What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a complete solution available for you to create an ecommerce store. It is free and open source. In fact, you will have to install WooCommerce as a plugin for your WordPress website. Therefore, you will need to buy your own hosting and a domain as well. If you are familiar with WordPress and if you are looking for a low-cost option to start an online store, you may take a look at WooCommerce.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a beginner friendly ecommerce platform available for you to use. If you are planning to start an online store without any previous knowledge of experience, we encourage you to stick to Shopify. The platform will provide all support you need to configure the ecommerce store. However, services offered by Shopify are not free. You will have to pay and purchase a subscription plan to use the services.
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Comparison between WooCommerce and Shopify
While keeping these basic facts in mind, let’s do a WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison. Then you can understand what exactly you are getting out of each and come up with a decision to go for the best platform.
User-friendliness
If you are looking for user-friendliness, you should go ahead with Shopify. All you have to do is to create an account in Shopify and it will be able to provide the support that you need to create your online store. In other words, it will provide you with step by step instructions that you will have to follow. Shopify will even take care of hosting. You can simply play around with features available and further customize the store. No technical expertise is needed to use Shopify.
You can set up WooCommerce quite easily. However, you will have to do some work on your own before you start using WooCommerce. For example, you should buy hosting and install WordPress on it. The steps are bit technical, and you will need to have basic skills to proceed with.
Flexibility and themes
You should think about using the best themes on your ecommerce store to get maximum attention from customers. In Shopify, there are over 180 different themes available to pick from. Most of these themes are available to you for free. You will also be able to fine tune the appearance without having any coding knowledge. All themes are mobile responsive by default.
You cannot get a dedicated theme store out of WooCommerce. However, there are numerous third party themes that you can refer to. For example, you can take a look at Theme Forest, which offers more than 600 different themes.
Presentation of products
In order to ensure success of the online store, you should ensure that you are presenting products in an effective manner. Both these platforms can help you to present the products that you sell over your ecommerce store clearly. For example, it is possible for you to upload pictures, create product descriptions and allow the users to zoom into the images that you have as well. You can also include details about product variations that you have. If you have a product video, you can add it to the product page on both these platforms.
Payment options
You can find two different payment options in Shopify. You can use an internal payment processor offered by Shopify or you will be able to configure an external payment gateway to get the job done. If you are using an external payment gateway, you will have to pay a fee on the transactions.