Woocommerce VS Shopify – Detailed Comparison With Pros. & Cons.

If you want to run an e-commerce website, then you will agree on how important it is to have the best e-commerce platform for your website. Woocommerece vs Shopify, both are the most popular and trending tool for an e-commerce website.

With both these tools at the top, website owners mostly get confused, which one they should choose.

So, which is better?

Get Ready, you are going to get your answer.

In this post by “Kreo Web” you will get to know which one is better between woocommerce and shopify, for getting a profitable e-commerce site.

Woocommerce VS Shopify

Woocommerce vs. Shopify? They both are the most trending and most popular tools for e-commerce stores worldwide.

Do you know?

According to a report of Twispay.com they both share a 30% market share, worldwide. Now let’s directly jump to a short introduction of both Shopify and Woocommerce individually.

Introduction Shopify

Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce platform, headquartered in Ottawa. It was founded in 2004. The company had market share of 9% worldwide in 2018 which has increased to 10.27% in 2019. More than 160,000 websites in the world runs on Shopify platform.

Shopify is a paid tool which offers a variety of tools and option including Shopify payment, Shopify themes, Shopify apps, etc. which are necessary to run an e-commerce website. It also includes paid hosting, domain and SSL certification for your website.

Woocommerce

Woo-commerce is a WordPress Plugin for creating an e-commerce store with WordPress. It was founded in 2011, and it has captured the market at a good speed.

Woo commerce’s market share, among other WordPress E-commerce Plugins, is around 93%, which is a great number. According to the report of January 2019, more than 2 million websites in the world use woo-commerce to run their e-commerce business.

Unlike Shopify, Woo-commerce is an open-source e-commerce platform, where users can develop their website the way they want, which will include advance developing options, which is missing in Shopify.

Now, lets deep into a more detailed comparison of Woocommerce and Shopify.

Shopify – Pros.

The major advantages of Shopify are:

• Better Templates – Shopify provides better templates than woo commerce if you are willing to pay for the premium Shopify templates.
• Quantitative Integration – Shopify provides you with a lot of integrating options, which will also include social media integration.
• Error Free – There is a very little chance that something can go wrong in Shopify.
• Good customer support –Shopify offers you an efficient, 24 hrs support.

Shopify – Cons.

The major disadvantages of Shopify are:

• More Expensive – Shopify is very expensive to start an e-commerce store which includes more than a single expense.
• Fee for using payment gateways – You will be charged a fee for integrating popular payment gateways for your website.
• Not suitable for every area – Shopify is not for people living in High-Risk areas.
• Shopify can shut you down – Yes it can shut you down if your website violates any security rule.
• Limited Options –Shopify only gives you around 10 free themes.

WooCommerce – Pros.

The major advantages of woocommerce are:

• Less Expensive – In fact woo commerce is free, but if you go for some premium woo commerce themes and plugins it can cost you some amount but still it would be far less than Shopify.
• Great For Startup – Woo-commerce is easy to use and very cost-effective and it is great for newbies on e-commerce.
• Great For Blogging Websites – Woocommerce is a WordPress plugin, which is mainly used to create blogging websites, so it will be a good option if you want to run an e-commerce store with blogs.
• Won’t Shut your site – It would not shut your site, because it does not handle domain and hosting of your website.
• Open Source – Unlike shopify, it allows you to execute a lot of innovative ideas on your e-commerce store.

WooCommerce – Cons.

The major disadvantages of woocommerce are:

• Technical problems – If you go with woo commerce, you are going to face a few technical problems like out of date plugins, plugin and theme conflicts, etc.
• Less Integration – Woo commerce has less integrating options as compared to Shopify.

Woocommerce vs. Shopify – Features

Shopify Features

• Shopify is an easy to use tool for your e-commerce store,
• It can integrate with popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
• Shopify is good for a dropshipping business

WooCommerce Features

• Woo commerce is free
• Woo-commerce gives you a tter analysis of your business with its analytics tool and it also gets integrated with Google Analytics.
• It gives you easy shipment tracking and integration with popular shipment carriers.
• Integrating with popular companies like FedEx for easy shipping. You will just have to play with the API key. You will be charged an amount by FedEx to get access to this integration.

Shopify & Woocommerce Pricing

Shopify Pricing

(Note: Shopify is always free for 14 days as a trial)

• $9 / month for ‘Shopify lite’.
• $29 / month for ‘Shopify Basic’.
• $79 / month for ‘Shopify’.
• $299 / month for ‘Advanced Shopify’.
• Approx. $2000 for ‘Shopify Plus’.

WooCommerce Pricing

Woo-commerce and WordPress, both are free tools for your website. It is the best free e-commerce platform for your website in the web today.

In some cases, you will have to pay in Woo-commerce for getting more premium features.

What are they?

• Woocommerce Hosting – $3.95 / month – $ 5,000 / month
• Domain Registration – $15 / year
• Woocommerce Themes – $0 – $100 / year.

Most of the themes in woo commerce are free, but for more premium themes you will be charged by woo commerce.

Shopify vs. Woocommerce – SEO

Shopify SEO

Shopify ranks 2^nd when it comes to search engine optimization. This is because, Shopify handles only the basics of the SEO, i.e. the title optimization, meta description, etc.

But, When it comes to advanced SEO (which is very necessary) Shopify lacks essential features.

WooCommerce SEO

Woo commerce is far better than Shopify when it comes to SEO. This is because, it is a plugin of WordPress and it is very easy to optimize your page with WordPress, because of popular SEO plugin like ‘Yoast SEO’.

Which hs a better Security?

Security is always an important concern when it comes to an e-commerce website, mainly because of money transactions. First of all, always work with ‘https’ on your website, which is very important for a secure website. But what about shopify and woo commerce security.

Shopify Security

When you buy space on Shopify for your e-commerce site, it gives you hosting, domain registration and SSL certification within the paid package. The point is, you will not have direct control over your website’s security as it is handled by Shopify.

When it comes to payment, Shopify has its own payment gateway, but if you want to integrate with popular payment gateways you have to pay an amount for it.

WooCommerce Security

Woo commerce is better than Shopify when it comes to security, especially because you get direct control of SSL which is not handled by woo commerce. It does not have any inbuilt technical measures for security, but, it runs on WordPress so you can add a new plugin for security on your WordPress dashboard.

The main benefit is you will have direct control on the security of your website, without depending on a 3^rd party for the website’s security.

So now coming to a very important point on woocommerce vs shopify.

When you can use Shopify?

• To run a dropshipping store.
• Willing to pay a good amount for themes and design.
• When you want more integration to your e-commerce website.
• Want to run an e-commerce store just for sale.

When you can use WooCommerce?

• Want to run a professional e-commerce website.
• When you want to run an e-commerce website with a blogging website.
• To start with a low budget, because, woo commerce is free to use.
• Customize your website’s look on your own.
• When you want better analysis of your business.

Conclusion

In this post of woocommerce vs shopify we help you to choose the better platform for your e-commerce website. In today’s world, there are two most popular platforms to run an e-commerce website. When starting with e-commerce, people get confused about which one to choose, Shopify or Woocommerce.

Both platforms are very great on their own, it totally depends on you that how you want to run your e-commerce website. The most important point is Woocommerce is free to start but Shopify is a paid tool.