Shopify vs WooCommerce

Shopify powers over 600,000 businesses, while WooCommerce claims to be the web’s “most popular ecommerce platform. But in the midst of this rivalry, on which platform will you put your bets on?

Known for exceptional easy usage, both the e-commerce behemoths have captured their niche in the market with their own set of pros and cons. Perhaps, it’s this reason why you should know, which set of consequences will fascinate your brand more and add value to your company.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: The Comparison

1. 1- Easy Brand Building
2. 2- Seamless Integration
3. 3- Easy Web Management Options
4. 4- Online Selling Process
5. 5- Payment Gateways
6. 6- Data and Analysis
7. 7- Optimization on Search Engine
8. 8- Support and Communities

1. Easy brand building

No one can relate to their business’ needs more than the starter himself. So choosing the correct platform to secure a painless journey to success is the starting step, which depends on factors as the product niche, resources at disposal and technical affinity of the user.

• Shopify a Closed-source Platform gives users a limited possibilities of themes and customization on the platform, without allowing the user to gather complete control of the website.
• This platform is mainly built for the technical novices who simultaneously would like to venture into the e-commerce territory.
• The custom features included in the website through Shopify App Store by installing applications and integrating with webstore. It offers more than 2000 applications on its store to integrate your website for desired features and responsiveness.
• Shopify gives all user PCI Level 1 Compliance to protect their account from cyber attacks
• Shopify has limitations in including multiple business models online through a single webstore.
• The page loading time is greater than WooCommerce and scalability of on store products can be an issue.

• WooCommerce is an Open-source Platform where the access to web source code is given, imparting partial control of the user on the website while customizations can be done from the backend.
• Since it’s an Open SaaS solution it depends heavily on plugins to provide features on the WooCommerce website.
• This platform is created considering the niche which want fast and easy creation of website as well as a partial control on the backend.
• It has 54,000 plugins on WordPress to integrate your website for various dynamic features.
• The WooCommerce hosting provides you with free SSL certificate and is fully PCI Compliant.
• The platform in conjugation with a multi-vendor plugin can offer user the leverage of multi-vendor business model
• Page load time is faster when the website contains more content rather than products for sale, like an e-commerce website.

2. Seamless Integration

Third-party web integrations are immensely popular and necessary for a smooth functioning of a website’s activities onto social media platforms and other web platforms. Since WooCommerce and Shopify both have a different set of functionings, these points below will guide you how each platform will add value to your online store.

• To combine his Shopify products into another platform the user needs to bring the Shopify Buy Button live on the current store, which can be easily done incorporating codes generated into places at website where the person would like to show the product.
• Social media platform integration can be achieved through application which provide API code.

• WooCommerce provides the opportunity of multi-channel marketing and even automate the daily recurring activities in backend.
• The e-commerce solution has numerous plugins in the market which act as a mediator between two apps for integrating features into your WooCommerce account server.

3. Easy Web Management Options

• Shopify’s easy-to-use features allows technically challenged users to create Pop-Ups, CTA’s and customize on-store themes.
• One of the most out-of-the-box features of Shopify is managing the products, categories and variations and implementing the barcoding system which gives the flexibility of locating a particular product in the stock.
• Shopify has a moderate strength in CMS (Content Management System) and needs to be integrated with CMS applications to support content formats agility on websites.
• Being a Closed-source platform and limitations of renditions from integrated apps, Shopify website do usually witness cross browser issues as different browsers work on different technologies.
• Shopify websites are responsive on mobile devices.

• WooCommerce allows the user to access the source code, to give unique customization features on your website.Carousels, CTA’s and Pop Ups can be added with the help of Plugins from WordPress
• This Open-source platform carries the prestige of providing the best CMS backend to the user, highly suitable for website which have more diverse and proportion content.
• WooCommerce seldom witness any cross browser issue until the website is not updated.
• Yes, generally speaking both WordPress and WooCommerce have responsive websites on different devices.

4. Online Selling Process

• Shopify offers its users the POS system sends you alerts on stocks and sales from all locations, but also include the report metrics like the best sellers and aggregate performance of your business.
• For e-commerce aspirers there is a niche service known as Oberlo and Ordana, which follows the process of dropshipping. It claims a certain charge for the service, for the inventory to be handled and shipped by the host itself.
• The order management and sales dashboard touch every point of Customers, Sale channels, Product information, Inventory levels and location, Suppliers for purchasing and receiving, Customer service; namely, returns and refunds, Order printing, picking, packing, processing, and shipping.

• WooCommerce’s Step-by-Step Ordering System allows the sellers to diversify their product categories through layers and add-ons. This comes out really beneficial in promoting cross-selling, pushing grouped and segregated products through enhancing the end user’s in-store shopping experience.
• The user can view orders and sales status for a given time period.
• Also he can change the order status, manage prices and inventories as well as product meta descriptions on the website.
• The order, sales and store management analysis facility can be derived from plugins in the marketplace.

5. Payment Gateways

Both Shopify and WooCommerce have partnered with some of the most popular and secure payment gateways, giving their clients the satisfaction to grow on sales through secured payment platforms like PayPal. But as the threats of cyber-attacks are constantly on the rise, a more secure 3-D platform is preferable.

• While the option of Shopify Payments will always be an option for online sellers, it does not support a 3D secure gateway, though you can integrate with a third party option
• Through Shopify Payments you can track your money real time, streamline the chargeback process as well as spared from any transaction fees that any other gateway would charge on per sales.

• WooCommerce, alike Shopify, WooCommerce Payments do not support 3D Payment Gateway but have numerous options in the marketplace to integrate the plugins and add 3D functionality to your checkout page.

6. Data and Analysis

Data is the oxygen for any company to grow its business on. Shopify, as well as WooCommerce, provide an uninterrupted match for all their clients’ data needs. Subscribers can track from where the customers’ have landed on their page, which product is selling the most, the average order value to detailed reports on marketing activities. But which solution will provide you with the most information with a minimal budget in hand?

• Shopify within the range of plans provide greater options of metrics and all in one dashboard.
• The user can integrate Google Analytics into your Shopify account for further in-depth information of your website performance. This can be easily done by copying the code from Google Analytics account under ‘Get Tracking ID’ domain, and applying on your Shopify webpage.
• In their basic plan they’ve covered metrics like orders, sales and revenue to market reports and what’s ticking the consumers to purchase their product.

• The basic WooCommerce plan will provide you statistics and data on orders, sales by date, by month, product and category along with the graphical representation of the information given through a user legible dashboard.
• You can now find the brand performance aggregate metrics like stock, customer downloads, potential customers vs acquired leads as well as total sales and taxes.
• WooCommerce besides the basic plan, offers users the choice of Advanced reporting plugin which provides a highly detailed metric analysis of various brand performance domains.

7. Optimization on Search Engine

Both e-commerce platforms provide a safe and reputed domain for their clients’ to build their website upon. This helps in increasing the visibility of the website on Google, whenever a searcher inputs their query regarding a particular segment in which the subscriber deals in.

• WooCommerce is the extended arm of Wordpress, where 30% of 10 million websites are present on the Internet, it’s domain usability and popularity adds to an advantageous factor when it comes to SEO.
• Both sources provide convenience to end user as well as to its main user in segregating the products into sub categories and catalogs.
• WooCommerce and Shopify alike, provide their subscribers the feature to utilize product cataloging and allowing users to search on the website through catalog search.
• Shopify offers a blog page, which is highly beneficial when it comes to keyword optimization and brand building.

8. Support and communities

Shopify as well as WooCommerce second biggest asset is their accessibility of clients’ to the internal support and communities. Not only there are virtual help desks to solve your issue in a minute but also you can contact some of the platform experts for their help when in need.

• Shopify extends a forum for the user to interact with millions of experts, partners and their colleagues simultaneously.

One can seek help from the community of Shopify Partners, which are regarded as authorized experts of a handful of which FirstWire Apps dominates the arena with real, yet magical results to their clients. These Shopify Partners not only suffice your needs for web development, but also are deemed as the authoritative figures for online promotions of Shopify websites.

• WooCommerce for general queries about products and services, has curated massive collection of documents online.
• They’ve also established the online support system with many trustworthy third-party companies.
• Alike Shopify the user can approach the WooExperts and partners who can guarantee satisfaction for the solution of your problem.

These are some of the insights which might help you in realizing your e-commerce goals for the year. Since these platforms frequently update features for an invariably smooth user experience curated for their subscribers, working on any of these services might not only save your time but also redeem your efficiency which your company might be leaning on for future sales and growth. But this shouldn’t confuse you with what platform you should go for to set up your online business since the major decision depends on what resources you currently have at your disposal.

As for Shopify, it’s the most desirable SaaS (Software as a Service) source when a user:

• Does not have a substantial budget at the start
• Lacks the count or skills of web development, which is rendered mandatory if you’re choosing Open-source Platform like WooCommerce for your on-store customization.
• Wants to introduce her blog page which he/she might integrate into her online store in the near future.
• Is new to e-commerce tool where creation of websites is extremely easy.

Hence picking the right option in the lot is extremely necessary and will depend significantly on the current resources you have. Many mid-sized companies have moved onto Open SaaS platforms as they are ready to afford the technical complacencies, which will grant them full control of their website on the other hand. So before making a purchase through any of the platforms make sure you have the right resources, the right budget and the right niche.