Comparison between Shopify and WooCommerce

If you are in E-Commerce, you have no doubt heard of WooCommerce and Shopify. Both are great tools for building and maintaining an e-commerce store.

Today there is a multitude of e-commerce platforms that claim to be or better quality. In any case, it is difficult to determine which of these platforms is the best. Despite the marketing of these two products, they both have excellent features. The improvement and access to technical support make decision-making easier for some users. We will see together with their advantages and disadvantages.

Overview of WooCommerce and Shopify

Among the most popular platforms, Shopify and WooCommerce are considered the best. Both have a maximum number of features that meet the needs of the users. According to a December 2018 survey of over a million fairly popular e-commerce sites, 21% used the WooCommerce platform and 18% used Shopify. However, in recent years, it has been observed that Shopify’s growth curve is steeper. It is not enough to rely on online surveys to reflect the reality on the ground.

In this article, we are going to establish the pros and cons of these two e-commerce platforms. This will help you to have a clear idea of the choice to be made to better embark on this exciting digital adventure. We made these comparisons based on statistics, our expertise in using these tools, and user opinions.

The fundamental difference between Shopify and Woocommerce

Shopify is an all-in-one solution. In fact, it offers to design, build and publish your website online without worrying about the technical aspects. On the other hand, Woocommerce, with its plugins related to WordPress, is only available for owners of existing WordPress sites who want to sell online. While Shopify offers a completely free trial version, WooCommerce offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. (If you decide to choose the subscription plan instead of the open codes).

The benefits of Shopify

• Shopify automatically provides technical maintenance for the management of your e-business site. Using this platform means having a hosting plan while having security certification agreements.
• Additionally, with Shopify, growing your online store can be achieved without the risk of technical failures caused by the gradual increase in traffic and sales volumes. This platform does not necessarily require technical skills to ensure a good design of its websites.
• One of the best advantages of Shopify is the great responsiveness of its customers’ phone support. For example, they are available 24/7 to effectively resolve all forms of problems related to your website. If you don’t understand how the functions work, you can get help quickly.
• Shopify offers its users absolute ease of inter-connectivity with the most important commercial spaces of the web like Amazon and Facebook. The advantage is that your products can be advertised and marketed on these sites outside your website.

Cons of Shopify

Despite the great features listed above, Shopify has some limitations that are mostly related to its restructuring. If you want to make significant changes to your online store, having advanced technical coding skills is imperative. This way, you’ll be able to learn Shopify’s corporate lines of code to make meaningful changes or bring in a developer. Also, the cost of using Shopify becomes very high as your business grows.

The advantages of WooCommerce

• The specificity of WooCommerce is that it is an open-source platform whose programming language is accessible to all. (Unless you decide to subscribe to the monthly option)
• Because it is free to use, it has an unlimited possibility of customization, allowing a wide margin of flexibility. You can practically use it to build your website according to your creativity and aspirations. Customizing and using Themes on WooCommerce is easy and straightforward.
• Because WooCommerce uses the power of WordPress, it has an exhaustive variety of themes for better web design.
  WooCommerce easily improves your natural positioning on Google thanks to extensions such as Yoast SEO and the ease of finding suitable tools.

Disadvantages of WooCommerce

Unlike Shopify, WooCommerce does not have a responsive and accessible telephone customer support service at all times. If you are having trouble with WooCommerce, you can either use the community or chat with other users on the forums.
WooCommerce requires technical knowledge to ensure proper management of the online store.

Conclusion

Launching your online store on an e-commerce platform requires good knowledge of the different features that characterize platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce. However, the choice of platform depends mainly on your budget plan, your technical expertise in IT or web development and your web project. You can only make a good choice by estimating the investment you are willing to make for your online store.

In summary :

• If you’re looking for tech support, that’s easy to manage and 100% available 24/7, go to Shopify. Shopify supports you through all stages of your e-commerce.
• On the other hand, if you want more control and flexibility in customizing your store, WooCommerce might be the best. However, you need to understand that you will be managing all aspects of your store yourself.

If you need help choosing the best tool for your e-commerce business, contact us today. We also offer Shopify and Woocommerce development services.