Shopify or Woo commerce? What's better for building an e-commerce site?

Web Design E commerce
#1

thanks Peninah for this detailed answer.
Age old question :slight_smile:
I think there’s a thread on jdf about it. In short I find Shopify to be much easier for the client to manage. There are different advantages for the web dev in either end – I see some things missing that the other has in each dashboard – but the site owner experience can’t compare.

I find Shopify to be harder to do advanced customization, but that might be because I’m so used to WP and their infrastructure and coding system. And not all sites need that. Similarly, WooCommerce is necessary if you have a very complex integration with other types of features, but again, most e-commerce sites don’t need that.

Both will usually have you relying on plugins or apps that will add to the total annual cost, but both sides will say it’s a disadvantage of the other :wink:

Shopify charges a percentage if you don’t use their payment gateway. That can make it not worth it for someone with a smaller store (higher percentages) who needs a currency that Shopify Payments doesn’t support.

#2

Hi just adding to this.
Penina is very on target with her feedback.
I created my first Shopify site for my mother before I took the course.
She uses Shopify for her payment gateway and it was a seamless connection and it is integrated with her POS-inventory system. It is very easy for her to use and she barely ever bothers me to help her with updates. (Which is quite surprising as she is not so techy.)
It is very user friendly for those that just want a functional site and are not looking to customize much. Otherwise you must mess with a lot of code, though they have great tutorials on how to do everything. I felt pretty limited as a designer.

#3

my 2 cents - again agree with peninah re advanced customization may need wordpress but for a more standard store, i found clients were able to promote themselves more quickly with shopify and they are encouraged to make black friday promotions, sell via social media etc right from the dashboard… i believe they made sales faster b’h than if it’d have been wordpress.

#4

And there are plenty of large ecommerce sites on Shopify! It’s not only for small shops. Advanced customization can just mean integration with something like a membership platform, it doesn’t indicate the size of the store.

#5

To customize shopify you need to learn the liquid coding language.

#6

I see I never responded to this. To some degree, yes, you need Liquid to modify Shopify, but only to the same extent that you need PHP to modify WooCommerce. If you can’t do either, you’re on the same page with both platforms :slight_smile: