WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which One Is Better In 2024?

Starting an eCommerce business seems like a lot of work if you don’t know how to start. But before starting your business, you need to choose an eCommerce platform, and Shopify & WooCommerce are the two best options available in the market.

Now the question arises, which platform should you choose – WooCommerce or Shopify?

Having built and managed demo stores on both WooCommerce and Shopify, I’m in a unique position to compare them head-to-head across criteria like cost, scalability, themes, features, and support. 

In this unbiased WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison, I’ll assess the core strengths and weaknesses of each solution based on firsthand experience as an ecommerce store owner.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Quick Comparison (2024)

Here is a quick comparison between WooCommerce and Shopify.

Feature	WooCommerce	Shopify
Cost	Free, paid plugins	$39 – $399 per month
Ease of Use	Advanced setup and design require more technical skill	Very easy “drag & drop” builder
Customization	Very flexible, edit code directly	More pre-built templates and sections
Themes	Thousands of free and paid themes	A Few free themes and paid themes starting from $140
App Integrations	Extensive app and plugin ecosystem	Robust app store with thousands of apps
Scalability	Highly scalable to enterprise-level	Scalable for small to large businesses
Selling Channels	Online store only	Online, retail, social selling channels
Inventory & Shipping	Requires third-party plugins	Built-in tools for U.S. and Canada
Support	Documentation, forums, and paid support are available	24/7 live chat, email, and phone support

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Main Differences

Before we compare these two eCommerce platforms, you should know the key differences between them.

• WooCommerce is a free-to-use platform, but you will need a custom domain and a hosting service to start using WooCommerce. You will need an active subscription on Shopify to take your store online. However, you can try all the features of Shopify with its 3-day trial.
• WooCommerce allows you to sell products only online, whereas you can combine your offline and online stores using the Shopify POS app and sell your products seamlessly.
• WooCommerce depends on third-party hosting services meaning if your hosting faces any issues, then your online store will face issues as well. Shopify does not rely on third-party hosting services because it offers its own hosting to all its users.
• You can design your online store on WooCommerce in any way you want because WooCommerce is part of WordPress and it is an open-source platform. Shopify does not give you the freedom to add coding to your online store.

Now we will check their functionalities in detail – 

WooCommerce Vs Shopify: eCommerce Features & Tools

First things first, we would check their built-in eCommerce features and evaluate who can be the better option to serve an online store.

WooCommerce eCommerce Features

As you all know, Woocommerce is mainly built on WordPress. As a result, what will work for WordPress, will also be useful for Woocommerce. Thus, Woocommerce has a wide range of effective eCommerce features. 

• From physical goods to digital products,  you can sell anything and everything on this platform. 
• Managing orders is as easy as pie. 
• Automated tax calculation
• Market your store and skyrocket sales by listing products on Google Shopping.
• Woocomerce allows multi-currency and multi-channel selling.
• Show products in a modular way via Woocommerce blocks.
• It includes 140+ region-specific payment gateways, including Woocommerce Payments, Stripe, PayPal, etc. 
• Google Reporting and Analytics

Shopify eCommerce Features

Now, Let’s see what Shopify has to offer in its eCommerce features.

• Flexible POS
• Streamlined Order Fulfillment Process
• Product Management
• Abandoned Cart Recovery
• Email Marketing feature
• Mukti-currency and multilingual selling
• Shopify Internationalisation
• Dropshipping
• Order management
• 100+ payment gateways, including some leading names like Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.
• Reporting & Analysing

Winner: Shopify

After analyzing both platforms, we find Shopify has more solid and effective built-in features than WooCommerce. Also, Shopify’s best principle that can benefit your business is this platform is capable of handling complicated technical aspects automatically. 

Thus, Shopify is always a better choice in this case.

Woocommerce Vs Shopify: SEO Functionalities

No matter how phenomenal eCommerce features a platform offers, if it fails to maintain top-notch SEO functionalities, it’s a turn-off for your business. We, therefore, must check what these platforms have included to help your store rank in SERPs. 

Woocommerce SEO

As Woocommerce is integrated with WordPress, it offers exciting SEO features with a range of impressive SEO plugins.

You can enable the breadcrumb to help visitors determine site structure.  You can also go the extra mile by adding unique product descriptions and optimizing page titles.  Apart from that, Woocommerce’s other unique SEO functionalities, like simple site navigation, WordPress Permalinks, Image Alt Text, Yoast SEO integration, and All-in-one SEO Plugin, are quite effective in boosting site visibility. 

Shopify SEO

Like Woocommerce, Shopify also offers basic SEO functionalities, including page titles, meta descriptions, crawling & indexing, redirects, etc. 

But Unlike Woocommerce, Shopify doesn’t integrate many effective SEO plugins. Thus if you are looking for any third-party SEO integrations, you have to either go for Yoast or SEO Booster to have the best SEO functionalities.

Winner: Woocommerce

Being a WordPress eCommerce solution, Woocomerce integrates WordPress SEO functionalities ( which is itself unbeatable) too. Thus, it’s a bit difficult for Shopify to overcome Woocommerce’s commendable SEO features. 

WooCommerce Vs Shopify: Ease of Use

When a site or store is super easy to navigate, it becomes the first choice of everyone. Thus, we have included this section to check which one provides better UX. 

WooCommerce Ease of Use

Though Woocommerce claims it’s super intuitive to navigate, we slightly disagree with this statement. No doubt, you can create a basic eCommerce store with its simple customization process, but to create an attractive-looking storefront and operate advanced features, you need some learning curves. 

Not only that, sourcing security and configuring shipping are also tricky on Woocommerce. Thus, we recommend you take a developer’s guidance or get information from the Woocommerce documentation and support forum.

Shopify Ease of Use

Being a hosted eCommerce platform, Shopify takes care of the technical complications on its own and frees you from the extra burden of learning the process. 

From setting up a standalone store to order fulfillment, the whole cycle is a piece of cake with Shopify’s beginner-friendly interface and functionalities. On top of that, you don’t need to worry about any security settings in your store. 

Winner: Shopify

Considering all the above aspects, we’ll give a big thumbs up to Shopify as far as ease of use is concerned. But still, if you have some technical knowledge, using Wooocommerce would be a cakewalk for you. 

Woocommerce Vs Shopify: Themes & Designs

When a customer visits an online store, the first thing he notices is the storefront – how it looks, whether it’s attractive or not, whether it’s personalized or not, and many other aspects. If your site checks all these boxes, then it creates a long-lasting impression among your customers.

Woocommerce Themes & Designs

Currently, Woocommerce offers a total of 62 customizable templates from various categories, including arts and crafts, digital and audio, electronics and software, fashion and apparel, and many more.

All these themes are responsive and include eCommerce integration, enough display option, and eCommerce-focused homepages. We personally like Woocommerce’s Storefront ( free)  theme, which is super lean and designed to take your store to the next level. 

However, if you aren’t satisfied with its built-in features, you can install Storefront integrations( paid) for better results.  

Shopify Themes & Designs

When it comes to Shopify’s themes & Designs, it’s “commendable.” With 100+ advanced themes ( both paid and free), Shopify is the go-to option for every business owner. 

No matter whether you have a clothing, electronic, or food brand, Shopify has every kind of solution for you. While Shopify’s free themes are a bit outdated, its paid themes ( $200-$350 one-time)  are expertly designed and modern. 

These templates are categorized into small-large catalogs, selling in-person or internationally, minimalistic styles, etc. 

In a nutshell, if you are looking forward to enhancing your brand storytelling via visual themes, Shopify is a perfect fit for you.  

Winner: Shopify

From our test, we’d make Shopify the winner here as its themes offering are way more streamlined and updated than Woocommerce’s. 

WooCommerce Vs Shopify:  Apps & Integrations

In this competitive marketplace, you need some extra features and apps ( except for built-in features) to stand out among the crowd. Now, we need to see which of them has better extensions and integrations. 

WooCommerce Integrations 

As of now, Woocommerce has a total of 788 extensions to create a seamless selling journey. These integrations range from $0- $299 and are categorized into different sections. 

From conversion to merchandising to customer service, Woocommerce has integrated every type of extension in its app marketplace. 

( Pro Tip: We recommend checking the ratings before integrating any apps. )

Shopify Integrations

With over 8k+ epic apps for various categories, Shopify App Marketplace is a perfect place for merchants looking to scale their business to the next level. 

To name a few – Klaviyo, Spocket, Oberlo, Printful, and many more leading apps are available in the Shopify app marketplace. 

Winner: Shopify

Shopify has a wider and more diversified range of apps than WooCommerce.

Woocommerce Vs Shopify: Blogging Features

Content marketing is one of the best ways to engage with your potential customers and boost conversion rates. But who has aced these features? Let’s check. 

WooCommerce Blogging Features

As you all know, Woocommerce integrates with WordPress (one of the most used and trending CMS platforms). Thus, no other platform can defeat WooCommerce in this case. It automatically inherits all the top-notch blogging functionalities from its parent site, WordPress. 

You can simply start blogging from the WordPress dashboard and optimize it with the out-of-the-box SEO features to rank higher on SERPs.

Shopify Blogging Features

Creating a blog on Shopify doesn’t require much time and effort. Every Shopify store comes with an in-built blogging engine. On top of that, you can manage and customize your blogging page with different site theme designs. 

You can also optimize the blog posts for better visibility. Thus, blogging on Shopify is quite good and standard. 

Winner: Woocommerce

Undoubtedly, Woocommerce would be the winner here as its blogging functionalities are backed by WordPress, the king of all CMS systems. 

Woocommerce Vs Shopify: Pricing Battle 

Here comes the most important part of the whole article. How much do they cost? Are they value for money? – We will answer here. 

Woocommerce Pricing

Most people get confused when it comes to Woocommerce’s pricing plans.  Well, let us tell you WooCommerce has no fixed monthly plans like Shopify. 

Being an open-source platform, integrating Woocommerce is free. But you need to pay for its maintenance. For example –

• Hosting Cost –$120/year
• Domain registration- $15
• Payment gateway cost – 2.9% +30 cents with $0-$30/month

Thus, if we keep shipping, themes, and developer costs aside, you have to spend around $30-$40/month, which is quite affordable and worth it. 

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers 3 different plans to users – 

• Basic: $39/month
• Shopify: $105/month
• Advanced: $399/month 

If you are just starting your eCommerce business, we would always recommend the basic plan. However, Shopify’s 3-day free trial option is a good advantage for testing its features.

On top of that, you have to pay 2.9%+ 30 cents with the monthly plan if you use any third-party payment gateways except for Shopify Payment. If you want to know how much Shopify takes per sale, then refer to this page.

Winner: Woocommerce

Shopify is a bit expensive – its basic plan starts at $39/month but you can also save on the plans from our exclusive Shopify discount code. In contrast, Woocommerce is free to install, and you can manage everything under $100. 

So, Woocommerce would be a better option for newbies.

Woocommerce Vs Shopify: Customer Support

An active customer support team is always helpful to handhold you in your selling journey. If this service is poor, it’s a huge turn-off for both the store owner and customers. Here, we’ll check who has a better customer support team. 

Woocommerce Customer Support

Woocommerce only offers two methods to contact the customer team – Email ( support@woocommerce.com) and Live Chat. 

There’s no call support for merchants. However, you can visit Woocommerce blogs and community forums to get your doubts clear. You can also hire a WooExpert who will guide you throughout the technical process. 

Shopify Customer Support

Like Woocommerce, Shopify also offers Email and Live Chat support to users. It also offers phone support, which we really appreciate. 

Moreover, Shopify Blogs are the best place to enrich your eCommerce knowledge and solve your doubts. 

Winner: Shopify

The clear winner is Shopify, as it offers phone support with email and live chat. 

Woocommerce Vs Shopify: Pros & Cons

Final Verdict: Shopify is Better than WooCommerce for Beginners

Now, it’s time for the ultimate conclusion – Who wins the battle? 

Well, as per our research, we find both of them are useful to a different set of customers. Thus- 

Go for Woocommerce if – 

• Your main focus is on CMS.
• You are a complete beginner.
• You have a tight budget.
• You are tech-savvy. 

Go for Shopify if – 

• You have less tech knowledge.
• You want to grow your business to the next level
• You want more eCommerce features. 

However, Shopify will be our ultimate winner as we believe great product comes with a higher budget. 

What yours? Do let us know. 

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