Wordpress + Woocommerce vs Shopify

Saturday, May 2, 2020

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Are you starting an online business?

If you are looking to sell online, there are two site builders that you’ll undoubtedly come across, WordPress with Woocommerce and Shopify. In the world of eCommerce, these two are the biggest platform providers in the business.

When deciding between the two options, one does not beat the other completely in every category. The site builder that is right for you depends completely on what you want to do with it and what your plans are.

Both Woocommerce and Shopify have a lot of strengths, as well as some possible downsides, to build your eCommerce site with. What is great about them both is that it’s possible to get up and running without having to enlist the help and pay for the services of a designer or developer.

So if you’re looking to decide between Woocommerce and Shopify, read on below to find out more about the two platform providers.

Pros and Cons

WooCommerce

Pros

Cons

Completely customisable

Built on WordPress, the opensource platform means that customisation is limitless.

No Customer Support

If you run into a problem, there is not a phone number to call to advise you. Instead, you have to rely on the community to provide answers in the forum.

Ecommerce specific themes

Wordpress themes that are created for the exact purpose of eCommerce are available to choose from, meaning your site can look stylish straight out of the box.

Strong SEO functionalities

Most site builders claim to be built with SEO in mind, but in general WordPress sites are some of the most easy to optimise.

Shopify

Pros

Cons

Hosting is taken care of

Shopify will cover the technical side of managing a site. Your pricing plan includes hosting and all security certificates that are required. This means you can concentrate on growing your store, without worrying about maintaining the technical aspects.

Customisation Requires Specialised Knowledge

If you’d like to make more changes to your site that the templates allow, you’ll have to use the coding language that’s specific to Shopify, which is called Liquid.

24/7 Customer Support

Shopify has great customer support. They respond quickly and will solve problems as quickly as possible.

Cross-Channel Integration

If you want to sell across multiple channels and social networks, Shopify integrates well with other marketplaces and social networks.

WooCommerce vs Shopify

There are some things we can learn from comparing the pros and cons from each site. Understanding how these fit into what you are capable of and what you want your site to do will determine what site builder you should choose.

Understanding how much technical work you are willing to put in can help guide this decision. With Shopify, every aspect is taken care of for you on the backend. However, WordPress and WooCommerce doesn’t give you an eCommerce store neatly packaged and ready to go. Instead it gives you the tools and the platform to create it yourself. It allows for huge customisation options, but does mean that your time will have to be spent on technical aspects of running a website, such as hosting.

So for the technically minded, WooCommerce could be a great option. For people not wanting to divert their resources away from selling, Shopify might take the lead. However there are other aspects to consider when choosing a platform. For example, how much money can you spend on your website and what plans do you have for your business in the future?

Features

Both of these sites will allow you to build a great website and start selling. There is a slight difference in approach though. For example, Shopify includes much more features within its standard package, ‘Basic Shopify’. Some of these include:

No limit on the amount of products
A website and blog
Abandoned cart
Offers and discount codes

In comparison, WooCommerce doesn’t have as many features inbuilt. However, its strength comes in the amount of plugins that are available to customise and provide the features needed. Because the platform is open source, there are hundreds of additions you can make to your website, but you will have to put the time and possibly money in to build your store.

Both WooCommerce and Shopify can offer businesses extensive eCommerce features to start selling online. The decision really comes down to knowing your specific business needs and comparing that against what the two platforms offer. In general, the customisation of WooCommerce is great if you are willing to put in the time and have some technical knowledge, but if you want a site that looks great straight out of the box, Shopify is a solid choice.

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