WooCommerce vs Shopify – Make the Right Ecommerce Decision

In this article we will help you decide which platform to choose for building your e-commerce store. Here, we will compare the two most popular e-commerce platforms – WooCommerce and Shopify. Both these platforms are highly valued in the e-commerce market. Your choice of an ecommerce platform may vary based on the business requirement and the experience you want to deliver to your users.

E-commerce market holds the future. Its speed of growth is unbeatable. It is one of the fastest growing and most explored market in today’s world. Are you planning to be a part of this market? However, choosing the right platform is the real trouble.

However, you may have your own set of queries to make the right decision before making a final choice. Therefore, we will discuss WooCommerce vs Shopify both individually and combined to make it easy for you to decide. Let’s get started with the difference between them.

Pros of WooCommerce and Shopify:

WooCommerce

• With WooCommerce, you are offered complete customisation and control.
• It has a great community online, allowing you to have a huge reach.
• There is no end to the themes and plugins available on WooCommerce. The greater the community the better the facility.
• Configuration on WordPress is easier with WooCommerce.
• You get free plugin on WooCommerce.

Also read: How to speed up your WordPress website

Shopify

• You get the clear vision of monthly payment with Shopify. The pricing is fair to everyone.
• With Shopify, you can access to thousands of apps. You can easily extend your store on these applications.
• The number of themes may be just enough but they are extremely beautiful.
• You are free from hosting and security with Shopify as it handles them itself.
• You get to launch your store within a few minutes on Shopify.
• Shopify provides a very simple solution to Drop-shipping.
• Shopify provides the best support in the business.

Cons of WooCommerce and Shopify

WooCommerce

• WordPress doesn’t provide a learning material.
• It is more expensive than others as it provides themes, plugins and hosting.
• You have to manage everything from hosting to security and maintain backups on your own. WooCommerce doesn’t take any responsibility of these factors.

Shopify

• You may have to compromise a bit of control over your site with Shopify.
• Other platforms provide better customisation.
• You need make monthly payment which will increase from time to time.

WooCommerce vs Shopify

Basically, Shopify is designed to give you all-in-one eCommerce solution. It facilitates you with everything that you need to get started online. On the other hand, WooCommerce is designed as a self-hosted eCommerce platform. It requires coding skills to tap and access various parts of your store with WooCommerce.

As mentioned above, Shopify intends to provide an easy to use platform to build an online store. This is made possible as Shopify takes away all the complications and technical aspects from the platform. You are left with comfort and ease of use as a user. When it comes to WooCommerce, we are given more freedom to build our own store on our own terms. Using our own technical tactics, we are offered an easy platform for building our online store. If we compare WooCommerce and Shopify, we need to understand that freedom that we get from WooCommerce comes at a price. We need to handle the technicality and security of our site on our own.

Design

Shopify

One of the greatest advantages with Shopify is that we get absolute great looking out of the box themes. It comes with more than 54 different store templates. 10 of which are free. A greater advantage is that they all work on mobile and have a variety of different colouring options. The users are allowed to change the themes easily. Since the designs are quite attractive, most of the users end up having similar themes. Therefore, Shopify allows its users to upgrade or edit their themes by quickly adjusting the colors or styles used in the theme. For customisation of themes, they also offer a Theme editor within the platform. So, it facilitates the easiest way out to design customised theme.

WooCommerce

When it comes to designs, WooCommerce gives a greater advantage. Although Shopify themes are beautiful but they are limited. However, WooCommerce is an open source so you get tons of developers selling customised WooCommerce themes for all kinds of purposes. WooCommerce provides the standard recommendations and best practices as it has been built to cooperate with most themes on the market. It means we can select any WordPress theme in favour of our choice and still make it work together with WooCommerce.

Price

Shopify

It has been discussed above that Shopify is designed to provide all in one e-commerce platform and make it easier for the users to start their business online. Therefore, the pricing of Shopify is quite straightforward. Shopify e-commerce store running on a top level domain is $29/month. It is as clear as that. It doesn’t include any additional charges. It provides a smooth and creative platform to get started with an online store. This is why it is highly recommended to beginners who are looking for quick and smooth online store building platform.

WooCommerce

The pricing of WooCommerce can be confusing to beginners. But here you get the clear understand of it. Since WooCommerce is an open source software plugin. Therefore, the plugin is free. Although one needs to consider the cost of self hosting, cost of the theme, cost of domain name and additional extensions and an SSL certificate. The freedom that we get on WooCommerce has its own cost which needs to met by the user itself.

Additionally, both of these platforms charge a small amount of fee every time you make a transaction. This fee is called transaction fees which is charged for various duties performed by the platforms like processing the payment, delivering the money, etc.

Features

Shopify

Although Shopify allows its users to install apps to make the most out of the platform. But there are certain in built features that give a range of free options. They are as follows:-

• Blog module
• Manual order creation
• Automatic fraud analysis
• Discount codes
• Embedded Oberlo integration
• Unlimited products
• Unlimited file storage
• Editable HTML and CSS
• Free SSL certificate
• Mobile commerce optimisation
• Credit card payments
• Multiple languages
• Adjustable shipping rates and taxes
• Customer profiles
• Drop shipping capabilities
• Site structure ready for SEO
• Reviews for individual products
• Facebook selling module
• Social media integration
• Physical and digital products in the store
• Unlimited traffic to your store
• Daily backups
• Site statistics and product reports
• Advanced reports
• Fully featured mobile app
• Product import via CSV files
• Different product variations
• Print orders
• Inventory management
• Gift cards
• Abandoned cart recovery

Also read: Shopify 2.0 features

WooCommerce

Since it is an open source software. It allows third party developers. The extensions and plugins are used with the in built features of WooCommerce together to create an online store. Let’s name these features below:-

• It allows selling of physical products and digital products along with affiliate marketing.
• It has built in feature of accepting payments via PayPal and Stripe.
• The users are allowed to adjust shipping rates and taxes on WooCommerce.
• A store can have unlimited products and categories of products on WooCommerce.
• Stock levels control
• Its structure is designed in a way that can be used on a mobile.
• It allows you complete freedom of controlling your data.
• Works with different WordPress themes as chosen by you.
• Provides more than hundreds of plugins.
• A free facebook ad and facebook stores extension.

Ease of use

Shopify

From the very start, Shopify gives a sense of ease of use. Its structure is such that one can sense ease of use in it. It takes just a sign up and subscription to get started with Shopify. Along side, Shopify tends to guide you through the platform so that you can make the most out of it. In accordance with the nature of your store, it suggests you various methods in which you can utilise its endless features.

Once you have signed up and finished up filling the initial detail requirements, you get access to the main dashboard where you can new products, etc.

WooCommerce

It is also as easy as Shopify if your ultimate need is freedom. To take advantage of freedom on WooCommerce one needs to complete four steps – 1) get a domain name 2) sign up for a hosting account 3) Install WordPress 4) Find and install a WordPress theme. WooCommerce consists of five steps. It takes you through every element of the platform. Once the setup is done and activated. Allowing you to choose the main parameters of the store, it configures everything neatly. You can begin adding products and start using your store.

Support

Shopify

Technical support is highly appreciable in today’s time. Therefore, Shopify being crowned the easiest platform for building online store provides highly quality technical support to its users. They get the benefit of accessing customer adviser 24/7. To resolve any issues or queries they can chat, email or make a phone call for emergencies.

WooCommerce

With WooCommerce, support system isn’t straightforward. Since is a free WordPress plugin, the users can get support through the WordPress forums. Along with that, the users can take advantage of the support provided on WooCommerce.com after creating a free user account.

The support system of Shopify is available 24/7 which is unbeatable. Therefore, Shopify wins this head.

SEO

Shopify

With Shopify, the users can access basic SEO practices like meta information and site copy with ease. Although not at the top but Shopify presents its content in a quite creative way. With the quality of content produced by your business, you can get great results and strong user engagement.

WooCommerce

SEO experts have name WordPress as the most reliable option for SEO practices. It is primarily a content creation platform. With certain plugins, you can enjoy complete control of every detail that’s related to SEO. WooCommerce users can take advantage of what’s there in WordPress and make the complete use of the most reliable content creation source.

Payments and fees

Shopify

Shopify decided to have a unique way of payment option. Unlike other platforms, Shopify came up with its own payment option named after itself. Shopify Payments is set as the default method of making transactions as we see it on our dashboard after signup. Besides that, Shopify provides its users with a large number of payment option available on the platform making it the easiest platform.

WooCommerce

Although, both of these platforms have similarity in payment options. However, there are a number of differences too.  WooCommerce outshines Shopify by offering two different options – PayPal and Stripe.

Cheaper transaction fees

Both the platforms are very flexible and reliable when it comes to the way payment processes are handled.

Shopify stands out with its in built powerful service of Shopify Payments providing a great user experience. Whereas, WooCommerce has its own default section of PayPal and Stripe providing a better platform for handling transactions.

That being said, we cannot distinguish Shopify and WooCommerce on the basis of cheaper transaction fees. Both of the platforms have their own set of advantages and features privileging its users in their own way.

Also read: 10 best payment gateway providers in 2024

Security

Shopify

With Shopify, the users are free from the responsibility of securing their online stores. The platform itself is responsible for securing the stores of its customers and providing a gust of support.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce, on the other hand, is a open source software. Therefore, the users are themselves responsible for the security of their stores. However, WooCommerce does provide encryption to private details of its users.

Wrap Up

Shopify is great for beginners and those who are looking for a online store on urgent basis without having to put in a lot of efforts. WooCommerce, however, is for the ones who are looking for freedom of control in the managing process of online store.