If you were thinking about transferring your business online or just creating a new online store for the first time and you’re not sure whether to start with WordPress’s WooCommerce or the eCommerce platform Shopify, then you’re in the right place!
Now, both WordPress’s WooCommerce, as well as Shopify are one of the top platforms to make your store on. However, you should keep in mind that as an owner, one should do extensive research on what both platforms offer in terms of their plans.
What is Shopify?
The eCommerce platform offers an all-in-one solution, including payment methods, a very straightforward way to manage the store’s inventory, and one of the most practical things, which is not having to worry about hosting, caching, and stuff like that. Many Shopify experts say that it is the easiest eCommerce platform to manage
Cost
Offering three paid plans from which one can choose, Shopify makes it extremely easy to start your own eCommerce store. Now, it is vital to note that all of the Shopify plans come with an SSL certificate, web hosting, and a domain name included.
Basic Plan Features
- One can add an unlimited amount of products to the store
- One can create two staff member accounts that will have access to both the Shopify admin and Shopify POS.
- 24/7 support
- Manual order creation
- Discount codes
- Gift cards available for the customers to purchase
*Price starting at $29/month
The best thing about Shopify is its scalability, i.e., the fact that you can upgrade from the Basic plan to the Shopify plan at any time or to the Advanced Shopify plan. On the other hand, Shopify also offers a great collection of apps that are useful for business owners to manage and optimize their stores. There are apps to increase the website speed, then there are apps to optimize the store for SEO point of view, there are apps to increase the website traffic etc. Some apps like Tada also offer website users to play games in exchange of their email addresses, helping store owners to increase their subscribers and sales.
Shopify Plan Features
Offers everything from the Basic Plan plus:
- One can create five staff member accounts that will have access to both the Shopify admin and Shopify POS
- One can create up to five inventory locations
*Price starting at $79/month
The Advanced Shopify Features
Everything from the Basic Plan and the Shopify Plan plus:
- One can create up to 15 staff member accounts that will have access to both the Shopify admin and Shopify POS
- One can create up to eight inventory locations
- The transaction fee if one isn’t using Shopify Payments is lowered to 0.5%
*Price starting at $299/month
Please, keep in mind that this pricing will not include any additional services like the cost of some third-party tools and plugins and creating a custom solution for your eCommerce store with the help of Shopify developers.
What is WooCommerce?
The open-source eCommerce plugin powered by WordPress’s developers is one of the most popular and straightforward ways of becoming an e-store owner. Now, this plugin allows you to create an online store by leveraging the powerful WordPress CMS.
Keeping in mind that both the WooCommerce plugin and the WordPress CMS are open-sourced, one might be able to customize almost every aspect of the eCommerce store in development. However, depending on the theme you’ll choose, there might be some limitations in that field, and that’s why we recommend hiring a WordPress professional or, even better, a team that will take care of everything for you.
Cost
When we look at what WordPress WooCommerce e-store offers compared to the Shopify eCommerce platform, the difference is immense!
It’s true that the WooCommerce plugin, just as the WordPress CMS is free of charge, there still is an important question to solve – the web hosting, SSL certificate, and the domain name, all of which the Shopify offers for free, i.e., as part of its monthly plans.
Some other costs you can find yourself in when starting an eCommerce store with the WooCommerce plugin are:
- Premium WooCommerce themes
- Premium WooCommerce payment methods plugins
- Premium WooCommerce third-party tools and plugins
All of these costs can be drastically lowered if you’d hire a team of professionals that would take care of everything on your behalf, as we mentioned before.
Especially if we’d have in mind that the cost of your eCommerce store would be a one-time thing and then you’d pay only for the maintenance, while if you’re building your store with premium themes and plugins, you’d have various ongoing monthly subscriptions.
Another aspect one should look at is that when you have your own proprietary solution built entirely for you and per your business’s needs, you’ll have full control over your store, and there will be no limitations. While with the premium both themes, that can be the case. You can come to a wall of limits that are impossible to overcome unless you pay a higher price to the theme developer.
