Shopify vs Woocommerce:- A website or web portal which is specially designed & optimized for online buying and selling of products and services over the internet is known as E-commerce platform. E-commerce platforms allows user to buy and sell products or services over the internet. Shopify and woocommerce are the example of popular e-commerce platforms, these platforms helps user to start their own online shopping portal. If you are confused which one to choose between Shopify or WooCommerce, then this article is meant for you. In this article we will discuss Shopify vs Woocommerce 2024, which one is easier, user friendly and which one is offering better and useful features.
What is E-commerce Platform?
E-commerce platforms works as a digital marketplace where consumers can check a wide range of available products, place orders, make payments, and after that their selected items will get delivered to their doorstep. All the services offered by e-commerce platform are performed over internet. Shopify and Woocommerce are the most popular e-commerce e-commerce platform, which allow its users to create and manage their own e-commerce platform for business purposes.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform, which helps its users to create their own online shopping platform. It provides a user oriented interface which helps its users to set up an online store and sell products or services without any technical knowledege of coding. Shopify offers various tools and features to handle & manage inventory, payment processing, shipping, and more. Shopify e-commerce platform ishosted,it means you don’t need to worry about managing servers or technical problems. All you need to do is tom keep focusing on running your business wisely.
Features Offered by Shopify
- Online Store Customization: Shopify offers a wide range of professionally designed templates, which allows you to customize the aesthetic look and feel of your online store without requiring any technical knowledge of coding.
- Easy Products Management: Product management feature offered by Shopify allow you to easily add, edit, and organize products within the Shopify admin panel. It also allows you to manage product variants, inventory levels, and pricing.
- Safety and Security: Shopify offers a secure shopping cart feature that provide security of protection of customer data during the checkout process, providing peace of mind for both buyers and sellers.
- Payment Gateways Integration: Shopify easily integrates with multiple payment gateways, this easy integration helps customers to make purchases using credit cards, debit cards, and other payment methods. It also supports Shopify Payments, which enables you to accept payments directly through the platform.
- Mobile Friendly: Templates offered by Shopify are mobile-friendly, which ensures that your online shopping store looks good and functions well on various devices, including smartphones and tablets.
- In-House App Store: Shopify offered wide variety of useful applications in its in-house app store. These applications are loaded with multiple add-ons, updates and extensions which helps to increase your store’s functionality. These apps can help you in with marketing, analytics, customer support, etc.
- SEO and Marketing: In-built Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features offered by Shopify help you to improve your store’s ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs). It also allows you to create discount codes, manage customer groups, and utilize social media integration for the promotion of your products and services.
Disadvantages of Shopify
- High Platform Charges: If you are not using Shopify payment as your default payment system, shopify will charge you shopify platform charges on top of the fees imposed by payment gateways on every payment you made. This will lower your revenue and profit especially small business owners will get the maximum impact. You have to purchase the advance shopify plan to lower these platform charges. The advance shopify will cost you $399 per month.
- Limitations on Design: Shopify offers customizable templates but still there is a limitations on design flexibility compared to building a fully custom website.
- High Additional Costs: Apart from monthly subscription fees, shopify chargers additional costs on using paid apps and premium themes. This will lower down the revenue and overall profit especially for small business owners
- Migrating is Not Easy: If you ever want to migrate your online shopping store away from shopify to different platform, it will become a hectic task because exporting all your data can be a bit challenging.
What is Woocommerce?
As we all know that WooCommerce is backed and designed by wordpress, therefore it is an open-source e-commerce Platform where anyone can create an online e-commerce store. It is one of the world’s most popular free e-commerce platforms. Woocommerce allow its users to switch their wordpress website into fully functional online e-commerce stores. WooCommerce was first introduced in the year 2011 and from that time till now it has grown into one of the leading e-commerce platform globally. Additionaly Woocommerce easily integrates with WordPress websites.
Features Offered by Woocommerce
- Easy Store Management: WooCommerce offers easy management of online shopping store. It allows its user to add and manage multiple products, including physical products, digital downloads, and even affiliate products. You can set various product categories and manage inventory.
- Customization: Woocommerce is designed by WordPress, therefore WooCommerce offers a wide range of themes, tools, and customization options which helps you to create a visually appealing online shopping store.
- Multiple Payment Gateways: Stripe and paypal integration is offered by default in WooCommerce. It also supports multiple payment gateways, allowing customers to make purchases using credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers, and other popular payment methods.
- Vast Variety of Extensions and Plugins: The WooCommerce ecosystem provides a vast variety of free and premium plugins to increase the functionality of your e-commerce store. These plugins and extensions help you in promotion, search engine optimization, shipping, payment, safety and security etc
- Flexibility and Scalability: Easy customization offered by WooCommerce makes it suitable for both small and large businesses. Its open-source system allows its developers to customize the platform for different and specific needs.
- SEO-Friendly: WooCommerce SEO friendly which allows you to optimize your product pages and content for better search engine visibility.
- Analytics and Reporting: The platform provides built-in reporting tools to track sales, order details, customer behavior, and other essential features to help you make important business related decisions.
Disadvantages of Woocommerce
- Technical Knowledge is Mandatory: We all know that WooCommerce is user oriented e-commerce platform but still setting up and managing an online store on woocommerce require some technical knowledge, especially for handling hosting, security, and updates.
- WordPress Dependency: WooCommerce is designed by wordpress therefore it is depends on wordpress for best performance and functionality. The performance and stability of your online shopping store is influenced by the type theme, plugin you install in your wordpress.
- Additional Costs: WooCommerce open source it means it is free to use but still you have to pay for premium themes, plugins, and extensions, which could impact your budget.
- Security Concerns: Because of its open source nature, there is always a matter of safety and security with WooCommerce. But you need not to worry because implementation best security practices and keeping up all components up to date will eliminates all the safety concerns of woocommerce.
So Shopify vs Woocommerce Which One is Easier?
We have provided you the overview of Shopify and Woocommerce with their features and drawbacks, now it’s time to compare them with each other for better understanding.
| Point of Difference | Shopify | Woocommerce | Our Verdict | ||
| Total Number of Users | More than 2.1 Million Active users as of July 2023 | More than 6.6 Million Active users as of July 2023 | Woocommerce has more trusted user base | ||
| Accepted Payment Getaways | Shopify Payments (available in select countries) PayPal Stripe Authorize.Net 2Checkout Amazon Pay Apple Pay | PayPal Stripe Square Amazon Pay Authorize.Net Braintree 2Checkout Apple Pay Google Pay | Woocommerce offers more payment getaways | ||
| Price | Basic plan $29/Month $14.44/ Month on yearly billing Basic Plus Plan $79/Month $39.44/ Month on yearly billing Advanced Plan $299/Month $147.79/Month on yearly billing | Woocommerce is free to use for anyone, although you have to purchase plugins and extensions for better functionality of woocommerce | Woocommerce is completely free and suitable for both small and large business owners | ||
| Ease of Use | Shopify offers intuitive drag and drop interface which make it very easy manage. | Woocommerce comes with learning curve; it means basic technical knowledge is required for management. | Shopify is more suitable for beginners | ||
| Dropshipping | Limited variety of dropshipping plugins available Costly plugin subscription fee | Vast variety of dropshipping plugins available Free or very low plugin subscription fee | Woocommerce offers better dropshipping features | ||
| Add-ons & Integration | Limited variety of add-ons and integration plugins available | Wide variety of more than 59000 add-ons and integration plugins available | Woocommerce provides better add-ons feature and multiple integration plugins | ||
| SEO Features | Shopify offers limited yet powerfull SEO tools | Woocommerce offers wide range of SEO tools | Both are good at SEO | ||
| Marketing Features | Shopify offers multiple marketing tools for better promotion | Woocommerce depends on marketing plugins for promotion | Shopify offers better marketing tools | ||
| Service Support | Shopify offers 24/7 service support over phone, chat & email | Woocommerce relies on Extensive documentation, tutorials, and guides for service support. You have to purchase 24/7 service support plugin | Shopify offers better service support. However woocommerce also provide good service support based on tutorials and documentations. | ||
| Final Statement | Shopify is expensive yet user friendly. Beginners with zero technical knowledge will find ease of use in shopify. | Woocommerce is free open source e-commerce platform with vast variety of free plugins and integration features. It is ideal for user who are having basic technical knowledge | Woocommerce is clear winner it comes to affordability and compatibility. User with basic technical knowledge will find woocommerce more user friendly as compared to shopify | ||
Conclusion
In our comparison of Shopify vs Woocommerce, we find that woocommerce is more affordable and offers much more features & integration plugins as compared to shopify. Shopify is easy to use because of its drag and drop user interface, that makes it easy to use e-commerce platform for beginners. If you have basic technical knowledge, we will suggest you to choose woocommerce over shopify because it is affordable and highly customizable. We hope this article helps you in understanding e-commerce platform much better way.