Shopify vs WooCommerce- Who will be the last one standing?

Shopify vs WooCommerce – Head to head comparison

 
The analogy is often done only between two substantial opponents. In the field of online businesses, choosing the right platform for building an ecommerce site is tricky when the search result pops up with so many big names.
 
Confused much about which one of the platforms will be the best to take a leap in your business?
 
In this blog you will get to know a detailed head-to-head comparison between Shopify and WooCommerce which will give you a clear perspective about both the platforms and will yield you the end result.

 

Shopify is a strong platform which is sought-after among the merchants for its ease of use with umpteen of features that can be explored and used without investing huge amounts of money and worrying about security at the same time for your ecommerce site.

 

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress. It is a free WordPress plugin which converts your WordPress website to an ecommerce site. WooCommerce is basically for small scale industries and startups. WooCommerce is flexible and the cost is indefinite and depends on the set up, customization and extensions used.
 
This blog will lay out a detailed comparison between Shopify and WooCommerce and would be very beneficial for you to set your mind for the platform you should go for.
 

1. Shopify vs WooCommerce- Pros and Cons

 

Shopify pros and cons-

 

 

WooCommerce Pros and Cons-

 

 

2. Ease of Use- How easy is Shopify and WooCommerce to administer

 
It is really essential to understand a system to run and manage it properly. And for choosing a platform to build your ecommerce site you need to consider which one will be less complicated and less time consuming and which one would have you sit and use your head a lot to decipher the instructions. In usability let’s compare to understand which among Shopify and WooCommerce is better.
 

Shopify-

 
Shopify is undoubtedly the simplistic platform. The instructions are simple and easy to understand for the beginners to set up a basic store. For attaining a site as per your requirements you would need the help of professional web developers. Nonetheless, the steps are ready to grasp in Shopify. And being a proprietary platform you don’t have to worry about hosting your platform and also about security as Shopify manages security issues on its own.
 

WooCommerce-

 
WooCommerce in contrast requires to perform more work on it being an open-source platform. In WooCommerce you need to take care of the hosting of your website which anyone cannot perform unless they have coding knowledge. In that case you would require a professional to host and make the website secure as without having a secure and reliable website you won’t be able to achieve your goals. Further it is time consuming as compared to Shopify.
 

3. Themes- Which one among Shopify and WooCommerce has superlative themes

 
The phrase making a good first impression is time and again used because the first impression does matter a lot in gaining the attention of the customers. An attractive theme is highly preferred to use in your ecommerce site as it creates a big impact on the customers and is the first step towards building their trust on your website. The homepage of an ecommerce site should look premium so let’s find out whether Shopify or WooCommerce would stand out in having better themes.
 

Shopify-

 
Shopify has an extensive collection of very impressive themes which will give your site a professional appearance having more than 100 themes available in Shopify’s theme store. It includes both free and paid themes. Shopify has a good deal in themes. The range for themes goes up to $ 180 but it is not over the top as it is a one time investment and can be used in ease. The themes of Shopify are mobile responsive as well. To achieve the unique and best result in themes you will have to hand over the task to a graphic designer otherwise for simple themes you can do on your own.
 

WooCommerce-

 
WooCommerce is really flexible in customizing the theme. There are a large number of themes available in WooCommerce’s ThemeForest with over 500 premium themes. The themes of WooCommerce are also mobile responsive. While the theme of Shopify looks very upscale, WooCommerce is highly customizable; it is time consuming as well as requires the skills of the professionals to get it done right according to the requirements of the company. The price for the themes range between $ 20- $ 100 per year.
 

4. Sales Tools

 
Sales tools are the major component of a platform. Sales features facilitate how well you can manage your business and proliferate. The growth requires reliable sales features and also to meet the expectations of both the merchant and the customers. Let’s analyse Shopify and WooCommerce and see which one provides better features.
 
Mentioning here some of the best sales tools of Shopify:
 

1. Abandoned cart recovery- Shopify has it all ready to remediate if there any issue occurs in sales. Having an abandoned cart is bad, it hampers the inventory and sales rate. Shopify provides a quick fix to it by sending automatic emails to the customers as a reminder to complete the checkout process. And that’s a plus of Shopify.
2. Multi-channel selling- This tool enables sales on different platforms to reach out to numerous customers across the globe giving power to have an influx in sales rate and to let more people be aware of your business. You can integrate your site with Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, WhatsApp etc. without paying anything.
3. Shipping and partnership- Shopify provides a very easy to ship service to the companies. Shopify allows you to give free shipping to the customers. It opens the door to trade internationally. Apart from that to ease things up, Shopify is already tied up with DHL Express, USPS, UPS and Canada Post.
4. Payment Gateways- Shopify supports a large number of payment gateways, more than 100, making it easier to have transactions with your ecommerce site.

 
Now let’s have a look at what WooCommerce has to offer in sales tools. What similarity we find with Shopify and to what extent it differs from it.
 

1. Multi-Currency- WooCommerce allows you to add custom drop-down menus so that the customers can choose in what currency they would like to checkout the prices. It must be noted it is not an inbuilt feature but an extension which will charge extra.
2. Quick View- WooCommerce quick view allows you to look at the product details without leaving the page you are on.
3. Multi-channel selling- WooCommerce similar to Shopify allows to sell on different platforms but it differs from Shopify as well in the region where apart from integration with Facebook which is free on WooCommerce, in order to have other platforms integrated such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest etc. you need to pay $ 79 to install all of them.
4. Product Add-Ons- This is an extension of WooCommerce which enables you to allow your customers to have personalized products. It costs $ 49 per year.

 

5. Marketing Features

 
Intellect is required in marketing to set the strong base of your business and the tactics and strategic moves are highly required while running a business to achieve the milestone.
 
Shopify has effective tools and is very efficient in dealing with the marketing scheme hence providing a lot of native marketing features. Shopify runs email marketing. It supports ads to roll out on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc. An engaging ad is really helpful in forming interest within customers to check out your products.
 
WooCommerce in comparison doesn’t have an inbuilt feature to run email campaigns and to have multi-channel selling. In order to integrate social media platforms on your website, an extra plugin is required. Furthermore it costs extra to install the multi-channel setting in WooCommerce.
 

6. Apps and Add-Ons

 
Amenity enhances your site more in being resourceful and be advantageous in the sales of your site. Apps and add-ons make ways to explore different areas and make your ecommerce site feature rich. It aids in impressing your customers with the desired features.
 
Shopify has an extensive range of very impressive apps available to turn your site into a top-notch ecommerce business. Shopify has more than 4000 apps and plugins that can be integrated including both free and paid apps to add extra functionality. Plug in SEO is one of the best apps of Shopify which optimizes the SEO. Being proprietary it may limit you from having all the apps of the world unlike open-source, yet the apps Shopify has won’t have you need more. Oberlo, Order Printer, Free Shipping Bar, Klaviyo are some of the powerful and free apps of Shopify.
 
WooCommerce being an open-source platform is highly customizable and there can be used as my extensions as one may want to increase the functionality of their site. WooCommerce has more than 40,000 apps and plugins that you can use to hike up your online store. While it is quite impressive, let’s not forget the extensions cost more and there one may have security issues if the website is not built with high security.
 

7. Payment Processors and Transaction Fees

 
Payment Processor is the means by which the transaction is carried out on your ecommerce site. Shopify and WooCommerce both support over 100 payment gateways. Let’s compare both to know what they have to offer regarding payment and transactions.
 
Shopify has its own payment processor, i.e., Shopify Payments. Beside that Shopify supports various payment gateways, Stripe, PayPal, Credit and debit cards, Square, Amazon Pay to make a few. Although this provides the customers a freedom to choose their way of making the payment but Shopify imposes extra credit card processing fees.
 
Mentioning here the charges of each plan and the extra amounts that will be charged if not used Shopify Payments:
 

1. Shopify Basics- 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction
2. The Shopify Plan- 2.6% + 30¢ per transaction
3. Shopify Advanced- 2.4% + 30¢ per transaction

 
WooCommerce on the other hand, doesn’t have its own payment processor and thus doesn’t impose any extra credit card processing fees upon using any third party payment gateways. As already mentioned WooCommerce also supports a large number of payment gateways same as Shopify and the only charges included while transactions are the bank charges. This is one of the advantages of using WooCommerce.
 

8. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

 
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one of the very essential features which increases the chance to show your result at the top of the search. The more at top your result will be while the customers would search the keyword in the search engine, the more organic growth will be of your ecommerce site. Both Shopify and WooCommerce are powerful platforms and take SEO seriously and help in optimising the search result.
 
Shopify has some brilliant SEO features to help you get started with your ecommerce site. Shopify has features that automatically takes care of the SEO related issues. It auto-generates canonical tags and adds them to pages to eliminate the problem of duplicate content which appears in the search results. You can edit the meta descriptions, title tags, URLs for web pages, blog posts and products. Apart from these there are a lot of other features that would be very beneficial in running your ecommerce site in Shopify.
 
WooCommerce is built using code optimized for SEO. WooCommerce being an open-source is relied on plugins for the integration of the SEO features. Though it offers a wide range of features much more than Shopify’s, it is the fact that its customization requires a lot of work to perform. You can add detailed meta descriptions and titles to your pages. The plugin called Yoast SEO is a great assist and bolster WooCommerce and WordPress SEO.
 

9. Security

 
Security is of prime importance to look after for any ecommerce website. A platform where you will be running all the essential tasks of your business should be highly secured and protected from viruses else it may cause a lot of harm and eventually have your business run at a loss.
 
Shopify is SSL certified with inbuilt SSL which safeguard customer’s card details, and the credentials are encrypted so that they feel safe to make transactions from your site. Shopify meets all the six requirements of PCI DSS and is certified from them. Further Shopify has automated mechanisms that monitor the security and date transfer and any harm to the site will have prompt action and will alert the merchant.
 
WooCommerce is a bit difficult in having the website completely secure. Being an open-source platform it is self-hosted and totally relies on plugins which can make way for the bugs to enter if the website is not built with high security. WooCommerce doesn’t have its own SSL. SSL is provided by the hosting provider. Also in WooCommerce PCI DSS has to be sourced and set up by the website developer.
 

10. Help Center and Support

 
We talked so broadly about the features of both the platforms but it should not skip the mind that assistance is also an important point to consider. While being stuck at somewhere the help center should be reliable enough to solve the issues sooner. Let us understand what customer service Shopify and WooCommerce provides.
 
Shopify’s help center and support offers-
 

1. Contact support
2. Video tutorials
3. Shopify community
4. Webinars
5. Changelog
6. 24/7 phone support
7. 24/7 live chat support
8. Email support

 
WooCommercealso provides excellent support when it is powered by Bluehost. WooCommerce has many guides, 24/7 phone support as well as live chat support, messaging platform for sales and support. The guides available of WooCommerce are really helpful in the assistance of the customers.
 

11. Pricing

 
After taking a tour of all the features, it comes down to one point that’s the price of the platform. One should be very mindful about the money they are investing and should look into all the aspects and choose the one which will be cost effective.
 
Shopify being proprietary, one doesn’t need to worry about the hosting and the cost of the hosting gets included in the monthly set pricing of Shopify. Shopify is strong, secure as well as value for money while having the capacity to support small, medium as well as large businesses. Below mentioned all the plans of Shopify:
 
Shopify monthly plans-
 

1. Basic Shopify- $ 29 per month
2. Basic Shopify- $ 29 per month
3. Advanced Shopify- $ 299 per month
4. Shopify Plus(Enterprise) – Starts from $2000/month

 
WooCommerce is an open-source platform, thus it is free to install and has flexible pricing. As it is free to customize in the desired way of the company which leads to the addition of lots of plugins and extensions, which in turn add up to the charges one has to pay. But it must be noted WooCommerce is comparatively cheaper in expenses than other open-source platforms. Below mentioned are the prices which you need to pay for hosting, security etc. of your ecommerce site in WooCommerce:
 

1. Domain- Upto $ 12 per year
2. Theme- Approximately $59
3. Plugins and extensions- Upto $ 100 per month
4. Developer Fees- $ 20 to $ 150 per hour
5. Hosting- $ 35 to $ 50 per month

 

12. Shopify vs WooCommerce- Summary

At the end, let us summarise all the essential key points that you must remember while choosing the best platform for you to start your business and run it in full-fledge.
 

1. Shopify is a simplified platform where you don’t have to worry about hosting while WooCommerce is a self-hosted platform.
2. Shopify has rich and premium themes very easy to customize while WooCommerce also provides a good collection of themes with high customization options but it is not easy to grasp the instructions of WooCommerce, unlike Shopify where not much coding language is required.
3. The website can be quickly launched in Shopify whereas it will take time to build the website in WooCommerce.
4. There’s a dedicated 24/7 support system available in Shopify.
5. One doesn’t have to think about the security issues in Shopify whereas in WooCommerce because of being open-source the professional website developer has to precisely look after the security of the website built.
6. One doesn’t have to think about the security issues in Shopify whereas in WooCommerce because of being open-source the professional website developer has to precisely look after the security of the website built.
7. Given the features Shopify is providing, the price of Shopify is also economical.

 

13. The Verdict

Shopify and WooCommerce are completely different products and have their own pros and cons. Shopify is a complete eCommerce solution while WooCommerce is a plugin which relies on other plugins to meet the eCommerce requirements of most businesses. Also a major advantage Shopify has is its security as well as ability to hold large businesses swiftly. If you want a complete peace of mind and do not want to get in the glitches of technology and infrastructure to manage the site, then Shopify is actually the right platform.