Shopify Vs Magento Vs WooCommerce : Which one to choose for your Online Store?
As an eCommerce professional, choosing the right eCommerce platform is crucial to reduce the gap between you and success. A plethora of platforms is available in the market pool. However, some are very popular as Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Volusion. The right platform makes it easy to build, manage and maintain the online shop. This factor is crucial due to limited resources and investment plans in the start-up or small scale business.
Professionals are often confused in finalising the available frameworks. It is not a piece of cake to be done overnight. So to make it simple, we here compare WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento for your convenience. If you are about to start your e-commerce profession and curious to know its platforms then this content will be your best guide.
So let’s begin here.
Shopify Introduction
The famous online store framework, Shopify was launched in 2004. Most of the small and mid-size professions like to choose this framework. One of the most interesting facts in this framework is its drag and drop website design interface. This simplifies many things like generating discount promo codes and gift cards.
It also offers one-click integration with Google Analytics. The platform has its own application with rich extensions. The integration with common email platforms like MailChimp and Avada adds the cherry on the cake for this platform.
Key Features:
- Customized website
- Supporting popular payment gateways
- 24/7 customer support
- Unlimited product inventory and bandwidth
Shopify Merits:
Best site performance
The visitor of any website expects the fast load of the webpage. At the same time, if the website takes a long time to load, the visitor will leave the page immediately. Ultimately, this will also hike the bouncing rate. Fortunately, Shopify sites load fast and increase user engagement as well.
Multiple themes and design
For any website, themes and overall design is important to enhance user experience. Luckily, Shopify has a place rich in different themes to increase the user’s visit. The themes are divided into multiple categories like Food & Beverage, Furniture, Photography and Art.
Wide Payment Processor
The making of the payment process robust, easy and quick is the most important one for any business website. There are about 100 different payment processors that are integrated into the website that supports different currencies.
Good customer support
If one is looking for excellent customer support then Shopify is the best. The supporting team is available to assist 24/7. Additionally, the Shopify Help Centre provides all the helpful documents and other community forums. The customer support of Shopify is easy to access.
Mobile friendly
For mobile shoppers, the most important thing is the website should be mobile-friendly. Due to the mobile responsive nature of Shopify, it is a great choice for mobile shopping lovers. Additionally, with the availability of the Shopify app on Android and iOS, it is quite easy to manage all things.
Shopify Demerits:
Theme Customization is Not Easy
Shopify offers a wide range of themes that are PHP based. These themes cannot be customized easily, even if the user wishes to do so. Professionals could only change these themes by coding.
Costly
Apart from the free feature, Shopify also charges for the proper functioning. The cheapest plan is $29, and it could go up to $299. If you wish to include a subscription then you have to pay for some apps.
Magento Introduction
Magento was introduced in March 2008, and Adobe is managing this platform. There is a wide range of extensions and templates due to its open-source nature. It is highly customized for its users and enables them to make changes in languages, currencies, add coupons and apply a discount on a particular product.
One of the most interesting concepts in Magento is the creation of multiple online stores and managing with a single admin panel. This means several people could manage the site with different roles.
Key features
- Mobile friendly commerce
- Fully SEO centred
- Complete management of the site
- Catalogue management
Magento Merit
Huge community
There is a large number of developers and design professionals that are ready to support. There are about 360,000 active users and more than 1500 partners available. There is a lot of content, forum, documents, FAQs that are created by its community.
Open source
Magento is an open-source platform that enables developers to make changes in the function as per the requirement. Good freedom is there to alter the website as the business grows. Furthermore, it is a cost-effective one. For start-ups and small scale companies, Shopify could be a great choice that requires less investment.
SEO friendly
E-commerce professionals spend extra effort on the Search Engine Optimization process. Luckily, Magento comes with an SEO friendly feature. Moreover, it is a highly customized one that allows users to modify the URL of the page along with the Meta description and the sitemap etc.
Built-in functions
There are plenty of in-built functions available in the Magento. Through the single admin panel, one could easily configure the orders, invoice, optimized shipments and current order status. There are many handy features available in the frontend and backend administration to make the shopping process excellent.
Magento Demerits
Expensive plan
Besides the free plans, other extensions could lose your pocket. The use of extensions is among the one. Magento is not the right choice for big companies due to its high cost.
Need for hosting
In the Magento framework, customers need to host their website hosting. That means customers need to pay separately for the same. Therefore, when you are choosing Magento be ready to connect with the hosting service provider as well.
Complex strategy
Magento is not so easy for beginners or anyone who possesses little technical knowledge. Due to the large and complex structure, this platform is not suitable for those who aim to build a website on their own. When you choose Magento, it is good to connect with experts who are excellent in developing and testing the sites.
WooCommerce Introduction
Key Features
- Seamless WordPress Integration
- In-Built Payment Processing
- Flexibility
- Simple and Robust
WooCommerce Merits
Highly customized
Customization is a primary thing that customers need to fulfill the particular demand. There are many themes available on this platform. Additionally, the user could do changes in themes after selecting one.
The user can even do modifications in the header, product sheets, footer and checkouts etc. It provides free access to HTML, CSS and PHP Style code. This means the user could change the themes and other elements as per the requirement.
Secured
WooCommerce commits to offer security. It is regularly updated and this keeps it up to date with cybersecurity. The secured elements like SSL certificates or the backup tools are absent in this platform.
As far as payment security is considered, it is perfectly complemented with secure gateways and other e-wallets.
An abundant amount of plugins and themes
WooCommerce offers both free and paid themes and plugins to the user. These themes and plugins are found in the different directories which are as follows:
- Free WooCommerce-plugins are found at the official WordPress Plugin Directory
- Paid WooCommerce extensions are found at Codecanyon or Woocommerce.com
- Paid WooCommerce themes are found at ThemeForest
- Free WooCommerce themes are found at WordPress Theme Directory
Large community
The large community of developers, users and contributors make it the perfect option. One of its forums is WooCommerce Support Forum. In addition to it, there are many others like Upload WP Community Forums.
WooCommerce Demerits
Extra payment for the Extensions
No doubt, the downloading and installation of this WordPress plugin is free with its widgets and add-ons. However, the extension installation needs some punctual payment.
For making the payment gateway, a specific amount has to be given to the specific subscription services.
Lack of Legal texts
The legal texts like general terms and conditions, revocation regulation, data protection declaration, shipping regulations are not present in WooCommerce.
Not for the German Market
Due to its origin in the USA market, WooCommerce is not the right choice for the German market. Another plugin is required for the German and European markets if you want to sell the product. The two such plugins are Free WordPress Plugin Germanized and premium plugin German Market. Both plug-in legally protects your shop in Europe.
Update Problem
The main demerit of WooCommerce is the updated policy. It depends on other plugins and themes. Due to this, when any update is introduced, the user should not click on it immediately. Instead, the user must test the shop in a closed test environment. This avoids the enormous problems caused by the multitude of other plugins.
Quick Glance on Comparisons between WooCommerce Shopify and Magento
Which one to choose- Final Conclusion
So we here end up comparing Shopify, WooCommerce and Magneto. After focusing on the insight information, and data we conclude the following facts.
- Shopify is good for small stores that want to grow their online business.
- Woocommerce is a good platform for small to midsize scale organizations.
- Magento is ideal for big enterprises that have massive resources.
Every platform has its pros and cons. The entire three platforms provide some advantage that suits the individual business niche.
However, if we compare three of them, Woocommerce is good, and Magento scores the least score in this game. In addition to that, you need to think of 360-degree ways when finalizing the platform for your online business. You can even consult the e-commerce developer experts to find the optimal solution.
