Are you stressing out to start your online store? Then reach out to your target customers more efficiently by an e-commerce platform. Reaching out to more people will add value to your business. An e-commerce website can help you with that to a great extent. Establishing trust and reaching your target audience more effectively are two benefits of having a website. However, to do that, you must carefully construct the website employing a powerful platform. Currently, the most famous website builders for creating e-commerce pages are Shopify and Woocommerce. To help you out in selecting one of the platforms, we will tell you in detail about the advantages and disadvantages of each below.
Shopify: What is it?
Shopify is a one-stop platform for the business owners of e-commerce stores and you can quickly and simply create an online store to sell your products directly from your website. It will manage the inventory and take several payment ways, allowing you to control everything from a single platform. This e-commerce website will offer you security, web hosting, and caching without requiring any technical expertise if you are a newbie in those areas.
WooCommerce: What is it?
You may create an e-commerce website for WordPress using the open-source Woocommerce platform. You can develop your online store with the content management system in this website builder. Because it is open-source and allows you to customise the website to your store’s products and target audience’s needs, it is gradually becoming more and more popular than Shopify.
Parameters to compare Shopify and Woocommerce
You must consider a few factors when selecting the platform by which you will build your e-commerce website. These points will help you to determine which option is best for you. We’ve included a list of some criteria here to assist you in this case.
Cost
The cost of the website builder is one of the most essential factors for small business owners. Most of the time, this website provides add-on services with some variable pricing. For Shopify, the basic plan will start from $25/month and you can upgrade the plan to $65 or even the advanced version by $399/month. The pricing structure of Woocommerce is $14.99 for the domain name, $69.99 for the SSL certificate and $7.99/month for the web hosting.
Ease of Use
The ease of use is an important factor because most of the time people who do not have any technical knowledge come to this platform to build their website. So if the platform is easier to handle, it will get more customers. Shopify is completely hosted and that is why you don’t have to install or manage it at any given point. You can rely on the backups and performance of the platform as well. Woocommerce is not hosted and that is why you have to install it along with the plugins and updates. Shopify is the easier option for you to use according to this parameter.
Payment Method
A convenient payment method is another factor which is quite important when choosing the website builder to create an online store for a small business. An easily available online payment system is extremely needed and that is one of the biggest requirements by the customers nowadays. Shopify has its payment solution which is powered by Stripe. It is one of the most popular third-party payment gateways right now but it charges a 2% extra fee for each transaction. Woocommerce accepts PayPal which is much more convenient along with some other service providers. So, you can save a lot of money by choosing Woocommerce over Shopify.
Add-Ons
The add-on services are certainly needed if you want to build a website which will be eye-catching for your customers. Here comes the role of third-party tools in any website builder. Shopify has its own API and app store where you can find different types of third-party add-ons to add some extra options to your website. Woocommerce is an open-source builder and mostly prefers to build the website on WordPress itself. So clearly the business owners will get more plugins from WordPress itself if they use Woocommerce.
Drop shipping
Drop shipping is a particular online service where an e-commerce store does not keep the stock of their product and all the orders are fulfilled by purchasing different products from some vendors and shipping them to the customers directly. So, this service has become quite popular. The front end of the drop shipping business can be built by Shopify very easily which will look like your online store itself. The customers can browse their products and buy them directly from that store. But the interface will be simple. Woocommerce has some exciting plugins where the drop shipping business will look even more attractive by the look.
Growth and Scalability
When your business will grow gradually, you will need more resources to achieve higher targets. You have to scale Shopify or Woocommerce accordingly to experience that growth. Shopify will always handle all the technical parts of your website which is why you won’t have to worry about your knowledge regarding the technology. On the other hand, Woocommerce is a self-hosted platform where you have to maintain the updates and all the security backups of your website. So, in this parameter, Shopify wins.
Support
Whenever you use software, you will need some support assistance if you face any difficulty during the process. Shopify has 24/7 customer support through phone calls, chat, email and Twitter. So, it will be quite convenient for the users to get their questions answered through Shopify support. Woocommerce is currently the most famous e-commerce platform all over the world. They provide 24/7 chat support for the users who will buy their premier extension only. So Shopify will be a better choice for you in this case.
Conclusion
After taking into account all the given parameters about both the website builders, you can decide which one to choose for your online store according to your convenience. You have to make sure that it can provide your purpose well within your financial limitations.