WordPress vs Shopify: What’s better for an eCommerce store?
From Shopify naturally providing growth opportunities to WordPress future-proofing your eCommerce site, here are 10 answers to the question, “If you were setting up an eCommerce store today, would you choose WordPress or Shopify? Why?”
- Shopify Naturally Provides Countless Growth Opportunities
- WordPress For Flexibility and Community of Developers
- Shopify Was Built With E-Commerce in Mind
- I’m Torn Between Them
- WordPress Offers Flexibility and Scalability
- WordPress for Lower Costs
- Unless You Have WordPress Skills, Go With Shopify
- WordPress Freedom Versus Shopify Comprehensiveness
- I’d Opt for WordPress but Currently, I Use Shopify
- WordPress Will Futureproof Your E-commerce Website
Shopify Naturally Provides Countless Growth Opportunities
As providers of a SaaS solution that integrates with both, we can confidently say that Shopify offers the most secure, stable, and seamless experience as opposed to WordPress sites using WooCommerce or other commerce plugins. While WordPress can be considered the Swiss Army knife of website providers, Shopify is designed for e-commerce and naturally provides countless growth opportunities.
Maria Chan, Marketing and Communication Manager, Scalify
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WordPress For Flexibility and Community of Developers
I would definitely choose WordPress over Shopify for setting up an e-commerce store. The main reason for this is its flexibility and a huge community of developers.
Other than that, WordPress also offers a wide range of customization options that allow for a more personalized and unique online store experience. Additionally, WordPress has a wide variety of options for payment gateway integration and does not charge any additional fees for using the WooCommerce plugin and gateway.
The large community of developers also ensures that support and resources are always available for troubleshooting and maintenance. Overall, WordPress offers a more robust and cost-effective solution for e-commerce stores.
Sunny Bundel, Founder, WpTalky
Shopify Was Built With E-Commerce in Mind
For setting up a new e-commerce store, I’d usually recommend choosing Shopify for most brands. The reason is that with Shopify, everything has been designed and built from the ground up with e-commerce and online retail in mind. WordPress does have a good e-commerce solution in WooCommerce, however, the WordPress platform was not originally built for this purpose. This means a lot more customization is needed to get things working exactly as you’d like in many cases.
As a business grows, Shopify is more of a scalable solution, too. In 2022, we saw some of the world’s biggest brands migrate their e-commerce platform over to Shopify-which is a huge task-but shows how confident they are in its ability to handle thousands of orders per day. Shopify is perfect not only for beginners just starting out, but also for enterprise-level brands.
Ryan Turner, Founder, EcommerceIntelligence.com
I’m Torn Between Them
I’m torn between Shopify and WooCommerce for WordPress – I think either one is great for an e-commerce store. Shopify is generally easier to use than WooCommerce, particularly for beginners.
It has a more user-friendly interface and provides a range of tools and features to help you set up and manage your online store. WordPress is pretty easy also, but I think Shopify is just that bit better for beginners. Both Shopify and WooCommerce have free plans, but Shopify’s paid plans tend to be more expensive than WooCommerce’s. Shopify and WooCommerce offer a range of features for managing an online store, however, Shopify tends to offer more advanced features and integrations, such as support for multiple languages and currencies, and the ability to sell on social media platforms.
But, one thing makes me biased, I’m obsessed with SEO and in my view WooCommerce is much better at it than Shopify, meaning it’s much easier to set up and you get traffic more quickly.
Shane McEvoy, MD, Flycast Media
WordPress Offers Flexibility and Scalability
In my opinion, WordPress is the ideal choice for setting up an e-commerce store today.
One of the main reasons I prefer WordPress is its flexibility and customization options.
WordPress offers a wide range of plugins and themes that can be easily integrated with an e-commerce store, making it easy to add features and functionality as needed. This allows for a highly personalized and unique online store that can meet the specific needs of your business. Another key advantage of using WordPress for e-commerce is its scalability.
With WordPress, it is easy to start small and grow as your business expands. This is especially important for businesses that are just starting out and may not have the resources to invest in a more expensive and complex e-commerce platform.
Alan Carr, Director, Webpop Design
WordPress for Lower Costs
WordPress and Shopify are both great platforms for e-commerce. However, WordPress is the winner for me, for two reasons.
Firstly, WordPress offers great flexibility. I am not a coder, and even on a fairly complex WordPress e-commerce site, the platform has always had the functionality my business needs, without the need to fiddle with code. I have worked on Shopify sites before, and I found that I needed a developer to make certain changes ‘under the hood’ in the CMS.
Secondly, WordPress is cheaper than Shopify in the long term. Although it takes longer to set up a site on WordPress, the ongoing charge is basically zero, whereas Shopify has moderate ongoing charges.
Michael Sandford, Director, Big Whistle
Unless You Have WordPress Skills, Go With Shopify
For most people planning to run an e-commerce business and who are primarily business-oriented, Shopify is still the better choice. It was built with just that kind of audience in mind, and it still serves them outstandingly.
WordPress is primarily a content management system, albeit a powerful one. It’s virtually limitless in what it can achieve in skilled hands, but that’s also a high bar to set for an average person just looking to run a digital storefront. So, unless you know WordPress inside out, Shopify is still the way to go.
Damjan Tanaskovic, CMO, Localizely
WordPress Freedom Versus Shopify Comprehensiveness
Both WordPress and Shopify are popular options for setting up an e-commerce store. WordPress is a free and open-source CMS that is widely used for building websites and offers a large community of developers and users, but it does require more technical know-how. Shopify is a fully-hosted e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of features and tools and is easy to set up and use, but requires a monthly subscription fee.
Essentially, if you want more flexibility and control over your store or you have a budget to handle, then WordPress is a good choice. However, if you want a more turnkey solution that is easy to set up and use, then Shopify might be a better option. If we were just after quickly testing an initiative, we’d definitely go with Shopify. However, if we had web development resources available to us at all times, then WordPress would probably be better.
Andreea Saveluc, Head of Content Marketing, Blue Starling Media
I’d Opt for WordPress but Currently, I Use Shopify
Right now, my online store is built with Shopify, but I find it quite difficult to update and manage, and I don’t feel like the blog is very well integrated into the product. I’ve heard a lot of positive things about using WordPress as an e-commerce store, and so in the near future, I may look at switching things over. I’ve seen some nice stores that run on WooCommerce, and as my shop is quite basic (we sell fruit and veg boxes), I don’t need a lot of the functionality that Shopify provides. I wouldn’t consider this a downgrade, though; I would like to have a nicer-looking website and to publish more on my blog.
Cherry Fermor, Owner, Cherries and Carrot Tops
WordPress Will Futureproof Your E-commerce Website.
If I were setting up an e-commerce store today, I would choose WordPress. Although Shopify is a great e-commerce tool, it can’t compete with the future-proofing you get from choosing WordPress as your website platform. WordPress allows for your e-commerce features to grow along with your brand with very few limitations. Of course, you can expand your Shopify site to an extent as well, but you will find there is a threshold with either your budget or what their platform allows.
Kate Smoothy, SEO Specialist/Web Designer, Webhive Digital
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