Basics of Shopify and WooCommerce
Difference between WooCommerce and Shopify
Expenditure: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
Ease of Use: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
Remuneration Practice: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
Scalability and Growth: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
Support Options for WooCommerce vs. Shopify
A showdown between WooCommerce vs. Shopify
Are you wondering about starting an online business? But it could be a bit confusing as to which leading eCommerce platforms to choose between. Woocommerce VS Shopify: a showdown between two e-commerce giants – so who comes out on top?
As an entrepreneur struggling to choose the right eCommerce platform that fits your business needs, is crucial for business?
This article will guide you through a detailed comparison of Shopify vs. WooCommerce.
Basics of Shopify and WooCommerce
Before we jump into our in-depth comparison of the two most popular eCommerce platforms on the web, let’s start with a basic understanding of both.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce platform that allows you to create an online store, manage your inventory, and accept payments from a single platform.
Be worry less with Shopify, as it covers all the technical aspects of managing an eCommerce site, such as web hosting, caching, security, etc.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin built especially for WordPress. It allows you to provide the most powerful content management system (CMS) and use it to run an online store.
Difference between WooCommerce and Shopify
Shopify provides a platform as a service. It provides the software and website hosting for your online store and takes care of backups, maintenance, and security.
On the contrary, WooCommerce is a self-hosted eCommerce platform. You would require a WooCommerce hosting account and a domain name and have to manage your online store yourself.
Yet, both platforms allow you to sell products online quickly, manage inventory, and receive payments via PCI-compliant third-party payment gateways.
Shopify Vs. WooCommerce
Let us begin the showdown between the two giants and get to their comparisons.
Expenditure: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
Cost is the primary consideration and also the most crucial one.
The Actual Cost of Using Shopify
You can start your online business with Shopify. Their standard plan starts at $29 per month, and you can upgrade to the Shopify plan for $79. The advanced Shopify plan comes for $299 per month.
You’ll need to purchase the domain separately if you want to use your .com domain name. The cost for a regular .com domain name generally starts at $14/year.
The actual Cost of Using WooCommerce
It is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress.org (or self-hosted WordPress). It is open source and obtainable as a free plugin.
Typically, a domain name costs $14.99, web hosting costs around $7.99 / month, and an SSL Certificate costs $69.99. This is not affordable, particularly when you are just beginning.
Ease of Use: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
Most users starting an online store need not necessarily be web designers or developers. And even the users who are acquainted with basic concepts need a platform that is simple to use.
Shopify – Ease of Use
You are not required to install, manage, or update any software as Shopify is a fully hosted platform. With this platform, you can also be worry-less about performance, backups, compatibility issues, and security.
The user can choose a design from many free Shopify themes as soon as they sign up. After that, Shopify walks you through customization and aids you in adding products.
Shopify also comes with a self-generated drag and drop interface.
WooCommerce – Ease of Use
It is not a hosted platform like Shopify. It means the user will need to install the WooCommerce plugin, keep backups, manage updates, and ensure that their website is secure.
Remuneration Practice: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
There are many remuneration gateways that you can use to accept payments online. Some payment methods are unavailable to your customers, and others may not suit you.
Payment Options: Shopify
Shopify offers many payment options that users can use during the check-out procedure. It has its payment solution known as Shopify Payments (powered by Stripe) and all other popular third-party payment gateways.
Payment Options: WooCommerce
WooCommerce provides Stripe and PayPal payments by default. They also have a WooCommerce Payments method which Stripes powers.
Scalability and Growth: Shopify vs. WooCommerce
As your business expands, you require more resources to handle new challenges and goals.
Shopify and WooCommerce can be scaled to handle significant traffic and orders, but they’re not the same.
Scalability on Shopify
Shopify handles your store’s technical parts, so you don’t ever have to worry about performance, security, and scalability. Once your business starts expanding, you can upgrade your Shopify plan.
Scalability on WooCommerce
It is a self-hosted platform that takes you in charge of maintaining updates, backups, and security of your website.
The starter WooCommerce hosting plan would run out of resources as your store starts getting more traffic.
Support Options for WooCommerce vs. Shopify
Both WooCommerce and Shopify are pretty easy to use. Yet, sometimes you may need help to learn how to do something new in your store.
Support Options: Shopify
Shopify is a fully hosted platform, which means they power/support the software, and they are the ones who know their platform the finest.
Customer support of Shopify provides 24/7 customer support via live chat, phone, email, and Twitter. Shopify offers extensive documentation, how-to guides, a knowledge base, video tutorials, and forums for users who want to fix things independently.
Support Options: WooCommerce
It is the most popular eCommerce platform, which means there are tons of support options that you can use when required.
The official website has extensive tutorials, documentation, and guides that allow you to aid yourself. They also have to support groups where you can get assistance from the WooCommerce support team and their other experts.
They have also added a 24/7 chat support feature for anyone who purchases any premium extension or theme from WooCommerce.com.
A showdown between WooCommerce vs. Shopify
They both are powerful platforms to begin your eCommerce store. The option to select between the two depends upon your preferences.
Shopify is a lot easier to use. You can quickly start with any platform as they don’t require installing anything. They both have easy-to-understand pricing plans.
The most significant disadvantage of Shopify is that you don’t have complete control over everything. Whereas, WooCommerce is open source, giving you complete authority over your website.
It costs a lot lower to start an online store with WooCommerce, as the costs can go up with every transaction through Shopify.
The disadvantage with WooCommerce is that you’ll have to maintain the software. It comes with a bit of a learning and research curve. However, many beginners are already using it and getting over the learning phase relatively quickly.
Conclusion
WooCommerce is perfect for you if you want a cost-effective solution and want complete control of your online store.
Shopify is best for you if you want something that’s completely hassle-free that has infinite scalability.
References- https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/shopify-vs-woocommerce-which-is-the-better-platform-comparison/
