Most of the eCommerce websites on the internet today run on one of these three platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento.
While all three platforms are highly competent and effective, the best eCommerce platform for you is the one that fulfils all your online selling needs.
To help you pick the right eCommerce platform for your business, we will walk you through the main features of each one as well as the advantages and disadvantages.
1. Overview
Shopify
Launched in 2004, with nearly 1 million global users, Shopify powers roughly 4% of online stores worldwide. It’s a leading eCommerce platform usually favoured by start-ups and small business owners as it’s simple to use and easy to set up.
Shopify is a subscription-based platform that can be operated even by users with limited technical knowledge. Due to its recent integration with Amazon, you can sell products on Amazon through a simple Shopify Admin Panel.
Cost-effective and popular, you can also directly access customers from online channels like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
WooCommerce
In terms of global usage numbers, WooCommerce boasts the largest customer base out of the three. WooCommerce is an open-source, freeware plugin offered by WordPress developers.
Convenient, affordable, and powerful — with WooCommerce you can build an online shop from scratch and upload products to Amazon, Google Shopping and other retailers with ease and simplicity.
With roughly 3 million active online shopping websites, WooCommerce powers nearly 30% of all eCommerce stores worldwide today. Offering an almost infinite selection of affordable, customizable themes, payment gateway options, and built-in SEO features, it is the go-to platform preferred by most small to medium sized businesses and eCommerce web design companies.
Magento
Launched in 2008 and owned by tech giant Adobe since 2018. Though Its popularity has waned in the last several years, Magento is still a very popular eCommerce platform that hosts two editions: Open Source and Magento Commerce.
Powering nearly 8% of online stores globally, with more than 250,000 customers, Magento boasts of a great reputation among the current most active eCommerce sites.
With several built-in functions and a wide range of templates and extensions, Magento is the most customizable platform out of the three. However, it is immensely complex for business owners to use, both in terms of set-up and shop management. It Is mostly geared towards those with very complex and unique needs or eCommerce developers, rather than regular users.
2. Scalability and Performance
Shopify
Shopify fares well in terms of website speed, performance, and handling high traffic volume. However, when it comes to scalability, it is not as good as the other two.
Shopify mainly caters to start-up and small business needs, which can be a problem if you plan to grow your online store massively. For seamless scalability, you will need Shopify Plus — starting at $2,000 per month — which will considerably increase your expense.
WooCommerce
When it comes to eCommerce website development, you can practically achieve anything and everything you want with WooCommerce.
Due to its immense popularity and open-source nature, WooCommerce has attracted the largest community of third-party eCommerce developers. Therefore, it boasts the most comprehensive catalogue of free and affordable plugins which meet nearly every need, including website speed and performance optimization.
Installing a new plugin with WooCommerce is typically a matter of a few clicks. If you would like to scale your website to achieve complex functions that are unique and are unfulfilled by using available plugins, you will need to hire someone experienced or invest in some coding lessons.
Magento
From optimizing the website for better performance to minimizing the server response time for all website actions — Magento offers superior scalability options.
It also provides extensive flexibility in terms of database management and complex backend operations. A dynamic and robust eCommerce platform, it’s equipped to accommodate thousands of products, high website traffic, and peak loads efficiently.
Hence, if you have big future expansion plans for your online store development, Magento’s powerful content management system may be the best option. Consult an eCommerce developer to understand which platform would be best for your unique needs.
3. Themes, Designs, and Customization
Shopify
High-quality design themes are one of Shopify’s key selling points. Shopify’s famed theme store offers highly responsive, SEO-friendly themes which you can simply purchase, download, and use to enhance your e-store’s look and feel.
However, since Shopify is a hosted solution with a patented codebase, you will not have direct access to the underlying software, so customization flexibilities are restricted, even when you hire a developer. Moreover, you’ll have to pay additional fees to use payment gateways that are not pre-installed.
WooCommerce
Featuring a practically infinite library of free and premium themes, plugins, and extensions, the sky is the limit when it comes to customization on WooCommerce. This is one of the core reasons why thousands of eCommerce web development services and eCommerce website design companies choose this platform for their business needs or for those of their clients.
Furthermore, extensions exist that let you change the style, layout and content of your website through simple click-and-edit, as well as drag-and-drop, methods. For those more technically inclined, WooCommerce provides direct access to HTML code, CSS, and PHP. If you have the required coding skills, you can include any feature or component in your website that fulfils your unique business demands. You can further enhance and improve your site’s functionality by creating custom plugins.
Magento
Magento offers a good selection of themes and extensions to improve and enhance your website’s functionalities. Almost all its themes have responsive design layouts that adjust themselves to multiple devices, like mobile phones and tablets. The themes listed in the Magento marketplace are affordable and user-friendly, but for more advanced options, you can visit Themeforest, Template Monster, and Magenest.
Magento web development gives you unlimited customization options so that you can tweak SEO settings, develop a custom theme from scratch, integrate payment gateways, among many other capabilities.
4. Ease of Use
Shopify
Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce platform with responsive designs, plugins, themes, and built-in payment gateways. To work with Shopify, you require no prior knowledge of coding or website development.
Although Shopify offers limited flexibility for eCommerce website development, its drag-and-drop design interface allows you to open a full-fledged online store in around 15 minutes — a great option for small-scale businesses who do not have a lot of time on their hands.
WooCommerce
If you have a basic knowledge of WordPress, WooCommerce can be the best option for your online shop development.
Online store functionalities like payment gateways, shipping carriers, currency conversion and multiple languages can easily be achieved with the help of its free themes and plugins.
Extensions exist that let you change the styles, layout and content of your website through simple click-and-edit, as well as drag-and-drop, methods.
Magento
If you have significant technical knowledge, Magento can be seamless and easy to use. However, if you do not possess the skills, it can be hard to manage without the help of an eCommerce website developer, since it has a steep learning curve.
5. SEO Properties
Shopify
An ecommerce store first and foremost, Shopify’s SEO features are excellent. Some of its prominent SEO features include adjusting meta tags, adding alt text to photos, and, generating page redirects — to name a few. Additionally, its fast-loading speed drastically improves the user experience and indirectly contributes to better SERP rankings.
WooCommerce
Thanks to its wide range of plugins, extensions, and customization options, WooCommerce is highly SEO-friendly. Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, it has all the SEO features of WordPress, which is a powerful toolkit that has been keeping pace with Google for nearly 20 years.
This includes Yoast SEO, which is a powerful and comprehensive search engine optimization tool, focus keyword placements, URL redirects, canonical tags, sitemaps, image optimization, and permalink optimization.
Magento
Magento offers tons of built-in SEO features along with several extensions and functionalities to improve its SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings. SEO features — like image optimization, meta tags optimization, product descriptions, and image alt-tags optimization — help search engines crawl your online website and understand its content and structure.
Furthermore, it also has some very useful features, like Google sitemaps, no-follow links, canonical tags, and page redirects.
6. Security
Shopify
Shopify offers a built-in SSL certificate that protects your website and prevents customers’ personal data being stolen while their payment processes.
Additionally, Shopify is completely PCI-DSS compliant. It allows your site to accept all card payments in line with the latest regulations.
WooCommerce
Since WooCommerce is a self-hosted eCommerce platform, you may have to independently procure an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate from your hosting provider, though most offer these preinstalled and for free nowadays.
WordPress developers are constantly monitoring and updating their security guidelines, thus pre-empting any impending threats, and free security plugins are available for advanced protection.
Magento
Magento has several security plugins and extensions that can predict site vulnerabilities, send out password-change notifications in case of threats, and scan files and data when it detects any changes.
It also launches timely security patches to ensure high-level safety and protection.
7. Costs and Pricing
Shopify
Shopify comes with several payment plans, and its monthly starting rate varies from $29 to $299 based on the features included. Every payment plan comes with a domain name, web hosting, and an SSL certificate.
One of its downsides is the indefinite monthly costs of the service, as well as each of its third-party apps, tools, and add-ons.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce software is open source and will always be completely free to use. As it also enjoys a large contributor base, its extensions and apps are most often free or low cost as well. The apps and extensions that are premium either offer lifetime updates for free, or one year of updates with the option to renew each year (typically no more than $25 to $75 per year) to continue receiving the latest features.
Therefore, even though there is usually an upfront investment to develop your website, as opposed to Shopify where you can do it yourself, one of WooCommerce’s main benefits is that it is the most economical of the three platforms.
Magento
The Magento software can be free if you download and install Magento Open Source. The Magento Commerce edition can cost you anywhere between $22,000 to $50,000 per year. And, as you grow your business you will have to pay additional costs for apps, plugins, and extensions.
8. Pros and Cons – Summary
Company | Pros | Cons |
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Shopify |
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WooCommerce |
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Magento |
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Conclusion
We hope our analysis has given you valuable insights to help you determine the best platform on which to run your eCommerce business. If you’re looking for an eCommerce website development company or an eCommerce web design agency, you can consider using Digital Lion’s eCommerce, SEO, and website development services.
Our team of accomplished and skilled professionals can help recommend a platform based on your unique needs and goals as well as help you develop a secure and successful online store.
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Calgary-headquartered Digital Lion, with secondary locations in Edmonton and Ottawa, is a digital marketing and design agency built with a purpose and passion to partner with its clients and provide first-class Web Development, Graphic Design, and Online Marketing services. We work with clients across Canada, as well as worldwide, and are focused on being environmentally friendly and giving back to charities that we are passionate about. Our mission is to “Design a Better World®.” Browse our website, follow our social media channels, and contact us anytime for more information on how we can customize a package that meets your needs and suits your style.
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