WooCommerce Vs Shopify – Ultimate Comparison

Starting an online store is no more a tedious task with the many e-commerce platforms available. WooCommerce and Shopify are two of the best e-commerce platforms available today. But as the owner of an online store, you would always go for the best option that suits your store. Both WooCommerce features and Shopify features have got their own pros and cons, so choosing the best from this is quite a difficult task.

So, here let us discuss in detail about WooCommerce Vs Shopify to make a better comparison that can help the users select the appropriate platform for their store.

WooCommerce vs.Shopify: Performance Characteristics

WooCommerce

• It is a flexible, openly accessible e-commerce platform that helps to build the store of your wish quickly.
• The dashboard provides all the necessary features including key metrics.
• Easy to arrange and expand. You can customize your store using the extension available.
• You can select a design of your choice for your online store.
• It aims to help you run an online store on your own without the need for a web-developer.
• The store owners can manage their store on mobile using the free WooCommerce mobile app.
• It allows open-source freedom as well as exposure to a friendly global community.
• You can also improve the functions of your dashboard using the prop tool.
• Ensures safe payment.
• Google Analytics support.
• More customizable shipping options include label printing and linear rates.
• Calculate the taxes automatically.

Shopify

• Optimizable website
• Sales through channels like Pinterest and Amazon are possible.
• Make use of most of the payment gateways. Payment can be done from anywhere.
• 24/7 customer support.
• You can track anything by integrating Google Analytics with Shopify.
• It offers Shopify extensions for offering gift cards and discount cards.
• Instinctively calculate the shipping prices, thereby solving the task for the owners.
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Shopify has really in-depth analytics and customer management. It features its own analytics system and also supports Google analytics.
• It helps to manage multiple staff logins.
• Abandoned cart recovery systems.

Inference

Both WooCommerce and Shopify are feature-rich platforms. But technically WooCommerce has more features than Shopify when we keenly observe WooCommerce Vs Shopify. Therefore in terms of features WooCommerce scores.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Sales Features

WooCommerce

• You can sell both physical and digital products via WooCommerce.
• With paid extensions, you can add more features to attract customers such as booking options, subscription packs, discounts on certain products, and even hampers or gift coupons to increase the sale.
• Helps you with the product organization and gives you discount codes.
• Unlimited products, orders, and sales.

Shopify

• Shopify caters to a broad range of industries like art and photography, clothing and fashion, electronics, food and drinks, home and garden, sports, etc. Therefore any sort of physical product can be sold through Shopify.
• Offers gift cards and discounts to attract customers to increase the sale.
• It helps you to sort your customers by geolocation, age, gender, product sales so that it helps you to sell to your audience better.
• Unlimited products, orders, and sales.

Inference

The sales features are excellent for both WooCommerce and Shopify. Therefore both of them are on par in terms of sales features.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Ease of Use

WooCommerce

• WooCommerce is much more technical and complex than Shopify.
• With WooCommerce, first, you need to install WordPress and then the Woocommerce plugin.
• It needs more maintenance as you have to take care of updates and may need to solve the plugin conflicts.
• Helps to customize the store using available extensions.
• Completely free software used by nearly 2,000,000 sites.

Shopify

• With Shopify, you simply sign up and once you are logged in, you will be able to add products, and take only a couple of hours to set up your store.
• Allows the tool to insert product images, descriptions, and details.
• Provides inventory management software 
• Helps you create web pages, blogs, and cart pages.
• Both free and paid apps are available and are used by over 27,0,000 merchants.

Inference

Shopify is smoother to handle than WooCommerce as it does not require much technical knowledge and can be easily configured by even beginners. So comparing WooCommerce Vs Shopify in terms of ease of use Shopify scores.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Themes and Flexibility

WooCommerce

• It allows you to add the theme of your choice from many available themes.
• For WooCommerce the free themes are very limited, but they have got a lot of paid ones.
• It helps to customize your storefront by adding your brand and giving your logo.
• You can enhance the design using WooCommerce blocks.
• It allows many extensions that help you to optimize your online store. 

Shopify

• Shopify offers 10 free templates and more than 60 paid ones. Dozens of premium themes are available.
• They are relatively easy to customize and also receive updates from time to time.
• The templates are easy to manage and look good.
• They provide themes that can create trust and credibility among customers.

Inference

Shopify provides templates that are good looking and easy to manage. On the other hand, WooCommerce offers a larger selection and can offer you the theme you want. So in terms of the selection of themes WooCommerce scores. 

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Payment Methods

WooCommerce

• Payment is possible through credit cards, bank transfer, or even cash on delivery.
• Several payment gateways like Stripe, Amazon Pay are integrated with WooCommerce.
• Ensures quick, easy, and secure payment for customers. 
• They usually come with a one-time charge of around $79.

Shopify

• Shopify accepts multiple currencies and payment processors.
• It helps set up customer accounts so that they can edit the details while getting private access to products that are sold to them.
• The selection of pf payments is large.
• Instinctive calculation of tax rates.

Inference

Both WooCommerce and Shopify are rich in terms of their payment gateways, therefore they are on par.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Shipping Services

WooCommerce

• The shipping options are highly configurable.
• You can adjust the setting features to allow free shipping or linear rate shipping and label printing.
• The shipping zones can be decided and can be set up locally or globally.
• Several extensions are available to enhance delivery and shipping options.
• Official extensions help you connect with local and international shipping agents.

Shopify

• Offers real-time shipping cost estimates and tax rates that are automatically calculated.
• Various shipping features can be added through paid plugins.
• It works with the best suppliers like UPS, DHL, etc.
• Orders are shipped quickly with label printing.
• It also offers discount rates on many shipping services.

Inference

Here in the comparison of WooCommrce Vs Shopify, we can see that both WooCommerce and Shopify provide the best shipping services. So in terms of shipping, they are at par.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Security

WooCommerce

• WooCommerce gives you full access from stock levels to customer accounts.
• It ensures complete data protection by allowing free control over the products tracked and stored.
• It gives you the freedom to switch your themes and designs, add extensions, select the payment gateways according to your wish.
• If you want to share the usage data, it will be shared unnamed thus keeping it secure.
• Includes SSL certificate.
• WooCommerce also stores the data, thereby it reduces the risk of losing the data while exporting.

Shopify

• Shopify is hosted by Shopify itself, so you don’t have to think about any hosting providers.
• They have good uptime and speed results.
• There is two-factor authentication, and Shopify primitively monitors the system for unauthorized access.
• They offer top-notch security that ensures customer data is secure with Shopify.
• It uses industry-standard, 128-bit, encryption technology, which keeps the stores’ information secure.
• Includes SSL certificate alongside all its plans.

Inference

Both of them are provided with the best security services, but since WooCommerce is built on the popular WordPress platform, their popularity even stretches to hackers. Since the site owner is responsible for installing securing updates, it can be very dangerous not to do so. Therefore in terms of security Shopify scores.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Support for Developers

WooCommerce

• WooCommerce was created entirely for developers.
• It allows access to stored data anytime safely.
• They make use of a RESTful API that allows virtual communication with any services.
• It helps the developers to create, improve, and expand a store to meet the clients’ needs.
• They provide several extensions for the enhancement of the store.
• WooCommerce helps you build the store irrespective of its size, whether basic or an enterprise with the help of its solid foundation.
• It is also examined by an expert team of developers periodically to correct the flaws.

Shopify

• Shopify provides support via chat, e-mail, and even phone for 24/7 with troubleshooting technology.
• They have an app store where professional developers can make productive apps.
• They provide chat functionality where you can use virtual assistants to talk with your customers.
• There are product rating systems that help the customers to rate their products after purchase and thus the owners can get a review of the desired product. 
• It provides bookkeeping and accounting services that help to easily track your sales and upkeep so that it makes the accounting side of your business easier.

Inference

Both WooCommerce and Shopify help the developers in their own ways to streamline the business and save time. But WooCommerce helps the developers more in terms of support. Therefore WooCommerce scores here.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Multilingual Support

WooCommerce

• WooCommerce makes use of WPML to set up multiple language stores. It is very established and integrates easily with WordPress.
• You can even offer your products in multiple currencies and use them at a yearly rate of $79. 

Shopify

• Shopify requires a plugin to set up multiple languages in the store.
• The most popular is linguify which has to be paid $17 per month.

Inference

In terms of multilingual stores set up WooCommerce scores.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: SEO

WooCommerce

• For WooCommerce, you need to install an SEO plugin like Yoast. This gives you complete flexibility over everything.
• It offers structured data set up for things like ratings and additional product information at a cheaper rate.

Shopify

• In this arena, Shopify provides everything you need.
• It allows customizable page titles, site maps, and 301 redirects.

Inference

On comparing WooCommerce Vs Shopify, we can see that both of them offer the best features in terms of SEO, but Shopify has a small downside that it adds slugs like “pages”, “products”, or “news” to your URLs. Therefore WooCommerce scores here.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Pricing

WooCommerce

• WooCommerce is actually free. But they charge a hosting fee of about $5 to $25 per month.
• We would also have to pay an additional fee of around $59 for themes.
• Around $25 is charged for plugins and extensions.
• The developer fee for WooCommerce is actually very high which is about $20 to $150 per hour.
• Additional investment is needed for a domain name and hosting, see the best hosting providers for WooCommerce.

Shopify

• They have the basic, regular, and advanced packages., so their price is $29 to $79.
• The credit card rates are 2.9% of every transaction plus 30 cents.
• The advanced and regular packages offer gift cards, professional reporting, and abandoned cart recovery.
• Comes with a free “myshopify.com” sub-domain for all its plans. You can also link your own custom domain name. Hosting is also included.

Shopify vs. WooCommerce: Pros and Cons

Shopify

Pros

• Better templates.
• Easier to use.
• 24/7 support.
• Better add-ons and apps.
• Integrates better.
• Errors are less.

Cons

• It’s expensive.
• They can shut you down.
• Expensive third-party apps.
• Charges fee if you want to use a third-party payment gateway.

WooCommerce

Pros

• WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress and the hosting is really cheap.
• It’s customizable.
• Never be shut down.
• Build with WordPress

Cons

• Technical difficulties.
• Less integration.
• Set up payment gateways with transaction fees.

Conclusion

The ideal choice for you will depend upon your goals and individual needs. Beginners and people who want to avoid technical headaches will definitely have an easier time using Shopify. Professionals who need full flexibility and want to be able to do some serious code-tweaking will appreciate the freedom WooCommerce provides. International sites that are set up with different languages and currencies are best built on WooCommerce. Cash-strapped startups appreciate the fact that a WooCommerce store can be built for very little money. Therefore, in comparing Shopify vs. WooCommerce, always WooCommerce is the better choice. But going down the DIY path can become very costly once you hire a developer. So in these cases, Shopify will be the cheaper choice.