When it comes to building an online store, choosing the right e-commerce platform is crucial. Two popular options are Shopify and Woo Express. Both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, and it’s important to understand them before deciding. In this article, we will compare Shopify and Woo Express regarding features, ease of use, customization options, pricing, and customer support.
In this informative blog post, I have done a comparison in tabular form to make it easy to understand.
| Features | Shopify | Woo Express |
|---|---|---|
| Pay Monthly | $25/mon | $39/mon |
| Pay Yearly | $19 /mon | $25 /mon |
| Online store | Basic marketing options are available in Essential, But automation is available in Performance (Source) | A lot of themes.😃 |
| Number of products | Unlimited 😲 | Unlimited 😲 |
| Staff accounts | 2 😐 (Well, I think it depends upon your need). | Unlimited 😲 |
| 24/7 support | Yes 😃 | Yes 😃 |
| Default Storefronts | Hydrogen storefronts. Also has 100 free themes. 😃 | Has many beautiful themes 😃 |
| Inventory locations | Has 1000 Inventory/Store locations 😃 | Did not mentioned |
| Manual order creation | Available 👍 | Available 👍 |
| Discount codes | Unlimited 👍 | Unlimited 👍 |
| Abandoned cart recovery | Yes (A good option for marketing/sales) 😃 | Available in Performance Plan 🤔 |
| Gift cards | Available in Performance Plan. Event-based email marketing, birthday messages. | Available third-party shipping options in all plans. 😃👍 |
| Reports | Yes, but very basic in Basic Plan and Advanced in higher plans. 🤔 | Here it’s named (Analytics), and it’s very extensive in both plans of Woo Express. |
| Third-party calculated shipping rates (It’s an option to calculate total shipping rates at Checkout Page) | Only available in Advanced Plan, which is $399/mon. ☹️ (I believe companies need this option essentially) | Available third-party shipping options in all plans. 😃👍 |
| Customer segmentation | 😃👍 – Yes (Another amazing marketing option. Mostly helpful in email marketing) | Detailed analytics and customer segmentation. 😃👍 (All Woo Express plans have this option.) |
| Marketing automation | Available in all Shopify Plans. 😃👍 (One of my favourite marketing option.) | Basic marketing options are available in Essential, But automation is available in Performance (i) |
| Contacts/Customers List | Unlimited in all plans.. 😃👍 | Unlimited in all plans. 👍 |
| Ecommerce automations | Another amazing feature to manage the store easily and save a lot of time. 😃👍 | Available in Performance Plan, but has plus points, like email marketing, and abandoned card recovery. 😃👍 |
| Transaction Fee | Basic: 2%, Shopify: 1%, Advanced: 0.6% | Did not mention. |
| In-person selling | Available in all plans. Shopify POS Lite: For popups, and casual sellings with 1 staff account, basic inventory, customer profile, and checkout. No analytics, and omnichannel _____ Retail stores, permanent locations: ($89/month/location) For retail stores with unlimited staff accounts, customer profiles, checkout, analytics, and omnichannel. | Did not mentioned. |
| Connection With Marketplaces (Amazon, Walmart, Ebay) | Available in all plans, but only 50 order sync per month are free. For additional orders you will be charged a 1% transaction fee for every order, but don’t worry, the transactions’ total fee will not exceed more than $99/mon even if you sync 1000 orders/mon. | Woo Express also has a listing feature but it only provides a listing with Google Marchant Center. |
| International | All the below features are made to customize and give a personalized experience to your customer based on their country/location. 1- Localized selling with custom markets. 2- Product pricing by market. 3- Market domains and subfolders. 4- Language translation. 5- Duties and import taxes. | As per my knowledge, Woo Express does not have this level of personalization. If you found this feature. Let us know in the feedback.👍 |
Features
Shopify is known for its extensive range of features. It offers a wide variety of built-in tools and functionalities, including inventory management, payment gateways, shipping options, and marketing tools. Shopify also has a large app store where you can find additional features to enhance your store’s functionality.
On the other hand, Woo Express is a big rival of Shopify and is made by Automatic the same company behind WordPress, who don’t know WordPress, the famous CMS(Content Management System) by Matt Mullenweg. It provides almost the same features as Shopify, except few differences. It also has many add-ons to enhance functionalities.
Ease of Use
Shopify is known for its user-friendly interface and intuitive design. It is designed to be easy to navigate and set up, even for beginners. The platform provides step-by-step guidance throughout the process of building your store, from choosing a theme to adding products. Shopify also offers 24/7 customer support to assist you with any questions or issues that may arise.
Woo Express, being based on WordPress also provides ease of use for its users. The simple dashboard always comes in handy when we talk about UX, while Woo Express needs a bit technical person, and that could be achieved by reading some documentation on their detailed documentation.
Customization Options
Both Shopify and Woo Express offer a range of customization options to make your store unique. Shopify provides a wide variety of themes and templates to choose from, allowing you to customize the look and feel of your store. You can also make further customizations using the built-in theme editor or by editing the HTML and CSS code.
Just like Shopify Woo Express also has many add-ons. Like, you can list your products with Google Marchant Center, and also make your store easily visible on your social media pages. Visit the link to find more details on it.
Pricing
Shopify offers a range of pricing plans to suit different business needs. The plans start from $29 per month for the Basic Shopify plan and go up to $299 per month for the Advanced Shopify plan. In addition to the monthly subscription fee, Shopify also charges transaction fees for each sale made through your store, unless you use their own payment gateway, Shopify Payments.
Woo Express has two plans, the Essential plan starts from $25/Mon, and the Performance plan starts from $39/mon if billed annually, and also provides 14-day trial and then $1/mon for the first months just like Shopify.
Customer Support
Both Shopify and Woo Express offer 24/7 customer support through various channels, including live chat, email, and phone. They also provide extensive documentation and resources that I have linked at the top.
Conclusion
In conclusion, both Shopify and Woo Express are powerful e-commerce platforms with their own unique features and benefits. Shopify is a user-friendly platform that offers a wide range of features, while Woo Express is a plugin for WordPress that provides more flexibility and customization options. The choice between the two ultimately depends on your specific needs and technical expertise. If you are looking for a straightforward and easy-to-use platform, Shopify may be the better option. However, if you are already familiar with WordPress and want more control over your store’s design and functionality, Woo Express could be the right choice for you.