WooCommerce vs Shopify – Features Compared Side By Side

While both platforms' approaches to pricing are different, they're relatively similar when it comes to giving your eCommerce site what it needs. Unlike a platform like BigCommerce, Shopify and WooCommerce are more basic with the ecommerce essentials built into the main software.

However, both have solid app stores for installing any other features you may need.

How Shopify Helps You Sell

Although you will probably need to install apps to make the most of the platform, Shopify offers significantly more free options. From the very start Shopify gives you:

• Unlimited products
• Unlimited file storage
• Automatic fraud analysis
• Embedded Oberlo integration
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Blog module
• Free SSL certificate
• Mobile commerce optimization
• Editable HTML and CSS
• Credit card payments
• Multiple languages
• Adjustable shipping rates and taxes
• Customer profiles
• Drop shipping capabilities
• SEO-ready site structure
• Individual product reviews
• Facebook selling module
• Social media integration (and a spicy new integration with Instagram)
• Physical and digital products in the store
• Unlimited traffic to your store
• Daily backups
• Site stats and product reports
• Advanced reports (on Shopify and Shopify Advanced plans)
• Fully featured mobile app
• Product importing via CSV files
• Different product variations
• Print orders
• Inventory management
• Gift cards (on Shopify and Shopify Advanced plans)
• Abandoned cart recovery (on Shopify and Shopify Advanced plans)

In comparison, some of these free features, such as CSV uploads, shipping options, and bookings will set you back up to $500-600 with WooCommerce.

How WooCommerce Helps You Sell

As open source software, WordPress is well known for allowing third-party developers to create various extensions and plugins. WooCommerce taps into that further by offering lots of interesting and exciting additions. Whether you want to easily edit aesthetics, sell on Facebook, ramp up email marketing techniques, understand user behavior or quite frankly do anything else, you'll be able to.

Here's what you'll find inside WooCommerce:

• You can sell physical products, digital products (including software and apps), plus it's also good for affiliate marketing
• Payments via PayPal and Stripe built-in (plus a range of other gateways available for an extra fee)
• Adjustable shipping rates and taxes
• Unlimited number of products and product categories
• Stock levels control
• Mobile-friendly structure
• You have complete control over your data
• Works with your current WordPress theme
• Literally hundreds of plugins (extensions) available
• A free Facebook ad and Facebook stores extension

WooCommerce vs Shopify Features Compared Side-by-side

Just to make everything above easier to grasp, here's a side-by-side comparison of the essential eCommerce features in Shopify and WooCommerce:

 

 

As you can see, there's nothing particularly important that's missing from either platform. Choosing one over the other can often come down to your personal preference, or your thoughts on the value (or lack thereof) of open source software vs the rest.

 

But, the devil is in the details. At the end of the day, Shopify seems like a more laser-focused solution. Everything that Shopify offers is geared at making your online store more functional and easy to use. With WooCommerce, the platform is extremely feature-rich and it doesn't lack any specific eCommerce features. However, it's still an add-on to WordPress, making it more complex to configure.

In the end, though, there's no clear winner here in the features department. Both platforms have everything that a standard eCommerce setup could need.