Two of the most prominent e-commerce platforms are Shopify and WooCommerce, but how do you determine which one is best for your online business? N4 Studio has worked with both platforms extensively and put together the following summary of the most significant factors you should consider!

Shopify

Simplicity
Looking for something simple yet functional? Shopify’s greatest strength is its user-friendliness. With pre-vetted themes and applications, a more streamlined structure, and 24-7 customer support, Shopify is very reliable and simple to use.

Customizability
Shopify comes with access to over 1,000 supplementary plugins to add additional features to your website. Many of these plugins are free, many incur a recurring charge, but all of them have been vetted by Shopify and come with guaranteed functionality and synchronicity with your other applications.

Hosting
A website hosting service provides you the foundation to build your website from. It’s where your website images, text and files are stored and it also factors into the speed of your website. Starting at $29/month, Shopify’s basic plan includes premium quality web hosting so you don’t need to purchase it through a third party service.

Upfront Investment
With Shopify, there is a base cost of $30, $80, or $300 per month depending on which package you choose. While Shopify offers many free theme and plugin options, the majority of their high quality and most used options incur additional one-time or recurring charges. The average cost of a premium quality website theme ranges from $120 – $300.

WooCommerce

Simplicity
WooCommerce is an open-sourced extension for WordPress, it’s designed to be highly flexible in both appearance and functionality. This customizability does lead to more complexity, which usually leads to a longer development time. Additionally, the backend of your website will be slightly more complicated to navigate than a comparable Shopify website.

Customizability
Impressively, WooCommerce boasts over 10,000 supplementary plugins, most of them created by third-party developers. Since WooCommerce is an open-source platform, more developers create applications to offer additional features to a WooCommerce site. This does increase the risk of conflicts between applications and plugins, but it also offers a greater variety of features to choose from. And with an experienced team like N4 Studio, you won’t have to worry about compatibility issues because we’ll do the research to get ahead of any pain points. Additionally, the more competitive market for supplementary plugins also helps drive down the cost compared to similar products on Shopify.

Hosting
WooCommerce doesn’t come with web hosting so you’ll need to purchase it through a third-party service like Bluehost, Godaddy or NameCheap. That said, basic hosting plans are very affordable and generally range from just $3-6/month. Because of the competitive market for hosting, many of these services offer additional perks like a free domain and security features that would otherwise come at an additional cost.

Upfront Investment
WooCommerce has fewer free options for themes and plugins, but they do not have a base cost for their platform, and as a result often end up being notably lower in upfront and recurring costs. Moreover, the more modular nature of WooCommerce allows for a more customized cost structure; i.e. you only pay for what you need and will use.

The Bottom Line

All things considered, if you’re looking to get a website up quickly and with a simpler design and functionality, Shopify is hard to beat. However, if you’re looking for something more unique, customizable and highly functional, we strongly recommend choosing WooCommerce.

Regardless of your decision, our team is ready to support your web development needs and offer services that suit both platforms.