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WooCommerce vs. Shopify – Top 10 Differences

woocommerce vs shopify

The world of E-commerce has made the buying and selling of products quite easy. Both customers and retailers benefit from this shopping model. Retailers can easily use any e-commerce platform like WooCommerce or Shopify and set up shop.

Choosing between whether to use WooCommerce or Shopify as your e-commerce platform depends on many things, such as ease of use, pricing of the platform, SEO, payment options, security, customer support, build time, sales feature, design, theme, and marketing options.

If you keep reading, this article will discuss the top 10 differences between WooCommerce and Shopify in detail. Hopefully, by the end, you’ll understand the pros and cons of both, as well as understand which E-commerce platform is best used for your business.

The Top 10 Difference Between WooCommerce And Shopify

1. Pricing And Usage Costs

Shopify works on a tiered monthly pricing plan ranging from $29 to $200. The price you pay depends upon the type of plan you use. Each plan offers different features and levels of service in accordance with its price.

The WooCommerce platform itself is free but setting up a store requires a WordPress website. For this, you must buy a domain name, a web hosting account, extensions, plugins, and themes to help the site run smoothly. The cost, thus, depends on what your site needs to run.

2. Design And Theme

Shopify and WooCommerce both provide a multitude of themes that can help make the site look more professional and approachable. Shopify has over 70 designs and themes for you to choose from; some are paid, and some free.

WooCommerce, on the other hand, has an entry theme, “Storefront.” Its sophistication and style depend upon how much time you spend on the aesthetics of your site. You’ll have to spend a lot more time designing your site on WooCommerce. IGNITE specializes in WooCommerce themes and can help build any size eCommerce store, tailored for your business and brand.

3. Payment Options

Shopify has its own payment solution called Shopify payments, and it also offers third-party payment gateways. However, Shopify charges an extra 2% fee on the third-party payment gateways.

WooCommerce offers Paypal, Stripe, and other payment services through add-ons. There is no additional transaction fee.

4. Security

Shopify is a hosted e-commerce platform and is itself in charge of any security breach that might occur.

WooCommerce works via WordPress and is self-hosted. This means that security needs to be bought via a plugin.

Shopify also has its own SSL certificate, while WooCommerce by default, does not. However, every eCommerce website hosted by IGNITE Media will come with an SSL certificate.

5. Customer Support

Shopify and WooCommerce both offer 24/7 live and phone customer support, as well as helpful guides to aid the setup of the store.

WooCommerce goes a step further by providing an extremely vast library of guides that surpasses that of Shopify.

6. Build Time

The build time of Shopify stores only barely surpasses that of WooCommerce. If you use Shopify, your store will go live quicker than if you use WooCommerce.

This is because WooCommerce gives its users more creative control. Hence, the design of the site is more personalized but takes longer too.

7. Plug-Ins And Integrations

WooCommerce vastly outshines Shopify in the department of plugins and integrations. Since WooCommerce is open-source software, it allows you to build an app without any limitations. Shopify, on the other hand, has 1200 free and paid apps built in that you can use.

8. Marketing Options

WooCommerce and Shopify both offer plugins and other outsourced integrations for marketing, including social media, blogs, and emails.

Although digital marketing for WooCommerce is more complex than that of Shopify. WooCommerce does not have built-in marketing tools, while Shopify does.

9. Ease Of Use

Using Shopify is quite easy. On the other hand, using WooCommerce presents a bit of a learning curving. Although once you learn, it is infinitely more rewarding.

With WooCommerce, you can easily bring your imagination to life, while Shopify limits you to the tools it has on hand.

10. SEO

Shopify and WooCommerce both offer SEO tools that help your rank better on search engines. WooCommerce outshines Shopify by being built on SEO code and having an integrated SEO system that ensures each user is properly guided. Shopify also has these guides, but they are not as complex or in-depth.

Final Verdict

WooCommerce and Shopify are both exemplary platforms for e-commerce. They have many similarities, but the main difference lies in creative authority. WooCommerce allows for more creative control in comparison to the ever-popular Shopify. Hopefully, we’ve helped make up your mind about which platform to use for your site.

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