Choosing the right ecommerce platform is crucial to the success of any online business. Shopify Plus and WooCommerce are two of the most popular options on the market.
In this article, we’ll explore the differences between Shopify Plus and WooCommerce and discuss why Shopify Plus might be the ideal choice for growing stores.
What are the biggest problems that retailers with high sales volume on Woocommerce face?
1. Security breach issues: Because WooCommerce is a popular plugin, it is constantly being targeted by hackers from all over the world. This creates a huge problem for retailers who are forced to spend time and money hiring programmers with experience in securing WordPress sites to protect their businesses.
2. Constant need for updates to plugins and themes: To have a customized online store on WooCommerce, the store owner will need to install a considerable number of plugins and extensions to improve the user experience. However, these plugins need to be updated frequently, weekly or even daily. In addition to the challenges that already exist in managing an online store, WooCommerce store owners also need to worry about these updates, as forgetting to update one plugin can affect others and harm the entire e-commerce operation.
3. Performance issues: When choosing Woocommerce as your e-commerce platform, you need to remember that it was not created specifically to be scalable. It is a plugin that requires WordPress to perform as an online store. Therefore, you will need to manage hosting and backup issues yourself. In addition, problems connecting to databases occur frequently and can compromise your website's performance.
4. Limited Technical Support: WooCommerce does not have official technical support, so the store owner will need to look for alternative solutions to solve problems. These solutions can be found, for example, in communities and forums aimed at WooCommerce users managed by volunteers. Furthermore, since the platform does not have internal quality control, it is important to pay close attention before implementing plugins or extensions on the store's website.
5. Integration Difficulties: As we mentioned earlier, when opting for WooCommerce, the store owner will need to install several additional plugins to ensure full integration with other systems running on the site. This can be time-consuming and impact the site’s performance, especially if there are many plugins in use. In addition, these plugins may present incompatibility issues, which can cause difficulties in integrating and updating applications and affect the store’s scalability.
SHOPIFY PLUS
Shopify Plus is a premium version of the Shopify ecommerce platform designed to meet the advanced needs of high-volume businesses. It includes features and support to handle large volumes of traffic and sales, including:
- Unlimited products and team accounts
- Multilingual and multicurrency support
- Dedicated Account Manager
- Advanced analysis and reporting tools
- Ability to customize the checkout process
- Built-in fraud protection;
- Ability to integrate with third-party applications and services
Click here to see all the benefits that Shopify Plus can offer your business!
PLATFORM COMPARISON: SHOPIFY PLUS X WOOCOMMERCE
EASE OF USE
Shopify Plus has a very intuitive interface, allowing you to manage up to 10 stores on the same dashboard, personalized reports, and modern technology. It is a fully hosted e-commerce platform, which means it takes care of hosting and offers security for you. It is an excellent option for store owners who do not want to have to worry about security, hosting management, and installing updates for their website.
WooCommerce, on the other hand, is a WordPress plugin, so you’ll need to manage this yourself. Additionally, users rely on documentation to know what to do, and often that documentation is inconsistent and full of incomplete information.
DESIGN
Shopify Plus has a wide variety of professional templates to choose from, including the Theme Store, which has hundreds of responsive, Shopify-certified designs for you to choose from and edit easily and intuitively.
WooCommerce also has a variety of themes available, but the customization options are more limited and you'll need to have coding knowledge or hire a developer to make significant changes. Additionally, it's important to be careful when downloading themes from the internet, as some may contain hidden code, links, and malicious plugins that could compromise your site's security.
INTEGRATIONS
Shopify Plus has an extensive app store with over 8,000 available solutions that can help you add features to your store, such as global integrations for marketing, logistics, payments, and more.
Meanwhile, WooCommerce has several plugins available, but if you need advanced customizations, you will need to have good technical skills or hire professionals to perform these tasks. Furthermore, WooCommerce plugins do not go through a quality and security testing process, which can cause incompatibility issues between plugins and instability when updating applications.
PAYMENT GATEWAYS Shopify Plus integrates with over 100 payment gateways worldwide. WooCommerce, on the other hand, requires you to install a separate plugin for each payment gateway you want to use.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT Shopify Plus offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat, and an ecosystem of Shopify-certified partners and professionals around the world. WooCommerce is a free and open system developed by the community, meaning there is no official development team. It does not have the same level of support and security quality as Shopify Plus.
AUTOMATIONS
Shopify Plus offers a wide range of automations included, which gives you a lot of autonomy. Some of the main automations are:
Shopify Flow App: It is possible to create and manage complex automations of daily tasks, reducing and optimizing the work of e-commerce management. For example: It is possible to create order flows with different conditions, receive daily emails with a summary of products that are out of stock, add loyalty tags and much more)
Shopify App Scripts: You can create complex discount rules at checkout in addition to the default rules. Example scripts: Discount by order of spend, quantity, "Buy one get one free" discount, discounted shipping rates by customer tag, reorder payment gateways, and more.
App Launchpad: Allows you to create automated workflows that help manage promotions, launches, inventory, and other aspects of your business.
Woocommerce: There are many plugins for automation, but you will need to find and install one for each solution, taking care not to have conflicts between them and to ensure that they do not break during updates. In Shopify Plus, these automations are already ready and have support for the merchant to use.
PRICE
While WooCommerce is free to install and use, merchants will need to manage costs associated with e-commerce hosting as well as any additional plugins or themes. The cost of hosting can vary depending on the size of the business, with some plans offering traffic volume restrictions while others do not. It is also important to check the SSL certificate and security options available, as many providers charge an additional fee for these extra concerns. For payment gateways, such as PayPal or Stripe, there may be fees associated with them that can range from 2% to 3%.
The Shopify Plus plan starts at $2,000 per month for standard configurations and integrations. This plan already includes everything a merchant needs to manage and scale their business, such as: Cloud hosting, B2B e-commerce, Global e-commerce, Open APIs, management of 10 stores, and advanced tools. For more complex business structures and higher volumes, the platform offers a variable rate option that adapts to the needs of your business.
Shopify has announced that starting August 9, 2023, there will be a pricing change for new or upgraded accounts to Shopify Plus only. The Plus platform fee will remain at $2,000 per month, and the fee will be calculated as a percentage of GMV, and will be 0.18% for all B2B transactions and 0.25% for all DTC (direct-to-consumer) transactions.
Important Update: Shopify Pricing and Fee Changes (Updated 03/07/2024)
The monthly fee will increase to $2,500 per month if the person decides to stay on the current plan. In addition, changes are being introduced to the platform's variable fees. For online sales, the fee will be 0.40%. For business-to-business (B2B) sales, there will be a new fee of 0.18%. However, fees for in-store sales will not change.
Special Condition: Keep the standard 2023 rates, opting for a new 3-year contract before April 24, 2024. Interested? Come talk to us!
Conclusion
When initially evaluating, Shopify Plus may seem more expensive than WooCommerce, but it is important to consider that with WooCommerce, a considerable investment is required in several plugins, theme configuration, hosting, security and development. In addition to the time that the store owner will need to dedicate to maintaining the entire e-commerce operation. With this in mind, the price of Shopify Plus is justified due to the security, dedicated support, specific solutions and advanced features that the platform can offer.
In short, if you are a retailer who is expanding your business, Shopify Plus is the best option for an e-commerce platform. It offers all the features you need to grow your business, right out of the box, while WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress sites that offers several customization options, but requires a large investment in technical knowledge, security measures, and quality checks to ensure that your e-commerce site works properly.
WE CAN HELP YOU!
If you're tired of dealing with the limitations of your current store and want to upgrade to Shopify Plus, our Shopify Agency is here to help! We're one of the first agencies to achieve the Shopify Plus Partner status in Latin America and we're among the best-rated in the Shopify ecosystem!
Your project can count on the expertise of our Shopify Agency in every step, including migration, planning, design, custom solution architecture, development and ongoing monitoring for the success of your Shopify Plus store.
Contact us today using our form and find out how Alce Rocks can boost your business growth with the Shopify Plus platform!
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