Every business is seeking ways to rebuild its online presence after a devastating pandemic. The market is evolving, and the pandemic has shifted the focus of the market towards online shopping. Therefore, you may be looking for an online solution for your e-commerce or online business.
Shopify and WordPress (where WooCommerce is a plugin) are both popular and well-known e-commerce platforms for businesses. However, each platform has its own basic characteristics. Below is a general overview of Shopify and WordPress.
Both are giants in the website design and application industry, but each serves very different needs.
The question that arises now is: Which will be the best e-commerce platform for you? Most people often face a difficult situation when choosing between WordPress or any other specialized e-commerce platform, such as Shopify, for their business.
WordPress/WooCommerce
WordPress.com is an open-source blogging platform that operates like a website builder, allowing you to easily create your own website. Whether you want to build a magazine page, an online store, or a blog, WordPress can serve all these needs. Therefore, WordPress is suitable for many user groups with different purposes. Moreover, it has a large ecosystem of themes and plugins, allowing you to develop any type of website.
In contrast to Shopify, WooCommerce is not a standalone platform. It is a free WordPress plugin that adds e-commerce functionality to a WordPress website to create an e-commerce website. Installation is very easy and quick. Currently, there are some small and medium-sized businesses that use WooCommerce to create their e-commerce websites.
Shopify
The user base of Shopify is suitable for entrepreneurs and e-commerce store owners as it is a store management system. Those who own an online e-commerce store or plan to have an online store will see Shopify as the platform to aim for.
Apart from e-commerce users, other users have no compelling reason to use Shopify. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows you to create an online store website based on the Cloud SaaS model. Here, you can create an online store website with all the features from basic ones like posting products, shopping carts, payments, to advanced ones like inventory management, user management, or social media integration.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages of WordPress:
- More powerful and flexible than Shopify, allowing for complete customization.
- The new ‘Gutenberg’ editor makes it a bit easier to use.
- There are many useful online resources, both from user forums and professional developers.
Disadvantages of WordPress:
- You need to have a fairly technical knowledge to use it proficiently.
- Building a complete website can be quite costly.
- You need to prepare a few things such as hosting (I recommend using Bluehost), security, and domain.
Advantages of Shopify:
- You don’t need any technical or programming knowledge to use Shopify.
- Built specifically for e-commerce websites, so all the sales tools you need are already set up for you.
- You don’t need to pay for hosting or external security.
Disadvantages of Shopify:
- You have to pay additional transaction fees (0.5% – 2% per transaction) unless you use Shopify’s own payment gateway, Shopify Payments.
- If you choose to change the website design, you will need to reformat your content.
- Not as basic or simple to use as a drag-and-drop platform (such as Wix).
Cost
Shopify comes with 5 different pricing plans. WordPress CMS is free. Therefore, you don’t have to pay anything to use WordPress or WooCommerce. However, because domain and hosting services are not included in the WordPress package, you will need to pay extra for these things.
Although most plugins and themes in the WordPress repository are entirely free or have limited free versions, you still need to purchase premium versions to access advanced features.
Template and Theme
WordPress provides an immense amount of themes, with over 8,800 themes for websites and over 1,500 themes for e-commerce. Additionally, there are many themes developed by third parties. However, considering security and compatibility issues after updating WordPress, you should use themes from WordPress.org.
On the other hand, Shopify offers a total of over 70 themes, including 10 free themes. The remaining themes are priced from $140 and up.
User Interface
The basic layout of WordPress and Shopify is almost the same. Both platforms come with a similar dashboard with a menu on the left side. You can select options and add, edit, or delete elements as needed using the menu.
Some users have confirmed that they find Shopify’s interface slightly simpler and more modern than WordPress’s interface. However, WordPress provides more flexible customization capabilities, as it comes with visual editor plugins such as Elementor and Divi to adjust the store or website to your liking.
Ease of Use
WordPress is relatively more complex to use Compared to the simplicity of Shopify, WordPress is relatively more complex to use. Because it is not specifically developed to create online stores, users need to install e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, BigCommerce or Ecwid. In addition, the backend dashboard can be overwhelming for new users, as there are many options and tools.
Adding products to a Shopify store is a simple process. The interface looks very similar to Microsoft Word. Users need to let the system know a little about their job, and the system will take care of the rest. There are two ways to upload products – individually or in bulk.
SEO
SEO is an area where WordPress has an advantage. As a blogging platform, SEO has become a stronghold for WordPress. The platform itself is SEO-friendly. In addition, various SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and Rank Math provide excellent guidance to help you maintain a strong position in SERP.
Shopify’s SEO capabilities are also relatively good. For example, you can add meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta tags. You can also add Redirect 301 and change page URLs as needed. Additionally, Shopify suggests best SEO practices when you add products to your website.
Choose Shopify or WordPress/WooCommerce?
There is no exact answer to the question of whether Shopify or WordPress/WooCommerce is better. Both are great tools to power your e-commerce website. Each platform has its pros and cons, but the main difference is how it operates.
With Shopify, you live and breathe on its platform, while WooCommerce allows you to have more control. WooCommerce may be more cost-effective, but Shopify is an easier solution. It’s not about one being better than the other, it simply comes down to the choice that depends on your skills, budget, and goals.
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