Confused between WooCommerce vs. Shopify?
Properly, you’re not alone. Most individuals seeking to begin an ecommerce enterprise discover it exhausting to decide on between the 2 options.
Though each Shopify and WooCommerce permit you to construct a web based retailer, they’re very completely different when it comes to options, pricing, and consumer expertise.
On this publish, we are going to do an in depth Shopify vs. WooCommerce comparability that will help you establish the most suitable choice for your corporation.
(Disclaimer: Oberlo is part of Shopify inc. media properties. Though we purpose to supply goal, factual, and correct data, we might give biased opinions in sure circumstances).
Shopify vs. WooCommerce: An Overview
Earlier than we evaluate WooCommerce and Shopify head-to-head in several classes, let’s take a fast overview of each choices.
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is an all-in-one ecommerce resolution that means that you can construct a useful on-line retailer with out requiring a developer’s help.
It’s a hosted resolution, which suggests much less trouble for you — you don’t have to fret about discovering an internet host or putting in software program. Shopify takes care of this stuff for you.
Mainly, all you do is join Shopify, select and purchase a site title (or sync an current one), and apply a theme to get your retailer began.
And whether or not you’re simply beginning out or transferring your retail enterprise on-line, Shopify gives a bunch of instruments that make it simple to create an ecommerce model, together with a emblem creator, a video maker, and a enterprise title generator.
What Is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a free plugin for the WordPress CMS that allows you to flip a regular web site into a totally useful ecommerce retailer.
It’s open-source, which means you could customise each side of your on-line retailer and even add some customized extensions.
Constructing a WooCommerce retailer doesn’t require superior coding abilities, however you’ll have to discover an ecommerce host and set up WordPress on it.
You’ll additionally have to discover ways to set up plugins if you happen to’ve by no means used WordPress earlier than. Briefly, WooCommerce has a small studying curve however turns into simple to make use of when you get the cling of it.
Shopify vs. WooCommerce: How They Stack Up
Now that you’ve some concept of every resolution, let’s check out how they evaluate when it comes to utilization, options, worth, and customer support.
Ease of Use
As we talked about earlier, Shopify is a hosted ecommerce resolution. This implies it handles the technical facet of ecommerce retailer creation itself. From activating internet hosting to putting in software program to integrating security measures like SSL, Shopify makes it simple for everybody to get began in ecommerce.
Shopify’s software program can also be extraordinarily simple to make use of. When you make an account, the onboarding wizard helps you choose a theme, add your content material and merchandise, and publish your retailer. And with Shopify’s drag-and-drop theme editor, you may simply add, take away, or transfer parts round.
WooCommerce, however, requires a number of further steps to get issues going, like sourcing your individual internet hosting, putting in software program, and managing website backups. Nevertheless, you do get a setup wizard that guides you thru the fundamentals of making your on-line retailer and selecting a theme.
Nonetheless, it’s a must to full all of those duties your self, and that takes time — that might be higher spent on creating a model technique. It’s not a dashboard you may navigate on the fly with out studying from documentation or tutorials.
So if you happen to’re on the lookout for an ecommerce resolution that’s simple to make use of, Shopify is the higher alternative.
Shopify additionally gives {many professional} themes so that you can select from, together with free themes verified and authorized by Shopify to mirror the most recent net design practices.
Though WooCommerce gives an even bigger library of customizable themes, Shopify’s themes are extra polished, and also you don’t should hold them up-to-date like within the case of WooCommerce.
Ecommerce Options
With regards to promoting merchandise on-line, do you have to select Shopify or WooCommerce? The reply is that each platforms supply the options it’s essential to make your first sale and develop from there.
One good thing about utilizing Shopify is it gives a pure-play expertise with many of the crucial options built-in. As an illustration, each Shopify plan comes with:
- Deserted cart restoration: This can be a must-have for ecommerce shops. With cart restoration, you’re in a position to ship a pleasant electronic mail reminder to those that haven’t accomplished their buy in a bid to get well misplaced gross sales.
- Multichannel promoting: Shopify means that you can promote on completely different on-line channels from inside its dashboard. You’ll be able to record merchandise on Amazon and eBay, in addition to have interaction in social promoting whereas leaving it to Shopify to maintain monitor of incoming orders.
- Transport: When you’re within the US, Canada, or Australia, you may make the most of Shopify’s delivery provider accounts. Eligible retailers can sync their Shopify account to the corporate’s accomplice carriers to get lowered charges for his or her delivery labels, show calculated charges as an alternative of flat charges at checkout, and print delivery labels immediately from the Shopify admin.
In distinction, WooCommerce doesn’t supply any of those capabilities out of the field. You’ll want to make use of a third-party integration or plugin so as to add these options to your on-line retailer, which can come at a worth.
As an illustration, if you wish to promote on eBay by way of your WooCommerce store, you’ll pay an annual price of $199.
However WooCommerce has higher running a blog performance because it’s constructed on prime of WordPress (a extremely succesful content material administration system). And WooCommerce customers additionally get an even bigger vary of search engine optimisation plugins than Shopify’s.
The correct resolution for you’ll rely in your particular wants and priorities. Shopify is the higher alternative from an ecommerce perspective, whereas WooCommerce may work effectively for these seeking to develop by way of content material publishing.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is quick changing into in style amongst entrepreneurs and retailers because it removes the necessity to hold a listing.
You create a web based retailer, add merchandise from dropshipping suppliers, take orders, and look ahead to the provider to obtain, pack, and ship the products to your clients.
With regards to WooCommerce vs. Shopify dropshipping, folks ought to most likely look to Shopify because the platform gives a simple technique to begin dropshipping by way of Oberlo.
Oberlo is a well-liked dropshipping app for Shopify that makes it simple to seek out nice merchandise to promote on-line. All it’s a must to do is set up it from the Shopify App Retailer to seek out objects in in style niches like electronics, attire, toys, backyard, jewellery, sports activities, crafts, and extra. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Aside from Oberlo, Shopify integrates with varied print-on-demand companies that additionally supply a dropshipping resolution. These seeking to promote customized t-shirts and different POD merchandise on-line can make the most of these companies to satisfy clients’ orders with out investing in storage and printing gear.
Now let’s evaluate Shopify dropshipping to WooCommerce.
On WooCommerce, dropshipping is offered by way of the AliDropship plugin. Whereas nice, the plugin prices $89 to buy. Oberlo, however, is free to make use of for as much as 500 merchandise and accommodates limitless month-to-month orders. Once you add greater than 500 merchandise, you begin paying a $29.90 monthly price. Even then, Oberlo prices much less to make use of than AliDropship for WooCommerce, making it good for learners.
It’s additionally price mentioning that WooCommerce wasn’t designed to be optimized for the AliDropship plugin, whereas Oberlo is well-optimized for the Shopify platform (Shopify truly owns Oberlo and the know-how behind it).
In the end, Shopify is more likely to be the precise resolution for folks seeking to get into the dropshipping enterprise.
POS (Level-of-Sale)
You probably have a brick-and-mortar outlet, you most likely need to unify your on-line and in-store gross sales.
Shopify gives a POS resolution that means that you can combine your offline retail operations along with your retailer in Shopify.
The POS boasts a variety of capabilities to assist improve a buyer’s expertise:
- Categorize merchandise by season, promotions, varieties, and extra
- Present whether or not an merchandise is offered for in-store pickup based mostly in your stock
- E-mail clients with their favourite merchandise from a current retailer go to
- Use the Shopify POS app on cellular to scan barcodes and take a look at clients rapidly
- Refund previous purchases from any on-line or bodily location and see inventory adjusted mechanically
You’ll be able to entry all of those options with simply the Lite model of Shopify POS that’s included with all Shopify plans.
And if you happen to improve to the $89/month Professional Model, you’ll get loads of additional options like automated reductions, sale merchandise solutions, and low inventory experiences.
What about WooCommerce? For promoting in-store, the WordPress plugin integrates with varied point-of-sale apps. Nevertheless, most of those apps price above $100, and the truth that it’s essential to use a separate app makes for a disjointed consumer expertise.
All of that makes Shopify the higher choice for retailers with stores. Plus, the truth that Shopify gives its personal point-of-sale {hardware} makes it a good higher choice for dealing with your in-store POS wants.
Checkout and Fee
The checkout and cost expertise make up an more and more vital piece of the ecommerce pie. Fortuitously, each Shopify and WooCommerce permit you to make impression on clients once they arrive on the checkout web page.
On Shopify, you may decide to make use of Shopify’s personal cost methodology, Store Pay, to speed up the checkout course of with saved delivery and cost data. Shopify discovered that retailers utilizing Store Pay noticed the next common order worth than those that didn’t activate Store Pay on their checkout web page.
Moreover, Shopify means that you can arrange an accelerated checkout utilizing PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay.
Coming over to WooCommerce, the answer allows customers to combine Stripe and PayPal into the checkout course of freed from price. Nevertheless, it requires premium extensions for different choices like Authorize.web and Braintree, which price $79 a yr minimal.
So if you wish to give an immersive checkout expertise to your clients, Shopify is arguably the higher alternative. It saves you the additional charges to just accept all these {dollars} that folks can’t wait to throw at you.
To not point out, Shopify Checkout can also be optimized for digital wallets, subscription-based promoting, and multi-currency funds.
Web site Efficiency
It’s vital you could rely in your ecommerce resolution to maintain your on-line retailer reside always.
Shopify is manner forward of WooCommerce in that side. Right here’s how:
- Shopify takes website velocity fairly significantly and has a crew of specialists working to keep up uptime for all Shopify-hosted ecommerce websites. WooCommerce, however, doesn’t have management over website velocity.
- Being an all-inclusive ecommerce platform, Shopify doesn’t require you to put in further plugins. In case you didn’t know, having too many plugins typically makes for a slow-loading web site. Clients hate sluggish web sites and can typically take their search elsewhere after ready a number of seconds.
- Shopify mechanically optimizes pictures and makes use of a CDN (content material supply community) to make sure your on-line retailer masses rapidly, it doesn’t matter what a part of the world it will get guests from. In WooCommerce, you’ll have to do this stuff manually or take assist from a internet hosting supplier.
In a nutshell, Shopify is the higher choice in order for you peace of thoughts that your website will load quick on a worldwide scale. WooCommerce is extra appropriate for these already accustomed to WordPress, as they will take steps to cut back the loading time of their website.
WooCommerce vs. Shopify Pricing
Now, for the vital query – how a lot do the options price to accumulate and run?
The important thing distinction between Shopify and WooCommerce is that the previous operates on a set pricing construction. This implies you pay a set month-to-month price to entry Shopify’s software program that features a free subdomain, internet hosting, ecommerce options, and extra.
Shopify gives 4 pricing plans:
- Lite – prices $9 monthly.
- Fundamental – prices $29 monthly.
- Shopify – prices $79 monthly.
- Superior – prices $299 monthly.
Every plan comes with a distinct set of options and bank card charges. The charges are the bottom on the Superior Shopify plan. Retailers who require extra options than what’s provided on the Superior Shopify plan should signal as much as Shopify Plus, an enterprise ecommerce software program beginning at $2000 monthly.
Shopify additionally gives a 14-day free trial that you should utilize to check out the platform.
WooCommerce, however, is a free plugin accessible for WordPress, which suggests its performance isn’t tied to pricing.
Nevertheless, the answer comes with further prices comparable to a site title, safety, internet hosting, and extension charges. The precise price will be tough to calculate and is extremely variable based mostly on the choices you select.
As an illustration, you may get good internet hosting for 10-$30 a month. However not all net hosts supply the sources wanted to develop an ecommerce enterprise. Some suppliers restrict your bandwidth, whereas others prohibit the disk area your web site can use. Outgrow these limits, and also you’ll be requested to pay the next invoice than what you’re presently paying.
You’ll additionally have to pay extra for SSL safety, which is critical for safeguarding a web based retailer. Plus, if you happen to rent a VA to assist hold your web site’s software program and plugins up to date, the prices will rise additional.
So whereas Shopify isn’t free, it offers a greater overview of the prices you may count on to incur whenever you join to make use of its resolution. With WooCommerce, you’re sort of clueless in relation to ecommerce startup prices.
Shopify vs. WooCommerce: Which Is Higher for My Enterprise?
By now, you must have understanding of each Shopify and WooCommerce. With regards to selecting between them, your targets, abilities, wants, sources, and finances will dictate which platform is best for you.