WooCommerce vs. Shopify: Battle of the E-Commerce Platforms

Technology drives e-commerce. Even the best products and strategies won’t succeed if you don’t have a platform that makes the purchasing process easy for your audience.

Earlier this year, we broke down how WooCommerce and Magento compare in providing that basic technology platform. Of course, those are not your only choices. So in this article, we’ll go into the depths and nuances of how the world’s most popular e-commerce platform, WooCommerce, compares with perhaps its closest rival: Shopify.

Just the Basics: WooCommerce

WooCommerce is not a standalone platform, but a free plug-in of WordPress — the world’s most popular content management system. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, WooCommerce holds the same moniker for e-commerce, with 4.4 million websites around the world using it for their online shop.

As we’ll break down in the categories below, WooCommerce shines with its combination of ease of use and flexibility. It’s perhaps the most user-friendly e-commerce platform out there, while still providing the ability to scale up with growing online stores.

Just the Basics: Shopify

Unlike WooCommerce, Shopify is not an add-on but a standalone e-commerce platform. In fact, it’s the most popular standalone e-commerce platform in the world, used by more than 2.2 million websites and 19% of the world’s top 1 million online stores.

Shopify offers a so-called closed platform, with all functionality inherent in the system itself. That makes it easy to use, with no coding knowledge required and plenty of great-looking themes readily available. Unfortunately, it also means flexibility is limited, as we’ll explore in more detail below.

Pricing Differences Between WooCommerce and Shopify

Pricing is a naturally important factor when choosing the right system for your website. If a solution doesn’t fit into your budget, you might as well stop reading. It’s also the first point of difference between WooCommerce and Shopify:

• WooCommerce is free at its core, regardless of how complex the store gets. You might need to consider hosting fees and premium plugins, but this will tend to stay within the realms of affordable.
• Shopify is a paid service, which starts reasonably low at £50 but scales quickly from there. Its enterprise solution Shopify Plus starts at £2,000 per month. You’ll also get charged a transaction fee that increases your costs with increasing sales volume through the store.

The winner on price: for startups, it’s a tie with comparable costs. As soon as your online store gets more complex, though, WooCommerce comes out on top.

Hosting Options for WooCommerce and Shopify

WooCommerce and Shopify take two opposing approaches when it comes to hosting your e-commerce website and store:

• WooCommerce is self-hosted, with all files living on your server of choice. That can add some minor costs, but greatly increases your flexibility of choosing a host and allocating resources as you see fit.
• Shopify is centrally hosted, with no client control over location or details. Merchants are limited within that framework, including full dependance on the system for security and potential downtime solutions.

The winner on hosting: WooCommerce. The flexibility provided by the WordPress Plug-In is difficult to overstate when it comes to building and scaling the best possible online store for your business. 

WooCommerce vs. Shopify on Speed and Performance Optimisation

Naturally, your store needs to be fast and reliable, especially considering that slow load times can lead to significant revenue losses. Here’s how our two contenders compare:

• WooCommerce offers full control over speed and performance optimisation. As with any WordPress site, you can add caching, dynamically compress images, and minimise script usage. Your ability to choose your host and support allows you to prioritise performance.
• Shopify has fast out-of-the-box speed, but little customisation opportunity. Should performance begin to slow, you will likely be unable to make adjustments that speed it up again.

The winner on performance: WooCommerce, due to its customisability. There’s something to be said for a fast initial site. But if your e-commerce plan is long-term, the customisation opportunities of WooCommerce become impossible to ignore.

SEO Considerations When Choosing WooCommerce or Shopify

Naturally, modern e-commerce merchants need to consider search engine optimisation. Your product and category pages should be prominent when potential customers search for solutions online. Here’s how WooCommerce and Shopify compare:

• WooCommerce brings the full power of WordPress, meaning it’s built for well optimised SEO content. You can use add-ons like Yoast to optimise every bit of content, and easily customise anything from URL redirects to image ALT tags. You also have far greater control to make Tech SEO improvements.
• Shopify has limited SEO functionality. For example, you are unable to customise your URL to match keyword and intent. You will get the core functionality to get the basics right, but cannot quite take it as far in terms of ranking highly for relevant keywords.

The winner on SEO: WooCommerce, and it’s not particularly close. In an age where a third of global e-commerce page traffic comes directly from organic search, this is a significant decision factor.

Content Management on Shopify and WooCommerce

Finally, modern e-commerce tends to excel when attached to a comprehensive content marketing channel that goes beyond straight promotions. High-value educational content can build credibility and nudge potential customers through the sales funnel, but requires comprehensive content management abilities to be done right. 

• WooCommerce, built on a content management system, offers a wide range of opportunities. From creating your own blog to various lead generation tools, you can easily build and manage a comprehensive content marketing framework.
• Shopify offers basic content management features, as well. A blog is a standard feature, while external apps like PageFly can get more in-depth on landing page and lead generation creation.

The winner on content management: It depends. If you just need a blog, both offer similar functionalities, even though WooCommerce’s edge in SEO should be considered here as well. For more comprehensive content management, WooCommerce becomes the clear winner.

How Shopify and WooCommerce Compare on Plug-ins and Extensions

Finally, the two systems also offer fundamental differences in how they treat the ability to build onto the core platform:

• WooCommerce users can take advantage of the thousands of plug-ins available through WordPress, customising their platform in any way possible. They will, however, need a vetting process to ensure that the plug-ins they use are stable, credible, and don’t negatively impact security or performance.
• Shopify users can use the platform’s App Library for a similar purpose. On the positive side, these apps tend to be more closely vetted than their WordPress counterpart. However, the amount of options is only a fraction of what WooCommerce can offer.

The winner on extensions: it depends. If you’re trying to build a website yourself, without a partner or resources to vet each plug-in or custom build them, Shopify is the safer options. For true customisability and with the right resources on your side, WooCommerce comes out ahead.

Summary

Ultimately the winner of the WooCommerce vs Shopify battle, comes down to your goals: are you looking to create a powerful, customisable online shop that drives your e-commerce business and grows with it along the way? In that case, WooCommerce is your clear winner. Especially when you can partner with someone who custom-builds your website on the WooCommerce platform, it’s a clear winner in all relevant categories.

Our expertise in WooCommerce development makes us the perfect partner for your needs. Check out our case studies on creating VIP experiences for your customers and re-platforming to WooCommerce, or get in touch today to start the conversation.