Shopify or WooCommerce? Advantages and disadvantages and determine which option is best for you

you are thinking about launching your first online store and are hesitant about choosing the appropriate platform to build your store, in this article we will provide a comprehensive comparison between the two most famous e-commerce platforms: Shopify and WooCommerce, explaining the pros and cons of each platform and the features it offers you, and what criteria help you determine the platform. Most appropriate to rely on.

At the end of the article, you will have a completely clear idea that will enable you to choose the appropriate platform for you to open your first store and lay the basic foundations for its success in the future.

An overview of e-commerce

Electronic commerce (or E-commerce ) is the process of buying or selling products or services over the Internet, either through your own online store or through a store on popular e-commerce platforms (such as Shopify and WooCommerce) or by displaying these products or services on electronic stores. Middleware (such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, etc.).

E-commerce platforms offer you a huge scope, as you can offer almost countless products and services without having to think about how to store, preserve or display them to customers like in traditional physical stores.

Another big plus of e-commerce platforms is the possibility of starting your own project with ease, with very little capital, and without the need for any significant knowledge of programming or technical matters. All you have to do is choose the products you want to sell, the platform you want to trade through, the transfer and shipping methods, and other steps. Simple.

Requirements for online store platforms

Before we move on to talking about: WooCommerce and Shopify, and the advantages and disadvantages of each of them, we must highlight the elements that you should look for in your online store project. In order to be able to choose the appropriate platform for you, you must know the factors that facilitate the process of building and designing a store. Those that enhance the customer’s experience, and accordingly, you can choose the platform that suits your project’s requirements and goals.

Below are the most important criteria that affect the store design process and the success of your project in the short and long term. These are the criteria on which we will base the comparison between Shopify and Commerce:

The cost of setting up the store: Of course, this factor will be essential for you if you want to start your project from scratch, and it is worth saying that online store platforms offer strong offers regarding reducing the cost of setting up your store, in addition to the extent of the discount on the profits you reap from customers through these platforms.
Ease of use : If you are a novice user and are not familiar with programming or technical matters, then this factor is crucial for you. It is worth noting that the platforms have begun to realize this matter and have developed a unique and simple design and construction method for users who want to establish their first online store from scratch.
Diversity of payment methods : You certainly do not want to limit your customers to one payment method, especially with the current great diversity of payment methods, such as credit card, PayPal, and others. Therefore, it may be necessary for the platform to provide multiple payment methods in order to encourage the customer to purchase.
The possibility of developing the business : Here we mean the possibility of expanding your store, adding new products, and receiving increasing orders, and also the possibility of adding features or linking sub-sites or even social media accounts to your store. This would expand your customer base.
Security level: The platform must have a high level of security. You do not want errors to occur or for there to be security vulnerabilities that weaken your customers’ confidence in your store or make them hesitate to take the purchase step, right?
Support and assistance : Of course, you may face many technical problems at the beginning of launching your store, and you will need technical support and some advice and guidance in order to be able to overcome these problems, and the presence of a good support and follow-up service on the platform is one of the keys to success for novice entrepreneurs.

There are many other secondary elements, but what we have mentioned so far represent the basic pillars that support the success of your store and improve the customer’s shopping experience.

The most popular e-commerce platforms

Many trading platforms have emerged in light of the great competition in the field of e-commerce, but the largest players in the market in the Arab world and in the global arena as well are the Shopify platform and the WooCommerce platform on WordPress. We will review a brief overview of each platform separately with its most prominent advantages and disadvantages before Moving on to the comparison round and then the decisive result between these two giants.

About WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the most popular plugins specialized in online stores on WordPress, and it constitutes about 3.5% of the electronic pages on the Internet, and this is what puts it at the forefront of the competition with a wider reputation than the famous e-commerce platforms, such as Magento (1.1%) and Shopify (1%). and PrestaShop (0.6%).

Here are some encouraging statistics about the widespread use of WooCommerce around the world:

More than 3.3 million websites use the WooCommerce plugin on WordPress
More than 28% of online stores use the WooCommerce plugin
Of the top 1 million e-commerce sites, about a fifth (22%) of these sites use WooCommerce
About 94% of stores that rely on the WordPress platform use the WooCommerce plugin
There are more than 1,200 distinct WooCommerce plugin templates that users can choose from
About 1,000 plugins and plugins can be used with the WooCommerce plugin on the WordPress platform

WooCommerce Features

The WooCommerce plugin features the following:

Various payment methods, including PayPal, BAC transfer, cash on delivery, credit cards, and others.
It provides different payment systems regarding shipping costs, including local shipping costs and shipping costs to different countries
The ability to obtain periodic reports on sales and products in the store (if you have a place to store products) and customer ratings, in addition to statistics about the general performance of your store.
Providing the ability to add offers, discounts, wholesale sales, and other various selling options to the customer
The ability to market the store on WooCommerce through other websites or social media platforms
The ability to sell both physical products and services through your store
Completely free and open source; This means that you can benefit from other users’ contributions, and you will find a long and diverse list of customizable plugins and templates .

Disadvantages of WooCommerce

As for the disadvantages related to using the WooCommerce add-on, we can summarize them as follows:

It costs extra for secondary plugins and utilities, although the WooCommerce plugin itself is completely free.
The significant impact on the speed of pages on your WordPress site, especially if you run a blog or another plugin on WordPress, but this negativity can be overcome through good management and organization of plugins on WordPress and not installing them randomly while configuring the code and adjusting plugin settings in a consistent manner. each other.
The possibility of conflict or interference with some other plugins on WordPress, and the reason is the presence of different codes between the WooCommerce plugin and another plugin that is active on your WordPress site.

The steps for creating a WooCommerce store are simple. They initially include creating your own website on WordPress, then obtaining reliable hosting from one of the hosting sites, then installing the WooCommerce add-on and then choosing what you deem appropriate from among the templates available for online stores. After that, you have to adjust some Simple settings, such as shipping and delivery methods, payment, main and sub-sections, and finally adding and organizing products.

You can learn more about these stages through the step-by-step guide to creating a WooCommerce store , which explains in precise detail the simple steps to creating your own integrated online store.

About Shopify

On the other hand, Shopify is an independent platform specialized in designing and managing individual online stores. In other words, you will not need to download any programs or add-ons in order to launch your own store. It is a pre-configured or closed source platform. This means that you cannot modify the source code of your site, but rather you can modify your store interface according to the presets provided by the Shopify platform.

Despite the limited freedom of choices in customizing and designing the store, the user can only control the front-end interface, while the basic code is not editable. That is, the platform takes care of all modifications and repairs in the back-end of the site. However, the Shopify platform includes enough options to ensure a unique store design.

It is not completely free as in WooCommerce, but nevertheless the cost is quite acceptable, and Shopify is distinguished by the availability of various templates provided by the site itself, in addition to many secondary helpful additions.

Here are some interesting statistics about Shopify:

Last year, the value of sales on the Shopify platform during Black Friday reached about 1.5 billion US dollars.
The tiger rate in terms of sales, number of customers, and e-store owners is impressive, reaching 126% annually.
The third largest online selling platform with a market share of 20% of global value.
About 400,000 websites use Shopify services.
Shopify supports more than 600,000 stores in more than 175 countries around the world.
More than a billion real purchase orders have been made through the Shopify platform so far, amounting to an estimated value of more than 55 billion dollars.
The platform’s annual revenues in 2019-2020 amounted to about $1.5 billion.

Shopify features

Shopify has the following advantages:

Availability of a large number of ready-made templates.
Flexibility in platform settings with the ability to use it on smartphones via the platform’s official application.
The ability to use your own domain name on your store on the platform.
It provides the feature of self-designing the exterior of the store, so that you can put your distinctive artistic touch on the design of your store.
Provides a secondary blog through which you can write articles or posts about your products.
There is a feature of statistics and questionnaires about the general performance of the store.
High compatibility with popular marketing tools, such as email and social media.
It provides the ability for customers to submit their opinions and ratings, in addition to the ability to place discounts for a specific group of customers.
Availability of a special support and assistance section.

Disadvantages of Shopify

Disadvantages of Shopify include:

The Shopify platform is designed specifically for beginners, so if you know some technical tricks and are familiar with programming matters, you will not be able to use your experience much on this platform.
Shopify includes a long list of premium templates, but most of them are paid, and the free ones are very limited, so if you want some distinction for your store, you will have to buy paid templates or hire an expert programmer to set up your store in your own style.
Although there is a special support section, if you need help, you will not be able to get it directly, and you may have to raise your problem in the support forum to wait for an answer from one of the developers or administrators on the platform, and the direct support number is only available to call from the United States. Britain, New Zealand and Australia.

Shopify or WooCommerce ?

In the introduction to our article, we mentioned the factors and features that you should look for in the ideal store for your project, and below we will put these factors in the arena of comparison between the two e-commerce giants, Shopify and WooCommerce on the WordPress platform, to determine for yourself which is the most suitable option for you.

the cost

For most entrepreneurs, the total cost of starting their own online store is the first and primary criterion when choosing the appropriate platform. There are three factors you should take into account when comparing the costs of different platforms:

Store start-up costs, in other words, how much do you have to pay to open your store with its initial design?
Subsequent costs, including additions and utilities that you may need in the future when your store attracts a lot of customers.
Payment plans and additional features available on the platforms, and how much you need these plans.

Shopify includes various payment plans, including:

The basic payment plan, which costs $29 per month, allows you to open your store completely. Through this plan, you can add an unlimited number of products, two users, and an unlimited size of the size of the files attached to the store. However, this plan does not include the auxiliary tools and add-ons that You will definitely need it as your store grows in popularity.

The advanced payment plan, costs $79, and includes the ability to use some add-ons and utilities. In addition to all plans, all plans include the ability to set your own domain name, an SSL certificate, and internal hosting on the Shopify website. Additional paid plans are characterized by reducing the fees that Shopify deducts from the sales that your store achieves. For example, Shopify deducts 2% from the price of the product sold in the basic payment plan. Below is an image from the official Shopify website showing the fees in each business plan.

On the other hand, WooCommerce is essentially a free plugin based on WordPress, but you will still need to add a domain name, obtain an SSL certificate, and host your site. The cost of a domain name is about $14.99 per year, an SSL certificate is about $69.99 one-time, and hosting usually starts at $7.99 per month.

It may seem as if opening a store on WooCommerce is more expensive than its counterpart Shopify, but if we think about it carefully, the monthly costs on WooCommerce are mainly hosting, which is less than the monthly costs of opening a store on Shopify in the long run, in addition to the fact that there are many companies Which provided distinctive hosting offers for entrepreneurs who want to open their store for the first time on WooCommerce.

It is also worth noting that WooCommerce does not include any fees for sales made through your store, and there are many free plugins and templates that you can choose from.

Based on the above, it is clear that WooCommerce is the winner in the cost race with Shopify.

Ease of use

Most entrepreneurs who want to open their first store do not have much experience in programming matters and website development, and even if you have simple knowledge in this field, you will need an easy and clear interactive interface in order to start your store without errors.

Shopify plays a strong role in terms of ease of use. As we mentioned, the online store on Shopify is self-hosted. This means that you will not have to download or install any software, nor will you have to secure hosting, constantly download updates, monitor performance, errors, etc.

Once you register your store on Shopify, it will lead you to choose the appropriate template for you, specify the basic settings, and add your products in a very easy and simple way. One of the drawbacks is the limited selection and customization of your store, as the user is limited to options and tools previously defined by the platform.

In contrast, WooCommerce is not autonomous, meaning you need to manage and customize content yourself, download and upload plugins and utilities, routinely perform backups and updates yourself, and register payment services with intermediaries, such as PayPay.

However, WooCommerce offers very great flexibility in customizing your store and modifying the smallest details in it. You can add almost any tool you can imagine to your store, especially with the availability of more than 50 thousand plugins on WordPress related to online stores, and this gives you a very wide space to come up with a distinctive store.

The main drawback of this great flexibility in customization is that you need to have sufficient knowledge of technical matters and basic website design principles, but it is not that difficult at all.

After this review, we can say that in terms of ease of use, Shopify wins the round.

Diversity of payment methods

One of the basic criteria that plays a major role in the success of your store is the diversity of payment methods. You do not want the customer to back out of purchasing your distinctive product just because the payment method available to him is not available in your store, right? Therefore, the diversity and flexibility of payment methods is essential in which platform you want to rely on.

Shopify offers many options for payment methods, including its own payment method called Shopify Payments, in addition to other popular payment methods, such as PayPal, Amazon, Stripe, and others.

The main negative in Shopify is the fees that the site imposes on every sale made through external payment methods. These fees reach 2% of the price of the product paid in the basic store plan (Basic Shopify), and you can reduce this percentage to 0.5% by choosing the advanced payment plan ( Advanced Shopify).

On the other hand, WooCommerce also provides multiple payment methods, mainly PayPay and Strip. You can add other payment methods by downloading add-ons for those methods. The main advantage of WooCommerce is the availability of many local, uncommon payment methods, and this greatly expands your customer base.

Another big plus when using WooCommerce is that the platform does not add any fees at all to sales made through your store, and the fees are only for money transfers via payment methods.

So it is clear that WooCommerce is superior to its counterpart Shopify in terms of saving money and increasing profits.

Developability

As your store develops and your customer base expands, you will be surprised by the large amount of orders and sales that need to be organized and controlled. You will face great challenges as your store’s popularity increases. Both Shopify and WooCommerce are prepared for that challenge, with some differences between them.

Shopify performs its work excellently in this regard. All technical matters related to increased work pressure and requests on your store are handled by the platform for you. You will not have to worry about declining performance or the emergence of security vulnerabilities and making backup copies of your customers’ extensive data.

As your store grows and the demand for your products increases, you can simply develop the payment plan on Shopify to keep pace with the increasing demand and demand for your store. Shopify also provides a business plan specific to companies to match their work pressure, and this saves you the costs of hiring employees to control orders and ensure smooth workflow.

The main negative here is the increase in costs that Shopify imposes on your store, so at this point you must review your accounts well so that you do not find yourself in embarrassing financial situations later. In addition, Shopify is a closed source platform, meaning that you cannot make any modifications to the source code of your site. If you want to.

On the other hand, WooCommerce requires some monitoring from you, especially as your customer base expands and your sales increase. As we mentioned, WooCommerce is one of the plugins on WordPress, which means that you are primarily responsible for expanding, monitoring, and developing your business.

The nice thing is that you have many options to develop your store, such as purchasing broader hosting on specialized servers and downloading add-ons to monitor and control sales operations in your store, all of which will give you almost complete control over your store even at peak times.

Of course, the costs of hosting your store will increase as it expands. In return, you will be able to control all the details related to your customers easily and save the costs resulting from increasing sales in your store and controlling the sales movement in it as well. It is worth noting that you can employ the services of companies specialized in hosting online stores through WooCommerce, which will organize for you all the details related to expanding your store and controlling sales operations.

In addition, adding WooCommerce to WordPress is open sourced, meaning that you can add any modifications you deem appropriate to the source code, and this gives you great flexibility in controlling the expansion and development of your business in the future, of course if you have sufficient programming skill.

After reviewing the ease and automatic tuning on Shopify versus the great flexibility of self-tuning and cost reduction on WooCommerce, we can say that there is a trade-off for each of them in terms of some pros and features depending on the characteristics you are looking for.

Conclusion

After the round of comparison that we conducted in our article between Shopify and the WooCommerce plugin and clarifying the pros and cons of each party, we can clearly lean towards the WooCommerce plugin on WordPress because of the great freedom it offers to store owners in designing and choosing templates and many helpful tools, with the possibility of combining the WooCommerce plugin with Other WordPress plugins to produce professional results.

In addition to reducing costs to the greatest possible extent with the absence of fees on sales operations through your online store, maintaining complete control over the buying and selling movement through your online store, and finally the high level of security and the possibility of expanding and customizing the store completely and with great freedom that guarantees you to come up with a distinct and unique store in the market. Intense competition on the Internet