Shopify vs WooCommerce: Which ecommerce platform is best for your online store.
So, you’re looking to set up shop on the web? If you’ve already been looking into popular e-commerce platforms, chances are you’ve come across Shopify and WooCommerce many times. Both e-commerce giants in their own rights, Shopify powers over 800,000 online stores and WooCommerce can transform any WordPress site into an online store.
It’s helpful to know which platform offers the best benefits for your business needs, so in today’s blog post we’re offering a beginner’s guide to Shopify and WooCommerce. Who will come out on top in the battle of Shopify vs WooCommerce? Read on to find out!
Shopify vs WooCommerce pros and cons
First of all, let’s take a look at a general overview of the two options, delving into the pros and cons of each. This should help to give you an idea of which platform is most suitable for your e-commerce needs. We’ll then break this down further, comparing the best features of each so you can really drill down into the nitty gritty.
Pros of Shopify
If you’re looking to open up your sales fields to other channels, the built-in Shopify multichannel integration makes it quick and easy to sell on other platforms such as Amazon, eBay and Facebook.
Shopify is a hosted platform, so it includes all the security features needed to keep your customers’ payment information safe and ensure regulatory compliance from the get-go. This also means that it has a much faster build time [so you can start selling sooner].
You can access 24/7 phone, email and live chat support from the Shopify team to address customer concerns quickly. They also offer access to helpful guides and a community forum.
Cons of Shopify
The major downfall of opting for a Shopify store is the financial cost. As well as charging transaction fees for all payment methods apart from its own Shopify Payments gateway, Shopify apps can also be costly.
Pros of WooCommerce
Not only is WooCommerce free to install, but it also offers limitless customisation options at no extra cost. This makes it a very affordable option [and perfect for small businesses].
As an open-source platform, you can easily use code to customise your e-commerce website to match your brand identity and scale it to suit your business goals. Whether you do this yourself or engage a WooCommerce customisation expert [like Ketchup] is up to you.
WooCommerce offers a range of setup guides to help you get started quickly and easily. You can also submit general support tickets if you run into any issues.
Cons of WooCommerce
The only real downside of opting for a WooCommerce store is its reliance on pre-existing coding knowledge. Without prior code experience, you might find that WooCommerce isn’t particularly beginner friendly for building an e-commerce website from scratch.
Ketchup’s verdict
The short and sweet version of the outcome of the Shopify vs WooCommerce pros and cons is this: Shopify is a great option for a wide range of applications and levels of tech savviness, but it can be costly. On the other hand, WooCommerce is super cost-effective and offers unparalleled customisation, but requires coding knowledge [or the support of an expert in WooCommerce customisation].
Shopify vs WooCommerce: Comparing the best features
So that’s the general gist of how the two platforms stack up against each other. Let’s explore the key features of both options to provide a more nuanced look into which is the best platform for your online store based on what you actually need.
Get started: Usability
Shopify
As a hosted e-commerce platform, Shopify takes care of a lot of the technical operations behind an e-commerce store, making it very accessible. Not only will it manage your domain name and hosting, but it also provides all of your SSL certificates [giving you one less thing to worry about]. This hosted platform also manages all of your software updates and backups, meaning that if you have limited technical skills, this is a much more straightforward option.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a far more technical platform that requires users to have an existing knowledge of coding to navigate the platform, as well as sourcing their own hosting and security. The learning curve is therefore pretty steep, and getting external support may eat into the cost-saving benefits of choosing WooCommerce over Shopify [though it will also bring dedicated expertise that could prove invaluable].
Ketchup’s verdict
If you’re looking for a more user-friendly platform, Shopify offers all of the major features as standard, whereas WooCommerce requires you to source them yourself. If you’re looking for a platform that will manage your operations, Shopify is the better choice.
Make it your own: Design customisation
Shopify
Shopify offers a range of curated templates, with over 70 free [and paid] template themes that can be further customised by applying your own code. This gives you lots of simple options to create your own e-commerce website design, as well as some more complex customisation capabilities.
WooCommerce
Offering limitless customisation options, WooCommerce includes a brilliant breadth of themes that designers are constantly adding to. Storefront, WooCommerce’s entry theme, is also fully responsive on mobile devices. The only trouble is that the appearance of your design depends on your technical skill level [so if you’re not a whiz at coding, your theme won’t be optimised]. But if you’re a confident coder, you have the opportunity to create a much more bespoke e-commerce web design.
Ketchup’s verdict
Both platforms offer a good range of stylish themes to help you create a professional e-commerce store. Shopify is the better choice if you’re looking to have a ready-made template that requires minimal input, while WooCommerce is the way to go if you’re confident with coding.
Get discovered: E-commerce SEO
Shopify
While it does have a range of SEO plugins in its App Store [including a free SEO Booster to resolve issues that might be harming the performance of your store], Shopify doesn’t have a great range of options here. This limited number of SEO apps could restrict your performance in the long run.
WooCommerce
As a platform built using code optimised for SEO, WooCommerce allows you to add detailed meta descriptions to your pages to further optimise your appearance in search results. WooCommerce is integrated with WordPress [and a number of other SEO plugins], and goes one step further by providing helpful guides and prompts to help you optimise your SEO.
Ketchup’s verdict
If you want to maximise your SEO performance, WooCommerce allows you to customise your URLs in order to help search engine users discover your pages, providing better SEO for e-commerce.
Sell your brand: Marketing tools
Shopify
Shopify offers an impressive range of marketing features that include free multichannel selling on platforms such as Facebook, Amazon and eBay. It also provides integrated email marketing through apps such as Seguno and Constant Contact.
WooCommerce
You can integrate WooCommerce with MailChimp to help you create and send personalised email campaigns. However, it relies on plugins for its other marketing tools. WooCommerce also has limited social media integration, as only advertising on Facebook is free. With that being said, it’s worth noting that WooCommerce does offer a built-in-blogging feature to help market your products on the same platform.
Ketchup’s verdict
With integrated multichannel selling on all major platforms available at no extra cost, Shopify takes the lead when it comes to offering value-for-money marketing tools.
Make the sale: Sales features and payment
Shopify
All of Shopify’s sales features, including abandoned cart recovery, are built into your e-commerce website, helping you to retain the interest of customers who didn’t get round to completing their order. Shopify also offers a choice of over 100 payment options [including Paypal and Apple Pay]. However, unless you use Shopify Payments, you’ll have to pay a 2% fee on all third-party payment transactions.
WooCommerce
While WooCommerce can embed products, provide one-click refunds for customers and offer multichannel selling, Facebook is the only platform that is free to install. A significant benefit of WooCommerce [over Shopify] is that it doesn’t charge transaction fees when you use a third-party payment gateway, with a choice of over 10 payment gateways including Paypal, credit and debit card, and Apple Pay.
Ketchup’s verdict
Both Shopify and WooCommerce provide sales features that allow you to build an effective website. However, Shopify is the only platform that offers a great range of these tools in-built, allowing you to use them from the moment your web store is set up. That said, a major advantage of WooCommerce over Shopify is the absence of transaction fees. As it still offers a decent range of sales features and payment options [but with none of the transaction fees], WooCommerce takes the title for the better sales and payment process.
Maximise your budget: Pricing
Shopify
Shopify offers fixed-price plans on a range of packages, which offers great value for money but makes this more expensive than opting for a WooCommerce site. It’s worth considering the cost, as you can unlock more advanced features as you upgrade your packages, helping to grow your e-commerce site with your business.
WooCommerce
Free to use with relatively affordable extensions available, WooCommerce offers better value for money as a basic package. However, you need to be mindful that you’ll incur extra costs on features such as hosting, acquiring a domain name and security.
Ketchup’s verdict
If you’re looking for a basic e-commerce site, the free-to-use WooCommerce platform is better value for money. However, as you can incur costs for all of the features that are included as standard with a Shopify store, it may be worth considering the long-term benefit of opting for a Shopify package.
Shopify or WooCommerce: Which is the best platform for your online store?
In our WooCommerce vs Shopify debate, we’ve covered all of the key areas you should factor in when considering which solution to choose. From Shopify’s multichannel integration to WooCommerce’s customisation capabilities, each platform offers lots of benefits to your e-commerce site.
Whichever you choose, the Ketchup Crew is on hand to optimise your store performance by offering technical support and marketing expertise. Find out more about our expert web development services [to get the most out of your chosen platform], or put our web designers in charge of making your e-commerce store beautiful.