Shopify vs WordPress WooCommerce: Basic Comparison

Shopify is basically an E-commerce solution that offers a great variety of services to customers who want to start doing business online. It is subscription-based cloud software that allows you to set up your store by selecting different themes, adding your products, and implementing different plugins to enhance the performance of the website. In addition to this, Shopify also sells domain names and a web-hosting service integrated into their monthly subscription plans, which is why it is relatively easier to use Shopify in comparison to the traditional methods.

You might have heard of WordPress. It is an open-source system that allows you to create a website or blog. It is extremely popular as over 40% of websites all around the world are powered by WordPress. While the original WordPress is popular for content/blog writing, WordPress WooCommerce allows users to use their websites for commercial purposes as well. It is a plugin that could change a WordPress website into an e-commerce store that you can customize by adding products and a payment system.

Shopify has 3 plans which are called basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. Each of them costs $29, $79, and $299 respectively. All of these include the three most basic items to start a website, domain name, SSL certificate, and web hosting service.

However, each plan has different features. For example, the basic plan allows you only to have 2 staff accounts, while the Shopify plan allows 5 accounts, and the advanced plan allows 15 accounts. Moreover, the advanced plan allows you to have a third-party calculated shipping rates system, while the basic and Shopify plan do not allow such system. The advanced plan and Shopify plan also allow your website to become more global as they offer you the feature of international pricing (customizing product prices for different countries) and international domains.

WordPress WooCommerce is free since it uses an open-source system. Nonetheless, you need to pay for the domain name, SSL certificate, and web-hosting service. The price varies, but let’s say a domain name could cost around $9-$20 a year, hosting service costs $8 a month (could reach around $20 if it is VPS hosting), and security is $0-$200 a month. Do not forget that you might need to pay for different extensions and plugins to make your website better. If you are just getting started and want to know more about domain names, you can go here.

It is worth noting that Shopify has a trial period of 14 days in case you want to test out your business idea and website.

Shopify is an E-commerce solution in one platform. In other words, the installation of additional plugins, software, and security systems are not needed. Moreover, it is a user-friendly platform using a drag and drop interface system to build a website. As a result, you can design your website and manage your products easier. One more thing, Shopify has experts to help you when problems arise and even detailed tutorials on their website.WordPress

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. Therefore, you still need to manage your WordPress, secure it, and add different plugins and extensions to make the website better. A point to remember is that it does not have the drag and drop interface system. Trust us, it is quite challenging for beginners, but it gets easier when you get used to it and you will be able to customize your website better. WordPress does not have constant access to user support, but user community and tutorials are available.

Related to features, both of them have everything you need to create a clean and polished E-commerce platform such as shipping system, payment methods, blogs, discount pricing, and multichannel selling. However, Shopify has more in-built features in comparison to WordPress WooCommerce.

Shopify offers more than 100 free and paid themes that are stylish, professional, and clean to be used for commercial purposes since Shopify specializes in the customization of e-commerce platform.

WordPress WooCommerce offers more than 1000 themes for commercial purposes. Nevertheless, you need to remember that WordPress is an open-source platform and thus, those might not be as polished as the themes from Shopify.

Both Shopify and WordPress WooCommerce allow you to use E-mail marketing and social media integration to attract more customers. Seguno is a common app used for Shopify to enhance the performance of E-mail marketing, where WooCommerce relies on plugins such as MailChimp.

Regarding social media integration, you can integrate and advertise your website to different channels such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook, etc. WooCommerce allows you to do the same thing to Amazon, eBay, and Instagram, but you need to pay an extra fee for it.