Every business looks forward to popping up on the internet after a tragic pandemic has passed. Besides, the growing market and the pandemic has shifted the buyers’ focus on buying online. By correspondence, you may be looking for an online solution for e-commerce or online business.
The burning question is – which is the best e-commerce platform for you? Like you, most of the coming online entrepreneurs often face the dilemma of choosing between WordPress or any other dedicated e-commerce platform like Shopify for their business.
Hence, in this article, we have tried to draw a fine line between WordPress and Shopify to better understand you of these two platforms.
What is WordPress?
WordPress It is the leading open source content management system (CMS) that powers 42 percent of all websites in the world today. And because it is an open source tool, it is completely free.
Initially, WordPress started as a blogging platform. But the emergence over the years has prompted WordPress to create and manage all kinds of websites. Specifically, the introduction of WordPress plugins and themes has greatly affected the non-technical users who chose WordPress as their platform.
Another WordPress revolution is WooCommerce, with which you can create a fully functional e-commerce store without worrying about running a complex management system. Since the opening of WooCommerce, WordPress has gained an influential position in the e-commerce space.
What is Shopify?
Shopify It is a self-hosted web application platform where you can create an online store without worrying about anything. It has a wide range of customizable templates to meet individual business needs. So, logging in and creating your website is as simple as playing a plug and play game.
Shopify hosts your website on its servers. Thus, everything works on the cloud. Notably, Shopify is self-hosted, so you don’t have to purchase any hosting solution. It’s a Software as a Service (SaaS) tool, which means you don’t own the entire software. You pay a certain amount of monthly or annual fee to use the software.
WordPress vs Shopify Comparison: The 8 Key Differences
WordPress and Shopify are two different emperors in two different online domains. In the next part, we discuss some of the main differences between WordPress and Shopify.
user
Whether you want a magazine site, membership site, online store, or maybe a blog, WordPress can serve them all. Therefore, WordPress has multiple users that each serve a different purpose. Moreover, it has a large ecosystem of themes and plugins, allowing you to develop any type of website.
Conversely, Shopify’s user base builds with entrepreneurs and e-commerce store owners because it is the store management system. Those who own an online e-commerce store or plan to own one consider Shopify as their go-to platform. Aside from e-commerce users, other users do not have compelling reasons to use Shopify.
Pricing
WordPress CMS is free. Thus, you do not have to pay a penny to use WordPress or WooCommerce. However, since the domain and hosting do not come with the WordPress package, you need to pay for it.
Even though most of the WordPress plugins and themes in the WordPress repository are either completely free or come with a limited free version, you still need to purchase the premium version to access the advanced features.
On the other hand, Shopify comes with five different pricing plans. Its pricing plan covers everything for you as a user. So, you don’t have to worry about other issues.
Templates and themes
WordPress offers an unparalleled variety of themes. It provides more than 8800 themes for your website and more than 1500 e-commerce themes only. Apart from that, there are a lot of themes developed by third parties. However, given the security and compatibility issues after updating WordPress, we suggest you use themes from WordPress.org.
On the other hand, Shopify offers a total of 70+ themes, of which 10 are free. The rest of the themes cost $140 or more.
user interface
The basic design of WordPress and Shopify are almost the same. Both systems come with a similar control panel with a menu on the left side. You can select options and add, modify or delete items according to your needs using the menu.
Some users confirmed that they found the Shopify interface a bit simpler and contemporary compared to the WordPress one. However, WordPress offers more flexibility in customization as it comes with visual editor plugins like Elementor and Divi to customize your store or website according to your taste.
Ease of use
Comparing Shopify’s simplicity, WordPress is relatively complex to use. Since it is not strictly developed to create online stores, users need to install an e-commerce plugin such as WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Ecwid. Also, the backend dashboard might seem a bit confusing to a novice user because there are so many options and tools.
Adding products to your Shopify store is a simple process. The interface is very similar to a Microsoft Word document. Users need to tell the system a little bit about their business, and the system will take care of the rest. There are two ways to upload products – individually or in bulk.
mobile response
Nowadays, a large number of users are browsing from their mobile devices or tablets. In this case, a device responsive website is a must for you with customer satisfaction in mind.
Most WordPress themes are mobile responsive, although some lack this feature. On the other hand, all Shopify themes are mobile ready. However, you can use Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on both platforms to enjoy better mobile responsiveness.
E-Commerce
Shopify is a platform designed precisely for e-commerce businesses and online stores, while WordPress serves a variety of benefits. So, Shopify has a slight leading edge in the WordPress ecommerce arena.
Shopify offers all the elements, themes, and everything else geared towards just one goal – to provide you with a fully functional online store. Whereas e-commerce is not the main concern of WordPress. To create an e-commerce store in WordPress, you need to install separate plugins (WooCommerce, BigCommerce, etc.).
Both platforms integrate multiple payment options, and Shopify supports more languages. However, you can use multilingual plugins to use other languages on your WordPress site.
For dropshipping, WordPress has a native solution. On the other hand, Shopify integrates with Ordoro, eCommHub, and Inventory Source for dropshipping.
SEO
Being a blogging platform, it has made SEO a strong area for WordPress. The platform itself is SEO friendly. Besides, many SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math provide you excellent guidelines to rank well in the SERP.
Shopify’s SEO functionality is also very powerful. For example, you can add meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta tags. You can also add 301 redirects and change page URLs according to your needs. Also, Shopify recommends SEO best practices when adding products to your website.
It’s now easier to choose between WordPress and Shopify
Both WordPress and Shopify have their own importance and weaknesses considering your purposes. Thus, given the main differences between these two platforms, you can choose the one that best suits your needs. If you are not satisfied with any of them, there are other options on the market as well, such as Magneto and EDD.
read the following
About the author
