Shopify Vs WooCommerce

Shopify Vs WooCommerce

What is Shopify

Shopify is an all-in-one platform where you can create an online store, make transactions and manage inventory without worrying about technical aspects of managing a website.

What is WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin created for WordPress and is open-source, giving you more control over the technical aspects of and flexibility to customise every aspect of your store.

Shopify vs WooCommerce – the best one for your business

Shopify Vs WooCommerce – Which is best for your business? Our web development experts from Perth compare the best two e-commerce platforms.

Design

Design plays a crucial role in setting the tone of a user’s experience. Both Shopify and WooCommerce designs are easy to navigate and enticing.

Shopify Themes

Shopify has around 70 different themes, with 10 of them free. All these themes are outsourced to third-party developers. They all are created to meet the site’s specific requirements making them all well-designed and of high-quality. The pricing will vary depending on the level of development.

All the themes are unique. You can customise the themes, but you will need coding expertise. The themes are optimised for mobile use allowing your mobile users to have a great user experience.

WooCommerce Themes

Since WooCommerce is a plugin, they are made to cooperate with most of the themes on the market, giving you thousands of design options. The designs are built within the WordPress CMS, and some of them are built specifically for WooCommerce. Most of them are free, and all of them are customisable. With some coding, the choices are infinite.

Ease of Set-Up

Usability of an e-commerce platform is mainly evaluated based on user experience and individual preferences. In this field, both Shopify and WooCommerce provide their clients with significantly different techniques.

Shopify

Shopify offers all the resources you require to create an online store and are incorporated in your subscription fee.

To start an online store in Shopify, you need to:

• Sign-up
• Choose theme template
• Add content
• Polish the details
• Initiate store

Shopify has a simple and crisp interface. The dashboard component simplifies the management of your online store. You can easily change or update any components with the help of Shopify guidelines. You can also get help from Shopify’s support system when you feel things are difficult.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce requires more involvement to set-up than Shopify. Since it’s a plugin, the Initial set up requires some level of comfort around web-related use.

To start an online store in WooCommerce, you need to:

• Get a domain name
• Web hosting registration
• WordPress installation
• WooCommerce plugin incorporation
• Incorporate additional plugins to enhance functionality

You can take professional web-development help if you find the set-up process difficult. You still need to be aware of your site’s working and about the basics of WordPress. Once the initial stage is completed, it becomes easy to use and provide a richer experience. You will also have complete command of your store.

Pricing

When choosing a platform, pricing plays a major role, especially in the initial stage. Shopify and WooCommerce offer entirely different pricing features. Shopify offers a monthly fee, while WooCommerce is a free plugin. Both platforms promise you all the necessary tools and additional add-on components you require for an excellent retail experience.

Shopify

Shopify offers a conventional pricing structure. All the necessary tools, hosting, and domain name are included in the subscription fee. They offer different pricing categories that vary according to the number of functions. Select the plan according to your store’s size and requirement.

The pricing plans include:

• Shopify Lite: $9/m (AUD 11.65)
• Basic Shopify: $29/m (AUD 37.60)
• Shopify: $79/m (AUD 102.4)
• Advanced Shopify: $299/m (AUD 387.56)
• Shopify Plus: Enterprise-grade solutions (for high volume retailers)
• Shopify also provide a 14-day free trial, with no payment information requirement

You will also need to include the transaction fees while determining overall costs. Shopify charges for a transaction involving credit cards and payment gateways (PayPal). The number of tools Shopify provide at the primary service levels makes them impressive over other platforms. Shopify ensures you get what you need to start an awesome e-commerce site.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is free. It is open-source software and is technically cheaper, but will require more work to set up and maintain. You will need to install WordPress software which is also free. You may need to purchase web hosting later.

Here are some items you need to purchase to set-up a WooCommerce platform:

• Domain Name
• SSL Certificate
• Web Hosting
• WooCommerce Theme (if you are going for a premium design)
• WooCommerce plugins( to add additional functionality)

Like Shopify, WooCommerce also ensures all your requirements are met to set a great online store.

Support

A support system is crucial to find remedies for issues as they arise. Shopify and WooCommerce both have their own sturdy support options.

Shopify

Subscribers can contact the 24/7 customer support. You can call, email or live chat at support.shopify.com, a customer care executive will help you with your queries. Shopify also has a huge knowledge domain, including FAQs, forum, webinars and videos.

WooCommerce

You can reach out to the WooCommerce support team through email. They don’t have a central support system like Shopify, but their website contains a wide range of information to easily guide you through setting up your store and maintaining it efficiently.

Since WordPress and WooCommerce are open-source, you can find plenty of guidance on WordPress forums, groups, and communities. They use, discuss and troubleshoot the CMS and its plugins.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

A well-optimised SEO is a must for an online store to rank high in SERPs. Both Shopify and WooCommerce are robust in this field with each possessing their own solid structure and efficient tools.

Shopify

Shopify possesses robust code structure, and practices link building, making it rank high. Shopify’s fast infrastructure, its metadata and site copy also play a major role in SEO.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is built using code optimised for SEO and integrated with WordPress, which has an impressive range of SEO plugins. It also offers helpful SEO guides and prompts.

Search engines favour WordPress since they are fast, customisable and optimised. If the content of your site is SEO focused, you can get yourself ranked high.

Security

E-commerce sites deal with sensitive personal information about their customers which makes site security a necessity.

Shopify

Shopify stores all the sensitive information of your customers in their server. They take responsibility for any cyber-breaches or cyber-attacks. It comes with built-in SSL. Having SSL increases the customer’s trust in your website. It also helps with SEO.

Shopify also provides you with PCI-DSS compliance, which allows your site to accept credit or debit card payments legally.

WooCommerce

Since WooCommerce is based on open-source WordPress, you need to source your own SSL and PCI-DSS compliance. Most people take care of it through their hosting provider.

These are the basic differences. Both have similar aspects too like mobile-friendly structure, selling an unlimited number of products, the option of sales stats and reports, etc.

Both platforms have their own pros and cons depending on the scale and requirements of your business.

You may want to go with Shopify if you:

• Are a small store/start-up creating your online store.
• Don’t want to deal with any of the set-up and willing to pay a fee for the same.
• Prefer simplicity over customization as modifications can be costly and difficult to integrate.

WooCommerce would be a better option for your business if you:

• Are a larger store.
• Want to be in full control of your store.
• Prefer setting things up on your own or have hired resources to do the same.
• Prefer customization and functionalities over simplicity and ease of set up.

Let’s get your products online

Hope this blog on Shopify Vs WooCommerce helped you choose which is the best for your e-commerce business. Now what’s next? Get The Computing Australia Group web apps team in Perth to help you set up your store from the word go. We manage your store end to end from set-up, updating your store with add-ons, manage traffic, customer support, maintenance and technical support.

Still not sure which one to choose or where to begin? Talk to us and get help on setting up. Contact us or email us at  sales@computingaustralia.group.

Jargon Busters

SERP – Search Engine Results Page – Web Pages displayed by search engines as a response to a user’s search query.
Web hosting – An online service that allows individuals and organisations to publish a website or web page on the Internet.

Reviewed on – January 12, 2021
Reviewed by – Monisha M M
Updated comparison points and details. Included jargon buster.