Many companies are increasingly focusing on their online presence. Offering your service or product online is essential today. However, not every company has boarded this departing boat. Are you one of those entrepreneurs who need to make the transition to the online world? Then this article is for you! we explain the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce from A to Z. So, when you're done reading, you'll know exactly which platform is most suitable for you and best fits your needs.

"Where can I make the best choice? Shopify or WooCommerce?"

Shopify

The name says it all: 'Shop'ify. A platform that is 100% dedicated to e-commerce. Shopify has designed its platform to be accessible to most people, plug-and-play. This enabled it to grow rapidly because many medium and small businesses went online with their shops. In the past, only large companies could do this because everything had to be programmed then.

There are several reasons why businesses choose the Shopify platform. Because Shopify is geared for the e-commerce world, the majority of shops choose to use Shopify as a hosting. This is because it comes with many options that make running a store easy, and it is also scalable.

However, it is also possible to host your Shopify web store with an external provider. In short: Shopify offers everything under one roof, but also allows the use of third party resources.

Themes and Customization options

You can choose from a nice number of free and paid themes, with a one-time fee charged for the paid themes ranging from $140 to $180. This means you don't have to pay annually, which is the case for some paid WordPress themes.

One disadvantage, however, is that you pay a monthly fee of $29 for Shopify hosting, which is still quite a bit of money annually.

The Shopify builder is designed so that virtually everyone can use it, but this means not everything can be customized. There are many fun options to work with, but many things are also fixed in the theme. While some things can still be customized through coding, we'll leave that out for now.

App Integrations

Shopify alone does not get you very far as a store, you are basically paying only for the technology. But the strength is in the platform as a whole, it is more than just an e-commerce platform. It has a marketplace with more than 4000 apps that enhance the functionality of your store, all of which seamlessly integrate with Shopify technology.

So anything you can think of and what you need for your store has an app developed for it, no more difficult coding. Examples include: Mollie (for payments), PostNL (for shipping), Shopify SEO (for visibility), Apps for special integrations on your website, apps for reviews, and integrations of all social media platforms. This makes it easy to link your company's social media accounts to your website.

Also consider automatic integrations with companies with which you have a partnership, such as a fulfillment center. As a result, your orders, inventory, and checkout process are all automatically managed, making it even more scalable thanks to Shopify.

Customer Support

It is one of the most important things in the e-commerce world today, where many companies have a lot to learn, which is customer support. In many stores, it is almost impossible to speak to someone or where you can go with your question, while it is so easy to install an app for the customers where they can ask their question. Just by letting them know it's there, customers automatically feel a sense of trust, making them more likely to convert.

WooCommerce

To start, what is WooCommerce? It's a plugin that you install on the WordPress platform. It provides you with all the functionality to help you set up your store as best as possible, including inventory, shipping, and tax integrations. In addition, you can easily link payment providers like Mollie to your website, allowing customers to shop on your webshop.

Themes and Customization options

The themes and customization options mostly come with the theme you install as a plugin, which means you can design the website however you want. This is not to say that WooCommerce does not come with any options. By installing WooCommerce, you get a number of options that make it easier to turn your website into a webshop, such as using a variable product. This is setting options for a product so you don't have to create multiple products for each color or size.

The customizations and options offered by Wordpress are endless, you can adjust every line and corner of the website in form and color of your choice. This makes the options for designing a website endless, while Shopify clearly has its limitations.

App Integrations

WooCommerce is itself a plugin built on the open source of WordPress. In addition to WooCommerce, there are about 58,000 other plugins that seamlessly integrate with the platform. Not all of these plugins are directly related to WooCommerce, but they can improve the overall website and thus the customer experience. These plugins offer options for everything you can think of, such as a reservation pop-up for restaurants or a plugin to automate your customer service. You may be thinking of using as many plugins as possible. But just like too much eating, too many plugins are also bad for your website. So remove your unused plugins to maintain the speed of your website, which is important for your SEO.

In addition to all the plugins, as mentioned above, you also have a plugin for customer service. But apart from giving your customer the option to ask or report something, it is very important to actually respond to it.

Conclusion: Shopify or WooCommerce?

Shopify has become very popular in recent years. This is because the e-commerce world has made a leap. Shopify makes it easy for its users to get started, which goes hand in hand with the large number of people wanting to start e-commerce.

In addition, WooCommerce / WordPress has been a big platform for many years because it offers so many options. But which one should you choose?

It depends on what you want to do, who is going to do it, and what you want to do. If you are a beginner in the e-commerce world and are going to start working on your website yourself, you should choose Shopify. But if you don't want a standard website and may want to have the website made by a specialist, then I would choose WordPress. This is because it offers you so many more options, but not every business needs this to become successful. So, it's not that one platform is better than the other, but it all depends on what you want to do with your website.

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