E-commerce has revolutionized the lives of people living in the 21st century. With the growing demands of e-commerce businesses, e-commerce website providers have also increased to an exponential level. Although there are innumerable e-commerce tools and service providers today Shopify and WordPress still surpass all. When it comes to choosing one of them, it leaves the person baffled. In the next few lines, we will go through a quick comparison of both the services by elaborating and comparing their features. One can choose the best service by analyzing the features of each service according to one’s needs.
Shopify vs WordPress for e-commerce
Difference between Shopify and WordPress is given below, but before going into their detailed features, it is important to understand what these services are:
Shopify
It is a multipurpose tool and an online software service that allows you to launch an e-commerce store without technical help. You don’t need to possess any web developing, coding or any other technical skill to launch a store on Shopify.
WordPress
It covers a wide range of services but keeping in view its e-commerce site, it is multipurpose software for e-commerce website development. Unlike Shopify, the user needs some technical expertise and web development skills.
Targeted audience
Shopify aims at facilitating users having no technical skills related to web development and coding. They provide services for people developing their store from scratch and without any prior experience. This process is quick and easier. On the contrary, WordPress aims to provide services to people classified into two categories based on their area. These categories include web design beginners and web developers. It is suitable for both the users having web developing experience and those who don’t have any idea about web design.
Customer Base
Before choosing a web hosting site, it is important to get knowledge of its customer base. The site on which most people rely to get their services is preferable. WordPress websites have taken over the internet with the number reaching to about 65 to 75 million. Shopify online stores are no less in number. These numbers have reached to 600000.
Pricing
Pricing plays a great role in deciding the platform you want to choose. There are 5 pricing packages offered by Shopify. The services provided by the platform depends on the package chosen by the user. It provides inexpensive price packages which consist of Lite, Basic, Shopify, Advanced and Plus for $9, $29, $79, $299 and $2000 per month respectively. It offers fixed prices for all packages except plus which allows negotiations however the starting price is fixed.
The pricing model for WordPress is different from that of Shopify. Its software doesn’t cost you any money but you need to pay for other features such as plugins, hosting, themes, and e-commerce integration. It doesn’t offer any fixed prices specific for each project. The cost of each product depends on the features and paid services availed of. It typically costs $4 to $30 per month for a small or medium-sized website to launch through WordPress.
Design Options
Design impacts your website traffic. A site having a professional and decent display attracts more audience. Shopify provides you the facility of designing your website using its themes. It offers 10 templates for free and up to 61 themes with multiple variants at affordable prices. These themes offer a classy display for your websites by allowing you to customize your site easily. On the other hand, WordPress offers innumerable themes and features to design your website. There are thousands of options available to choose from. But it is a strenuous task to choose the right theme that has the safe code.
User Interface
Shopify offers simple and easy to use services. You need to register and then get started with it without mastering technical skills. It is designed in a way to provide a clear interface and appealing look. WordPress is also easy to use and simple, but the user needs to buy a hosting, set it up and install it through hosting. It has simple options for settings that new users can explore easily. There arise intricate options when the plugins are installed which seems complex for newbies.
Content Management
WordPress offers incredible services for content management. It provides you with the flexibility of using tags and categories. Unlike Shopify, WordPress provides you the feature of content versioning where you can look back on the copied version of the content. But managing e-commerce on WordPress is tricky. On the contrary, Shopify offers you numerous options and facilities regarding e-store management. Its option of creating an automated collection is time-saving.
SEO
WordPress allows you to create SEO friendly websites that show good ranking on search engines. For in-depth SEO analyses of your content, it allows you to install Yoast. It improves the content quality and website ranking of your site. It also provides you with the facility of obtaining clean URLs. Shopify provides plenty of options for SEO. It eases the use of SSL options, meta description, tag editing, etc. but it does not ensure the creation of as clean URLs as is provided by WordPress.
Maintenance of Site and Security
Shopify users just need to take care of putting their products on-site and then upgrading them. Shopify takes hold of all maintenance issues and provides its users with secure e-commerce experience. On the contrary, WordPress users are responsible for taking care of their site maintenance, updating WordPress versions and plugins, etc. But it ensures its users about the safe experience.
