The e-commerce industry is roaring high and is expected to touch $4 trillion by 2020.
This is all because more and more people have started using the internet. According to We Are Social, more than half of the world’s population is active online. Thus, this is the right time to launch your e-commerce store if you have not already.
But WAIT! Let’s have a quick reality check: which e-commerce platform would you like to go for?
Confusing, right?
Undoubtedly, there is an array of e-commerce platforms available today and the process of choosing one out of them could be overwhelming. If we only focus on the major giants and keep the rest aside, here are three platforms we are left with: Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.
So, which one would you choose? Fret not! We are here to help you out in this article.
But before we proceed further, let’s have a look at some of the major factors which should be kept in mind while choosing an e-commerce platform.
This is the first factor you need to come to terms with. You need to critically analyze the pros and cons of each e-commerce platform and choose an option that is cost-effective and meets all your business expectations and requirements.
In addition, you must also keep a check on how customer transactions are processed. Ideally, your chosen platform should be compatible with third-party vendors for amazing user experience.
Most of the e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce are compatible with third-party plugins and integrations.
This is an essential factor to look for. Make sure that your chosen platform can be easily integrated with third-party tools. Some of the plugins and tools it should be compatible with include the plugins meant for email marketing, shipping service providers, accounting and the likes.
Needless to say, to get the better rankings on Google SERPs, it is necessary that your chosen platform is SEO-friendly.
Thus, your platform should be such that it allows you to manage your blog and adopt best SEO practices on the go.
All these factors would help you enhance your reach, thus boosting the organic traffic which, in turn, would help you in boosting your revenue.
As we know, the majority of product searches and online purchases are done via mobile devices. It is essential that the platform is responsive and compatible with all screen sizes so that customers could access your website with ease and make purchases.
You might be a startup right now, but it is highly recommended to choose a platform which is in line with your future dreams and aspirations.
You would not like to switch to a different platform and deal with all the hassles because your current platform is not scalable. Thus, it is essential that your chosen e-commerce platform is flexible and can adapt to the required changes as your business grows.
This is a very crucial aspect that you must keep in mind while choosing an e-commerce platform. It should support HTTPS/SSL and must make sure that all the confidential data of your customers is safe and secure.
This goes without saying that your chosen platform should be up and be running 24 * 7. Ideally, there should be no downtime, and it should be available during peak hours and even when the traffic is high. Or else, you might end up losing your customers who would definitely make a switch to other better-performing online stores.
Thus, to expect the least, make sure that your chosen e-commerce platform supports live chat and responds instantly.
One of the crucial factors which determine the success of your e-commerce store is its interface. Ideally, it should be easy to navigate, has a clear layout, and crisp navigation.
Thus, make sure that your chosen e-commerce platform provides enough themes and templates which can be customized according to your requirements.
Before you choose a platform, check if they support social media integration and affiliate marketing. Ideally, they should have inbuilt tools to generate reports, and should also provide analytical features.
Now that we have a basic insight of the features to keep in mind, let’s move onto the next section. Before we dive into the comparison, let’s have a look and understand each of these platforms in detail.
Shopify is a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) e-commerce solution that acts as an online store platform. Shopify is popular and is the first choice of many businesses and start-up companies alike.
According to Wikipedia, Shopify was a privately owned Canada-based e-commerce company. It was founded by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake in the year of 2004 after they tried opening a store called ‘Snowdevil’. This company is located in Ottawa, Ontario.
This online SaaS e-commerce platform was mainly based on software written by the company founders, which enabled different online store owners to sell their products on the web without any hassle.
Currently, the company’s main purpose is to develop and maintain the software initially written to ease the process of online e-commerce business.
As claimed by the company, around 377,500 merchants use Shopify to run their online stores.
As a matter of fact, Shopify made its company public on May 21, 2015, with the ticker symbol SHOP on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and with the symbol SH on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE).
Shopify is built for people who don’t want to deal with coding or technical side while setting up an e-commerce store. Thus, you can directly jump into Shopify, get registered and start selling products in no time.
Apart from its easy-to-use interface, there are a bunch of other benefits that Shopify has on offer. We will discuss each of them in detail here.
When compared to other e-commerce platforms, Shopify provides the value-for-money services powered by cutting-edge technologies that allow merchants to set up their online store in no time.
Shopify offers three plans, to begin with - the basic plan for $29 per month, intermediate plan with a price of $79 per month and an advanced Shopify plan that comes with a price tag of $299 per month.
However for most of the owners, the basic plan works well which includes domain hosting, payment gateway, and also provides the SSL certificate.
One of the best parts of Shopify is that it is the perfect solution for a growing business. Its basic plan allows you to list unlimited products on the store.
Moreover, Shopify helps by expanding your market base by allowing you to list your products through popular sales channels such as Facebook, Pinterest and the like. It even allows you to add a ‘Buy’ button to help you sell your products through different blogs.
Shopify has an inbuilt payment feature, called Shopify payments. Through this payment option, customers can pay through all major credit and debit cards including PayPal and different e-wallets.
Shopify helps you boost your business and reach the online customers quite easily.
As a matter of fact, Shopify was initially built for marketing so that startups can easily spread the word faster while at the same time keeping the costs down.
Even the basic Shopify plan comes with SEO features and advanced e-commerce options to give you detailed traffic analytical reports so that you can set different strategies to enhance your reach.
It also comes with different promotional tools such as discount codes, custom gift cards, email marketing, and the likes, to help you grow your business.
With the ever-rising cybercrimes, weakly built websites are prone to breaches and security threats.
This is when Shopify comes to your rescue and provides security which is why it is also the preferred platform of various tech giants like Tesla Motors and General Motors.
One feature that makes Shopify more reliable is its 24/7 support. This means that you can reach out to Shopify support anytime through their mail, phone, and online live chat as per your convenience.
Magento is a professional open source e-commerce web application that provides merchants the complete flexibility and control over their online store in terms of design, product contents, and functionality.
Magento revolutionized the e-commerce industry with its launch on March 31, 2008. In just 18 months, Magento was downloaded more than one million times.
The platform has significantly processed billions of dollars transactions and has powered more than ten thousands stores.
Talking about its growth so far, Magento was sold to eBay in early 2011 and now it is the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the world. To your surprise, over 25% of online businesses choose Magento as their e-commerce platform.
Magento accounts for more than 25 billion dollars of transactions per year and has partnered with more than 300 business solutions and industries. According to the statics report of SimilarTech.com, over 140,000 websites were created with Magento with a monthly birth of 1000 websites.
If you are looking forward to creating your own online store, then Magento would be the right choice for you because of the following reasons:
Magento is easy to customize, all because it supports various ready-to-use CSS customizations. This helps you in making your online store unique, and different.
Moreover, the Magento team supports and provides great tips on how to implement the latest web trends and how to make your store responsive.
Magento is well known for its top-in line products and inventory management system. This allows you to have a quick look at transaction history, modify product descriptions, add or remove images and items, send reports and perform other such tasks on the go.
Needless to say, a responsive website is not just a need of the hour, but a necessity too!
It helps you in two ways – it provides easy accessibility to your customers and also helps you win brownie points from Google.
That’s why Magento regularly updates the store owners and guides them to make their online store mobile-friendly.
Talking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Magento is equipped with the latest SEO tools that help you take care of various aspects of SEO including a great URL structure and the like.
Further, Magento also provides analytical tools to help you execute data-driven marketing strategies. We recommend you to read this great Magento SEO Guide.
In comparison to other well-known open source e-commerce platforms, Magento dynamically supports almost all major currencies, thus making it more efficient for the US and other international stores to use Magento.
Additionally, you can also operate your web store in more than one language, all thanks to its multi-language support.
Magento is known for providing outstanding hosting support for more than one website on just one backend admin. This is also called a multi-site network. This makes it the most plausible CMS platform.
As Magento is an open source web application, it can be easily integrated with a range of third-party tools and applications which further enhance its versatility.
WooCommerce is a free plugin that works with WordPress websites and converts them into e-commerce stores on the go.
This plugin equips a WordPress website with all the functionalities that are must to run an online store including product management, order processing, and shopping cart functionalities.
Basically, WooCommerce lets you create an online WordPress store from where you can sell both physical and digital goods and services from your WordPress site.
WooCommerce plugin makes it easier to manage essential e-commerce requirements such as customer accounts, product and inventory management, shipping and tax cost calculations, and the likes.
WooCommerce was first launched in the year 2011 and was originally created by the team at Woothemes. Automattic bought Woothemes in May 2015 and from then onwards, WooCommerce became a product of Automattic Company.
The codebase of WooCommerce has over 350 contributors. These developers are a part of the Automattic team and are also responsible for the development of various WooCommerce plugin extensions and website templates.
According to the official WooCommerce website, there have been more than 49,000,000 downloads featuring over 28% of present online stores.
Just like any other piece of software, the WooCommerce plugin has got its own set of advantages:
WooCommerce plugin is free to use. Moreover, it is featured with different easy-to-use extensive tools which enhance your store’s functionality and make your site more robust.
Want to change your website’s appearance? Or, do you want to customize an existing theme?
Or, do you have other custom requirements? WooCommerce is here to your rescue and lets you customize your online store on the go.
One of the biggest benefits of using WooCommerce is its flexibility. WooCommerce stores can be used to sell physical, digital as well as affiliated products.
What’s more? The platform allows you to categorize your products, provide sale prices, and set different product attributes and so much more.
As of now, WooCommerce supports more than 400 official extensions that can be used to create more advanced analytics and integrate payment interface, shipping options, marketing tools and the like.
As WooCommerce is associated with WordPress which is the most trusted platform in the world, it is SEO-friendly.
WooCommerce provides a simple-to-use interface where product details along with SEO information can be entered and stored. This way, it helps you optimize all your products and makes them SEO-friendly.
On the top of that, WooCommerce also allows you to integrate different third-party SEO plugins for easy optimization.
One of the key aspects that determine the success of an e-commerce platform is its reach and popularity. Thus, let’s explore the popularity of Shopify, Woo-commerce, and Magento!
WooCommerce is an open-source and free platform and is preferred by a range of business owners. It has emerged as the leader in global e-commerce with a market share of 23%.
The huge variety of customizable themes, templates, and free plugins has extended its reach to nearly 3 million business websites.
Its high flexibility, ease of usage, development and set up are a few major points that have contributed to its popularity.
Shopify, empowering nearly five lakh businesses, is the next most sought out e-commerce application. It holds a market share of about ten percent of the entire global e-commerce platform.
It’s extremely easy to use and the interface is very user-friendly. In short, it helps businesses create attractive stores in a go!
While Shopify makes you pay a monthly fee of $29, the services it offers in return are worth every penny spent. Security is another reason that makes Shopify popular. The hosting is quicker and secure as well.
Magento holds a significant share of eight percent and empowers more than two lakh online retailers. A thirteen percent of the content management websites use Magento which is why it is referred to as a king of the e-commerce industry.
Magento is, in fact, a developer’s favorite, due to its superb testing environment. The platform is capable of handling issues like code reusability, debugging and the like perfectly
It can be concluded that all the three platforms are popular in the industry today.
Site loading speed is one of the important aspects of all e-commerce websites. During peak hours when you are experiencing the sudden spike in your traffic, the least you would expect is that your website takes ages to load.
This would not only irritate the customers but would also result in low conversion rates. By critically analyzing the downtimes, website loading time, web pages loading time, let us check out which e-commerce platform offers the best speed.
On an average, Shopify makes your website four times faster when compared to other e-commerce platforms, with an availability rate of 99.95%. On an average, Shopify can load your entire website in just two seconds. What’s more? Shopify is quite easy to handle and can let you create your entire website in just ten minutes.
Shopify tops the list in performance, as it takes just three hundred milliseconds to load a webpage. Further, Shopify powered stores experience downtime of only five minutes in a week! We can relate its high performance to its full SaaS-based architecture.
We have explored how rich WooCommerce is in its functionalities, but when we come down to its performance, is it great? Well, the answer is a no! On an average, WooCommerce sites take up 776 milliseconds to load.
According to Google, the average loading time of a website should be within 500 milliseconds. However, on an average, WooCommerce websites take 1.32 seconds to load your cart.
Approximately, the availability rate of this platform is 99.93 % which makes it less stable. This means that you are likely to experience downtime of forty minutes every week!
Even though the system has great technical capabilities, it takes quite some time to load, and this is due to the presence of huge modules and heavy images. The only way to speed up your website a bit is by caching these elements.
This Europe based e-commerce platform is comparatively stable with respect to WooCommerce. It has an availability rate of 99.97 % (apoprox.). It takes nearly 660 milliseconds to load. Additionally, it takes just 0.52 seconds to load the cart.
The complexity of the system has made it slower than most of the applications available, however, the results are satisfactory.
Thus, it can be concluded that Shopify provides the best speed, quickly followed by Magento and WooCommerce.
If you have a wonderfully-designed store with amazing products, but if it is unable to gain the required reach, it is all useless. This is why it is necessary that your chosen e-commerce platform is SEO friendly.
As a matter of fact, Shopify is not greatly SEO optimized. Although the platform allows you to edit the Meta tags, URLs for pages, title tags, and the likes, Shopify still has certain SEO issues.
Apart from that, one advantage of Shopify is that it automatically generates a sitemap that directs to your store, products, image files, and blog content and allows you to submit this map to Google search console. Thus, it helps you get your site indexed on the go.
To begin with, Magento provides reasonably good SEO optimization capabilities.
Magento websites are designed well, hence you can find them occupying the top ranks on the web search.
Magento provides all major features that come in handy in SEO optimization – like a site’s URLs and media data that includes Meta description and keywords. It also helps you in generating a canonical link for meta tags. Additionally, you can create advanced HTML/ XML sitemaps as well.
It automatically structures your data so that your web pages can be displayed in an organized and attractive manner. Further, the platform also provides inbuilt SEO support that helps you in resolving all the major SEO issues.
WooCommerce is SEO friendly. Being an open source system, WooCommerce offers a range of advantages when it comes to SEO. The platform allows you to access and modify the source code and provides the full control over your website.
Additionally, it is compatible with all major third-party plugins like Yoast SEO.
Thus, both Shopify and WooCommerce perform great in terms of SEO when compared to Magento.
Customization is a very crucial aspect when it comes to developing an e-commerce store. Ideally, you should be able to customize your e-commerce store as per your business model and niche.
Additionally, you should also be able to change themes, templates, layouts, and functionalities easily as your business scales up. So, let’s see how each of these three platforms perform when it comes to easy customizations.
Since Shopify is a hosted solution, it provides a limited scope for customization.
However, you can select themes, templates, language strings and colors as per your requirements. Nevertheless, it is very limited as the platform decides the extent to which you can customize. It provides a limited number of themes (maximum of hundred), and you can’t alter them fully!
On the same lines, Shopify doesn’t provide you a lot of freedom when it comes to optimizing backend. Additionally, even if you want to customize, you would need an in-depth programming knowledge which might not be feasible for most of the e-commerce store owners.
Further, you must purchase plugins and tools to make changes in the backend code which makes customization a paid feature. For example, if you want to edit the check-out patterns, you must pay a high price for the same.
In short, Shopify doesn’t provide good control over your e-commerce shop and provides you the limited opportunities when it comes to customization.
Customization is where the WooCommerce takes the cake.
Firstly, talking about the front end, you can easily customize and modify the themes, layout, font, templates and even the check-out patterns and change the entire look and feel of your store according to your requirements.
Needless to say, WooCommerce provides a range of themes and each one of them provides easy customizability.
Further, since WooCommerce is open source, you can easily modify the code to add custom functionalities.
In short, you have the entire command over your e-commerce shop, with infinite opportunities for customization. You can choose plugins and create custom styles for your themes.
Magento is a customizable e-commerce platform. Even though Magento doesn’t provide infinite opportunities, you can still customize most of the aspects of your store.
However, you need to have the basic coding knowledge for easy customization.
Talking about the frontend, Magento doesn’t provide a huge variety of thousands of themes like WooCommerce does, but you can choose between the available themes to meet your requirements.
Regarding the backend, it is an open source platform. Even though it comprises millions of code lines, but you can edit them as per your requirements.
As Magento is hosted by you, you can edit and create the configuration and set it up according to your requirements. Here, we can conclude that you can customize the platform in accordance with the depth of technical knowledge you possess.
Thus, Shopify offers the least freedom when it comes to customizing, while both Magento and WooCommerce can be customized on the go.
Hosting is where your website resides on the web. To a large extent, hosting also determines the speed of your online store. This is perhaps why choosing a reliable hosting is mandatory.
Let’s see how each of these platforms perform as far as hosting is concerned.
Shopify provides outstanding hosting services which are trustworthy, reliable and quick. Shopify provides hosting of its own, so you don’t need to deal with any hassles.
Further, in addition to providing hosting, Shopify also provides free email service. According to the claims made by Shopify, it is the first hosted e-commerce platform which used CDN or content delivery network. This is quite impressive, and what is even better is the fact that Shopify keeps rolling out automatic updates that keep your store running, well-protected and up to date.
It is worth mentioning here that Shopify provides no-limit hosting, and this is one of the best services offered in the market.
WooCommerce is a self-hosted platform, but it does provide hosting services in collaboration with other hosting service providers. The hosting solutions provided are quite fast and well-tuned.
However, WooCommerce just doesn’t stick to hosting. It also makes sure that your online store is safe and secure, and always running. Rest assured, the WooCommerce hosting is easy to comprehend and you won’t face any issues running it.
Next in the queue is the Magento which is a 100% self-hosted platform and doesn’t provide any web hosting services. Thus, if you need to host your Magento online store, you would have to take services from other hosting providers.
But, the best part is the fact that Magento is compatible with a range of hosting solution providers and finding the right hosting for you which is in line with your needs and requirements would not be a big deal.
All in all, it can be concluded that Shopify is the best solution when it comes to hosting as it eliminates the need for hiring third-party hosting services, thus making the entire experience smooth.
Needless to say, a theme is an important part of your e-commerce store and decides your website’s navigation and usability to a large extent.
This is why it is necessary that your chosen e-commerce platform is compatible and or provides a range of themes for you to choose from according to your niche and requirements.
Shopify would not disappoint you when it comes to choosing from an array of themes. To begin with, it is a WYSIWYG CMS and provides easy navigation along with a range of paid and free themes for you to choose from.
You can easily get a paid theme for your Shopify store in the range of $100 - $200 via third-party developers. Rest assured, Shopify themes are easy to integrate and come along with all the necessary features required to run an e-commerce store like single product themes, drop down menus, sub-categories, and zoom in and zoom out product images and so on.
WooCommerce doesn’t offer a range of theme options. This is because WooCommerce is just a WordPress plugin which converts your WordPress website into an e-commerce store. Since it is just software, it doesn’t provide themes for your store.
However, most WordPress themes are compatible with WooCommerce and you can have easy access to all of them – premium, paid and free!
Next up is the Magento which also offers a range of options when it comes to choosing the right theme for you. All the themes offered by Magento are customizable, responsive and user-friendly. They are easy to customize and can be adjusted as per the needs and requirements.
Although all the three platforms allow easy access to appropriate e-commerce themes, it is worth mentioning here that the flexibility offered by Shopify is the least as the Shopify themes cannot be customized easily.
Next up is the security. Needless to say, security forms an important aspect of an e-commerce site as the least you would expect is getting your and your customers’ confidential data compromised.
So, how do these three platforms perform as far as security is concerned? Let’s have a look.
Undoubtedly, Shopify is one of the safest and reliable platforms that we have with us today.
Shopify offers its own hosting and is monitored by developers round the clock which makes it most secure. Further, the platform also takes automatic backups and is compliant with level 1 PCI and provides SSL certificates to take care of your store on the go.
WooCommerce, as expected, also provides all the security features and even rolls out timely updates. However, since it is an open –source plugin, the ultimate responsibility of updating your websites lies on you and your developers.
Rest assured, the platform is compatible with all high-end security features like 2-factor authentication, FTP directory and so on.
You need not worry when it comes to security with Magento. It is a robust and secure platform made to handle large enterprise stores and it would not disappoint you at all. Like Shopify, it is PCI compliant and also provides SSL security.
As far as security is concerned, all the three platforms perform well. However, the only difference is that while Shopify takes care of your store’s security on its own, you would have to take proper steps to ensure your store’s security when choosing the other two platforms.
Support is an important component for every website that is trying to make it big in the e-commerce platform. When you are new to this platform, it is but natural that you would be encountering some issues, be it technical or administrative.
In this situation, the platform you choose needs to back you with some strong support system such that these issues are resolved at the earliest. This is the key to a good online shopping portal. In this regard, how does each of Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento fair? Let us take a look.
When it comes to support, Shopify beats its counterparts by a huge margin. How is it so? Basically, this particular online shopping portal provides 24/7 support services for its users.
This means, irrespective of the time of the day and the part of the world you are in, you are sure to receive full technical support from Shopify.
How do you reach this support time? You could get in touch with the experts of Shopify via phone, email or even live chat. Its user community support might not be that well-developed in this regard, but it makes up for it with its panel of experts and technical help.
Next up is WooCommerce. When it comes to support, this particular online shopping platform doesn’t provide amazing technical support availability. Owing to the open system architecture, the platform framework is pretty automatic and thus you have the opportunity to fix your issues here.
This means you can edit the source code at any point in time. However, if you want to contact WooCommerce through phone or email, that service is yet to be developed fully. However, there is something that makes up for it. It has a wide user community of people, especially on WordPress forums. The users here are always ready to cater to your issues.
This is helpful since each of those developers and website owners has personally faced the same issues as you have and thus, you have access to more personalized solutions to your problems.
Magento’s support service varies between the paid and the free versions. Let us start with the free version first. Since it is an open-source platform, you cannot interact directly with the technical support on the company’s end.
Official support services are negligible in this case. However, if you are a paid user, for the Enterprise edition, there is sufficient technical support available. However, for both the categories of users, you will have access to a wide developer community.
In here, most of the issues faced by any user are already answered. So, all you would have to do is look through the questions to search for the exact issue and get your query resolved.
Shopify provides unbeatable support. However, WooCommerce and Magento have a large community of developers which make it easy to solve a problem.
Every business, whether a startup or an enterprise, has its own budget constraints. Thus, it is necessary that your chosen platform is pocket-friendly. Let’s have a look at how these three platforms perform in terms of cost.
Shopify offers an initial subscription of a 14-day trial period. Most of the users start their journey with Shopify with the help of this membership. However, thereafter, once the trial period is over, you would have to purchase a membership, usually on a monthly basis.
There are different rates for the monthly plans. There are different rates for making your payment on Shopify. If you pay via your credit card, you would be paying the credit card rate of 2.9%+30 cents per purchase.
The other option is to pay via the Shopify payment portal. In this case, you are not required to pay anything extra. However, if you choose to use other payment portals, a maximum of 2% will be charged on your membership fees.
By default, WooCommerce proves to be a free platform, free plugin and the updates come in free as well. However, if the users need to get a little extra from the site, they opt for a paid version.
Now, let us consider the different payment methods on WooCommerce. By default, all the payment methods are visible on the WooCommerce portal. However, you have the freedom to edit the settings and display the payment method of your choice. You could make them visible by the use of simple widgets or template tag. The latter is available in three styles of default, inverse, and outline.
When it comes to cost, Magento could prove to be a bit costly. While the community version of the platform is free, however, if you wish to use the enterprise version, you would have to spend a considerable amount of money.
One of the best parts of Magento is the presence of various payment modules bundled in its site. You could make use of those payment gateways for the best results. These include:
You can visit the admin settings on the site in order to get access to changing these payment methods. You can code the right payment method and build its base from there. There are different coding options available for each payment method.
Magento turns out to be more payment-friendly when compared to the other two platforms.
Features offered by your chosen e-commerce platform are another important criteria which you should focus upon.
As it goes, the more the features, the easier it would be to setup and run your online store. Let’s have a look on different features provided by each of these three platforms.
Shopify comes along with an easy to use wizard-like interface which is very user-friendly and allows you to create your online store within a few minutes. This is what provides this platform an upper hand when compared to others.
Talking about the features, Shopify offers a range of exciting functionalities like an easy-to-use website builder, ability to customize your URL, a range of payment options, full store management, and global tax support.
In addition to this, it also provides a gift card support and allows you to upload unlimited products and services along with various shipping options. Its 24/7 customer support is another important feature to look for.
What’s more? It also offers a number of features that come in handy in the swift running of an online store like order history, refunds and a data-driven dashboard consisting of important information like sales, traffic, orders, and others.
WooCommerce is a free plugin and allows you to sell unlimited products on the go. You can further enhance its functionality and customize your store as per your needs.
As far as the features are concerned, the platform is known for providing easy checkout process along with a pre-installed payment gateway.
In addition to these, the platform comes equipped with a range of amazing features like shipping cart calculator, shipping methods, price display options and others.
WooCommerce also keeps your accounting sorted by providing net and gross earning reports, built-in tax feature and so on.
Magento, undoubtedly, comes along with an extensive range of features. This is perhaps why the platform is popular among enterprises and large organizations which need an array of high-end features.
From easy website management to analytics and reporting, payment and shipping, customer services, catalog management, order management and marketing tools, Magento has everything that is required to run an e-commerce store.
However, unlike Shopify, you would need an expert level knowledge and technical know-how to be able to use all these features.
Although all three platforms provide a range of amazing and useful features, it is pretty easier to experiment with these features with Shopify wherein everything is simplified. This is not the case with Magento and WooCommerce which need you to be technically sound to explore the features.
E-commerce is very dynamic and it is always on the move. In fact, it is progressing and growing with each passing day. In this regard, if you are looking to getting your shopping site started on such a platform, you would have to ensure that the portal can accommodate any changes in the business size.
If the business grows, with higher requirements, the e-commerce portal should be able to adjust to this dynamic and progressing environment. This is why it is essential to choose a portal that is scalable and can fit your business.
Shopify is a highly scalable solution for your e-commerce store. If you are starting off as a small e-commerce company and progressing towards something much bigger, Shopify makes the transition and operations much easier.
Shopify engages in creating specialized and simplified online stores for you such that they can withstand the hike in website traffic and sales. In fact, Shopify has been tried and tested for different flash sales in which the portal has proved its mettle. This is why Shopify is a very resilient and strong, scalable online shopping portal.
WooCommerce is well-built to handle a number of different products, larger inventories, and payment methods. However, it is not the best option for creating very large or dynamic online stores. It really falters when you integrate a POS.
WooCommerce’s weakness is exposed in this situation. In general, both the free and paid versions of the e-commerce portal will be able to handle the basic requirements of the store unless the shop deviates from the standard store and brings in heavy customizations.
When it comes to scalability, Magento is not far behind its counterpart of Shopify. This proves to be a fully scalable platform for its users in the field of online shopping.
As soon as your sales are on the rise and your inventory increases, you will have the opportunity to customize Magento to make it more suited to your business requirements.
This is the reason Magento proves to be a very useful option for bigger companies that are expanding on a regular basis. This helps the user easily manage their e-commerce platform.
All the three platforms perform equally well when it comes to scalability, however, Magento is the most scalable of all.
This brings us to the end of this article. It is safe to assume that Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento all provide great features and are good to go. If you are a non-techie person, then Shopify could be the right fit.
However, if you have an in-house developer, you can choose WooCommerce for small and medium-sized businesses, and Magento for enterprises.
So, what are your views on this? Do let us know in the comments below.
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