Hey guys, in this video we're going to be doing an updated look at what platform is
best to use when building your eCommerce store.
Is it Shopify or WooCommerce?
For most people, especially my subscribers here at Wholesale Ted, there are five key
questions that they want answers to before deciding which platform is best for them.
One: Which one requires the least startup money?
Two: Which will cost you the most money in the long-term?
Three: Which is cheaper if you plan on building multiple stores?
Four: Which is easiest for beginners to use?
And five: What has the best dropshipping plugin?
If you guessed that I'm going to be answering these five questions on this video, you have
guessed right.
All right, so let's jump straight into it.
Question one: Which requires the least startup money?
Now this is kind of debatable.
You could argue that WooCommerce does, but for most people they're going to find that
Shopify will cost them the least amount of money to get started.
Now with Shopify you have two options.
You can pay for your plan on a monthly basis, or you can pay for a whole year with a discount.
For most users the Shopify basic plan is perfect, and they don't need to purchase a bigger subscription
plan.
If you select the monthly basic plan that means that you can get started for just $29.
You'll still need to purchase a domain name of course, and the easiest solution for most
people is to purchase it with Shopify.
If you do that a domain name is going to cost you $14.
So in total you could get started with a Shopify store today for just $43.
Now let's compare that to WooCommerce.
Now on the surface WooCommerce should be the cheapest, because it's free.
Right?
After all WooCommerce is just a free WordPress plugin and that always attracts a lot of people,
because well free, free, free.
Everybody loves free, but it's not actually free, because you still need to purchase web
hosting for your store, and that costs money.
Now in the past you could get away with using super cheap web hosting from places like iPage.
The reason for that was that an SSL certificate was not necessary, and super cheap web hosting
like iPage did not include it.
However, some recent changes in 2017 made having an SSL certificate basically necessary.
If you don't include it then Google and Chrome will now flag your site as not secure.
So now more than ever, it is no longer an optional expense.
Now in my updated 2018 tutorial where I taught everybody how to create a WooCommerce dropshipping
store, and you will find a link to that in the video description below, the web hosting
that I used as part of it was SiteGround.
The startup plan from SiteGround is perfect for most people, and it includes an SSL certificate.
Now while you can choose to get a month trial for $3.95, they make you pay an additional
hefty fee of $14.95.
After the first month they will re-bill you for a one year subscription plan anyway.
You can't pay monthly ongoing.
So most people won't want to select this and will just skip to the one year subscription
plan of $47.40.
Which of course, is more money than Shopify's $29.
I also find that a lot of beginners prefer to purchase their domain names through their
web hosts, and the reason for this is because if you do that it will automatically connect
your domain name to your web host.
Which makes it a lot easier during the setup process.
With SiteGround, this is also more expensive then Shopify.
Costing $15.95.
That means for most people getting started with SiteGround, they're going to be spending
$63.35.
Which is more expensive than getting started with Shopify.
Just a quick note, if you're on super tight budget and are willing to learn about connecting
domain names to your store, you can buy .com domain names from Namecheap for just $10.98.
However, I recommend that most beginners just spend the extra few dollars and purchase their
domain names through either Shopify or SiteGround to make it easier.
Question two: What will cost you the most money in the long-term?
There is absolutely no contest here.
You are going to save far more money in the long-term with a WooCommerce store.
Now up front you're going to have to spend $47.40 to get your web hosting going, but
keep in mind that lasts for 12 whole months.
Whereas if you do the math a basic Shopify plan over 12 months is going to cost you $348.
Now you can save money by purchasing a 12 month subscription in advance, but the savings
are only 10%, so it's still going to be costing you $313. $47 or $313?
I wonder which is cheaper.
Oh I know, $47 is cheaper.
WooCommerce definitely wins here.
Question three: Which is cheaper if you plan on opening multiple stores?
A question that we get asked occasionally is, whether you can open more than one store
on a Shopify account?
The answer is no you can't.
If you open a store called Brewer Treats on Shopify selling coffee accessories, you can't
also go and create a new store called Perfect Goodies selling cat trinkets.
You would have to open one Shopify plan for $29 a month Brewer Treats, and then you would
have to open an additional $29 a month account for Perfect Goodies.
All in all you would be paying $58 a month for both of these stores.
Now let's compare that to WooCommerce.
Most people are usually only looking to start a single store.
Which is why I recommend the startup plan with SiteGround as it's the cheapest, but
a limitation with it is that it only lets you host a single website.
What you could instead choose to do is purchase the GrowBig plan, which lets you host as many
websites as you like on a single account.
This will cost you $5.95 billed annually.
Which means you'll be paying up front $71.40, and you will get hosting for as many sites
as you like for 12 months.
Now, true fact here, price is not everything.
Which is what I'm about to get into, but if you are very price sensitive then there is
no contest.
WooCommerce is definitely cheaper than Shopify.
Question four: Which is the easiest for beginners to use?
Just like there was no contest for the last question, there is no contest for this one
here.
Shopify is by far the easiest for beginners.
Shopify has genuinely revolutionized the world of eCommerce.
It has never been so simple and easy for beginners to create stores.
If you follow along with my Shopify video tutorial you can have a professional looking
dropshipping site up and running in less than an hour, and you can find a link to that tutorial
in the description below.
Now there are many reasons why Shopify is a lot nicer and easy to use, but a very major
point here is that Shopify was only created for the sole purpose of making eCommerce stores.
That is it.
That is all Shopify does.
If you want to turn your store into a completely different website then you are just out of
luck, because the only thing that Shopify does is build beautiful stores.
Now let's compare that to WooCommerce.
Now the thing about WooCommerce is that it is simply a plugin that plugs into WordPress,
which was initially built to build blog sites, and then it turns that into an eCommerce store.
So before you can install WooCommerce, you actually have to install WordPress on your
site, and turn it into a blog site.
You then install the WooCommerce plugin into your WordPress blog, which adds functionality
that turns it into an eCommerce store.
Now if this is already confusing you then you should just stick to Shopify.
So because of the facts that you are taking what was initially supposed to be blog software,
and now turning it into a eCommerce store, the interface and the menus are quite awkward
and difficult for beginners to navigate to use.
There will be still lots of blog options, settings and features installed and available
to them that are not relevant to them.
Which makes it confusing and distracting.
The interface is not intuitive.
Plus it is a lot more glitchy, and I can not emphasis that enough.
That's because of the fact that WordPress is not well optimized for WooCommerce.
Whereas Shopify is incredibly streamlined, incredibly optimized, and has basically no
glitches at all.
Plus even if you do run into problems you get access to 24/7 support.
You can contact Shopify directly through either phone or live chat, and get someone to help
you right then and there.
The Shopify support is incredible.
They will literally hold your hand and walk you through the process step by step, but
if you go with WooCommerce you are on your own.
After all, it is a free plugin.
There is no one there to hold your hand.
Question five: Which one has the best Aliexpress dropshipping plugin?
Now most of my subscribers here at Wholesale TED are interested in creating eCommerce stores,
because they want to run Aliexpress dropshipping stores on them.
So this is a very relevant question for them.
For Shopify, the best dropshipping plugin is Oberlo, and for WooCommerce it is AliDropship.
The honest truth is that Oberlo is the best of the two.
First of all, it requires no startup investment with Oberlo, unlike AliDropship.
Which costs $89 to purchase.
Now this is a one off purchase, which is something to keep in mind.
Once you are making more than 50 sales a month you will start having to pay a $29 a month
fee with Oberlo, but once you get to the point where you're making 50 plus sales a month
the the $29 a month plan shouldn't be a problem for you.
And AliDropship definitely has more glitches than Oberlo.
Now, don't get me wrong.
What the AliDropship team created was quite remarkable, but like how WordPress was not
build to be optimized with the WooCommerce plugin, WooCommerce was not built to be optimized
with the AliDropship plugin.
Whereas Shopify actually acquired Oberlo in May of 2017.
It means then that Oberlo is incredibly well optimized for Shopify.
It integrates like a dream, and it is basically glitch free.
So there guys go.
There are definitely some advantages to using WooCommerce money wise.
I also understand that some people are always going to choose it anyway, because they like
using WordPress in general, but ultimately I do think that Shopify is going to be the
right platform for most of my subscribers because of the fact that it is cheaper and
easier to get setup initially and get selling.
Thanks for watching.
If you would like more videos about making money selling online then be sure to subscribe
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on any of our videos.
And if you would like even more dropshipping training then you should be sure to download
our free ebook, How To Make $10000 A Month Online With Dropshipping.
You'll find a link on how to download it in the video description below.