Shopify or WooCommerce, Which one is better for your eCommerce store?

Shopify

Shopify offers an e-commerce Management System just like Woocommerce for WordPress with the functionalities and features like carts, payment gateways like Razorpay, Paypal, and integration with delivery partners like Shiprocket and Delhivery.

Why Shopify has an edge over Woocommerce?

As a free plugin, Woocommerce requires too much manual effort to manage multiple things like the status of fulfillment and payment along with a fast hosting speed, security add-ons, etc. While Shopify is like an all-in-one solution for a subscription of 29$ per month including a super fast hosting and PCI DSS Complaint security with built-in SSL

Developers Section:

Shopify uses its own language called liquid written in ruby. For styling, Shopify uses SCSS also coded in ruby but can understand CSS styles as well. It also uses JS. All the elements and content loaded dynamically on most of the pages. This makes the HTTP request count low and only the required resources are loaded. This optimizes the page speed. Most importantly all the assets including Libraries, images, and JS & SCSS files, everything is served on CDN by Shopify only. So no minification or unused code issues come in it.

Performance review of Shopify

shopify performance on gtmetrix — Score of a Shopify website`s performance on GT Metrix

shopify mobile performance on google pageseed — Shopify Performance on Mobile

shopify performance desktop on google pageseed — Shopify performance on desktop

When it comes to performance, Shopify has an edge over WordPress. Since WordPress themes sometimes fail to optimize properly when plugins try to implement functionalities. Proper technical optimization practices needed to be followed for better performance in WordPress that require something technically very sound. But in Shopify, the platform automatically does everything required for technical optimization.

Free starter themes in Shopify

All these themes have some effects, transitions, and animations. For custom page development, we can use Pagefly or shogun. Pagefly is free while shogun is paid

Woocommerce

Woocommerce offers a free plugin and also provides much more flexibility and customization with few paid add-ons (for a person without technical knowledge). If you know the code, you can customize the free plugin according to your need.

With Woocommerce, you need a timely update as the plugin gets regular modifications and security patches and it requires regular backups as well. Another thing needed is the security of your platform, which is part of your responsibility with Woocommerce.

It supports Paypal and Stripe by default as payment integration services, for any other gateway services, you need to install their addons like Razorpay Payment Gateway for Woocommerce.

It can work with most of the WordPress themes while the initial look and feel depend on theme colors and styles.

Final Verdict! Shopify or Woocommerce?

For a business without a team, but regular cash flow with some profits, choose Shopify. This is because, if there is no team, you as an individual should focus on your products and business and not on the technicalities of the website or store. At the same time for a completely new business WordPress with WooCommerce can work as this is the initial state of business where cost-cutting is really important.

Shopify is no doubt the best choice for an e-commerce platform but Woocommerce is also a great alternative for people with different needs and requirements.

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