Before using any kind of framework or tool at King Design, we thoroughly research and test them. One of the more common questions we get asked by clients who need a new online e-commerce platform, is which platform they should use: Shopify or WooCommerce? There are more in-depth comparisons that exist but this post serves as more of a quick, general overview of why we prefer Shopify over WooCommerce. I also want to point out that both of these options are based on the main website having a WordPress backend.
Security
Security is a big part of an e-commerce store, as you can imagine, and Shopify wins by coming with an SSL certificate and being PCI-DSS compliant out of the box. With WooCommerce, since it’s a WordPress plugin, you’ll need to source an SSL and make sure your site has security measures in place. If you’re handling any credit card information outside of the standard payment processors, your site will also need to be PCI compliant.
Customer Support
Both Shopify and WooCommerce have detailed documentation but Shopify wins by also providing 24/7 customer service over the phone, live chat and email.
Price
Pricing starts off in favor of WooCommerce but can easily tip back toward Shopify. WooCommerce is free, while Shopify has set pricing tiers depending on what features you need. The tiers range from $29/month to $299/month. In our research, it seemed like we’d have to purchase add-ons in WooCommerce for similar features that are already included or free plugins in Shopify. We scored them about evenly for this category.
UX
The user experience should definitely be factored in but whether it’s good or bad depends upon the user. Shopify is essentially its own website, which means you have a separate login from your main website and all of your e-commerce data will live there. WooCommerce on the other hand, since it’s part of your current website, utilizes your same login and the e-commerce data lives with everything else. Like I mentioned, whether this is good or bad depends on how the user feels about keeping the e-commerce data separate or together.
Verdict
Thanks to the built-in security, 24/7 customer service, knowing the majority of the cost upfront and keeping the e-commerce data separate from the main website data, we lean more towards Shopify over WooCommerce. I hope this post was helpful and provided just a quick comparison overview for anyone else debating between the two options. If you have an online store and can use a website redesign, let us know!
