It is very crucial to decide which eCommerce platform to use when you have two great alternatives to choose from.
Comparing WooCommerce Vs Shopify is not an easy nut to crack.
The battle of WooCommerce Vs Shopify is a never-ending one. However, you can easily make the decision by answering a few questions:
- Your Budget
- Development time
- Have Designers or not?
- Features you want to use
WooCommerce Vs Shopify Comprison for:
The Quick Comparison Table
Comparison Factors | WooCommerce | Shopify |
Nature | Plugin | Platform |
Hosting | Self-Hosted | Hosted |
Easy-Hard | Do It Yourself thing | Easy enough |
Blog | Based on Blogging | Can run a blog |
Responsiveness | Depends on the theme | Responsive |
Email Marketing | Yes, with plugins | Inbuilt newsletter |
Storage | Depend on your server | Unlimited Product Storage |
Pricing | Free | Starts from 29$ per month |
Trial | Install on Local Host | 14 Day |
Open Source | Yes | No |
Additional Plugins | Free and Paid | Most are paid |
Analytics | Yes | Yes |
Design | Enhanced + Theme | Themes |
#1 Getting Started
Getting started is a one-time process.
It really does not matter if one is a bit more time taking than the other.
WooCommerce
Talking about WooCommerce, it is super easy for someone already using WordPress. Adding a store to your WordPress website is just a plugin install away. When you first install WordPress, you get a quick setup wizard. On the completion of the setup wizard, you will be having your eCommerce store ready.
Ingredients: a domain, web hosting, WordPress Install
Shopify
All you need is to pick a plan and start with building your Shopify store. Till the time you’re building your store, you get a subdomain URL to see how your store will look like. You can attach a domain to it and push it live for the web later.
Ingredients: a domain + Shopify plan
#2 Pricing
Cost is a matter of discussion when it comes to WooCommerce Vs Shopify.
Let’s see which is more pricey.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is offered for FREE by WooThemes. It is an extension to WordPress which is also a free open-source software based on PHP and MySQL.
When you develop your website on Woo, buying a domain and web hosting for WooCommerce is a necessity. It costs you a minimum of $10+250$ per year.

Shopify
Shopify is a hosted eCommerce platform where you pay for running and hosting your store monthly or annually.
In case you go with Shopify, all you need to buy is a domain and Shopify subscription. It costs a minimum of $10+$348 per year to run your website for one year.
Thus, Shopify is a bit more expensive than WooCommerce.
#3 Content
Any website that wants to rank needs strong content.
Both the platforms understand this need and have a lot to offer.
WooCommerce
Well, Basically, WooCommerce is WordPress. You’ll entertain all the features of a WordPress website when you decide to go with WooCommerce for your eCommerce store.
In WordPress, you can add pages, write blog posts, create custom post types, install WooCommerce add-ons and make custom landing pages using page builders.
You can also offer your customers to create an account and a public profile on your website where they can socialize with other customers. It is totally customizable and free to use.
Shopify
Talking about Shopify, it is especially to host an eCommerce website with product pages and archives. Well, Shopify has an App store that is growing continuously with over 500 cool add-ons to enhance the functionality of your store.
You get a vast resource to help you in selling online from the Shopify website since it is a platform especially to help you succeed in selling online.
#4 Payment Setup
The next big base of discussion on WooCommerce Vs Shopify is the payment modes that can be integrated.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with Stripe and Paypal. However, more payment methods can be integrated with it such as Amazon Payments, Authorize.net etc.
It is you who take care of the integration and connection with the payment processors when you run on WooCommerce.
Shopify
Shopify’s method of processing payments is different. They offer you their native Shopify payments which are powered by Stripe.
You have the peace of mind to focus on sales and grow the business. Shopify will pay you after deducting their credit card payment processing fee which is 2.9% + 30 cents. You do not pay any payment processing fee as far as you’re using Shopify Payments.
#5 SEO
Unless you bring your business online and then on search engine result pages, your business is not actually kick-started.
Here comes the need for SEO compatibility to successfully embark your business online.
WooCommerce Vs Shopify:
WooCommerce is super SEO optimized while Shopify needs your coding skills or additional apps for configuring the rich snippets.
Another thing is the freedom to customize the base folder for page and post URLs.
#6 Marketing Features (Affiliate/Referrals, Newsletters, Guest Checkout)
The best marketing feature is to offer influencers commission when they sell your product to their followers using their influence.
You can easily integrate an affiliate program in your eCommerce store with WooCommerce by installing FREE plugins while Shopify affiliate marketing apps are not available for free.
However, the feature exists in both of the eCommerce platforms.
#7 Support
Next comes the issue of technical support. You need thorough documentation and an active community of users and developers for your help and support.
Both these platforms have pretty different ways to offer this service.
WooCommerce
In WooCommerce, you either need to hire a developer to solve all your problems or ask in an open WordPress community.
This community is helpful and there to assist you out for free. The only hurdle is that you’ll have to do it yourself.
Shopify
At times you encounter errors inside your dashboard or hear about one from your customer, you will be looking for help.
Shopify support is well paid for assistance and they offer you help on email, phone call or chat to solve your issues at your disposal.

#8 Trial
Every software company is offering a free trial period for its customers so that they can evaluate the product.
You would also want to see how your eCommerce store will look like before hitting it live.
WooCommerce
But WooCommerce is open source and totally ‘free’ for all. If you have got a web hosting plan, you can start creating your online store today.
Even if you have not decided on the web hosting plan, you can still install WordPress on your localhost. This way, you can learn, create, customize and design your online store offline. Isn’t it amazing!
Shopify
Shopify offers you 14 days free trial where you can create, customize and design your online store and see changes live.
Only admins can see the store for the trial period, to make it visible for the customers, you need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Conclusion
After the full-fledged discussion on WooCommerce Vs Shopify, your next question would be, which platform is best for me?
So, let’s come to a decision.

When to choose Shopify?
If you’ve no idea how to sell online, just start with Shopify. You’ll get premium support, documentation help, invoicing and a peace of mind when it comes to billing and accounts.
When to choose WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is for those who can do everything on their own and may want to change their website design according to their needs.
WooCommerce is free to use open source WordPress plugin and extensive resources are available online. So, if you’re tight on the budget, going with WooCommerce is the right choice.
However, you will still need a good web hosting to manage your WordPress.