Magento Vs Shopify: Picking an Ecommerce Platform

Magento vs Shopify – Which is right for your store?

Shopify and Magento are two of the most popular e-commerce platforms available today. Both of these are being used by hundreds of thousands of store owners to sell products online. If you’re interested in setting up an online store of your own, these two platforms are bound to come up in the list of considerations. But even though these are marketed as complete e-commerce solutions, the way they operate and function differs significantly.

A direct comparison between Magento and Shopify is not an easy feat. That’s because Shopify operates on a “software as a service” (SaaS) model which offers users a complete set of store building and management tools for a monthly subscription fee. Magento on the other hand, is open-source and available to the public free of any cost (more on that later).

The catch with Magento is that while anyone can avail it for free, it is nowhere near as user-friendly as Shopify is to use. And that is one of the major reasons why anyone choosing between these platforms as possible e-commerce solutions should really go deep into the key differences.

Note: In this article we’ll be talking about the Community Edition of the Magento platform as it allows for a better comparison against Shopify.

At a Glance

	Shopify	Magento Community Edition
Transaction fees	Up to 2% of each sale (Exempted by using Shopify Payments)	Vary according to payment processor
Number of Products	Unlimited	Unlimited
Themes (on official marketplace)	62 (10 Free)	14 (1 Free)
Apps and Plugins	2000+	3300+
Supported Payment Gateways	70+	Supports most gateways
Number of Stores	500,000+	250,000+
Bandwidth Restrictions	None	Vary according to hosting plan
Pricing	Starting at $29 (excl. Lite plan)*	Free

*The Shopify Lite plan is excluded as it is does not include store-building tools.

Templates

Website design has always been a major consideration for site owners. Good design goes a long way towards building trust and credibility with a website’s visitors. An e-commerce store with a well-designed interface invites visitors to shop around, increasing the chances of a sale. Bad design on the other hand makes a bad impression and is likely to drive traffic away from a website.

The drastic increase in smartphone usage has meant that websites now need to be optimized for a seamless mobile web experience. Google goes as far as to penalize websites that do not offer mobile-friendly interfaces.

Shopify Templates

Shopify offers a selection of 62 templates, 10 of which are available for free. The company has always offered templates that sport a clean and modern aesthetic, even the ones that are completely free. Reassuringly, all of the templates offered are mobile-optimized so they look great and offer a consistent user experience regardless of the device they’re being accessed from.

                              Shopify’s free ‘Simple’ template in its ‘Beauty’ variation

 

The free templates all feature crisp and distinct designs that will suit a variety of industries. What’s more, each template comes in 2 or 3 variations, giving users further options on how they want a particular template to look right out of the box.

Shopify’s paid templates start at $140 and go up to $180. This is a one-time cost and one every store owner should consider with great care. The look and feel of an e-commerce store defines its identity and decisions down the road to change it can result in decreased customer confidence and a drop in search rankings.

The paid templates have been designed beautifully with a clean and modern aesthetic. What’s more, the selection of templates is quite diverse and Shopify has managed to cover nearly every major industry within these paid templates. These templates can be further customized with Shopify’s powerful customization tools. These customizations include:

• Changing the color palette of the entire website
• Changing the fonts used for the website
• Custom banner images for branding
• Size adjustments for various website elements

What’s more, all of this can be done without the need to delve into complex CSS or backend code.

Magento Templates

A visit to the template section of the official Magento Marketplace reveals that there are currently just 14 templates available, only one of which is free. The rest of the templates start from $29.99 and go all the way up to $499.99. Why the dramatic variance in cost? That’s because not all of these themes feature the same level of design and customizability.

The Argento template for Magento costs $499

 

In fact, some of the themes available in the Magento Marketplace feel downright dated and have very mundane designs. Store owners looking for a diverse selection of themes with modern designs certainly won’t find what they’re looking for here.

But this is where Magento’s open-source model comes into play. Because Magento is free, third-party designers and developers can create their very own templates for it. And that has led to the growth of vibrant Magento template marketplaces on popular website design websites such as Template Monster and Theme Forest.

Marketplaces such as Template Monster offer a large selection of Magento templates

 

At the time of writing, there are 461 paid Magento templates on Template Monster and 764 on Theme Forest. And it’s not just a matter of quantity either. Most of the templates have passed their respective marketplace’s quality control procedures and feature great design.

And thanks to Magento’s open-source nature, the templates can be customized in a variety of ways including:

• Custom sliders
• Add animations to individual elements to give the website a ‘livelier’ feel
• Add custom scripts to include additional functionality within the template

And if this kind of diversity still doesn’t cut it, you can have a custom and unique template designed from scratch. Mind you, you’re going to need a Magento expert to accomplish this and it’s very likely going to cost you a fair bit of money.

Customer Support

Access to reliable customer support is vital to the operations of any e-commerce store. If things go wrong, customer support is usually the first point of contact for many store owners. If your store is not functioning properly and there’s no support available to resolve the problem, you’re going to lose sales and even customers. This is far from ideal for any e-commerce business.

Shopify Customer Support

                                                                                        Shopify’s live support is responsive and provides swift resolution to customer issues

Shopify offers online and phone support for each of its subscription tiers. In practice, Shopify’s customer support is responsive and helpful to even the most simplest of questions, and queries on live chat were responded to within a minute. The company realizes that most of its customers are not well-versed in technical knowledge and the support staff is always there to help its users.

Magento Customer Support

Because Magento is open-source software, there is no official customer support available to its users. If a Magento-powered store runs into any kind of problems, its owner is either expected to diagnose and solve the problem on their own (Magento forums are useful in this regard), or turn to expert help.

There are third-party firms that specialize in Magento customer support. The best of these firms are highly knowledgeable and offer an excellent level of customer support.

One such firm is CoolBlueWeb that has been in the business of providing Magento expertise and support services since 2009. They are an official Magento Solutions Partner and have generally positive reviews by the companies they’ve worked with.

Pricing

Shopify is a paid product that is offered as a “software as a service” (SaaS). Magento on the other hand is open-source software available to anyone for free.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify is currently offered with the following 5 pricing options:

1. Lite: $9 per month
2. Basic Shopify: $29 per month
3. Shopify: $79 per month
4. Advanced Shopify: $299 per month
5. Shopify Plus: For high-volume merchants. Prices vary according to requirements and reportedly hover around $2000 per month

 

The Lite version of Shopify does not give access to the platform’s store-building tools. It is meant to facilitate product sales on existing websites or through Facebook.

Magento Pricing

Magento is open-source and available for free to anyone who wants to use it. However, that also means that the user is responsible for purchasing a website hosting plan. Hosting plans vary in cost depending upon the requirements and can go anywhere from $4 to $4000-per-month.

After that you need to factor in the costs of hiring Magento experts who’ll be responsible for getting the store up and running. This can be avoided if you’re good with coding and other web technologies.

Transaction Fees

Most popular e-commerce store building platforms charge their users a fee on each transaction. Shopify does this as well and charges up to 2.0% on each sale. The percentage goes down to 0.5% when users opt for the most expensive plan (Advanced Shopify, $299/mo). But keep in mind that after Shopify has kept a cut of the sale, your credit card payment processor will also deduct a small percentage of the payment. The table below highlights these costs:

 

	Basic Shopify ($29/mo)	Shopify ($79/mo)	Advanced Shopify($299/mo)
Credit Card Rates
Online (Purchases through online store)	2.9% + 30¢	2.6% + 30¢	2.4% + 30¢
In person (Purchases through Shopify POS)	2.7% + 30¢	2.5% + 30¢	2.4% + 30¢
Transaction Fees
Using Shopify Payments	None	None	None
Using external payment gateways (like Stripe)	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%

Using Shopify’s own payment processor, Shopify Payments, users can avoid the transaction fees the platform usually charges for using external payment gateways. Keep in mind that Shopify Payments is only available to merchants operating from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Puerto Rico and Singapore.

Magento doesn’t have its own payment processor and that means users will have to opt for an external payment processor. Popular options include Stripe, which charges a flat 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee on each transaction.

Popularity

The popularity of an e-commerce platform is an often overlooked factor. On the contrary however, it is one of the most important factors to consider for anyone deciding on what platform to build their online store on. The reason for this is simple. A platform’s popularity means that it is delivering according to the expectations of its users.

                                                                                         10% of the world’s e-commerce stores use Shopify. Magento isn’t far behind with a 7% market share

 

The more popular a platform is, the more likely its company is generating healthy amounts of revenue, which benefits the platform directly in the form of research and development. Platforms that are not popular will not generate much revenue for sustained research and development efforts, and will most likely be overtaken by better-performing competitors.

The Important Figures

• Stores using Shopify and Magento

Both Shopify and Magento are established players in the e-commerce business. Shopify powers more than half a million online stores in the world. Magento on the other hand powers more than 250,000 stores. The reason for Shopify’s popularity in this regard could be its accessibility for small businesses and even individual sellers.

• Revenue

Shopify’s market share of total e-commerce stores is certainly impressive. But that’s only a small part of the bigger picture. The revenue these stores are generating will illustrate how successful or big Shopify stores are. In this regard, Shopify stores are behind $46 billion in e-commerce sales. Magento on the other hand is responsible for just over $100 billion in sales. This could be due to Magento’s dominant footprint in the enterprise market.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins

After a basic e-commerce store has been setup using the preferred store builder, users might want to extend the functionality of the store beyond what the base platform has to offer. Store owners who’re likely to use increasingly complex business processes should definitely consider the extensibility of the e-commerce platform they choose.

A common phenomenon in the tech industry is that the most popular platforms get the most amount of third-party support. An example of this would be Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android which have thriving app ecosystems. These ecosystems form a major part of the platform’s appeal as they extend the functionality of a smartphone beyond the basic features (calling, messaging and internet browsing).

In terms of popularity, both Shopify and Magento enjoy dominant positions in the e-commerce business. This popularity has also led to tremendous support from third-party developers. Shopify and Magento both have their own dedicated plugin marketplaces (Shopify App Store and Magento Marketplace).

Shopify App Store

The Shopify App Store is a dedicated resource that hosts an extensive catalog of apps that are meant to extend the functionality of the platform. There are more than 2300 apps available which address a large variety of user requirements.

                                                                                                                         The Shopify App Store has a very accessible design

 

Another neat touch is the way the Shopify App Store has been laid out. The interface is really well designed and doesn’t feel intimidating to new users. In fact, the layout is quite reminiscent of smartphone app stores, which are designed to be easy to navigate for the average person.

There is a curated section of apps at the top and a “New and Noteworthy” apps section that highlights new apps that have impressed the Shopify editors.

Magento Marketplace

The Magento Marketplace is home to more than 3300 extensions. As you might have guessed, these extensions have been designed to extend the functionality of the Magento e-commerce platform. If your business is expanding at a rapid pace and you want the platform to keep pace with it, these extensions can come in handy as they ensure that complex business processes are taken care of with minimal human intervention.

The interface of the Magento Marketplace is overall nicely designed but it doesn’t have the user-friendliness of the Shopify App Store. Apps are listed in a grid view and can be filtered by category.

Features

The features of the e-commerce platform you choose will be a deciding factor for its success in the long run. A good set of features means that you can expand store operations according to market demands. Both Shopify and Magento give users the ability to create full-fledged online stores. But a successful online business is much more than just having a web portal that displays the products or services you’re selling.

• Marketing

A well-executed marketing plan is essential to an online store’s success. Without proper marketing, the store will not have any traffic and as a result no sales.

Shopify and Magento do not offer any substantial marketing features of their own, but that’s where the advantages of having a vibrant plugin marketplace kick in. Both platforms have an extensive catalog of plugins that are designed to assist in an e-commerce business’s marketing efforts such as:

• Mail-Chimp integration
• SEO optimization of web pages
• TrustPilot reviews integration

• Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a fast-growing facet of the global e-commerce industry. It provides a way of selling that doesn’t involve the management of product inventories which can be costly in terms of time and money.

Shopify and Magento do not provide dropshipping modules within their toolset. However, users can leverage the selection of dropshipping apps and plugins available for both these platforms to manage a dropshipping operation.

There are even third-party companies that will assist you with setting up a dropshipping business using these platforms.

• Point of Sale (POS) Support

Shopify lists point of sale support as a core offering of its platform. In fact, the company even offers its own set of specialized point of sale hardware that has been designed to work with the platform without the need for complex integration procedures.

Users can purchase the complete set of point of sale hardware directly from Shopify. This includes a barcode scanner, a receipt printer, a till and a label printer. These are required for operating a small point of sale operation and they’re officially supported by the platform.

With Magento, point of sale integration is a bit more complex. First of all there’s no official Magento point of sale module. Instead, users have to turn to third-party extensions designed for the job. So point of sale support is certainly there, but it’ll require the help of Magento POS experts which can cost a serious amount of money. One of the more popular extensions for this is the Magestore POS module which costs $299 for the extension alone. You’ll have to purchase the hardware separately and then hire a POS expert to integrate it with the extension.

• Blogging

Shopify features a built-in blog module which allows its users the ability to setup a company blog within minutes. The blog is fairly basic in its functionality and omits some important features such as content tagging. But convenience matters and Shopify delivers in this regard.

Magento users can install third-party plugins to attach a blog to their e-commerce store. Most of these plugins are fairly straightforward to use and feature extensive content management features such as tagging and categorization.

• ERP Integration

Small-to-medium businesses don’t really need an ERP to manage their business processes. For large e-commerce organizations however, the advantages of an ERP cannot be looked. ERPs allow companies to be more agile by giving them the ability to react quickly to market trends, manage inventory levels and streamline critical business processes.

                                                                                                         ERP revenues have seen steady growth since 2010 (Source: Statista.com)

Magento is often the platform of choice for firms looking to integrate an ERP solution to their e-commerce operations. It is highly customizable and offers easy access to backend code which makes it easier to integrate ERP modules with the overall working of a Magento-powered online store.

Shopify does allow full ERP integration, but you’ll have to opt for the Shopify Plus plan for that. The Shopify Plus plan gives access to the platform’s RESTful API which can be used to integrate virtually any ERP solution into a Shopify-powered website.

Ease of Use

Let’s not beat the bush about it, Shopify takes an easy victory over Magento when it comes to ease to use. Its powerful suite of store building tools is intuitive to use and does not require any coding on part of the user.

Shopify

Using the Shopify website editor tool, most users can have a basic store up and running within a day’s time. Of course, adding products, images, and setting the layout of the store will take some time but that’s about it. The only thing a Shopify store requires is time.

Shopify’s powerful store editor is intuitive and offers lots of customization

Common processes such as the addition of products are extremely easy to accomplish. And if a user should stumble while setting up the store, Shopify’s responsive live chat support personnel are always there to help out.

Magento

Magento is a different story when it comes to ease of use. This is a highly technical product with a steep learning curve. Even seasoned programmers will have to take some time to get to grips with the interface. With Magento the user is responsible for adjusting website parameters to get the best performance out of the product.

                         Magento offers lots of flexibility at the cost of ease-of-use

 

The sheer number of technical terms sprinkled across the interface means that only web experts can setup a Magento store properly. A novice user could follow some Youtube videos and setup a store, but it won’t be running at peak performance. For the average person, using Magento to build an online store is a challenging proposition.

Shopify vs Magento: Choosing the Right E-Commerce Platform

Shopify and Magento are e-commerce store builder platforms. But that’s the only common thing between them. Their target audiences are totally different owing to the way these products function.

Reasons to Choose Shopify

• Ease of Use

If ease of use is your primary concern when looking for an e-commerce platform, going with Shopify is a no-brainer. Its intuitive interface and powerful yet user-friendly store editor can be used by the average person to create a fully operational store in a small amount of time.

• Hosting Costs Covered

With Shopify, the user does not have to worry about the kind of hosting plan they need. Choosing the right web hosting service can be a real pain but Shopify takes care of that for you.

• No Transaction Fees

Shopify lets its users avoid transaction fees if they use Shopify Payments to conduct sales (online or through POS).

• Customer Support

Each of Shopify’s pricing plans includes online customer support. The Shopify Gurus (support experts) are always available and extremely helpful to queries.

• Flexibility Through Apps

Shopify’s thriving app ecosystem means that even larger businesses can have their needs met when it comes to extending the functionality of the platform. A common misconception is that Shopify’s platform poses limitations to more complex e-commerce businesses.

But consider this: Shopify’s list of customers includes Modelez International, makers of the popular Oreo cookies. That should give you an idea of how flexible this platform really is and how it can cater to the needs of industry leaders like Modelez International.

Reasons to Choose Magento

• Freedom of Customization

Magento is open-source software, so anyone with deep technical knowledge can modify it any way they want.

• No Software Costs Involved

Magento’s open-source nature means that it is available to anyone completely free of cost. What’s more, there are free templates and extensions available to anyone looking to build a store on a budget. Of course, deep technical knowledge is required to take advantage of this.

• Data Privacy

Contrary to Shopify in which store data is stored on the company’s web servers, Magento users have complete freedom on where they want to store data. For people who’re really conscious about the privacy and safety of their store’s data, Magento is a great option.

• Integration with ERPs

Thanks to the flexibility of the Magento platform, integration with virtually any ERP solution is possible. Granted, this requires a fair bit of expert help and will not be cheap.

ERP integration with Shopify is also possible, but that requires the Shopify Plus subscription, which can reportedly cost thousands of dollars each month.

• Unlimited Flexibility for Complex Products

There are some companies out there that offer incredibly complex products that are sold in countless variations. With Magento, custom programming can be done for these products to give customers a variety of customization options.

An example of this is iMovR, an online seller of advanced standing and treadmill desks. Each of their products can be customized in a variety of ways to suit customer preferences. There are as much as 15 different customization options for each product – something which cannot be handled within Shopify.

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Wix vs Weebly: The Best Option for Creating Your Own eCommerce Website

The number of total internet websites rose from 1 billion in 2016 to 1.8 billion in 2017. But creating websites isn’t the sole domain of skilled web developers anymore – platforms such as Wix and Weebly allow anyone to create a beautiful, advanced website without touching a line of code.

Wix and Weebly are hugely popular site builder platforms. If you’re looking to create a website using a site builder, these are most probably going to be in your list considerations, likely including other options such as WordPress and Squarespace.

But which one should you use to build your website? These are both complete software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that claim to offer the easiest way to create a website without the need for any coding knowledge. But users are choosing one service over the other because clearly, these aren’t one-size-fits-all products.

Both these site builder platforms have their own strengths and weaknesses. And that is what we’re going to find out in this Wix vs Weebly comparison.

Wix vs Weebly – At a Glance

	Wix	Weebly
Themes (on official marketplace)	500+	100+
Apps and Plugins (on official marketplace)	250+	300+
Websites	More than 2 million	930,000+
Bandwidth Restrictions	None	None
Pricing	Starting at $7 per month	Starting at $14 per month

 

Templates

Website builder platforms such as Wix, Weebly and WordPress rely on templates to provide the front end design of a website. Thus, the quantity and quality of templates offered for any website builder platform is quite important.

A well-designed template makes a positive impression on a website’s visitors. But a good design should be paired with good usability in order to be truly successful. Speaking of usability – mobile-optimized templates are an absolute necessity.

A significant portion of a site’s visitors will be using smartphones or tablets to access it. But the smaller display size of these devices requires special design considerations in order to provide an optimal viewing experience. Thus, always make sure that the template you choose is fully responsive and mobile-optimized.

If you’re serious about your search engine optimization (SEO), having a well-designed and fully responsive template should be one of your top priorities.

Wix Templates

Wix offers its users – regardless of whether they’re paying or not – access to more than 500 professionally designed templates. This is very impressive as we haven’t come across any other site builder platform that offers this many templates.

And Wix isn’t just aspiring for having the most amount of templates either. Most of the templates offered have beautifully designed interfaces that are ready to use without the need for extensive modifications. You really won’t feel the need to tweak the design aspect of these templates, instead you’ll just need to add in your own content and your website will be ready for the public.

The Wix template store itself is very intuitive to use. Templates can be filtered by categories and sub-categories so you can find the perfect fit for your website’s niche.

Wix’s comprehensive template filtering system

And a Wix template is just the starting point. Later on in the article we’ll explain just how easy it is to modify each and every aspect of the template using the platform’s powerful site editing tool. You really can modify the design of these templates to your heart’s content.

One thing worth mentioning is that you’ll have to be a hundred percent sure about the design of a template before choosing it for your website. Why? Because once you’ve chosen a template, Wix does not allow you to migrate to another template. A lot of users might not be aware of this limitation and will realize it when it’s too late. Hence, take extra care before choosing a Wix template.

Weebly Templates

Weebly offers a selection of more than 100 templates to its users, which is far less than the amount of templates you get with Wix. Still, 100 designs is still a lot to choose from and fortunately the template store allows you to filter templates according to category.

The quality of the designs is quite professional and there is a healthy amount of variation between them. One thing to note is that finding a template on the Weebly website will take a longer time compared to Wix. That’s mostly because of the filtering system – it’s great but it places the various templates into broad categories.

The design of the templates can be further tweaked using Weebly’s site editing tool. We’ll discuss the extent of the customizations possible in a later section.

Unlike Wix which limits users to a single template design for a website, Weebly allows you to change the complete template any time you want. The content of the website will be automatically migrated to the new template and after a few tweaks here and there your website will be ready to go live.

Third-Party Templates

Wix does not allow users to import custom template designs. As such, there are no third-party developers or designers offering Wix templates. This really isn’t a huge problem because Wix offers a tremendous amount of variety in its own template store.

Weebly does allow users to import their own custom designs. And that means that there are designers and developers out there offering their own Weebly templates. A reliable source to get templates is Theme Forest, but unfortunately it only has 7 Weebly templates available.

Customer Support

A core part of the appeal of products like Wix and Weebly is their ease of use. But despite this, people might need a little help in getting started. Not every aspect of these products is going to be simple, and for that there must be reliable and helpful customer support.

Wix Customer Support

Wix has comprehensive and detailed documentation that covers each aspect of the platform. Also, users can usually find instructions and resolutions to common issues by accessing the service’s knowledge base.

But some of us just prefer to talk to an actual person to get help. In this regard, Wix offers online support for all its paying users. Online support can be reached through email or phone, with the glaring omission being live chat. There are also set timings for reaching online support – Monday through Friday from 5am to 5pm PST.

The absence of live chat support might irk some users who’re wary of the wait times generally associated with email and phone support.

Weebly Customer Support

Weebly offers online support for all its users – including the ones who don’t pay. This includes access to a community forum, live chat and email support. Phone support is available for users who opt for the PRO price plan and up.

Pricing

Wix and Weebly allow anyone to use their services for free. That means you can have a website up and running without paying a dime. But keep in mind that the free website will not have its own domain (yoursite.wix.com) and there will be a lot of intrusive branded advertising on it.

In order to remove the advertising and to have a custom domain name, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee.

Wix Pricing

Wix currently offers the following 5 price plans:

1. Connect Domain: $7 per month
2. Combo: $12 per month
3. Unlimited: $16 per month
4. eCommerce: $20 per month
5. VIP: $30 per month

Users can avail discounted pricing on these subscription plans if they choose annual or bi-annual billing. Wix also runs promotional offers from time to time offering up to a flat 50% off pricing.

Wix price plans (Prices shown are for annual billing only)

Wix Pricing Plan	Cost per month	Cost per month (1-year subscription)	Cost per month (2-year subscription)
Connect Domain	$7	$4.5	$4
Combo	$12	$8.5	$8
Unlimited	$16	$12.5	$11.5
eCommerce	$20	$16.5	$15
VIP	$30	$24.5	$23

 

The entry-level Connect Domain plan ($7/month) allows you to connect a custom domain to your Wix website. It does not remove Wix advertising and features a rather limiting 1 gigabyte of bandwidth. We can only recommend this option for students at the most.

Users who want to set up an online store using Wix will need to opt for the eCommerce ($20/month) or VIP ($30/month) price plans. These plans provide access to the platform’s Wix Stores plugin, which lets users build a professional eCommerce site with relative ease.

Weebly Pricing

Weebly currently offers the following 4 price plans:

1. Starter: $14 per month
2. Pro: $18 per month
3. Business: $35 per month
4. Performance: $46 per month

The price-per-month of these plans falls significantly (up to 68%) if the user opts for annual or bi-annual billing.

Weebly price plans (Prices shown are for annual billing)

Weebly Pricing Plan	Cost per month	Cost per month (1-year subscription)	Cost per month (2-year subscription)
Starter	$14	$8	$5
Pro	$18	$12	$9
Business	$35	$25	$21
Performance	$46	$38	$35

 

The entry-level Starter price plan is more expensive than the entry-level Wix Connect Domain plan ($7 per month), but keep in mind that the Starter plan does not have Weebly advertising. It also includes a free domain which is not included in the Wix Connect Domain price plan.

Also, eCommerce features are enabled for all of Weebly’s price plans. However, users of the Starter and Pro price plans will be restricted to having just 10 or 25 products respectively.

Overall, the pricing is quite competitive with Wix with the exception of the Performance plan. At $46 per month it’s almost 50% more expensive than the top-tier Wix VIP plan ($30/month). This plan is really more suited to serious eCommerce businesses who want advanced marketing functionality – something this plan offers.

Popularity

The popularity of a product or service is a great way to gauge its success. The more popular a product, the more likelihood that it’s justifying its marketing claims. There are some popular services that go under after a while (Twitter’s video sharing app Vine), but the majority of popular products stay relevant by receiving a constant stream of updates.

Statistics for websites using site builder tools (Source: builtwith.com)

When it comes to website builders, going for the most popular one isn’t necessarily going to be the best decision. What you should really be caring about is whether its costs and features match up with your own requirements and limitations.

Wix and Weebly are both leading site builder platforms, but which one is more popular? Let’s find out.

Websites using Wix and Weebly

20 of the top 10,000 websites are built using Wix (Source: builtwith.com)

Wix is tremendously popular as a simple website builder. The fact that it costs nothing to start your own Wix website only adds to its appeal. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that there are almost 2.3 million Wix-powered websites in the world today.

Weebly usage statistics (Source: builtwith.com)

Weebly on the other hand is popular in its own right. With almost a million websites built on the Weebly platform, it’s easily one of the most popular website builder tools out there.

Google Trends

Google’s search trends are an indicator of how much user interest a product or service is garnering.

The image above shows user interest in Wix (blue) and Weebly (red) from May ’13 to May ’18. It’s quite apparent that both terms had similar levels of user interest back in 2013. But Wix has gained momentum when it comes to searches while Weebly’s graph is actually in a decline as a whole.

Revenue

Being a publicly-traded company, Wix is required to disclose its financial performance numbers. As such, it generated $296 million in revenue back in 2016.

Weebly is a private company and has not chosen to disclose their revenue figures or even the number of paying users on their platform. Thus it’s quite difficult to judge its financial performance against Wix.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins

Plugins provide an easy and convenient way of adding functionality to your website as your requirements expand. Because Wix and Weebly are proprietary platforms, the features that come built-in cannot be modified in anyway.

To provide flexibility to users, Wix and Weebly both allow additional features through plugin integrations. Both platforms have dedicated plugin or app marketplaces which host hundreds of plugins which claim to enhance the functionality of the platform.

Let’s take a closer look at the plugin ecosystem for these site building tools.

Wix App Market

Wix users can choose from more than 250 apps/plugins that are available through the Wix App Market. Even though the platform is mainly targeted towards non-developers, the app selection is quite diverse offering users the ability to implement many features, including the following:

• Community forum (Wix Forum)
• Forms for data collection (123 Form Builder)
• Events calendar (Events Calendar)
• Placement of relevant ads on your website (Google AdSense)

The App Market itself is quite nicely designed and has a colorful yet clean aesthetic. Browsing and navigating through the apps is quite easy and the filtering system makes it easy to find an app that will fulfill your site’s requirements.

Wix maintains a very strict control over the quality of the apps on its App Market. Although the number of apps available here is frankly, not that impressive, but there is a lot of variety and most users will be satisfied with the flexibility these apps offer.

Also, there aren’t any fiddly steps to perform when installing these apps. Simply find an app you like and click on the “+Add to Site” button. Wix will handle the rest and the app will be ready to configure and use.

Weebly App Market

The Weebly App Center hosts more than 300 plugins/apps that have been designed to extend the functionality and features of the core platform. The selection of plugins is noticeably larger than Wix’s App Market, so we were curious to see if there was actual quality behind the quantity.

To make the interface simpler to navigate, Weebly has assigned broad categories to the apps. The “Made by Weebly” apps have been designed and developed in-house and should offer the best quality and support. Worryingly however, most of the Weebly-developed apps do not have a favorable rating from users.

Weebly’s in-house apps/plugins

Otherwise, the general selection of apps is quite reasonable and covers functionality required by most users.

Installing a plugin is also pretty straight-forward. Simply find a plugin you like and you can add it to your website with a couple of clicks.

Features

The default features that come with a platform make up for a major portion of its appeal. Sure, apps and plugins can oftentimes make up for a lack of built-in features but those add unnecessary complication into the process. What’s more, some plugins can also create security risks for your website.

Therefore, consideration should definitely be given to site builders that aren’t too reliant on plugins and instead offer a decent set of built-in functionality.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Wix claims to offer the best SEO for your website and offers a step-by-step process to setup your website for peak SEO performance. This process is part of the platform’s SEO Wiz feature and it’s quite impressive. It’s definitely not an in-depth SEO feature but it covers the basics very well and gives you a good starting point for SEO optimization.

A site’s global SEO settings in Weebly

Weebly also offers users the ability to tweak some basic SEO parameters such as a page’s title, meta description, keywords and so on. All of this is great but it’s not quite as intuitive as Wix’s SEO Wiz feature. With Weebly you’ll just have to spend a little more time in getting SEO-related settings sorted.

Analytics

Analytics are an important part of any online business’s marketing plan. Without any knowledge about the traffic that comes to your website, you really won’t get far in your site optimization efforts.

Wix Visitor Analytics app

Wix does not include any analytics functionality by default. Rather, users who wish to know about their website’s user analytics can opt for the Wix Visitor Analytics plugin which offers rather detailed information about a site’s visitors.

Weebly on the other hand comes with a set of comprehensive stats and analytics features. Some of the stats and analytics available to the user through these features are:

• Unique visits
• Pages with the most views
• Average pages per unique visit
• Top referring domains and sites
• Top search terms

This is a feature that will be appreciated by many users as it doesn’t require any sort of configuration.

eCommerce Tools

Both Wix and Weebly come with a comprehensive set of tools that enable users to create professional eCommerce stores. Wix requires that the user installs the Wix Stores plugin to enable the eCommerce features.

Weebly on the other hand asks users if they’re willing to create an online store when the website is being setup. Judging the quality of the eCommerce tools and technologies of these platforms deserves its own separate write-up. But on the surface, there are a few key differences such as:

• Wix does not charge any transaction fees on sales. Weebly charges up to 3%.
• Weebly has an abandoned cart recovery feature in its Performance price plan. Wix does not have this feature at all.

Ease of Use

The apparent ease of use of services like Weebly and Wix is a major part of their appeal and popularity. People who choose either of these services expect a hassle-free experience in creating a website. Let’s find out how easy to use these services really are.

Website Setup

Want to create your own website? Simply click a “Get Started” button (Weebly.com)

Creating a website using Wix or Weebly is an extremely intuitive and straight-forward process. Simply go to the Wix or Weebly website and click on “Get Started”.

Wix asks some basic questions to provide template recommendations

In Wix’s case, users are taken to a page – which can be skipped – that asks them a few basic questions about the intended use of their website. This helps the service come up with its own recommendations as to how the website should look in terms of design.

Weebly on the other hand, takes users straight to template selection.

And that’s it! The website has been setup and can now be modified in any way you want – as long as the platform is capable of it.

Backend Dashboard

The Wix dashboard provides everything you need to manage a website, in a single place. It is very well thought-out and features a modern, minimalist user interface. You’re not going to be instantly familiar with the interface and there is a small learning curve involved.

We would recommend first time users to go through the excellent Wix documentation to learn about the dashboard and the features available with it.

The Weebly dashboard is also very well-designed and easy to use. Navigating through its various sections, we couldn’t help but notice the utter simplicity of the design and the interface. There is absolutely no clutter or unnecessary information here.

Weebly dashboard (Source: Weebly.com)

Owing to the simplicity of the interface, new users will have an easier time getting to grips with the various features. We kept asking ourselves whether Weebly had made the interface too simple.

The answer to that question lies within Weebly’s target audience – non-developers who want the easiest way to create a great-looking website.

Site Editor

The site editor is perhaps the most important feature of these platforms. This is what you will be using to create a website. Wix claims to have the most advanced site editor in the industry – and in practice – we really can see why.

Each aspect of a template can be edited through the interface. There really is no aspect of the design that cannot be modified. In fact, the range of customization offered here might actually be intimidating for newer users.

There are numerous pre-built site elements that you can use. And the really interesting part is that Wix hasn’t just tried to bundle the most amount of features it can get away with. Everything feels high quality and real effort has been put into making sure that you get access to only the best in modern design.

The Weebly site editor is also reasonably capable and gives the user lots of customization options. The interface however is much simpler and easier to understand. It does not allow users to tweak each aspect of the website but that’s a good thing. The Wix site editor’s technical capabilities are certainly impressive but only talented designers will be able to get the most out of it.

The Weebly site editor keeps things simple while still offering plenty of room for customization.

Wix vs Weebly – Choosing the Right Website Builder

If we were to judge a website builder based purely on its technical merits, Wix would win this comparison easily. It has an impressively powerful website editor that gives users full control over the design of the website. Programmers and designers will be especially pleased with the Wix Code(beta) feature which allows users to delve deep into the code of the website. Wix really is trying to please everyone with its platform.

Weebly on the other hand is clearly focused on users with limited technical and design skills. The template editor gives a reasonable amount of customization options but not too much so as to overwhelm and confuse users. During testing, we also noticed that the Weebly editor was noticeably faster in its response to inputs.

There is no ‘best’ website builder out there. However, there certainly is a ‘right’ website builder which will fulfill your requirements and will prove to be a worthwhile investment in the long run.

Go for Wix if you want full control over customizability of the website through advanced but relatively complicated features.

Go for Weebly if you want an easy to use tool that lets you create a professional website without much effort.

Reasons for Choosing Wix over Weebly

• Superior site and template editor which allows for extensive design modifications. Code-level modifications are possible through Wix Code.
• Selection of more than 500 professional templates designed for a variety of website niches. Weebly only has around 100 templates.
• Better out-of-the-box SEO optimization features thanks to SEO Wiz.
• No transaction fees for eCommerce stores. Weebly users have to opt for the top-tier Performance plan to avoid transaction fees.
• Relatively cheaper price plans with comparable features. The top-tier VIP plan is $30-per-month while the Weebly counterpart is $46-per-month.

Reasons for Choosing Weebly over Wix

• Simple, easy to use interface is better suited for beginners.
• Comprehensive analytics features without the need for plugin integrations.
• Abandoned cart recovery feature (eCommerce). Wix does not have this feature.
• Live chat support on all price plans. Wix users only get email and phone support.
• Website template can be replaced with a different one at any time. Wix users have to create a new website if they want to go for a new design.

 

The post Wix vs Weebly: The Best Option for Creating Your Own eCommerce Website appeared first on Logic Inbound.

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Magento vs WooCommerce: How Does WordPress Ecommerce Stack Up

Magento vs WooCommerce / WordPress: Which Platform is right for you?

There are a variety of options available today that let non-developers build their own online ecommerce websites – options such as Magento and WooCommerce. These are bound to come up in the list of considerations for anyone looking to build an ecommerce website. What’s more, Magento and WooCommerce are both open-source tools, hence available to anyone completely free of cost.

WooCommerce is the platform powering the Singer Australia website. The company chose WooCommerce because of the ease with which it integrates with other web services. For example, Singer wanted customers to buy their products through Facebook. WooCommerce for Facebook was chosen and hence the company was able to find more customers by integrating their product catalog with their Facebook page.

Magento also has some high-profile name in its customers list. Marie Claire, a boutique that sells clothing inspired by European trends still didn’t have an online presence until 2015. After that the company decided that it wanted to grow from a brick-and-mortar business into a successful ecommerce operation.

Because Marie Claire has more than 300 retail stores, they wanted an ecommerce solution that would scale and could handle complex integrations with custom ERP solutions. Magento was their platform of choice and this decision saw their average order value increase by more than 30% and their conversion rates by more than 40%. Talk about impressive growth!

This creates a bit of a dilemma. Since these are free tools, which one should be chosen to build an online store? Why do ecommerce websites choose one tool over the other?

To understand the similarities and differences between these two platforms and what they have to offer, we’ve decided to take a deeper look into how these leading platforms work.

Note: For the purposes of this comparison we’ll be considering the Community Edition of Magento.

At a Glance

	WooCommerce	Magento Community Edition
Transaction fees	Vary according to payment processor	Vary according to payment processor
Number of Products	Unlimited	Unlimited
Themes (on official marketplace)	14	14 (1 Free)
Apps and Plugins (on official marketplace)	297	3300+
Supported Payment Gateways	Supports most gateways	Supports most gateways
Number of Stores	2,200,000+	250,000+
Bandwidth Restrictions	Vary according to hosting plan	Vary according to hosting plan
Pricing	Free	Free

 

Templates

The design of an ecommerce website is important because it can affect the customer’s confidence and trust with the business. A badly designed store will make the customer feel uneasy and generally promote a bad image for your business.

Good design on the other hand makes a positive statement about your business. What’s more, with the proliferation of smartphones, an increasing amount of ecommerce traffic now comes from mobile users.

Catering to mobile users is now the number one priority for any website. Bad design will make customers leave and that will negatively affect sales and even search rankings. This is definitely not ideal for any ecommerce business.

Magento Templates

The official Magento Marketplace has a dedicated section for templates. A quick visit to this section reveals that there are currently 14 templates on offer, of which only one is free. The paid templates start from $29.99 and go up in price to $499.99. This dramatic variance in cost is there because the templates differ in quality of design and functionality.

The Argento template is available on the official Magento Marketplace for $499

Still, 14 templates can hardly offer a variety of choice. What’s more, most of these templates have a dated look and don’t look modern at all.

However, keep in mind that Magento is a hugely popular open-source platform. And that means third-party developers and designers are constantly putting out fresh new templates for it on popular marketplaces such as Template Monster and Theme Forest.

Template Monster offers a variety of high quality Magento templates

Visit any of these marketplaces and you’ll be amazed at the number of Magento templates they have to offer. What’s more, most of the templates on these marketplaces are quite reasonably priced and generally well-under $200.

WooCommerce Templates

The official WooCommerce Theme Store doesn’t fare very well when you consider the number of themes on offer. There are 14 templates available and each one of them carries a $39 price tag.

The WooCommerce offers decent themes for $39

WooCommerce also offers its free Storefront template to all users. On the face of it, Storefront is a pretty drab-looking template. But WooCommerce introduced an extension called the Storefront Powerpack, which lets users customize each aspect of the Storefront template without touching a line of code. It’s pretty impressive, but most users might be looking for a ready-to-go template rather than one they have to style on their own.

Fortunately, WooCommerce is a popular platform and there’s a lot of third-party support for it. Popular template marketplaces such as Theme Forest and Template Monster host thousands of WooCommerce themes and you’ll very likely find one to your liking.

ThemeForest offers a variety of reasonably priced, well-designed WooCommerce templates

The prices of these themes are also very reasonable, with most costing around $69 to $89. Great value, considering that this is most likely going to be a one-time investment.

What’s more, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, which means you’ll find some great WordPress themes that fully support WooCommerce. However, keep in mind that such WordPress themes are not built from the ground up to be used with an ecommerce store. For the best results and reliability, it’s better to go with WooCommerce-specific templates.

Customer Support

An ecommerce website is bound to come across technical problems at some point. Or the site owner might just need a little help with the backend features to set up the website. Google is there to help of course, but in time-sensitive situations users mostly turn to qualified support personnel for help.

Magento Customer Support

Being an open-source tool, there is no official online or phone support available for Magento. Instead, owners of Magento-powered websites are expected to diagnose and come up with solutions on their own. For this, Magento has a pretty dedicated community and help forums are quite active.

What’s more, there are firms that specialize in Magento support services. These firms employ qualified and knowledgeable experts who’ll happily help you with most Magento issues.

A highly recommended Magento support company is CoolBlueWeb. They are an official Magento Solutions Partner and have been in the business for almost a decade.

WooCommerce Customer Support

Like Magento, WooCommerce is also an open-source tool, and as such there are a limited amount of support options. But WooCommerce is not as technical challenging as Magento, so users have an easier time in diagnosing and solving most issues.

Non-paying customers can avail limited ticket support options

WooCommerce does offer an official ticket-based support service that usually responds to support requests in 48 hours. That’s definitely not prompt service. What’s more, if you have lots of customizations on your website, WooCommerce will ask you to disable them before they can provide you with any assistance.  

For better support services, you’re going to have to look for a dedicated WooCommerce support partner. There are a few companies that specialize in WooCommerce support and will serve prompt solutions to any issues.

Pricing and Costs

Magento (Community Edition) and WooCommerce are both open-source software tools, and can be downloaded and used for free. There are no platform transaction fees to be worried about and neither are there any restrictions on bandwidth or the number of products you can sell.

That doesn’t mean that running Magento or WooCommerce websites is free from expenses. And because Magento and WooCommerce are on completely different levels when it comes to technical complexity, there’s a lot of difference between the running costs of these platforms.

Magento Website Costs

• Domain name

If you want to build an ecommerce site using Magento, you’ll have to start with buying a domain name and deciding on a hosting plan. Domain names are pretty cheap nowadays, and you can get them for $10-per-year on average.

• Web hosting

Choosing a suitable hosting plan for your Magento website is an important decision. Magento is quite technically complex, and it requires good amounts of bandwidth and server processing to run without hiccups.

Because of this, you’ll have to choose a web host that offers powerful application servers. Bigger businesses might even need the help of dedicated servers to manage their website’s requirements. Web hosting plans with dedicated servers typically start at around $100-per-month.

• Development expertise

Magento is a very robust platform and requires a high level of technical expertise. If you hire a cut-price developer they might run into a lot of issues doing the required customizations. Thus, outsourcing to cheap developers is not advisable, and you should instead opt for firms such as CoolBlueWeb that are Certified Magento Partners. These firms employ a variety of strict quality control measures so that the money you spend on development is not wasted.

The costs of hiring an agency to handle Magento development will vary depending on your requirements, but will most likely run into the hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

WooCommerce Costs

WooCommerce will cost you in the same areas as Magento. However, there are a few notable differences in costs associated with the platforms which we’ll discuss below:

• Web hosting

WooCommerce is a powerful ecommerce platform, but it isn’t as resource-hungry as Magento. And so you can get away with choosing cheaper, shared hosting plans. You won’t be getting the power of a dedicated server but then a typical WooCommerce website doesn’t really need it. Shared web hosting plans start at around $4-per-month.

• Development expertise

Owing to the popularity of the platform, you can find plenty of WooCommerce experts available at very competitive rates. Hiring a firm for WooCommerce development is also a good option if you want dedicated support. Logic Inbound offers specialized WooCommerce development has executed several highly successful WooCommerce projects and boasts an excellent customer care track-record.

But since WooCommerce isn’t as technically complex as Magento, you’ll find that development costs are significantly cheaper.

Transaction Fees

One of the major benefits of choosing an open-source ecommerce solution is that you won’t be charged with any transaction fees. This is a practice normally seen in paid ecommerce site builders such as Shopify (which charges up to 2% of each sale).

Magento and WooCommerce don’t offer any form of payment processing of their own. For that, you’ll have to turn to third-party services of which there are many. Stripe is one of the most popular credit card processors and is highly recommended for online payments. Stripe integration is available for both platforms and the company charges 2.9% + 30¢ of each sale as the transaction fee.

Stripe costs
Transaction fees	2.9% + 30¢
Charge credit cards on website	Free
International cards	Normal transaction fees + 1%

 

Popularity

The popularity of an ecommerce platform is a signifier of its success. The more successful a platform is, the more revenue it’ll generate for the company behind it, which in turn should lead to consistent research and development efforts. The internet landscape is constantly evolving, and without adequate research and development an ecommerce platform will become a risky proposition to be doing business on.

Platform marketshare of total ecommerce websites (Source: builtwith.com)

WooCommerce and Magento are both leaders in the global ecommerce industry and power an impressive 15% of all ecommerce sites in the world. Needless to say, in terms of popularity neither of these platforms disappoints. To put this into perspective, let’s have a deeper look at the numbers behind them.

The Important Figures

• Websites using Magento and WooCommerce

According to BuiltWith, WooCommerce currently powers a staggering 2 million of total websites on the internet. Even more impressive is the stat showing WooCommerce having a 3.5% marketshare in the world’s top million websites.

Meanwhile, Magento is being used by 232,600 websites on the internet. Not a small number by any means, but certainly not as impressive as WooCommerce.

• Sales Volume

WooCommerce eclipses other ecommerce platforms with a solid 24.3% share in global sales volume. Magento, a popular ecommerce platform itself, lags significantly here with a 6.3% share.

WooCommerce is a popular platform for migration for Magento users (Source: builtwith.com)

WooCommerce’s increasing popularity is also proving to be troublesome for Magento. According to BuiltWith, WooCommerce is one of the top platforms that Magento site owners migrate to. In contrast, Magento isn’t in the top choices in site migration for WooCommerce users.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins

An ecommerce site’s feature requirements increase as time goes by and the customer base expands. Site owners who’re planning to upgrade their business processes might look towards extending the functionality of the ecommerce platform beyond what it offers out of the box.

For this, there are a couple of options. WooCommerce and Magento are both open-source platforms and can be customized extensively. But in order to do so, users will almost always have to hire expert help. But there are cases when the functionality that you’re looking for is already offered in the form of apps and plugins.

WooCommerce and Magento have solid third-party support and as such there’s a huge library of apps, plugins and extensions to choose from.

If you’re considering using a plugin on your website, make sure it comes from official sources or established third-party marketplaces.

WooCommerce Extensions Store

The WooCommerce website has a section dedicated to extensions. There are a total of 289 extensions to choose from and they fulfill a variety of purposes.

The Extensions Store is nicely laid out and features a well-designed interface and users can explore different categories using the filtering system. Out of the 289 total, 47 extensions are available free for anyone to use. The free extensions cater to popular integrations such as MailChimp, Stripe, PayPal and Amazon Pay.

Another trustworthy source of WooCommerce extensions is CodeCanyon and hosts more than 1000 extensions, more far more than the official Extensions Store. It’s a part of the popular Envato marketplace and only features quality and code-checked extensions. Keep in mind, however, that all the extensions here are paid.

Magento Marketplace

There are more than 3300 extensions available on the Magento Marketplace. The interface of the Marketplace isn’t as inviting as the WooCommerce Extensions Store but it certainly gets the job done. There’s a filtering system in place so you can explore what the various categories have to offer.

If you don’t want to pay for expensive Magento development, you might find an extension on the Marketplace that will add the required functionality to your website.

Features

An ecommerce platform with a lot of useful built-in features will be a better choice for starting businesses. This means that there’s a lesser need to install plugins to fulfill store requirements which can cost both time and money.

WooCommerce and Magento are great ecommerce platforms that have everything you need to create a full-fledged online store. But let’s see how they stack up when it comes to having essential features

• Marketing

Marketing should be an essential part of the business strategy of your ecommerce website. Without the right marketing efforts, your website won’t attract much traffic. Traffic is what makes or breaks an ecommerce store, and having features that assist your marketing activities are always useful.

WooCommerce and Magento do not have any notable marketing features out of the box. But that shouldn’t pose much of a problem as there are countless marketing-related extensions available for these platforms. Some examples of how these extensions can assist your marketing efforts are:

• Mail Chimp integration
• Traffic analysis and optimization (Google Analytics)
• SEO optimization of site pages (Yoast SEO for WooCommerce)

 

• Dropshipping

Dropshipping is an increasingly-popular choice for people who wish to run an ecommerce business. Dropshipping carries with it a few notable advantages, such as lower capital requirements, diverse selection of products and easy store management (you don’t have to store inventory in a warehouse/storage facility).

Dropshipping support is available for both platforms through extensions. WooCommerce Dropshipping is a popular choice amongst store owners as it is simple to integrate and very easy to use. The extension costs $49 and comes with a year’s worth of free support and updates.

The Magento Marketplace has several options for users looking for dropshipping extensions. However, it might be worth your while to check out Magento Connect, as it has a lot more dropshipping modules available for Magento.

 

• Point of Sale (POS) Support

Some users might want to expand their online business in the form of physical stores. This is where point of sale support can really help and streamline the processes associated with running this type of business.

There is no official point of sale support for either of these platforms. However, there are some well-designed extensions that offer everything needed to start POS operations for an online store.

A POS extension for WooCommerce in action

WooCommerce Point of Sale (POS) is a popular dropshipping plugin for, you guessed it, WooCommerce. It is being used by thousands of users and was included in a featured plugins list at CodeCanyon.

Magento users on the other hand should consider the Magestore POS module. It costs $299 but has great support from its developers and is highly recommended by users.

 

• Security

An ecommerce store has to be secure in the interest of its owner and customers. A data breach can result in leaked customer information and lost sales records.

WooCommerce has generally been quite weak in this area, as it relies on WordPress to work. WordPress websites are a popular target for most hackers and that’s what makes WooCommerce sites particularly vulnerable. Site owners should take steps to safeguard their online store from malicious attacks. Some tips for this would be:

• Using sophisticated WordPress passwords
• Secure web hosting
• Up-to-date WordPress and WooCommerce installations
• Updating plugins to the latest available version
• Using security-enhancing plugins such as Wordfence Security

Magento fares much better in the security aspect as it was built from the ground up to be an ecommerce platform. Because of its robust code and constant updates, hackers have a harder time taking control of Magento websites. Still, care should be taken by installing recommended security patches and only installing plugins from trusted sources

 

• ERP Integration

Large ecommerce operations often turn to ERP solutions to maximize their revenues and minimize losses through mismanaged inventories and resources. Smaller organizations however might not be able to fully benefit from ERP solutions since the initial cost of ERP integrations can be significant.

Magento has a strong footprint in the enterprise market and is highly regarded for its customizability. This customizability is what makes it easier for developers to integrate ERP solutions with Magento sites.

ERP integration with WooCommerce websites is also possible through the use of the WooCommerce API. But because of WooCommerce’s inherent security issues, it’s normally not the platform of choice for companies looking to integrate with ERPs down the road.

 

Ease of Use

Ease of use can be an important factor when choosing between Magento and WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a WordPress extension, so by nature it has to follow a set of design and development guidelines. It isn’t the most user-friendly ecommerce tool out there, but it’s not something that is out of the reach for non-developers.

Magento is in a different league when it comes to ease of use, and not in a good way. It has a steep learning curve and is definitely not the ecommerce platform for novice users.

WooCommerce

Setting up a WooCommerce store once you have a WordPress website up and running can be done within a matter of minutes. Simply search for the WooCommerce plugin, install and activate it and you’ll be greeted by a wizard interface that will take you through the basic steps of setting up an online store.

Once you’ve performed the necessary actions you’ll be taken straight to the WordPress dashboard where you can get started with applying a theme to your web store or adding products.

If you’ve used WordPress before, you’ll find it quite easy to do the basics in WooCommerce. Adding products, for example, looks quite similar to adding a blog post in WordPress.

WooCommerce will install the Storefront template by default. It’s a great template for people who don’t want to spend extra on paid templates and has a lot of customization options. The template editor for the Storefront theme is extremely easy to use and features many customization options. Using the template editor, anyone can customize the look and feel of their website without touching a line of code.

All in all, setting up a basic WooCommerce website is quite easy and not very technically challenging.

Magento

Like WooCommerce, Magento is an open-source product that anyone can download for free. But that doesn’t mean that everyone will be able to use it. That’s because Magento is a highly complex and technically advanced ecommerce solution. It has a steep learning curve and even seasoned developers will have to take a set of trainings before they’re comfortable with it.

If you’re looking for ease of use, Magento probably isn’t the ecommerce platform for you. Its customizability and technical capabilities are very enticing to users looking to build a robust ecommerce store. But in order to truly take advantage of that, a Magento expert is almost a necessity.

WooCommerce vs Magento – Choosing the Right Ecommerce Platform

Choosing between WooCommerce and Magento is a relatively straightforward decision for anyone who knows the differences between them. Both are free of course, but they’re not meant for the same audiences.

Reasons to Choose WooCommerce

• Popularity

WooCommerce enjoys immense popularity in the ecommerce business as it’s a reliable and robust platform that caters to most online businesses’ requirements. What’s more, it’s completely free so it’s especially attractive to those on a budget. The popularity also means that it will enjoy development and third-party support far into the future.

 

• Ease of Use

WooCommerce’s ease of use comes from its association with WordPress. For anyone who’s used WordPress, the interface is instantly familiar and easy to navigate around. Deep store customizations will still require expert help but for setting up a basic ecommerce site, WooCommerce is a fairly easy to use tool.

 

• Flexibility

Each aspect of WooCommerce can be customized thanks to its open-source model. What’s more, there are thousands of WooCommerce extensions available which can enhance the functionality and features of the platform even further. Even complex integrations with ERP are possible, as long as you’re willing to hire an expert.

Reasons to Choose Magento

• Engineered for Ecommerce

Magento was developed for the purposes of ecommerce. As such, its code has been optimized for use in ecommerce applications. If you’re looking for a highly stable and reliable ecommerce solution (that’s free), Magento is hard to beat.

 

• Safe and Robust

Magento has been developed using strict coding practices and quality control. The platform receives regular security patches to address any safety threats.

 

• Scalability

Designed for enterprise applications, Magento websites have been very successful in scaling efforts. Store owners who expect to receive high volumes of traffic and sales should have no troubles with a properly set up Magento store.

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