As an entrepreneur, selecting an appropriate e-commerce platform for a business is critical to success. It is also important that business owners have a deep understanding of the platform. Shopify and WooCommerce are two of the most popular e-commerce platforms right now. They share many similarities. However, each delivers a service or quality that the other may lack.

Table Summary

Unsplash

Definitions

Shopify is an all-in-one platform that allows users to easily construct an online store, collect payments, and manage inventory from a single platform. With Shopify, the sellers don’t have to worry about the technical parts of running an eCommerce site, such as web hosting, security, caching, etc. Sellers can also sell in various areas, including web, mobile, in-person, brick-and-mortar locations, pop-up shops, and across many channels ranging from social media to online marketplaces.

WooCommerce is a WordPress e-commerce plugin. It simplifies the process of developing and administering an online store by providing respectable levels of flexibility and various important features such as inventory and tax administration, secure payments, and shipping integration. WooCommerce also allows sellers to install custom extensions and modify every part of their online store.

WooCommerce VS Shopify

The biggest difference between the two is in the hosting. WooCommerce lets you host the site yourself with WordPress as the CMS. With Shopify, you don’t need to buy a separate hosting subscription because Shopify hosts and administers the software for you. As a result, WooCommerce allows for more flexibility even though it requires a little technical know-how and a bigger wallet. The cost of setting up a Shopify store is about a quarter of setting up on WooCommerce without a hosting company. However, with a little research, you can beat down the pricing to less than half of the Shopify cost.