Hey. Hey. Hey, y'all
Welcome to another WordPress Wednesday.
My name is Kori Ashton [WebTegrity in San Antonio, Texas]
And today we're going to talk about
WooCommerce vs. Shopify.
A lot of you all have asked me in the past
-Can you do a series on e-commerce websites.
We really want to build a WooCommerce
platform and sell our products online.
-Using WordPress, the top of the line,
as in my opinion, as of [July] 2015, is going
to be the WooCommerce plugin for
an ecommerce system inside of WordPress.
Free open source. But...I have had
a lot of issues with it, personally
struggling with building e-commerce
websites using WordPress.
And so some of you have even heard me say
don't use WordPress for e-commerce.
Eeeeeee! I know. But today
I actually want to walk you through
a comparison because I have now
built an e-commerce site on
Shopify as well as on WooCommerce.
Now I feel like I can actually speak to this.
We are going to get into it.
I'm not gonna ... These are our really cool
sponsors and partners. They're amazing.
[WPEngine, WPElevation, and WP101]
But I want to talk about
WooCommerce vs. Shopify today.
Hopefully I don't make any enemies with
all of this. We're just going to get into it.
Hopefully I can get through this in
10 minutes. There's going to be a lot
to deal with, so stick around with me.
Hopefully I won't go too far past it.
Let's get to talking about
WooCommerce vs. Shopify.
We're going to talk about the good first.
The good with WooCommerce.
Free to use. We all know that.
It's open source ecommerce, but is it
really free to use? You still have to have
hosting for your website. And we'll talk
about other options as we go into here.
Free? Eh. Maybe to get it set up
but you still have to pay for hosting.
There are also lots of great themes
our there. There are free themes for
ecommerce as well as paid versions.
And there are even WooThemes which
are specific themes created by the
same creators or WooCommerce that
already have everything plugged in for you.
You have lots of different design options
to choose and pick from. You can also have
lots and lots of plugins. Because we're on
the WordPress platform, there are going to
be a lot of free options for us
but there are also going to be paid options
there for plugins. And sometimes the features
that you might want are going to require
to be paid. One thing that you really have is
really good SEO inside of WooCommerce
because we can use the Yoast plugin.
That's a series that we've done here as well
on WordPress Wednesday on our YouTube
channel. If you don't know what that is,
be sure to check that out on our channel.
Really great SEO which is search engine optimization
for those of you that might not know what
that term is. That's really easily done
inside of WordPress. You also have more
control over the code over in our WooCommerce
platform. If you know a little bit of nerd code,
or if you're comfortable with editing some
CSS, you could certainly make a lot of
manipulations. A lot of themes also come with
an extensive amount of what I consider
option overload. You really have the ability
to get in there and change a lot of the
colors, a lot of the font sizes, and how
things are set up in your store.
A lot of flexibility there. You also have
some really good social media plugins.
Let's say your Facebook feeds, or maybe
you wanted your boards from Pinterest
to dynamically display on your website,
you have the means to plug those in quickly
and easily. Just a couple of clicks and you're there.
Plus, of course, out of the box, WooCommerce
allows for a blog because it's on WordPress.
Shopify has a blog as well, you just don't have
as many options as you do with WooCommerce.
There you go.
Let's talk about the good about Shopify.
And why I'm even comparing the two of them.
Shopify, to me, completely simple to set up.
I mean, literally, in a couple of minutes ...
I didn't even realize [dut dut dut] Done!
And I had a store. I mean, I could have been
selling within minutes. It was incredibly simple.
They do have some nice themes that are
free, however, you'll see some of the negative
here in a minute, you quickly have to get into
paying if you want something a little more
advanced. You do have a free trial if you want
to start using them just totally for free.
I think you have about 30 days to get over
there and sample it out. Then the lowest amount
that you're running on is a $14/per month fee
that you're going to be paying, as well as,
of course, the transaction fees on any purchases
that are made in your store. They do have
quite a few free plugins that were helping me
with shipping and a couple ... they had a customer
review plugin that was totally free for me to
drop in so that people couple give my products
reviews. That was kind of cool. Totally for free.
They also have really great tech support.
I never even really had to use it though
because, literally, I was just able to set
everything up. It was a very intuitive system.
Done. But I have heard and seen research
done that they have really great, great technical
support if you do need it.
And you also have instant payments.
In other words, with WooCommerce, I had to
go in and set up a gateway and plug it into
my PayPal account. And I really didn't have
anything out of the box that just would have
worked. Of course, with Shopify, it already
had that in place. What? It's true.
Let's talk about the bad for both.
Oh, I'm half way through it.
WooCommerce. Bad. If there's one thing
I've told you all about WordPress in general
is that it always requires updates.
And you can imagine how many plugins you
have to use with WooCommerce. Those, of course,
require updates. When we talk about updates
they're kind of a domino effect, right?
As soon as core (WordPress) requires an update,
very typically WooCommerce comes out
and says you're going to need to update.
And now all those plugins need updating.
And if you're not consistently doing that,
you're going to run into the next problem
which is security risks and breaks and breeches.
And people stealing your customer list.
You really have to be on top of things
and be sure that you have high security
set in place, as well as always consistently
doing your backups. WooCommerce
also does cost eventually. If you want
any sort of bells and whistles or extra features
or comparison plugins or auto shipping
calculators or anything like that, you're going
to end up having to pay. This could be costly.
It could run anywhere from $60 to $80.
I've seen some $125 per year if want
support on them and updates.
You do want those things.
Shake your head with me.
You do want those things because
ultimately those could be security risks
if you're not updating them.
An SSL expense (a secure server license) is
typically required on any ecommerce
website, no matter what platform you're using.
If you're over on Shopify, you're able to use
their system and it's not required.
It's pretty darn phenomenal.
Too many plugins conflict.
Now, what we typically have happen
with WooCommerce is, "Well, I want
this option, so I'm going to throw in
this plugin. And now I want this option,
so I'm going to throw in this plugin."
And, all of a sudden, let's say, you have two dozen
plugins running, and they can very easily
conflict with each other, causing breaks,
causing damage to your website.
You also don't really have tech support
when it comes down to WooCommerce.
Because it's free and opensource, you
can plug it in yourself, figure out how to
use it yourself, unless you purchase a
WooTheme or maybe you purchased
a theme from a specific author, maybe over
on ThemeForest, and those individual authors
could allow you to submit a support ticket.
But it's a little bit more cumbersome of a
process to get that type of help.
Whereas, with Shopify, you can typically
either get on the phone with them or
shoot them an email really quickly and
get a very fast response. And it is more
time consuming. That's just the bad of
WordPress is that option overload where
you literally just spend so much time
plugging in all your products, trying to get
everything set up correctly because it has
so many wonderful options.
Let's look at the bad for Shopify.
One of the reasons why people tend
to lean toward WooCommerce is because
it's free, right? And they don't want to pay
the monthly fee that Shopify charges.
Out of the gate, their lowest dollar amount
I believe is $14 or $14.95 or something like
that, per month, for you to be paying.
But very, very quickly, if you need unlimited
products, you're going to be headed, like,
literally, if you have over 25 products,
you're going to be headed into the $30 range
per month, plus the transaction fee,
so it can be costly. You also have limited
free design, so, if you want your theme
to look a little bit nicer, their themes
run around $80 to $150. It's a one-time
charge, but that has to be in your budget.
It also doesn't really have the best blogging
capabilities. You really don't have a whole
lot of options for running tags and creating
dynamic displays of your posts.
You also are a little limited with your
SEO capabilities, and editing your title
tags on your page, as well as manipulating ...
They do have a plugin for you that I found
to be comparable, in a sense, to Yoast,
but it's not just as robust.
So that's the good and the bad.
You can see that there really quickly.
The good and the bad.
What I do want to talk about though, overall,
the biggest issues with any ecommerce website
no matter what is that typically you have
bad pictures so you want to have really
great photos. Your photos are what's going to
sell your product. Then you also have to
figure out shipping. That has actually killed
some of our customers. They don't calculate
the right amounts for shipping, so they're
not charging the right amount, so they have
to eat the shipping cost, and ultimately that
dives into your profit margin and that could
ultimately really, really hurt your business.
And then, of course, figuring out what
payment gateway to use and how to be
sure that it works with your server,
your hosting company, as well as your
transaction fees and how quickly you can
get your money back from the payment
gateway and get it into your account.
All those different things are little things
you need to consider whenever you're
setting up an ecommerce website.
So, overall, I'm going to say to you
that I think Shopify wins as a proof of concept.
Let's call it that. A proof of concept website.
So, if you're just getting started with
an ecommerce website and you're thinking
I don't know which one to use, I think it's
pretty phenomenal to go ahead and use Shopify.
It's literally set up in a few minutes and
you're off and running with a very simple,
very basic website. Fantastic for that.
But if you need something a little more
advanced, and you really want to get
technical and put in some really cool
widgets and plugins and extra bells
and whistles, you want to look at WooCommerce.
I can't believe I'm saying this because
most of the time I tell people don't do it.
But WooCommerce is such a beast
to tackle. But if you've already got your
proof of concept, you know you're able to
sell, and you're able to maybe hire a tech
team or a developer team to help you set
up WooCommerce, I highly recommend it.
All right? I know that was a lot in 11 minutes.
I'm one minute over. But I appreciate you
taking time with me. I'm going to put the
subscribe button right here because every
single Wednesday I'm releasing great videos
on WordPress. If you have questions about
these two (which I'm not an affiliate of either
one, by the way. I'm not getting money
from this video from either one of these
companies. I was just giving you my opinion.
Completely my opinion on my user experience
in both environments) you can put your
comments in the description box below.
And be kind, all right. You all have a great one.
I'll see you next WordPress Wednesday.
Bye bye.