Shopify Vs WooCommerce | Which eCommerce Platform to Rely On? {2022}
The introduction of E-commerce has changed the way businesses have worked for centuries that too in a remarkable way. It gives a full sense of freedom to sellers to showcase and promote their products online without depending on the need for brick-and-mortar stores.
Shopify is the best platform to rely on when it is about web development services as it offers a great mix of quality and high standard features, simplicity, and efficiency.
In the market, you will observe that there are several vendors, who offer Shopify app development and Shopify store development services. If you too are looking to build an app or store using Shopify, then you can hire Shopify developers for the same.
- Since Shopify is a CMS and eCommerce shopping cart and is suitable for several businesses, to make the best use of this platform for eCommerce development, you would require the help of an experienced Shopify developer.
- This would further lead to better E-commerce experience for end-users as well. Apart from this, you can bestow a professional look to your online store and convert prospects into customers.
- This platform comes with a set of initial templates which can be customized as per your store preferences and branding standards. The capabilities of this platform allows to sell digital files and standard products in the best way.
- Being a hosted solution, it can run smoothly on their servers. Even though you are not technically sound or don’t have experience about coding part, you can still make changes to website design and can edit CSS and HTML.
Well, we might say that you should opt for Shopify for your web development projects, but the level of customization and project goals is also a deciding factor in choosing an E-commerce platform.
Some might argue that WooCommerce is also the best option, but let us understand about it as well and carry out a detailed comparison between Shopify vs WooCommerce to decide which one to rely on.
Let us carry out understand about Shopify and WooCommerce in detail and carry out eCommerce platforms comparison between these two:
What is Shopify?
Shopify is one of the leading and commonly used E-commerce platforms, which gives complete liberty to set up, develop, and manage an online or offline store most efficiently.
As this platform is cloud-based and hosted, it doesn’t require updates or maintenance of web servers or software. You can customize your store in the desired manner as per your business needs.
With this all-inclusive platform, you can promote, sell, or ship your products from any part of the globe. It lets you sell your products in a multitude of channels namely online marketplace, web, mobile, social media, brick-and-mortar locations, and lastly pop-up shops. Businesses of all sizes and sellers at any level can make use of this platform.
This online store builder allows you to sell online through your website or offline with Shopify POS (application). It is loaded with useful features, which can be used by all from beginners to E-commerce experts.
Benefits of Shopify
- Quick to set up, easy to use and 24/7 support
- Big choice of storefront themes/designs
- Secure & reliable
- Mobile responsive
- Shopify App Store
- Sell products on multiple channels
- Marketing Tools
- Several payment processors
- Abandoned cart recovery
- SEO
Quick to set up, easy to use and 24/7 support
- By using Shopify, you can quickly set up an online store, without getting bothered about the servers or development costs at all.
- The best thing about Shopify is that its admin interface is user-friendly and intuitive, as all of its features are structured logically. You can also find detailed documentation and video guides on its site that helps you to understand store setup and how to manage it.
- It offers 24/7 support via E-mail, telephone, and live chat, as per your preference and location. There are several community forums, detailed documentation available in the help center and not to mention Shopify University guides too.
Big choice of storefront themes/designs
The main advantage of using Shopify is that it has hundreds of storefront themes, which have been specifically designed for the E-commerce and Shopify platform. Every theme is in line with the E-commerce industry objectives and provides a wide variety of options in different niches so that it results in good customer retention.
Secure & Reliable
Since it is PCI DSS compliant, it promises optimum security for all debit and credit card transactions following the industry standards. The store comes with an SSL certificate, which plays a pivotal role in encrypting business-related sensitive data.
Mobile Responsive
- With several users accessing mobile phones to shop online, it is important to make your store, mobile responsive. The good news is that all the Shopify themes are mobile responsive and its platform has a free in-built mobile E-commerce shopping cart.
- To be precise, it can be said that your online store will look great on all types of mobile devices and you will not lose on your prospects too. Lastly, it has free Android and iPhone apps, which lets you manage your online store most comfortably.
Shopify App Store
- Its immense store has a treasure trove of about 1500 applications, which helps to carry out different tasks like traffic boosting, automation, E-mail marketing, and sales-boosting.
- Its useful SaaS integration with Shopify offers great benefits. This app store is usually the first one to launch and announce exciting new services for its customers, which can’t be accessed immediately by other platforms.
Sell Products on multiple Channels
It lets you sell your products on potential channels and platforms which are supported by Facebook, Mobile Apps, Pinterest & Amazon. Not only this, but you can also sell your products in brick-and-mortar shops. It makes use of a built-in POS system to unify all the inventory and products of your online store.
Marketing Tools
It comes with built-in marketing tools and functionalities. It is designed with the capability to easily integrate with the implementation of SEO practices, discount code generation, and social media and also create an E-commerce related blog, which suits your content marketing strategy. Its built-in marketing tools help you to create, execute, and analyze digital marketing campaigns.
Several payment processors
It is integrated with more than 70 payment gateways and also has its payment gateway powered by Stripe. When you opt for this, then you would not be charged any cost. On the contrary, you would be benefitted from lower credit card fees. Lastly, it doesn’t mandate the use of a merchant account at all.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
- It is a common thing that a visitor might leave your online store, without buying anything or would simply leave an abandoned checkout process in the middle for some reason.
- With Shopify, you can manage this process too as it helps you to automatically track and E-mail those respective customers and reminds them about their purchases.
- Therefore, you need not make efforts to track customers for an incomplete checkout process. This ultimately helps in generating smooth revenue.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
One notable feature about Shopify is that it comes with built-in SEO features and Google Analytics Integration. Store owners can easily carry out promotions and contact their buyers, thanks to its Facebook advertising Credit and Google Ads. You will get numerous useful marketing tools with Shopify, which will help you to sell more products to customers.
Limitations of Shopify
- Expensive
- Customization
- No E-mail hosting
- Migration
- Pricing for Payment Gateway
- App store
- No Scalability
- Limited features & themes
- Basic Marketing Tools
Expensive
Even though Shopify has several useful features but in case if you are willing to own a properly functioning website, then it will require you to pay more for the same. The cost can increase a bit in case you are including subscriptions to pay for at the time of using certain types of applications. You will have to pay more in case if you want to design something specific for your online store.
Customization
Sometimes in-built themes in Shopify require customization. The drawback is that the customization can only be carried out with the help of a professional developer or in case if you learn coding for it. You get bounded to original themes only or should hire a professional person for the coding part.
No E-mail hosting
Even though there may be several web hosting plans offered in Shopify, but it has no safe OFFER in place for E-mail hosting.
You can’t have E-mail ID with shop name and even if E-mail forwarding is done, then also a mail would be sent to your personal Yahoo or Gmail account. Therefore, this causes a limitation of domain-based E-mail ID. Apart from this, to make use of this functionality, you would need to set up a 3rd party connection.
Migration
It causes great problems in migrating Shopify users to other platforms. It has been a common complaint of several users that it adds to the difficulty level at the time of migration in several ways.
There is a risk involved in losing your store information during the process of migration from Shopify. You are left with the CSV export of your website. Not only Shopify, but this is also a common problem with several E-commerce platforms.
Pricing for Payment Gateway
About 1–2% commission is charged if you make use of 3rd party payment gateway for your online store. Therefore, it means giving a small part of your revenue as gateway charges, which is not worth it.
App store
You will have to pay fees associated with certain apps if you are using it. However, if you are not making use of these apps, then you need to manually insert data into your software, which would take much of your time.
You can choose to hire someone, which again would incur a certain amount of charges, or else you can opt for a monthly app subscription plan.
No Scalability
It is not the best option to scale a business. Shopify is not capable of handling millions of customers and offers a large range of products. Besides this, it doesn’t provide any type of assistance with complex stock and exchange problems on a big scale, which might occur at some point in time in large businesses.
Limited features & themes
It is limited to a certain set of features. Shopify’s E-commerce software doesn’t have basic or core features at all. To opt for marketing features, an online store has to rely on its App store, some of the stores which are paid ones. There is a big chance that you will have to opt for paid themes as there are only about 10 free theme templates available in Shopify.
Basic Marketing Tools
The basic and elementary nature of marketing tools is the major drawback of Shopify. The marketing tools you require would purely depend on the type of E-commerce store you are thinking to build using this platform. Even though it has a gamut of marketing tools, still you would require access to the App Store in case you require additional tools.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a free open-source WordPress E-commerce plugin, which has a vital role in adding E-commerce functionality to your WordPress website so that you can have a ready online store. To be precise, it turns a WordPress website into a fully functioning eCommerce store with just a simple few clicks.
It allows you to sell physical and digital products, manage shipping, shopping cart functionality, inventory, and secure payments, and sort taxes.
With this plugin, you can easily create and manage stores, with reasonable flexibility levels and vital features also you can add SEO value and E-commerce ability to your online store. Further, it lets you customize your online store and add extra features to it.
Benefits of WooCommerce
- Free & Open Source
- World Class CMS
- Official Extension Library
- Developer Friendly Documentation
- API
- Advanced Features for Larger Online Stores
- Fully customizable / Customization options
- Flexibility
- Large Community
Free & Open Source
It is a free and open-source platform, which means that any developer can easily alter its code. It is suitable for people, who have experience with WordPress. If you are familiar with WordPress then this platform will help you to get started with the design of a web store and also make first sales much easier for you.
World Class CMS
Content forms an important part of E-commerce marketing, SEO, and sales optimization. WordPress and WooCommerce provides a wide variety of content management options such as landing page, blogging, E-mail marketing, and product descriptions. Certain SEO plugins, which are compatible with WooCommerce like Yoast makes it easy for retailers to optimize their content for search.
Official Extension Library
On regular basis, high-quality developers and designers keep on adding new features and plugins to the WooCommerce extension library, which allows your website to stay fresh and modern and further provide more value to your esteemed customers.
Developer Friendly Documentation
The developer document provided by WooCommerce is unmatchable. Quality documentation helps you to review, customize, troubleshoot, and development much easier to manage, plan, and implement.
API
- The Rest API is one of the effective and powerful parts of WooCommerce. With its help, you can easily read and write different parts of WooCommerce data namely products, orders, shipping zones to coupons.
- Further, it adds an extra layer of functionality to an effective and stronger E-commerce platform, which allows you to customize different types of data and extend outwards. API makes sure that things don’t mess up or break whenever any third-party data type is introduced.
Advanced features for larger online stores
It has advanced features, which you can benefit from. It offers a vast selection of extensions and plugins, which makes your online store, a powerful one.
Fully customizable / Customization options
The best thing about WooCommerce is that its customization options shine differently. You can find thousands of themes on this platform. After opting for desired themes, you can fully customize sections like header, footer, checkouts, product sheets, etc. in your desired manner.
Flexibility
It fits like gloves for all kinds of online shops, regardless of product type or market niche. You can configure WooCommerce to best suit your selling needs for virtual, physical, and downloadable products. It can be also be adapted to other types of business models and affiliate systems.
Large community
It has a huge community of contributors, developers, and active users. You can easily find abundant documentation, informative guides, and articles. Apart from this, it has several forums as well.
Limitations of WooCommerce
- Performance affected with plugins
- Pay for Premium Extensions
- Potential Coding Conflicts
- Frequency of Updates
- Difficult to implement multi-currency
Performance affected with plugins
- If you choose to install thousands of plugins and extensions on your online store, then it will have a great impact on the downloading speed and overall performance of your store. The main reason behind this reduction in speed is they consume a lot of memory.
- Therefore, it is suggested to implement your choice of functions by making use of HTML code, CSS, and jQuery. In case, if this is not possible at all, then you can limit the use of plugins installed.
Pay for Premium Extensions
- If you install certain extensions, then it will cost you for sure. Further, it will require punctual payment or you can opt for certain monthly plans with a monthly fee.
- We do agree that starting a store and selling products don’t require purchase of any extension. But for certain cases, you would have to pay a certain amount of money.
- For instance, if you are planning to implement certain subscription services or inventory management utilities, then you have to consider this cost as well.
Potential Coding Conflicts
The best thing about WooCommerce is its ability to customize plugins is an added benefit. When you use plugins by using different authors then it can cause issues. Since paid plugins make use of script libraries, this in turn can be a great potential conflict with script libraries of other WordPress plugins.
Frequency of updates
The themes and plugins require frequent updates, therefore it becomes a tedious task to keep on updating thems frequently.
Difficult to implement multi-currency
With WooCommerce, it becomes difficult to implement a multi-currency feature, therefore it is a major drawback.
Things to Consider While Choosing E Commerce Platform
- Budget
- Pricing Options
- Product catalog
- Store size
- Ease of use & Performance
- Features
- Functionality
- Customizable
- Scalability
- Security
- SEO & Mobile Friendliness
- Payment Options/Gateways
- Product, Order & Return management system
- Availability of Themes and Templates
- Design Flexibility
- Third-Party or Multi-channel integrations
- Customer service & Technical support
When to Use Shopify and WooCommerce?
- Use Shopify if you are planning to sell physical and digital goods. Further, if you want to gain full control of templates and require different payment options then this is the best platform.
- Lastly, this platform is best if you require customer logins and want easy integration to 3rd party E-commerce features and applications.
- Use WooCommerce if you want to sell physical products, digital services, or goods. If you are looking for cost-effective options and want to have full control over your online store, then it is the best platform to rely on.
Popular Websites built on Shopify and WooCommerce
Shopify
Royal Enfield, Raymond NeXT, Relaxo, TheStiffCollar, Yellow Fashion, Paperbox, LetterNote, Fabmart, Poster Gully, etc.
WooCommerce
AeroPress, Orange, GHOSTBED, Blue Star Coffe, Wakami, Over Clothing, Porter & York, WooThemes, Trendy Resumes, Pact Coffee, Rotimatic, Bloomscape, etc.
Final Thoughts
Thus, to sum up, the above information it can be said that owing to the flexibility and versatility of Shopify, it should be considered for web development. This platform can match up with niche, preferences, and unique needs in the best way.
For Any Shopify Store, App Development Queries. Contact Our Shopify Developers.
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