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woocommerce vs. shopify: pros and cons untitled 1200 x 628 px 15

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WooCommerce vs. Shopify: Pros and Cons

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Ecommerce Solutions 2021 – WooCommerce vs. Shopify – Pros and Cons

Digital commerce continues to evolve to reach customers on a larger or global scale. With this benefit and many other advantages, more and more retail and brick-and-mortar businesses are building and migrating their businesses online.

Table of Contents for Easy Reading

  • Ecommerce Solutions 2021 – WooCommerce vs. Shopify – Pros and Cons
      • RelatedPosts
      • Best Shopify Themes Which Will Boost Your Sales
      • Most Common Problems Faced by Startup eCommerce Websites
      • Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce, Prestashop or Opencart – What are They and Which Ecommerce Platform is Best for Your Needs
    • Difference between WooCommerce and Shopify?
      • What is WooCommerce?
      • What is Shopify?
    • WooCommerce vs. Shopify: How do they work?
      • WooCommerce
      • Shopify
    • Pros and Cons of Shopify?
    • Pros and Cons of WooCommerce?
    • FAQs
      • How much does it cost to create a store on Shopify?
      • How much does using WooCommerce cost?
      • What is best for my business, Shopify or WooCommerce?
    • Conclusion

Along with these are the continuing upgrades and innovations of e-commerce platforms seeking to provide digital strategic solutions to startups and established brands. 

RelatedPosts

Best Shopify Themes Which Will Boost Your Sales

Most Common Problems Faced by Startup eCommerce Websites

Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce, Prestashop or Opencart – What are They and Which Ecommerce Platform is Best for Your Needs

Shopify and WooCommerce are examples of known and reputable e-commerce platforms which help individual sellers and businesses build their stores online.

As a website builder and a plugin that provide an all-in-one solution to the management of your store, they make business processes faster, more accurate, and more convenient for entrepreneurs like you.

Difference between WooCommerce and Shopify?

People planning to start their online businesses can use Shopify and WooCommerce to source products on online marketplaces and find suppliers. 

They can publish the products they plan to sell on their website and apply customizations to appeal to their audience’s preferences. 

However, there is a stark difference between the two.

While Shopify is a website builder where you can directly create your online store, WooCommerce is a website plugin for the website builder WordPress.

WooCommerce is integrated to a WordPress website to add e-commerce functionality while Shopify is a functional e-commerce platform by itself. It means that only the people who already have a website on WordPress or those who are willing to make a WordPress website first can use WooCommerce.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress designed to add e-commerce functionality to your WordPress website. In other words, integrating WooCommerce allows you to sell on your Website. 

WordPress is a website builder just like Shopify. However, while Shopify is programmed purposely for e-commerce, WordPress is built mainly as a blogging platform.

It is a content management system (CMS) that anyone can use to publish content. At present, 42% of what makes up the World Wide Web are websites built on WordPress. So, it’s safe to say that it’s the most popular website builder used by individuals and businesses out there.

WooCommerce is a smart integration for WordPress because it allows entrepreneurs and content publishers to market their products and services using content in a personalized domain. Sellers or e-retailers can create their WordPress website for free and publish their products and services using a free WooCommerce plugin.

They can customize their websites using hundreds of free and paid themes, and use Storefront, a dedicated WooCommerce theme that will help you make the most of the WooCommerce plugin and create branding.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a website builder offering all-in-one e-commerce solutions. It supports small-time sellers to big brands alike,

from product sourcing, marketing, managing, shipping, and monitoring.

Shopify is a platform where you can start selling from scratch and building your business from the ground up, with its beginner-friendly system of integrations.

Currently, it supports 1,700,000 online businesses, including big brands like Tesla Motors, Budweiser, and Penguin Books.

Creating a start-up store or migrating your brick-and-mortar store to Shopify costs zero dollars for 14 days.

The platform offers a 14-day trial period so you can decide whether your business goals can be met using the platform. After using up the free trial, you can subscribe to Shopify’s paid plan, which starts at $29 per month.

WooCommerce vs. Shopify: How do they work?

Although they serve the same function, Shopify and WooCommerce differ in some of their processes and features. Here is a basic guide to help you understand how they work and how they are set up.

WooCommerce

To build your e-commerce website with WooCommerce, you need to start by choosing a self-hosted site. Self-hosted sites allow you to pre-install WordPress, WooCommerce, and all other e-commerce features that come with them.

You can use WordPress.com, Bluehost, or SiteGround. You can also use Pressable if you’re planning to do multiple sites.

Then, install WordPress following the site’s installation process. However, if you already have a WordPress website that you can use to sell your products and services, you can skip this.

You need to sign up for a WordPress and WooCommerce account to be able to activate the plugin. There are three ways to install WooCommerce: 

  1. Auto-install WooCommerce on your WordPress site if you already have one.
  2. Pre-install WooCommerce by downloading the plugin, uploading it on the Plugins section of the dashboard, and activating it. 
  3. Search for the plugin on the website dashboard’s Plugin section by typing WooCommerce on the Search Plugins button. Once it shows, click install and activate. 

When you activate WooCommerce, you will be prompted with a Setup Wizard, which will guide you in creating and customizing your online store.

It will help you pick a theme. For your theme, it is highly recommended to use the Storefront theme with its child themes. It will help you maximize WooCommerce’s function in your online business.

Adding storefront extensions will also allow you to use more e-commerce features to optimize your store.

After activating WooCommerce and setting up your theme, you can already use it to publish items, add images, and even publish blogs for your store. WooCommerce has its Extensions Store containing hundreds of paid and free extensions you can install to add more e-commerce functionalities like shipping, subscriptions, and payment gateways to your website.

Shopify

It’s much easier to start with Shopify than WooCommerce because you wouldn’t need to download, install, and activate extensions. Instead, you can go directly to signing up for a 14-day free trial or signing up for a plan. For Shopify’s free trial, the count starts when you first sign up and not when you start setting up your store.

If you just want to familiarize yourself with how Shopify’s e-commerce features work, its free trial is a helpful advantage. However, when you start working on your store, and do not set a pricing plan, your store will be paused at the end of the trial period. You won’t be able to resume working until you choose a paid plan. 

Every plan you choose on Shopify corresponds to the work you need to do for your store. For example, the Basic Shopify plan is meant for beginners in the e-commerce business with occasional start-up sales.

The Shopify plan is best for growing and scaling businesses. On the other hand, the Advanced Shopify plan is meant for businesses doing large-scale operations and needing reporting.

As for the domain, you can either use Shopify’s domain or set up your own domain for a fee.

It also has a collection of 4,200 apps as of last year to cater to your business needs.

These apps, which you can find and install on the Shopify App Store, serve a wide range of uses that involves marketing, logistics, product sourcing and inventory, and integration to multiple channels. 

As for its additional useful features, Shopify has programs and apps tailored to the needs of every business. It includes Shopify Plus, Shopify Lite, Shopify POS (Point of Sale).

Pros and Cons of Shopify?

Pros
  • Multi-channel selling. You can integrate it with different platforms to promote and sell, like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Instagram.
  • Abundance of themes. You have access to 81 free and paid themes and templates on Shopify Theme store. This is in addition to independent developers selling Shopify themes on the market. You can choose what works best for your branding, content, and marketing needs.
  • Plenty of Apps to choose from. Shopify app store has over 4000 apps that can help with your different business needs. You can choose from categories like marketing, management, store design, shipping, and many more.
  • 24/7 customer support. Shopify has one of the most dedicated and reliable customer support. You can message and be assisted anytime via live chat and email. It also has 4 different numbers you can call depending on your location.
  • Programs and features tailor-made for everyone. Shopify respects every entrepreneur in a way that it has different features and programs dedicated for every seller in the different selling processes. Starting entrepreneurs, medium-sized businesses, and big brands can all find useful tools and resources.
Cons
  • Lack of marketing and branding support. Although you can find tools, apps, and resources you can use to market your brand and devise branding campaigns, you have to rely upon your own efforts to promote and build your brand.
  • Cost of additional features and apps can easily pile up. Shopify’s e-commerce features are limited depending on the plan or program you’re using. To improve your store’s performance, you have to add apps and other paid tools. It’s easy to lose count of your budget vs. the features you need, especially if you’re a beginner or small-time seller, so it can be costly maintaining your store.
  • Limited product options. Regardless of how many variants of products you have, Shopify only allows 3 options that customers can choose from.
  • Learning curve. You need to develop new skills and constantly learn to keep up with all the processes and requirements of your business relative to the platform you’re using.
  • Can sometimes require complex skills like coding. Sometimes, simple editing and layout skills aren’t enough. You need web designers, developers, or graphic designers to do the difficult process of seamless integration with other devices like viewing your store from mobiles or tablets. You also need to hire professionals to troubleshoot issues on the platform. To a startup, it can be costly hiring these professionals.

Despite its popularity and proven usability, Shopify is still continuously innovating to cater to different sets of markets. Here are general advantages and disadvantages of using the platform:

Pros and Cons of WooCommerce?

WooCommerce also has its fine points and drawbacks. Knowing them will help you weigh what you need the most in your soon-to-launch e-commerce business. 

Pros
  • High Scalability. WooCommerce is flexible as it is scalable. It can handle a great number of products and a high volume of traffic. It is also search-engine-optimized, allowing your website to get the visibility it deserves.
  • Plenty of plugins, extensions, themes. Although WooCommerce is a plugin, it can work and integrate well with numerous plugin extensions and additional extensions from its Extensions Store. Its Storefront theme helps you get the best out of e-commerce features and processes.
  • Large supportive community. There’s a large WooCommerce community that can give you access to multiple resources and can help you find answers to your concerns. Troubleshooting is made easy thanks to this community.
  • 100% control with customizations. WooCommerce offers access to lots and lots of paid and free themes, and you have the power to enhance and improve your store designs. You have full control of customizations on your website.
  • Provides sales reporting. A sales report is important to understand your store performance and the problem areas you need to fix. WooCommerce gives you simple and easy-to-understand sales reporting so you can manage your store better.
Cons
  • Costly premium themes and extensions. To be able to use premium e-commerce features, you need to deal with the extensions’ high costs. The same can be said for premium apps and themes.
  • Learning curve. To be able to achieve your business goals using WooCommerce, you have to have a better understanding of WordPress. You must first know how WordPress works to understand how WooCommerce will work for your business.
  • Long onboarding process.
  • Unless you already have a WordPress website, WooCommerce takes time and effort in its installation and activation. Its pre-installment process depends on the host. Sometimes, clicking a button is enough, but in most cases, you need to download then upload the extension to integrate it with WordPress. WordPress and WooCommerce also have different sign-up processes.
  • Decentralized support. There’s no central support on WooCommerce. It is spread out and divided among the developers of its 3rd party integrations. It can be a real problem, especially when several extensions or integrations encounter issues at the same time. There’s also no consistency in support.
  • Security concern. WooCommerce and WordPress are both self-hosted. It means that you need to handle the security and speed of your website. It’s good to have knowledge about software storage and licensing or hire someone who knows.

Once you finally have your e-commerce platform up, you should now learn about the marketplace software you need for it. You can read further at this blog: Top 10 Marketplace Software Platforms on the Market.

FAQs

How much does it cost to create a store on Shopify?

You can start a store on Shopify with zero cost using the 1-day free trial. However, after it expires, you should register for a paid plan. Shopify’s basic plan starts at $29 per month. The next Shopify plan costs $79 per month, and the last plan for large-scale businesses costs $299 per month. Prices of the apps are still not included in the plans’ prices.

How much does using WooCommerce cost?

WooCommerce and WordPress are both free to use! You will only be paying for plugins extensions, additional extensions, and themes that you add to your website. Yet, free extensions and themes are also available, giving you more control of your budget.

What is best for my business, Shopify or WooCommerce?

It depends on what you’re looking for in a website builder and website plugin. The process of starting in Shopify is much faster than that of WooCommerce. If you want more control over design and budget customizations, go for WooCommerce. If you’re looking for security and better channel integrations, go for Shopify. As for SEO, both are search engine optimized. They also have great search engine optimization features.

Conclusion

Both Shopify and WooCommerce are good e-commerce platforms. Both also offer many great but differentiated e-commerce features. One can be better than the other in one aspect but generally making a conclusion for what will work best for your business is not possible.

You need to know where your business is in terms of its growth and what you need at your current level to know which platform will give you the best benefit.

Tags: #Pros and Cons of Shopify?#What is Shopify?#What is WooCommerce?#WooCommerce vs. Shopify
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