WooCommerce vs. Shopify
Introduction to e-commerce platforms
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Creating an online store has become a common practice in today’s corporate world. The bar for online sales is being raised to never-before-seen heights. It’s a bad idea to leave your strategy or plans unimplemented. If you’ve already begun your research on this subject, you’ll run into a huge problem: which platform is the best fit for your store?
A successful business must have a pleasing appearance, easy-to-maintain features, and be simple to use for people of all skill levels. Many e-commerce platforms provide an abundance of unrivaled features, free designs, payment methods, and pricing alternatives, making it tough to select the best platform for your needs.
WooCommerce and Shopify, two significant e-commerce industry, will be compared in this article. They are both long-established businesses with good reputations. They give varied features packaged in various marketing gimmicks, but they all have the same purpose: to deliver the finest solution for e-commerce firms.
What is WooCommerce, and how does it works?
WooCommerce is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms. This open-source platform can accommodate businesses with zero to multimillion-dollar sales. WooCommerce, when used in conjunction with WordPress, is a full-featured platform that includes all of the e-commerce tools you’d want for an online store and an ecosystem of extensions that may enhance the functionality of your site even further.
WooCommerce is popular among retailers due to its open-source nature. You have complete freedom to create or add new features, layouts, or styles to the store. When comparing WooCommerce vs. Shopify, consider that WooCommerce’s flexibility comes at a cost; in other words, you’ll have to handle all technical aspects of your site yourself to maintain it safe and up to date with the current code standards.
What exactly is Shopify?
When opposed to WooCommerce, Shopify takes a completely different strategy. It’s an all-in-one e-commerce platform that lets you run any complex store in a matter of minutes; you don’t have to worry about hosting, site design, security, upgrades, or payment methods because Shopify takes care of everything.
When comparing WooCommerce with Shopify, Shopify requires no technical knowledge to set up a store. You have all the tools you need to start your store in an hour or less right away (really). The Shopify dashboard is user-friendly, and it’s simple to find what you’re looking for.
Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, after which the basic plan costs $29 per month. In most cases, the 14-day trial period is sufficient to set up a store in its entirety, but you must upgrade to paid plans to begin selling.
Shopify vs. WooCommerce Drawbacks/advantages?
Design and Templates
Any website’s front face is its design. Selling things to users will be difficult if you can’t please them from the first second. When it comes to design and templates, WooCommerce and Shopify take different approaches.
WooCommerce comes with only one template by default, Storefront, and no more templates are available. Storefront is a lightweight theme that is fully responsive and has a clean style, however it pales in comparison to Shopify’s beautiful themes.
Because WooCommerce is a completely open-source project, creating and selling readymade layouts has become a huge business. Only Themeforest, for example, sells over 1400 e-commerce templates, despite the fact that there are many other marketplaces similar to Themeforest. These templates are well-designed and coded and may be used for any project size.
Shopify, as an all-in-one e-commerce solution, provides everything, including templates, in one platform. They have a dedicated section on the platform where they sell both free and premium themes. This platform currently provides over 100 templates; they are better curated and polished because they are specifically optimized for e-commerce.
Shopify themes, like WooCommerce themes, may be found on various platforms such as Themeforest.
In this case, Shopify is the winner. It provides all-in-one solutions, high-quality themes, and simple installation.
Features
Both platforms offer extensive features, and the basic features are sufficient to begin selling and receiving payments; nevertheless, the default features of WooCommerce and Shopify differ. When it comes to standard functionality, Shopify is the clear winner. For example, Shopify includes features like as abandoned cart recovery, multichannel sales, improved delivery options, and payment providers by default. These features aren’t built into WooCommerce, so you’ll have to install extensions to get them.
It is possible to find things through third-party marketplaces if you are looking for a certain feature that is not accessible in the default packages on both platforms. Every conceivable detail associated with online sales is now manicured and exhibited someplace. In this regard, WooCommerce has a greater amount of plugins than Shopify, because to its open source nature.
Payment gateways
When it comes to payment in WooCommerce vs. Shopify, you want to make sure your online business has as many options as possible. Both platforms provide with a large number of payment gateways, with over 100 alternatives by default.
The following are the main payment options for both platforms:
Stripe/PayPal/Apple Pay
The payment fees make a significant difference. While WooCommerce doesn’t charge any fees, Shopify imposes a 2% fee if you use a third-party gateway.
Ease of use
When you first start using WooCommerce, you will need very little technical knowledge. Because setting up a WooCommerce store also entails setting up themes and plugins, you’ll need some knowledge with WordPress, WordPress themes, and plugins.
Shopify, on the other hand, takes care of a lot of technical problems because it’s a dedicated e-commerce platform; the setup procedure is simple and intuitive, and Shopify covers everything you need, including domain names, SSL certificates, security, upgrades, and backups.
Support
Getting help on free products is not a good solution. When it comes to WooCommerce support, you can turn to an open-source community or a Google search for answers. You can also submit a ticket, however free assistance is limited, and paid support is only available if you purchase one of WooCommerce’s extensions.
Shopify, on the other hand, provides excellent customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by phone, live chat, and email. They also provide an useful community forum, instructions, and an initial setup process that avoids the need for unnecessary support tickets.
Why are you looking for Shopify to Elementor service?
People are shifting from Shopify to WordPress, but why? The most important reason appears to be a limitation. Shopify users feel more restricted and limited by Shopify’s regulations than those who use an open-source platform like WooCommerce.
Another reason could be that Elementor recently unveiled Elementor Cloud, a new service that pits them against website builders like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, etc. Although this new service does not match other platforms’ e-commerce capabilities, this famous page builder will soon include new features, including a shop.
