There are a hundred ways you can start selling online or taking orders, but my two favorite ones are Shopify and WooCommerce. While they’re both e-commerce platforms, and they’re both awesome in their own way, there are some key differences that you should be aware of. In this article, I’m going to give a brief summary of each solution, the fundamental difference between the two, as well as cover some of the features, benefits, and drawbacks.

Player 1: Shopify

Shopify is a SaaS e-commerce platform. SaaS, or software-as-a-service, lets you know that Shopify handles hosting, security, maintenance, integrations, updates, and more, and you simply subscribe to it. While this is awesome because anyone with any level of technical know-how (or none at all), can use it, without worrying too much about security, compliance, or integrations, it also means you don’t have full control over the features and your customer data.

Player 2: WooCommerce

At its core, WooCommerce is a free, open-source WordPress plugin. That means you install it, you configure it, you update it, and you secure it (or you hire an expert like me to do it for you).

This is great, because you have full access to all of your data, and can customize it exactly how you want. But, now you have to think about everything from securing your server to making sure WordPress updates don’t break your store, so it’s a trade-off.

Pricing

Now that you understand the fundamentals of these two great e-commerce platforms, before we continue to discuss their pros and cons, let’s get to the pricing.

Shopify’s subscription model is simple – whether you sell one item a month, or a million, the price is the same, simply based on the features you need. In theory, you could operate a massive e-commerce store $29/month.

Now, for WooCommerce, while the plugin itself is free, how much it costs to host and operate your site depends on a variety of factors.

While you can run a smaller WooCommerce store on even a basic shared hosting plan, for moderate or high levels of traffic, you’ll want something more powerful, like a VPS or dedicated server. Of course, for the largest sites, you’ll probably want a more complex setup, leveraging scalable cloud services or at least some sort of multi-server solution. And that can get pretty pricey as your traffic grows.

Data Privacy and Security

Privacy matters, and security should be your top priority. Your e-commerce store contains sensitive information, and it’s often a target for those with bad intents.

Let’s start with WooCommerce. While WooCommerce has a good track record of security, there are a lot of moving parts. While the core WordPress and WooCommerce are unlikely to have any major security flaws, there’s more to it than that.

With a WordPress site, it’s likely you’ll be using plugins and themes from a variety of developers. And while many of those plugins and themes are high quality, there are also some straight up trash WordPress plugins and themes out there. And even formerly good plugins and themes can become outdated or abandoned. Any security issue with your WordPress site will affect your WooCommerce store and put your users and business at risk.

But, like we discussed, there are many ways to host a WooCommerce site. If you’re using shared hosting, you’re at the mercy of your hosting provider to keep everything safe, and even a well managed shared server is ultimately a shared environment. And you never know if another customer has an outdated site of their own or you share your server with a bad actor.

If you’re using a virtual or cloud server environment, it’s still a shared environment in some way. But, while typically more segmented from other customers on the same physical server, there are so many more ways you can get compromised. And while a dedicated server is, in theory, the most secure option, you still need to configure your server properly and stay on top of it.

Now that I’ve told you how complex it is to keep your WooCommerce site safe, securing a Shopify store is about as simple as choosing a strong, unique password. They handle all the tedious, complex security and compliance for you, which is great.

But, the problem with that is that you don’t control or own your data. Sure, they have a good privacy policy, and are a reputable business that tons of people and even huge brands rely on, but ultimately, nobody cares about your company like you do. And if you sell sensitive or controversial stuff, a self-hosted solution you have control over, is always useful.

At the end of the day, Shopify is overall a more secure solution, especially if you don’t have advanced technical knowledge with a focus on Linux security, or someone at your small business that does. But, the data privacy that WooCommerce can offer your business and customers when configured correctly is a distinct advantage. But, for most cases, this doesn’t really matter, and Shopify’s extensive compliance and security features are sufficient for e-commerce sites of all sizes.

Themes and Plugins

Both Shopify and WooCommerce offer oodles of customizability and integrations via themes and plugin, but there are some fundamental differences.

With WooCommerce, just like any other WordPress site, you can customize literally everything and anything, as long as you have the coding skills to do so. You can do anything and everything, with enough time, money, or effort.

And just like core WordPress, there are a virtually unlimited number of plugins and themes that you can use with WooCommerce. Options range from free to one-time purchases to subscriptions.

Shopify works a little differently. Sure, you can use it headlessly and build an entirely custom front end, but that’s probably outside the scope of this article. For the most part, you’ll be using the integrations offered in the platform, and then choose from either a free or paid theme. For most e-commerce sites, Shopify can do pretty much everything – but there are always cases where you need flexibility that you don’t have when using someone else’s software in someone else’s cloud.

Payment Methods

Both platforms offer a variety of payment methods. The most popular choice for Shopify is Shopify payments, their in-house solution. The exact rates vary based on plan and volume. If you decide to use a third-party payment provider with Shopify, you’re going to pay extra for that.

On the other hand, WooCommerce offers integration with a bunch of merchant accounts, as well as their own WooPayments product (powered by Stripe). Pricing varies, but if you’re set on using an existing account like Authorize.net or Stripe, WooCommerce is probably a better choice.

Hybrid Solutions

If you want to sell both online and in-person, both platforms offer this capability, but it varies in implementation. The specifics of that are beyond the scope of this article, but the short version is that while both Shopify and WooCommerce can work with physical point of sale systems, Shopify’s native support for things like BOPIS (buy online pick up in store) is a smoother experience.

Additional Website Features

Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, it can integrate tightly with the rest of your website. In terms of flexibility for the other pages and content of your site, a WordPress site is still one of the most customizable options, and great for companies that need advanced blogging functionality.

Shopify does support custom pages and the essential features you need for your business’ online presence, but it’s not nearly as advanced as what WordPress can offer. For many businesses whose priority is selling online, this doesn’t matter too much, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Adding E-Commerce to your Existing Site

It’s often the case that you might already have a great website for your business, either in WordPress or some other content management system or custom platform, and you now want to add e-commerce support.

Obviously, the tightest integration would be to simply install WooCommerce, but there’s another option – many big brands have their main site in something else, and then use Shopify for e-commerce. My favorite way to implement this is to keep your main site at example.com, and run shopify on a subdomain like store.example.com or shop.example.com. Although, some brands choose to use an entirely seperate domain for their Shopify store.

In Conclusion

As you can see, selecting the right e-commerce platform for your business is a difficult choice and ultimately can effect your business, customer experience, and the success of your growth online.

Beyond Shopify and WooCommerce, there are also other options, including Magento, Squarespace, Wix.com, and many more. I recommend you explore all your options and do research on what will fit your business the best.

If you’re interested in a quote for an e-commerce store for your small business, I’d love to help. Check out my company Wag Websites, and we’ll get you online!