This question arose every business owner’s mind when they are launching their business online. WooCommerce is already a popular platform with 5M+ active installation. But the number of Shopify user also growing daily. Now approximately 500K+ stores are using Shopify.
In this article, we will discuss the advantage and disadvantage of both the platform and our opinion for which platform you should go for.
Advantage of WooCommerce
Cost Effective
WooCommerce is free till today. You just need to install it from the WordPress plugin store. The cost needed to setup a WooCommerce store are a domain name, a hosting and SSL certificate and a good theme. There are many hosting companies that provides a special package for WooCommerce hosting with an affordable price. Approximately you just need $60 to build your store in WooCommerce. For further designing and functionality of the store you can buy premium themes and plugins.
Payment Option
PayPal and Stripe are the default payment gateways that are available in WooCommerce. You can add other payment options by using add-ons. Per transaction you just need to pay the charge of the payment gateway or the bank. There is no hidden charge that WooCommerce cut per transaction.
Offers free Plugin
As WooCommerce runs on WordPress platform, you can use the huge free collection of WordPress plugins. Also, you can develop your won plugin as per your requirement and submit the plugin in plugin store. Submitting the plugin in WordPress and getting approval is easier than other platforms.
Disadvantage of WooCommerce
Need expert to setup and running the store
Actually, you can’t tell that it is a disadvantage. But it is not a self-hosted platform like Shopify. So, you have to take care all the things like design, website security, managing updates, backups etc. It can be a hectic situation when your business is growing. At the same time, your business needs to upgrade to a better hosting plan. You have to be a bit technical to handle all these things. Otherwise, you have to hire an expert.
Hassle when need support
It is not the fault of WooCommerce support team. There are many tutorials available on their site for different issues also they provide 24*7 support. As it is not self-hosted, for different kinds of problems you need to contact different support team. When you are getting theme related issue, you need to contact the theme support team, for plugin related issue you need to reach out their team, for hosting related issues you need to contact the hosting provider. In Shopify you can get all kind of supports in one place.
Advantage of Shopify
Ease of Use
Shopify is a self-hosted platform. So, you don’t need to hosing your site on different company. Also, they take care of the other things like update, security and maintenance. After installing they will guide you to design your store by easy drag and drop interface and adding your products properly.
One Stop Solution for Support
For hosting, design, security or maintenance you just need to contact Shopify support team. They will take care all these things. And this is very beneficial when your business is growing. As you need better hosting plan, they will upgrade the hosting too. You just need to pay the extra bucks.
Disadvantage of Shopify
Lack of Proper Apps
Still there are not many sufficient apps for different purpose in the app store. As an example, for basic SEO purpose, you will get many good quality plugins in WooCommerce like All-in-SE0, Yoast SEO, Rank Math. But you can’t find these types of alternative in Shopify app store. Don’t worry about that. A Shopify SEO agency can help you to do this task. They can audit your Shopify site and suggest them the proper plugin to update the basic SEO things.
Costly
From setting up the store to adding required plugins you need to pay a good amount in Shopify. Even Shopify charges 2% extra fees per transaction that is made to the third-party payment gateways.
Final Decision: Which one you should use?
It depends on you. If you are a technical guy or have enough support then go for WooCommerce. You can make a functional website by using huge collection of themes and plugin in WordPress. But if you are a non-technical guy or don’t have any support then just go for Shopify. Just pay their charges, they will take care rest of the things.