- Trying to choose an e-commerce platform can be so overwhelming. They all look great on their websites and both WordPress and
Shopify have super fans that will tell you they are
the only solution for you. Well, here at Exposure Ninja, we've built dozens of websites, worked with hundreds of clients using every imaginable platform, and we've analysed over 20,000
different sites and stores. In this video, we're gonna
cover the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce, and help you find the
best platform for you. (upbeat drum music)
(wind whooshing) (soft beeping) (soft clicking)
(wind whooshing) Now, we're gonna analyse these platforms using seven criteria: ease of
use, marketing tools and SEO, scalability and growth, build time, payment methods available,
security, and price. In each of these categories, we're going to declare
a winner and a loser, and this will help you choose
the right platform for you based on what's most important in your particular circumstances. But before we do any of that, we need to understand that
Shopify and WooCommerce are coming at e-commerce from
a completely different place. Shopify is a closed system because Shopify is a company and a very profitable one at that. When you sign up for Shopify, you are locked into their system and they control what
you can and can't do. They set the rules. Ultimately, if Shopify wanted to beat you off their platform, they
could absolutely do that. Now the plus side of
this is that Shopify is doing extremely well and
investing lots of money in building out their
platform and its capabilities, and they're likely to do so
for the foreseeable future. BuiltWith estimates that Shopify powers 29% of U.S. e-commerce stores. So they are the biggest by market share. This means that Shopify
is unlikely to shut down or stop investing in their
platform anytime soon. But if they ever did,
that would be a real issue for people who have Shopify stores, because essentially Shopify owns it and you're kind of just renting it. By contrast, WooCommerce is open source and it's built on the open
source WordPress platform. This means that you can do virtually whatever you want with your store. You have unlimited possibilities. If the WooCommerce company died, you could technically just
keep your store running. WooCommerce also has great market share, with around 20% of U.S. e-commerce stores. So not as much as Shopify, but still a very considerable percentage. And WordPress itself is the most popular content management system on the internet. So what does this mean for you? Well, either way, whichever
waggon you hitch yourself to, you are probably going to be okay in the short to medium term. Neither of these e-commerce
platforms is going away, but understanding how they come at things from a completely different perspective and the closed system versus
open source model helps us to understand some of the key
differences that we're gonna be seeing as we go
through today's analysis. (wind whooshing)
(soft beeps) (soft beeps)
(wind whooshing) The first criteria that
we're gonna compare Shopify and WooCommerce is in ease of use. Obviously ease of use is a
really important consideration all the time, but particularly
if you are new to e-commerce or you don't have the time
or energy to get involved in the development side of thing. Let's talk about design, first of all. If you want something that looks great straight out of the box, then Shopify is, undoubtedly, the winner for you. You can get started and
build a Shopify store very quickly and it looks usable. Of course, there are quite a
lot of free and paid themes on Shopify's Theme Store
that you can choose and you have HTML and
CSS editing capabilities should you want to customise
them a little bit more. When we're building a
site for a Shopify client, for example, we will take
a basic Shopify theme that loads very quickly, and then we will customise and edit it to make it perfect for that business. Now, with WooCommerce,
you have way more options. You have so many more themes. Not only do you have the
WooCommerce Theme Store, but you also have third-party
sites like Themeforest and just independent
developers that have built WordPress and WooCommerce themes. And of course you have almost
infinite customization options because the whole thing is open source. Obviously these unlimited options come at the expense of simplicity. So you're typically gonna
have to put more time into building a WooCommerce store if you're gonna get it
looking really good. All right. What about functionality? Let's say that you wanna
add order tracking, referral programmes, email
marketing, fulfilment, whichever e-commerce platform you choose, you're going to need integration. So how do they stack up? Well, with Shopify,
you have the App Store. In here, you'll find thousands of apps for every imaginable integration that you could possibly want. There's a mixture of free and paid, but usually a theme will have
some kind of paid component. This Shopify App Store is a closed system, meaning that Shopify controls and owns it. This means two things. Firstly, it tends to mean the apps are better straight out of the box. So you don't have to worry too much about how it's been
developed or how it works. They tend to just work
as you would expect. The other thing is that
because Shopify charges the developers a fee for
listing in the App Store, Shopify apps tend to be more expensive than their WooCommerce counterparts. So what about WooCommerce? Well, WooCommerce also has
its own extension store and here there are thousands of different possible WooCommerce extensions that you can add to your store. But aside from this, there are all the third-party extensions
that have been built. What you'll usually
find with WooCommerce is not only can you find an extension to do basically whatever
you want it to do, but you'll also find a
huge number of extensions that give you each piece of functionality. So you've got a range
of choices between free and very expensive, paying monthly. So that gives you a huge
amount of variety in choice. The downside of this
obviously is you've got to sift through all of this stuff and because WooCommerce plugins aren't like vetted and approved into an official WooCommerce
store all the time, this also increases the likelihood that there will be conflicts, mismatches, and things that just don't work or plugins that haven't been kept up to date for a long time. So the onus is on you to
make sure that the plugin that you're installing
does what it needs to do and plays nicely with
the rest of your site. So on that note then, what about support? What happens if something breaks? Well, Shopify has 24/7 support. You can phone them, you can email them, or you can talk to them on live chat, and they're pretty good, but there's also a pretty active forum where people can post questions and the Shopify community
can provide answers. Now WooCommerce on the other hand, because it's not making money out of you, you're not paying a
subscription fee to WooCommerce, it's very difficult for them to provide a centralised support team. This means that WooCommerce
support is either up to you to go and find a developer
that can help you fix whatever issue you're coming up against or go to the WooCommerce community. This is a vibrant community, as it tends to be with
open source projects. So there are lots of forums and posts and helpful people that
will try and help you out, but again, the onus is on you
to find the right solution and to implement that yourself. So overall then for ease of use, who wins? Well, both platforms are
relatively easy to use. It's important to say this, you will be able to build
and maintain a store using whichever platform you want. If you're adding e-commerce
to an existing WordPress site, then obviously WooCommerce is by far the easiest way to do that. But overall, for most people, Shopify is a clear ease-of-use winner. Because Shopify prioritises simplicity over unlimited flexibility and because it is a closed system, which Shopify manages very tightly, it is a much easier e-commerce platform to get something usable out
of the box very quickly. Our second comparison criteria
is marketing tools and SEO. The saying, "build it,
and they will come," has never been less true
than with e-commerce. And every day we are
sent e-commerce stores by owners that are
struggling to market them because they haven't thought
about how they're actually going to promote their store
and drive traffic to it. So how do these platforms stack up with marketing and SEO capabilities? Well, starting with SEO, the story with Shopify was always that the SEO capabilities were limited. It was one of the
trade-offs that Shopify made in order to make the
platform simple to use. We've just released a video
all about Shopify SEO. So I'm not gonna go into
loads of detail here, but the short version is
that those SEO limitations are way more severe than they used to be. Today, we see some very successful, high-ranking stores built in Shopify. And if you're willing to stick with it, you can basically implement
what you need to implement on a Shopify store to get it
ranking and performing well. Now, WooCommerce, it's part of
WordPress, which is basically the most SEO-friendly
platform ever to exist. It's a dream to optimise,
it's a dream to SEO, and you can do whatever you want with it. Another important marketing consideration is blogs and content. Now you've heard us talk before on the Exposure Ninja
videos and our podcast about the importance for e-commerce stores of getting some kind of content
section on your website, whether it's your blog, or a
news section, or an article, knowledge-based thing, or a content hub. So how do these platforms
stack up with the flexibility and functionality that
they offer in this area? Well, it helps to think
about exactly what they are. Shopify is an e-commerce
platform with a bit of a blog functionality stuck on, whereas WooCommerce is
actually a blog platform with the e-commerce
functionality stuck on. So therefore you have way more flexibility and control of setting
up a content section on a WordPress WooCommerce store. Usually Shopify sites will either add-on the default Shopify
blog, the news section, and then they'll rename it, but the functionality
here is pretty limited. The next step up is to add an
add-on which will allow you to build out a content
hub or knowledge base. Again, this can be limited and it can feel quite disconnected from
the rest of the store. The level above this is to actually add-on a separate content management system onto your Shopify store, for example, as a sub domain or as a folder. And ironically, one of the
most popular solutions here is to bolt on a WordPress
site onto your Shopify store so that content section
can really be optimised and have all the functionality
that you would want. So which platform wins in
the marketing and SEO round? Well, really we've got to hand it to WordPress and WooCommerce here. They are very difficult to beat. This is one area where
the unlimited flexibility, complexity trade-off really
works in their favour. Having said that, the gap is much closer than it was a few years ago. So this is clearly an area that Shopify is focusing on and putting attention into. So we would expect to
see more developments in this area to come. Let's now look at scalability and growth because obviously you want
an e-commerce platform that can grow with your brand. Well, Shopify has various
different pricing plans that allow you to go from startup all the way to Shopify Plus, where you're gonna be running
an enterprise business, and there are large global brands that are running successfully on Shopify. This gives you the
reassurance that boring stuff like bandwidth and server
speed and the things that you'd rather not spend your time thinking about are all handled for you. But obviously as you
scale your Shopify store, the fees that you pay to Shopify will grow and quite significantly. And of course, high-profile
stores like Gymshark still prove that, given enough
traffic on Black Friday, any site can go down, regardless of what platform it's built on. With WooCommerce, it's very different. You can upgrade your
hosting whenever you choose, and you are in complete
control of the costs. And that's kind of the WooCommerce vibe. You're in control of changing and upgrading the bits as you need them. It's all up to you. That's the good news and the bad news. The plus side of this is
that your store's fees will usually be lower, but of
course the downside of this is that you have to spend more
time thinking about this stuff and possibly paying developers
to manage this stuff for you. So who wins on the
scalability side of things? Well, honestly, this is
a difficult one to call. If you want hassle-free scalability, then Shopify is definitely the winner, but if you want complete control
and you want lower costs, then WooCommerce is
likely to be your choice. (wind whooshing) By the way, hope you're
enjoying this video. If you are, consider
subscribing to the channel. Also, smash the like button and click the little bell notification to get an alert when we post a new video. Usually we post one of these
videos, plus a shorter one, and a marketing tear
down session on a Friday, every single week on our YouTube channel. So it's well worth subscribing. Also, drop us a note in the
comments if you're enjoying it. We love to read them. Literally, I read YouTube
comments when I've had a bad day. So please drop me a note
if you found this useful, or you have any tips for
raising a second child. (wind whooshing) Round four, ding, ding, ding,
build time and maintenance. We've built a lot of stores in
both WooCommerce and Shopify. So which is the simplest to build in and which requires the least maintenance? Well, the great thing about
Shopify is you can get something usable up within literally 15 minutes. Just sign up for your
store, get it all set up, put your products in and away you go. You're gonna have something
that looks decent. With WooCommerce, you can
definitely get something set up in 15 minutes, but it will look rubbish. Typically it takes way longer to get a WooCommerce store looking good. When we're building or
designing these sites, usually we'll be planning a Shopify build to take between one and two months, and that's with custom design and custom coding in the theme. Whereas with WooCommerce, we're usually gonna be
looking at three months plus, and it can be significantly longer if there's functionality
and complex integrations. And it's a similar story
with the ongoing maintenance. Shopify stores don't tend to require a huge amount of ongoing maintenance. Of course you wanna tweak
things, but with WooCommerce, it's useful to have a developer on hand, even if they're not full-time, just a contact that you
know who you can ping when you wanna do things
like do plugin updates or find out why something isn't working. So when it comes to build
time and ongoing maintenance, Shopify is a clear winner here. Next up, payment providers. With things like Splitpay,
Apple Pay, Google Pay, all the rage with e-commerce, it's important that whatever
e-commerce platform you choose gives your customers a range of simple and easy-to-use payment methods. So which e-commerce platform is best? Well, both platforms have
a range of integrations and are very easy to set up with things like Stripe and PayPal, which gives you a huge range of different payment options. Shopify also has its own shop pay service, which can be very easy
to use if your customers have bought from a Shopify store before. They usually have, and can enable them to go through checkout very quickly. But who's the winner? We're gonna call this a
tie because both platforms are so easy to set up
payment processes with. The final shootout in our
comparison is pricing and fees. Now Shopify has different
plans starting at $29 a month, going all the way up to Shopify Plus where you'll be paying
2,000 plus per month. Add to that, the fees for the add-ons, which tend to be more expensive than the WooCommerce equivalent, plus Shopify's transaction fee, which you have to pay on
every sale that you make, even if you don't use Shopify
as the payment processor, and the fees really start to add up. Now these transaction fees do fall as you move up in different packages. So at the very low end, when
you're paying $29 a month, you'll be paying a 2% transaction fee. But as you move up through their
offering into Shopify Plus, that transaction fee
comes down much further. But regardless, when
you're doing decent revenue through a Shopify store, those fees are going to feel painful. WooCommerce, by contrast, has no fees. WooCommerce is free. WordPress is free. Of course you might be paying
for any paid extensions or plugins that you use,
but you can often find free or cheap versions of those anyway. The only cost you'll have to
pay for your WooCommerce store is your payment processor fee, but you'll have to pay this
with Shopify as well anyway. So it's clear that WooCommerce is the most economical option. But as for calling a
winner in this category, it's really difficult because
WooCommerce and Shopify are offering such different propositions. With Shopify, you're paying
for that closed system. You're paying for the protection and you're paying for the
support and the ease of use. Whereas with WordPress, you've
got a bunch of free tools, but you are in charge of doing
all of that stuff yourself. You'll probably have to pay for
ongoing development support, which you might not have to
pay as much for, with Shopify. So it's really difficult
to weigh up these two costs because they are such
different propositions. Overall, though, if pricing and fees is a real priority for you, it's very difficult to
beat the free WooCommerce. (wind whooshing)
And by the way, the team here at Exposure Ninja, we build, optimise and
promote e-commerce stores. That's what we do. We've got a team of 107 ninjas at the time of making this video, which builds, optimises and
promotes e-commerce stores and other websites through
SEO, content marketing, pay-per-click social
media, email marketing, and conversion rate optimization. This is what we do. If you want some free help and support with
your e-commerce store, then you can request a free website and digital marketing
review from the team here. All you need to do is
go to exposureninja.com and click the big button to request your free website and marketing review. One of the consultancy team here will take a look at your store. They'll have a look at how
you're promoting it already and how well you're doing. They'll also analyse your competitors to see what they're doing for any clues for areas that you could be focusing on to generate more sales through your store. They'll then put together
a prioritised action plan that you can follow over
the next 6 to 12 months to significantly increase
your store's revenue. They'll send this through
to you as a video. It's completely free of
charge. There is no catch. There is no obligation to
use Exposure Ninja services. So request your free website
and digital marketing review today at exposureninja.com. (wind whooshing) So what's the verdict?
Which platform wins? Well, the ultimate answer is, it depends on what's
most important to you. If ease of use, simplicity
and having something that just works straight out
of the box is your priority, then Shopify is the
e-commerce platform for you. If however, you're willing
to get your hands dirty and you value the
flexibility and lower fees, then WooCommerce on
WordPress is a great option, and we've built high ranking, high-performing sites on both platforms. There is no one best. And I'd like to leave you with this point, your e-commerce store's
success is not dependent on the platform that you used. These are just tools and brands are built on how you use these tools,
not which one you choose, Shopify or WooCommerce. You can make a successful store on either of these platforms. It's all about what you do
with it, how you promote it, the proposition that you have and the traffic that you drive. Yes, choose an e-commerce
platform that you like, but it's what you do with
it that really counts. You've got this. (upbeat drum music)
(wind whooshing)
