WooCommerce vs. Shopify vs. Magento: WHOPPING DIFFERENCES

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Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce empower the majority of all top-notch 100,000 eCommerce websites across the globe. 

Currently, Shopify has crossed the mark of 5,00,000 consumers, Magento consistently had more than 250,000 websites for a very long time, and WooCommerce has reached millions of active websites. 

The majority of big organizations having websites around the world have chosen one of these platforms to build their astonishing, customized, and beautiful eCommerce websites. Although these eCommerce development platforms are excellent at their own places, choosing between the three is quite tough. 

Precisely, Magento is quite popular amongst the three but Shopify and WooCommerce are gaining traction from the past few years. To clear out the confusion i.e. Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento, which one to choose,

Let’s check out the difference between the three in the answer below  

Parameters to shortlist between Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento 

• Performance & Scalability 
• SEO effectiveness 
• Reliability & Support 
• Safety & Security 
• Ease-of-use 

There are nearly 24.0 million eCommerce websites across the world that trade their products & services online and the eCommerce market revenue is expected to reach $4.8 billion by 2021. 

Interesting Fact :- 

Do you know that Shopify, Magneto, and WooCommerce hold more than 50.0% of the eCommerce market share? Check out the diagram explaining eCommerce usage distribution in the best-in-class 1 Million Sites- 

So, let’s start the main topic of this blog i.e.  WooCommerce vs. Shopify vs. Magento. But before jumping into the WooCommerce vs. Shopify vs. Magento road, let me give you a brief introduction to these platforms. 

• SHOPIFY 

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Shopify started as an online store in 2004 with the name “Snowdevil”. It later became an eCommerce platform in 2007 and its retailers earned a net sales of nearly $100 million in 2009. Currently, Shopify has more than 820,000 merchants as its customers. 

Shopify has become a big hit among its customers these days as it is more like a software-as-a-service where non-technical people can easily sign up and use it and get their online store running on it in no time. There are no complications, learning curve present, and the interface is amazingly intuitive. 

Following are some of the big organizations that have partnered with Shopify – 

• WooCommerce 

Build exactly the eCommerce Website You Want 

WooCommerce runs more than 29.1% of all eCommerce stores, which nearly amount to almost 3.0 million stores. WooCommerce is primarily a WordPress plugin that one has to deploy after they have bought a domain for the website. 

 The main reason behind the popularity of WooCommerce is that it’s very simple to build an eCommerce website if you are a WordPress user already. 

The user interface is quite easy but one does require some basic CSS or HTML knowledge to build and maintain their online store on WooCommerce. 

Following are some of the organizations that partnered with WooCommerce- 

• MAGENTO 

Presently, Magento has nearly 250,000eCommerce websites with a 10.0% share in the top-notch 1 million eCommerce websites across the globe. 

Magento is one of the most popular and acknowledged customizable eCommerce platforms one can find. It started in 2007 and scored more than 5,00,000 customers quite easily.  Magento has two main services- 

• One is open source 
• Another is Magento Commerce 

In the first one, anyone can easily sign up and build a website for free. In the second one, the services are paid and offer all hosting services.

Following are some big brands that partnered with Magento- 

Now, coming to the main topic Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento- which one is the best? 

WooCommerce vs. Shopify vs. Magento- Which one to Choose?

• Performance & Scalability
  

– MAGENTO

Magento is massively powerful and easily accommodates hundreds of products along with huge website traffic. 

If you are one of them who have a big business or are planning to expand the business then Magento can be an extremely efficient content management system for you. 

Magento is quite scalable and you can easily reduce or increase the resources your website needs depending on the traffic inflow. This literally means you don’t have to experience any barrier in website crashes or speed downfalls during a sudden change in traffic. 

– Shopify

In Shopify, when it comes to site performance & speed it fares well. In fact, website speed is one of the main benefits. 

Now talking about scalability, it does not perform well compared to the other two eCommerce platforms, which can prove to be a barrier if your business increases. If you need a smooth workflow for your business then you can go for Shopify plus. But this may also increase your cost heavily. 

– WooCommerce 

It allows scalability but people with less experience and no experience might find it difficult to map their websites according to the requirements. If you don’t have any coding backgrounds then you may find WoooCommerce scalable for you at all. 

So the winner is Magento 

Hire an eCommerce web development company to build a secure, and scalable website on the Magento platform.

• Seo Effectiveness 

– MAGENTO

It offers advanced SEO features along with inbuilt efficient analytics. It generates SEO friendly meta description, URLs, and integrates Google site maps that are too auto-generated in websites and automates image resizing and watermarking. 

Along with these features, SEO can be smoothly personalized suiting your website requirements if you hold the required skill set. According to a study conducted in 2019, it was revealed that Magento had an SEO score of 100 out of 100. 

– Shopify 

Well,  being the first eCommerce store, Shopify is surely optimized for SEO but the only issue is that it doesn’t spare much room for personalization. There are various SEO practices available for your business but the problem is you won’t be able to deploy them as Shopify doesn’t allow. 

– WooCommerce 

WooCommerce has a plethora of extensions and plugins available that helps in a good degree of SEO. Users can easily tweak their settings as they like according to their website to make them better. 

So We have Two Winners here: Magento & WooCommerce

• Reliability & Support 

– Magento 

Magento has a whopping community of nearly 3,00,000 members. With certified and amateur members in the team who are contributing to these communities, it is quite hard to search for help if you are facing any problems. 

– Shopify 

Shopify offers 24*7 support to its customers. The response time is very good and they are quite prompt with their solutions and replies. You can anytime reach customer service and connect through email, live chat, and phone calls. 

– WooCommerce 

WooCommerce is basically a WordPress plugin and you might be aware of the fact that the WordPress community is immense. You can smoothly run the platform, take the help easily, and avail the numerous benefits from plugins and code created by developers in the community to improve your website functionality. 

So the winner is Shopify. 

• Safety & Security 

– Magento 

In the case of Magento, safety & security is not a problem at all. If you have a team of efficient developers and hosting servers at your disposal nothing is as secure as Magento then. Further, Magento was the first eCommerce platform that kept the security of data as the priority. 

It offers security patches and there are a plethora of security plugins and extensions provided for securing the data. 

– Shopify

Since everything is globally hosted on Shopify, the platform is quite safe and secure. It keeps an eye on your server-side maintenance and timely regulates it. It also offers you a free SSL certificate and maintains PCI compliances for you. 

– WooCommerce

WooCommece keeps you updated all the time for bug security and fixing. The users need not worry about their security as the team working on the WooCommerce platform always monitors and alters the code to decrease such threats. 

In addition, there are also a plethora of security plugins available too that protect the website from every possible virus attack and hackers. 

So the winner is Magento

• Ease of use 

– Magento 

When it comes to Magento, it has a high learning curve. One cannot maintain a website on this platform without getting a developers’ help or hosting service.

To avail the benefit of the Magento platform you should have the knowledge of cloud hosting, PHP, and HTML  or you can hire eCommerce developers otherwise it would be very difficult for you to run the website on Magento. 

– Shopify 

In the case of Shopify, I would definitely say it requires no prior skills of website development and coding. The platforms offer hosting and the software itself which means the consumers only need to design, manage and set up the store for which themes and plugins are available. 

– WooCommerce 

Well, if you are comfortable with the free version of WooCommerce themes and plugins then it is great for you. But, as I have seen, in the majority of cases, you will definitely need some customizations, after which WooCommerce will become tricky, mainly when you have no coding literacy. 

So the winner is Shopify

Now, after seeing the detailed explanation of Shopify vs. Magento, Magento vs. WooCommerce, and WooCommerce vs. Shopify, let’s check out their advantages. 

Related: 7 REASONS WHY SHOULD STARTUPS SWITCH TO MAGENTO ECOMMERCE PLATFORM

Advantages Comparision of Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento 

Magento

• Hosting Freedom 

• Multiple Websites 

• Site Speed 

Shopify 

• Mobile App Compatibility 

• Beautiful Design 

• Ease Of Use 

WooCommerce 

• Themes & Plugins 

• Sell Any Kind Of Products 

• Flexibility 

Now I have mapped out the advantages of Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento, so let’s move further to their pricing and cost differences. 

Pricing and Costing 

So, now I will explain the price/costing of Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento with the help of a diagram which is as follows- 

So, I have tried to explain the core difference between Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce which might help you map out Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento, which you want to choose for your eCommerce website development. 

Well, for every case, it is a personal experience, but one thing for sure is that you would definitely need to hire an eCommerce web development company that has at least 10+ years of experience in delivering top-notch eCommerce websites to global clients. 

ValueCoders, a best-in-class eCommerce web development company, that has 16+ years of experience in providing top eCommerce website development services and hire eCommerce developers service to clients across the globe. 

The company has delivered 4200+ projects, served over 2500 customers in more than 40 countries globally. 

So, if you choose from any of the above-mentioned eCommerce development platforms you still need help for customized eCommerce software development. 

Related: 20 TIPS TO CALCULATE ECOMMERCE STARTUP COSTS

Final Words

So, I have tried to explain to you the difference between the three platforms and gave you an idea to choose between Shopify vs. Magento vs. WooCommerce. If you want to build a beautiful,  stunning, and efficient eCommerce website, don’t forget to connect with ValueCoders.

by Mariya James