find out how to do this. It’s pretty easy to actually contact the support once you find the path that you need to take.
Woocommerce: Woocommerce on the other hand doesn’t offer any support as standard. The core Woocommerce plugin doesn’t include any support at all. you’re on your own with it completely.
But you can get support for different areas of your site, so you can get support for your hosting from your web host. If you’re using paid plugins or themes you can also have support directly for those plugins.
You don’t have support overall for your store the same way you do with Shopify.
Pricing: Which offers more bang for your buck?
Shopify: Let’s look at Shopify, now Shopify offers three basic packages as standard they include a website builder.
They are the Shopify basic which is $29 per month, Shopify standard which is $79 per month, and Shopify advanced which is $299 per month.
Now there is another fee you may have to pay with Shopify. This is because if you using a third-party payment gateway so if you’re using things like PayPal or Amazon pay, you have to pay an additional transaction fee and it depends on the packages you’re on as to what this transaction fee is.
Now the transaction fee on Shopify basic is 2%, On Shopify standard, it drops to 1%, and on Shopify advanced it drops to 0.5%.
Woocommerce: Woocommerce is actually free to use so is WordPress. Now for this were just looking at self-hosted WordPress and Woocommerce stores, not the hosted option. That’s available on wordpress.com the self-hosted option and it’s completely free to use.
But you are going to have some costs in the form of hosting because you need something for your store to run on.
When you are just getting started you’re probably going to be okay using normal shared hosting but as your store starts to grow you’re going to want to upgrade your hosting. Which starts at $20 and $30 per month.
Conclusion:
At the end of the comparison between Shopify vs Woocommerce, we are going to decide which one is the better option. Both Shopify and Woocommerce have pros and cons so it is so difficult to decide which one is the best.
Shopify is so much easier to use because it’s easier to get set up. And it’s easier to run day-to-day.
Woocommerce even though is not a bad solution. It can be a bit of a nightmare at times. Woocommerce stores take much more time to develop and design. But it provides also a professional theme and design for your store.
