Shopify vs WooCommerce — Which is Better? (2022)
Are you wondering which e-commerce platform to choose — Woocommerce, or Shopify?
I can surely say that you’ve heard of these two e-commerce platforms before, as they’re the most widely used in the world.
Choosing between the two can be challenging, especially when it comes to something as important as running an e-commerce site.
I’ll give you all the information you need to better understand Shopify and WooCommerce so that you can decide which platform is best for your business.
What is Shopify?
It’s powerful, reliable, user-friendly, and comes with a great selection of templates and excellent customer service, all for a monthly subscription.
Read Also
What is Shopify? Ultimate Guide for Beginners 2022
What is WooCommerce?
A free e-commerce plugin, it converts any WordPress website into a powerful online store. It is an open-source platform, which makes it great for cost-conscious users, but here you will have to pay for a few services. Like web hosting and themes, for example.
Shopify or WooCommerce: which is better for an e-commerce website?
It’s possible to tell the difference between Shopify and WooCommerce by looking at these factors:
You should be familiar with the e-commerce methods adopted by WooCommerce and Shopify
It’s just like comparing website building tools like Squarespace or Wix to Word Press as a whole, WooCommerce and Shopify have two primary methods to building and managing your store:
- Your store hosted on your server, so you have complete control and freedom to customize WooCommerce however you want.
- Although you have a lot of control, you can only make changes that Shopify allows you to make because Shopify hosts and runs the software on your behalf.
Meaning that WooCommerce is more flexible than Shopify, but rather is less user-friendly for beginners, while Shopify’s platform is more user-friendly, but it has some strict limits that you won’t experience with WooCommerce.
WooCommerce powered for 23% of all e-commerce websites as of 2021, with Shopify coming in second with an estimated 20% of all e-commerce stores using the platform.
Design
A website’s design is everything, especially for e-commerce stores. Customers have no faith in a website that does not look or function effectively.
1. Shopify Design
The appearance of Shopify’s themes is a major selling point. I think it’s simply beautiful. Many of Shopify’s store templates are free. It’s also worth noting that each Shopify theme has its own unique features.
The best part is that they’re all mobile-friendly and come in a wide range of colors. They have a clean and modern design, making them perfect for modern websites.
Shopify Dawn Theme
By the way, Shopify isn’t a design company. The work is tasked to a team of web designers who make sure it is as up-to-date and attractive as possible. To us, it’s a great way to get a wide range of ideas from a number of businesses and individuals.
Premium Shopify themes have a price tag of up to $180. But in return, you get a fantastic design.
It’s a good thing that there are also free options.
Shopify Free Themes
Many websites may choose the same Shopify themes because of their quick appeal. In some cases, Shopify users who built their own website complained that it looked too similar to other websites. Customization is encouraged because of this.
For the most part, modifying Shopify themes is a simple task. The platform’s “Liquid” language allows more experienced developers to make more adjustments and give the brand a unique look.
Even better, they provide an in-platform theme editor for customization. Sections can be hidden in the theme editor without being removed. The hidden sections of the theme will still be editable in the theme editor, but they will not be displayed in the store. Creating sections for future releases and minimizing theme duplication are two advantages of this method (a common problem that most developers face with WordPress).
2. WooCommerce Design
Developers from WooThemes have created a plugin called WooCommerce (and acquired by Automattic). As a result, it offers no unique design features of its own. It allows you to market and sells your products and services online.
As long as you follow general recommendations and best practices, WooCommerce is designed to work well with most themes on the market.
As a result, you have a wide range of resources when it comes to WordPress themes and WooCommerce compatibility.
WooCommerce-optimized themes are also available, but they’re not as popular as those that are built specifically for WooCommerce. The design of your WooCommerce store should be a primary consideration when choosing a theme.
Woo’s Storefront theme is a good place to begin (free). It’s a good design that draws attention to all of the most critical aspects of an online store.
Woocommerce Storefront theme
Additionally, you may get a child theme to further customize the look of your store in Woocommerce.
There are many WooCommerce themes if you want a more modern customizable theme for your store, you can purchase one from ThemeForest.
ThemeForest Woocommerce themes
There are thousands of WooCommerce-compatible themes available in marketplaces like ThemeForest.
When it comes to design, WooCommerce actually has the upper hand over Shopify. The themes on Shopify are excellent, but they are limited by the themes available in the Shopify store. Developers are selling (or giving away) WooCommerce themes for all kinds of businesses and reasons because WooCommerce is open source.
I do weekly giveaways for free themes and plugins, join the Facebook group for a chance to get a premium theme for free.
Pricing
1. Shopify Pricing
To put it simply, Shopify’s pricing is simple. Not the same with WooCommerce.
As an open-source plugin, WooCommerce can be downloaded for free. Regardless of the fact that the plugin is free, you must take into account the costs associated with running an online business. Even if you choose to use WordPress, you’ll still need to pay for things like hosting services (which is inexpensive), a domain name (which is cheap), and an SSL certificate (which is included in WordPress hosting ).
All you have to do is sign up for a Shopify account and you’ll get access to all the features you need. Everything you need is included in the starter package, so you can start using your new online store as soon as you sign up.
The following table shows the costs for each platform in an easy-to-understand way:
If you’re looking to scale your Shopify or WooCommerce store to meet your business’s specific needs, both Shopify and WooCommerce provide a variety of upgrade options. To keep things simple, I’m only going to consider the lowest option — that is, the cost of running a WooCommerce vs Shopify e-commerce store.
PlatformHostingDomainSSL CertificateShopify$29/month$8/yearIncludedWoocommerceas low as $5/month$8/yearIncluded in most WP hosting
Even though the WooCommerce software is free, running an actual e-commerce store is cheaper than using Shopify.
That’s not all, however. WooCommerce may require to use of other plugins for things like SEO, payment gateways, and so on. These plugins can cost up to nearly $39 or over, but you can get by with the free plugins.
There is a catch, though, to WooCommerce’s extremely cheap, You’ll need considerably more work, and you’ll need to be careful not to go over your budget because every additional plugin costs money and you’ll have to pay for it, if you decide to use Woocommerce just use free plugins, or if you purchase a premium theme you get a lot of premium plugins for free.
The pricing with Shopify is more standard. Lite ($9), Basic ($29), Shopify ($79/month), and Advanced Shopify ($299/month) are the four packages that offer users a wide range of features upfront.
Shopify pricing
Finally, there is the transaction charge to consider. In short, you will be charged a small fee when you sell products on either platform (for processing the payment, getting the money into your account, etc.). If you have any questions about these fees, please don’t hesitate to ask me. Be sure to check the exact rates before joining up for any of the platforms, which typically range from 2% to 4% of each transaction.
Features
When it comes to giving your e-commerce website the features it requires, both platforms are similar regardless of the fact that their pricing differs. Like Shopify and Woocommerce are simpler platforms that include the basics of e-commerce integrated into the core program.
However, both have great app marketplaces where you may download extra features.
1. Shopify Features
Regardless of the fact that you may need to use third-party apps to get the most out of Shopify, there are a variety of free options available.
Basically, Shopify provides you with the following:
- Unlimited Products.
- Unlimited file storage.
- Automatic fraud analysis.
- Oberlo integration.
- Manual order creation.
- Discount Codes.
- Free SSL Certificate.
- Mobile-friendly.
- Credit Card Payments.
- Multiple languages.
- Shipping rates and taxes are adjustable.
- Social media integration.
- Physical and digital products.
- Daily backup.
- And much more…
Some of these free features are not free with WooCommerce.
2. WooCommerce Features
Known for its open-source design, WordPress allows third-party developers to create a wide range of plugins and addons. WooCommerce does this by providing a wide variety of plugins. It doesn’t matter if you want to improve the style and design of the website, sell on Facebook, grow your email marketing, or learn more about your customers’ behaviors; you can do it all.
WooCommerce has the following features:
- It allows you to sell both physical and digital products (including software and apps), and it is also useful for affiliate marketing.
- Built-in PayPal and Stripe payment options (plus a bunch of other gateways available for an extra fee)
- Shipping costs and taxes can be changed.
- Unlimited Products (Depending how powerful your Hosting Provider).
- Keep track of stock levels.
- Mobile-friendly
- You have complete control over your data.
- Compatible WordPress themes.
- Hundreds of plugins (free) are available.
- Social media integration.
- And more…
WooCommerce vs Shopify
To make everything above more clear, here is a side-by-side comparison of Shopify and WooCommerce’s e-commerce features:
ShopifyWoocommerceIt is an out-of-the-box complete e-commerce solution.It is a WordPress plugin that is available for free. WordPress must be hosted and running in order to work.It enables you to sell anything you want (physical, digital, products, services).It enables you to sell anything you want (physical, digital, products, services).Used both online (through an e-commerce store) and offline (via Shopify’s Point of Sale).Only use it online (e-commerce store).Customer service is available via email, live chat, and phone 24/7.Ticket and forum help, plus lots of other blogs, are available online.Shopify is a closed platform, which means you can only make changes to your store in the ways that Shopify allows.Open Source — You have complete control over how your store looks and functions. There are no restrictions or limits.Shopify is in charge of all data relating to your store.You have complete control over your data.There are over 60 store themes to choose from (6 are free). thousands of store themes to choose from (through WordPress themes and Themeforest).Hosting included.You need your own hosting provider.Every plan comes with a free subdomain (eg YOURSTORE.shopify.com).
But you need a domain name.You need to purchase a domain name.Sell unlimited products.Sell unlimited products.Free SSL Certificate.Free SSL Certificate included with your hosting.Unlimited file storage.Storage depends on your hosting.Accept several payment gateways (including PayPal, Stripe, and credit cards), bank deposits, cash on delivery, and other payment options can be accepted.Accept several payment gateways (including PayPal, Stripe, and credit cards), bank deposits, cash on delivery, and other payment options can be accepted (may need a plugin).Sales statistics and reports.Sales statistics and reports.Multiple languages are supported natively.Support for multiple languages by third-party plugins.Shipping and tax rates are both adjustable.Shipping and tax rates are both adjustable.
Both platforms, as you can see, have a lot to offer. It’s possible to choose one over the other based on personal tastes or how much you think open source software is worth compared to the competitors.
To make it simple if you want an easy way to start an online store with no complex setups, Shopify is right for you.
If you want full control over your store and you are familiar with WordPress, then Woocommerce is the right choice for you.
Conclusion
These kinds of comparisons aren’t always easy to draw. According to the unique circumstances of each of my clients, my advice changes constantly.
That’s all I have to say. It is up to you to decide which platform you prefer. Have you ever had to switch between the two? Is there anything else you’d like to know about WooCommerce vs Shopify? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.