Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento – Which Ecommerce Platform to Choose?

Choosing the right ecommerce platform is one of the biggest decisions for an ecommerce business. It can really impact the efficiency of your day-to-day operations going forward. When choosing a platform for your ecommerce business, a wide range of options is available. In this article, I want to focus on three popular platforms: Shopify, the WordPress-based WooCommerce and Adobe’s Magento.

These are all great ecommerce platforms that enable you to sell your goods online, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. In this article, I will try to shed some light on what it is to live with each of them, so you know what to expect.

Each will provide you with all the core features you would expect: listing products, categorising them, managing orders, creating coupon codes and so on.

Every business is different, so this article should be used as a rough guideline only. Get in touch with our experts, and we can help you choose one that best suits your unique requirements.

Shopify: Best for Quick Launch and Simplicity

If your goal is to run a store without relying on help from a web developer, Shopify is likely your best option. Security and platform updates are handled by Shopify, and there are safeguards in place to keep things less daunting.

Shopify operates only on a paid SaaS (Software as a Service) model. This makes the initial setup quick and easy, as Shopify handles the hosting for you. On the flipside, this means that you don’t own the website code, and are tied to Shopify’s subscription model. This is probably the biggest difference compared to the other two platforms, which operate on a popular open-source model instead.

An open source model is a system where the underlying code or design is freely available for anyone to see, use, modify and share.

As you scale your business further, you may hit a point where Shopify’s limitations become a barrier to realising your vision. If a suitable app is not available, you might be out of options since some of Shopify’s features cannot be altered.

At some point, you may be looking at upgrading to their enterprise model, Shopify Plus, which gives you more features. Naturally, the subscription cost will increase as well.

Pros of Shopify:

• Quick way to get online at a low cost
• Peace of mind knowing your hosting and updates are fully managed by Shopify

Cons of Shopify:

• Rental model means you won’t fully own the website
• Some areas of Shopify cannot be edited, leading to limitations down the line

WooCommerce: Flexible and Customisable for Growing Businesses

WooCommerce is built on the extremely popular WordPress content management system. It is flexible and can scale to almost any size. One of its biggest strengths is customisability. But this also means the quality of your website depends heavily on the expertise of your developers. Things like performance, usability and even security can vary significantly from one WooCommerce site to another.

At Pod Digital, we specialise in ecommerce websites, and most of our websites are built in WordPress/WooCommerce. Our web design team has developed Great White, an ecosystem of enhanced functionality, performance and security for all of our WordPress-based websites.

To get your website built, you should expect a moderate financial investment and development time can vary depending on the complexity of your project. Once your website has launched, the running costs can be as low as a low monthly hosting cost.

Pros of Woocommerce:

• Very flexible, easily adjusting to your business needs
• Low running costs after initial investment

Cons of Wocommerce:

• The standard WordPress-based back-end isn’t always the most intuitive
• Experience may vary based on the proficiency level of the development agency

Magento: Built for Scale and Enterprise Ecommerce

Magento comes with great ecommerce features out of the box, and it can handle large-scale product catalogues with ease. This is further elevated by its detailed and customisable back-end admin interface. Magento can also natively run multiple ecommerce websites from one installation, sharing product data and order handling. These features make Magento a great option for medium to enterprise level ecommerce stores.

Like WooCommerce, Magento is available as an open-source platform for developers to build upon. Due to its complex architecture, Magento doesn’t quite share the same quick moving flexibility WooCommerce offers. Specialist developers are often required to carry out website modifications. Launching changes often results in some maintenance downtime (unless custom zero-downtime deployment setups have been set up). This often makes development require more budget and longer timelines.

Pros of Magento:

• Handles huge amounts of product data with ease
• Great for multi-store businesses

Cons of Magento:

• Specialist web developer required for maintenance and upkeep
• Higher hosting requirements and development costs

Apps, Plugins and Extensions

All platforms offer add-ons to push your store’s functionality further. These might be for example, additional payment methods, advanced shipping configurations or optimising the website’s performance. There are thousands of options available for each of the three platforms.

On Shopify, apps typically come with a subscription fee added to the total monthly costs. Both WooCommerce and Magento have a wide range of both free and paid add-ons available. The paid variations typically come with a yearly subscription fee.

Which Ecommerce Platform Is Right for Your Business?

“I want to start selling online with a modest marketing budget. Which platform should I choose?”

“As my business evolves, how easy is it to launch new features on my website?”

“I have 100,000+ products with tons of product data and want to sell them across multiple websites. What do you recommend?”

“What about managing website updates and security?”

Final Thoughts: Choose the Platform That Matches Your Ambition

In the end, the choice depends on your product catalogue, technical requirements and budget. Contact our experts to get a tailored quote based on your requirements.