We wrote about the rebranding of WooCommerce as Woo. With this development and update, WOO also added new features. We compared Woo, the most popular infrastructure among open-source e-commerce software, with Shopify.
| WOO | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Free Trial Length | WooCommerce and WordPress are both free and open-source software | You can try Shopify free for 14 days, no credit card required |
| Transaction Fees | With WooCommerce you will need to choose a hosting partner and purchase a domain name fee. These can vary with hosting costing around $120 a year, and $15 for registering a domain name | Basic Shopify, which is best for new e-commerce businesses with occasional in-person sales is $29 a month. Shopify middle package is best for growing businesses selling online or in-store, $79 a month. And the Advanced Shopify is best for scaling businesses that require advanced reporting, $299 a month |
| Support | An in-depth support tab allows users to lodge an issue and receive a ticket. There are also loads of online forums | Shopify Help Center has an easy-to-search and locate certain documents. They also allow for direct contact with an expert |
| Online and Offline Usability | Can only be used online | Online and offline via Shopify’s point-of-sale (POS) kit |
| Platforms | Open source and can be modified to the code (no limitations) | Closed platform, only allows for drag and drop, as well as additional plugins |
| Hosting | Hosting is not included | Included |
| Subdomains | WordPress sites allow for an unlimited amount of subdomains | Unlimited amount of subdomains |
| SSL | Will need to find a plugin that suits your needs. You can use free SSL like Let’s Encrypt | When the domain is purchased through Shopify you get TLS certification. If you’ve purchased the domain from a third party you’ll need to encrypt it through another service provider |
| Creating Coupons | You can create coupons for any of the products in your store | You are limited to creating 20,000,000 unique discount codes for each store |
| Accepted Payment Methods | Currently there are 80 payment gateways available via the WooCommerce store. | Shopify Payment is linked to the owner’s bank account. If you are based in a country without the Shopify Payment payment gateway you can always select another third-party plugin |
| Monthly Reports | Reports from WooCommerce can include data about sales by date, product, and category. These reports can be exported via CSV | Reports from Shopify can be taken over time, product, product vendor, location, and so much more |
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools | There are multiple SEO plugins for WordPress. One such service provider is Yoast which provides instant feedback to optimize your SEO page ranking | Shopify allows users to edit title tags, meta descriptions, URLs for blog posts, webpages, products and much more |
| Blogging | Yes | Yes |
Shopify vs Woo Which One?
We will add new features to the comparison table as they become available. If you want to add to the Shopify and Woo Comparison, you can add it to the comments.
