Needless to say, a number of businessmen are now trying to go online and take their business to next level. For this, they need to build up an e-commerce store. Different online stores sell different products and so a number of options are available to develop the right e-commerce store. So the only thing you need to do is to find the right platform for your business, which will help you to get your site build in less time and money.
The best part is that you don’t have to choose an option from a big list. All you have to do is to make a choice between WooCommerce and Magento.
So before we start comparing, let’s get a basic idea on them.
Magento is an platform which is developed only to build e-commerce sites. It comes with added features that helps the store to function well.
On the other hand, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. You need to install it on the CMS to make it work. So in the real sense comparison is between a e-commerce platform and a plugin.
So now you must be thinking why there is a tough competition between them? It is because of some similarities between the two. So let’s see them one by one.
Open Source Development:
WooCommerce is a e-commerce toolkit which is absolutely free while Magento is an open source platform. So in both the cases, developer can easily use the code.
Development Budget-friendly:
You don’t have to pay extra to install Magento and WooCommerce. The amount you need to spend on building the project on any of these platform is really affordable. In case you are going for some paid features, you will have to pay more. Better hire a Magento developer to get it done.
Secure, Flexible and Robust:
When we look at the statistics, around 40% of the e-commerce websites are build on Magento and WooCommerce together. This has paved way to create websites that are rich in features.
E-commerce:
Both Magento and WooCommerce comes with the functionalities of e-commerce community where Magento is an e-commerce platform while WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin. They both satisfy different business needs. So at times, it becomes difficult to find the right one for a business.
So to help you out, a comparative analysis has been provided below which will help you to choose one between Magento and WooCommerce.
- Set up/ installation: You don’t have to spend a significant amount to install WooCommerce or Magento, but you will need technical knowledge for the same. Now a number of online tutorials are available so make best use of them. If your business is not divided into vertical branches, you can better make use of WooCommerce plugin. Then again, this plugin does not provide the robustness, scalability and features of Magento.
- Management: Whether you are having an online store in WooCommerce or Magento, you can handle it easily. Some of the features that you will find here are facility to provide multiple shipping address, single page checkout, etc. Something that makes Magento different from WooCommerce is that you can support a number of store front-ends from a single back-end management system.
- Account management and customer service: Some of the common issues that you will face while managing an online store are order details, customer queries, change in account details, etc. Magento as well as WooCommerce comes with admin panel that are interactive, making it easy to manage accounts and provide better customer service.
Magento is the better option when it comes to managing customer accounts. If you want to subscribe to newsletter with WooCommerce you need MailChimp.
- Catalog management: Products and catalog is everything that a shopping store has. So if you have a big business displaying thousands of products, you need a better solution to sort out products. You should be able to easily edit or add product details as well as quantity. WooCommerce and Magento provides better catalog management facility for products as well as deletes/approves product reviews and tags.In case of complex catalog management, Magento is the best option. Compared to WooCommerce, it comes with features like cashflow, shipping management, product comparison, different payment gateways, search reviews, wishlist, etc.
- Browsing: Both of them provide better browsing facilities to the customers. Shoppers can easily check product reviews, zoom product pictures, add them to wishlist, etc. In case you are planning to expand your business to international market, you can make use of the multi-lingual option for shopping and payment.
- Usability: If you are having a small e-commerce business with less number of products, you can go for WooCommerce. But if you have a big e-commerce store, better go for Magento. You can easily control different store-fronts by using a single back-end as well as manage large number of products.
- Hosting: One of the biggest concerns for any business owner is hosting so as to make the store work well. Magento requires storage space on the system while WooCommerce does not. If your store is large you need to organize thousands of products. You need a powerful server to take care of the traffic. In that situation Magento can help you to deal with the large product database.
So by now you must have got a clear idea regarding both platforms. You must have understood that they satisfy different business requirements. So in case you have a small e-commerce store, go for WooCommerce plugin and if your online store is large, opt for Magento platform. Again, if you want to add some additional features to the store, Magento can serve you better.
So now decide what suits your needs and choose the option accordingly.