Are you thinking of starting your online store, but confused whether you should opt Shopify or Woocommerce as your ecommerce development platform? According to the BuiltWith reports, as of 2018, out of the top 1 million sites, around 21% of the web users use Woocommerce to power their stores, followed in second by Shopify at 18%. As the business owner, selecting right e-commerce platform which fits in your organization requirements if important for your success. To choose the best ecommerce platform among both of them is a tough challenge especially for the beginners.

Shopify and Woocommerce, both are one of the top two e-commerce platforms in the world having their own pros and cons. Therefore, to make all your doubts and confusion clear & provide you a closer difference details about Shopify and Woocommerce, we have listed few points in this guide which will help you to go for the best e-commerce platform. But, before getting much deeper into the comparison of both the platforms, let’s discuss what they both are?

What is Shopify & Woocommerce?

Shopify is a web application which has been specifically designed to allow merchants for building and launching their own online store. It offers a range of templates which can be easily customized to meet individual business branding needs and also allows both physical and digital goods to be sold. One of the most significant ideas behind Shopify is that the users who do not even have technical or design skills can create an online store without restoring or coding.

Shopify also helps you to edit the HTML or CSS of your website that means users who do not have any coding skills will be able to customize their stores more exclusively. It is the hosted solution that means everything runs on Shopify’s servers. Therefore, you need not have to worry about buying web hosting services or installing the software anywhere. The idea behind it is that pretty much everything that you require to build and run your store happens out of the box.

On the other hand, Woocommerce is all in one website software which allows you to build any kind of website that provides all that which you can handle with the slightly technical setup that involves installing the software itself, plug-in, themes and then installing an e-commerce plug-in for handling the store operation. There are some website building skills which are required. Depending upon the customizations that you need to perform, you might need coding or design skills as well.

This is the open source e-commerce plug-in built for WordPress and allows you to leverage the most powerful content management system and use it to run an online store. Because of the open source nature, you can customize every aspect of your store and easily build custom extensions. The decision to choose woocommerce entirely depends upon your needs and skill level.

Difference between Shopify vs. Woocommerce

Now, let’s discuss the difference between Shopify and Woocommerce platforms so that you can buy any of these two which suits your needs:

1. Design

For an e-commerce website or any website, the design is the most essential factor for any organization. In Shopify, the greatest selling point is the visual quality of its themes. Shopify comes with 54 different store templates of which 10 are free of cost. What’s more is that each of these themes has unique variations and therefore, you are technically getting more than 100 separate designs. The best part is that they are all mobile responsive and have a variety of different coloring options. They have a fashionably sleek and have clean aesthetic which makes it perfect for modern, forward thinking website.

Woocommerce, on the other hand, is the plug-in which is created by the developers from Woo Themes. As such, there is no delivery to any specific design traits on its own. However, the design part is left to your current or future WordPress theme. It has been built to cooperate with most themes on the market which provides that they follow the standard recommendations and the best practices. This means that in most of the cases you are able to choose WordPress theme which you like the most and still make it work together with woocommerce.

2. Price

Shopify pricing is very clear and straightforward whereas woocommerce does not. On the other hand, Woocommerce is the free open source software plug-in, hence the plug-in is completely free but then you have to consider the additional costs that go along with making an online store. Shopify is all about delivering you single, out of the box solutions with just few pricing packages.

                                                                             Pricing

You sign up, and then you get to use your shiny new e-commerce store right away since everything you require is included from the get-go. With woocommerce, you might also have to factor in the additional extensions for things like SEO, more payment gateways and so on. In the need, with woocommerce, you are spending more time on setup and management, which translates to dollars.

3. Features

While both the platforms approach different pricing structure but they are relatively similar when it comes to giving your e-commerce site what it requires. Shopify offers significantly more free options like unlimited products, unlimited file storage, automatic fraud analysis, manual order creation, discount codes, blog module, and free SSL certificates.

As open source software, Wordpress is well known for allowing third-party developers to create various extension and plugin. It taps into further by offering lot of interesting and exciting additions. Whether you want to easily edit aesthetics sell on Facebook, ramp up the email marketing techniques, understand user behavior or quite frankly do anything else, you all be able to.

4. Support

Technical support service is a must for each and every organization. Shopify is renowned for its high quality of customer care. Each of the clients can enjoy 24/7 access to customer advisor in case they have any issue or queries with the help of email, open chat, phone call. Apart from that, you can also get access to an extensive knowledge base that covers some of the common user question and problem situations.

The matter of technical support with Woocommerce is not straightforward. First, of, woocommerce is a free WordPress plugin which means that you can get support with the help of WordPress forums. However, at the same time, the woocommerce team also enables everyone to create a free user account over at woocommerce.com and get the technical support solutions free.

5. SEO

Shopify may come into picture when we look at the overall volume of SEO features available, but there is certainly no shame in the way that it presents content. It also handles basic SEO practices like meta information and site with ease. So long as your business is producing quality content, there is no reason for suggesting you won’t enjoy the great result and strong user engagement.

There are plenty of ways that Shopify proves to beat woocommerce in the SEO game. It actually renewed by the developers who have some of the cleanest code and natural linking structure which offers a smooth user experience and in turn enhances visibility in search engine rankings. One interesting case that is worth pointing out is what happened to lost cyclist an e-commerce expert.

Conclusion

Both shopify and woocommerce are great platforms on their own right, although each has its own set of pros and cons. Running an online store is a massive undertaking and selecting the wrong one could potentially cripple your operations right from its inception, so consider all these factors thoroughly & then make a decision on which ecommerce development platform would be more suitable for your business between shopify & woocommerce.