Magento vs WooCommerce-Which eCommerce platform is better?

Nowadays eCommerce has become a fastest growing industry with the effective platforms. Day by day developers has been creating more and more robust solutions. To flow with the latest trends, the developers perform a regular update. Despite the fact, there are some of the platforms that have already gained the world recognition.

Today the most popular eCommerce platform on the market are Magento and WooCommerce. In the past few years, many digital marketers have a debate on these platforms strength and suitability. WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress whereas Magento is a standalone product that is owned by eBay.

These platforms are functional, scalable, and offers some nice designs. The best part of these platforms is that you can easily launch your own eCommerce store if you don’t have any prior on building a website.

Both the platforms have their own supporters claiming it’s the best. So, we decided to give you a correct information on this platform. In this article, we’ll compare Magento vs WooCommerce that will help you to take the right decision. Before that, here are a few things you need to keep in mind while choosing the right platform!

How to choose the right platform for your online shop?

Well, eCommerce plays a vital role in your online store. eCommerce platforms market is not the tiny one. Literally, there are hundreds of options available where some might be simple one whereas some might be the advanced one. So, these are the few things you need to be careful while choosing the right platform.

• Stock size: You need to consider your size of stock. Make sure to pay the less amount whenever you are browsing for a store to use.
• Payment method: If you will get the issue with PayPal, you need to look at other options. Because not all the eCommerce platforms favor 3rd party payment processor.
• Digital or Physical: What are you selling? Digital or Physical. This is the question to be asked. So look for the platforms that suit your products.
• Payment Plan: Select the platforms that suit your budget. Try to pay a monthly amount instead of giving a small percentage of the sale to the company that is hosting your platform.
• Self-hosted or hosted: If you are confident to modify your online store then look for the platforms that enable you to have a self-hosted version of the store.

Brief Overview:

What is Magento?

Magento is an open source eCommerce software that is very useful for the online businesses developed by Varien Inc. It comes with a flexible modular design and has many control options that help the users to build both user-friendly and SEO friendly website easily. Magento is an eCommerce platform that offers the companies complete eCommerce solutions. It is simple, quick and versatile to use that allows the users to update the website automatically.

It is fully responsive that supports all the devices and offers multiple payment options where the visitors can make the payment on their preferred gateway. Also, it has many extensions that support the development of an online store. Magento comes with all the options that are required for an online store.

Visit Magento

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an easy to use and powerful eCommerce platform. Especially, this platform was built to transform any WordPress website into a perfect online store. It is beautifully designed and constructed using WordPress best practices. This platform is a reliable and robust eCommerce plugin so if you are looking to build an online store by using the existing WordPress blog or website then this is the best one.

You don’t need to be experienced in coding knowledge to use this plugin. It became very popular among WordPress users due to its flexibility and simplicity. It includes a wide variety of themes and extensions and lots of customization options. WooCoommerce has a huge adoption rate that will help you to find the developers, community members, and 3rd party plugin products easily. This will make you easier to customize the WooCommerce according to your need.

Visit WooCommerce

Comparing Features: Magento vs WooCommerce

Magento is the most flexible eCommerce platform that is more geared towards the companies. And WooCommerce is very popular with the WordPress users. It comes with almost all the functionality which is needed to open an online store.

Features of Magento

• Magento is fully SEO optimized.
• It provides different payments methods like PayPal, credit card, Google checkout, money order, etc.
• This platform supports multiple languages and different currencies.
• Magento helps to manage the orders easily by using admin panel.
• It enables shipping of the product in one order to different addresses.
• Magento includes the features like image zoom in and checking of stock availability that makes easier to browse the product.
• It filters the product and displays on grid and list format.
• Magento provides the history and order status of the product.

Features of WooCommerce

• WooCommerce is an open source that means you can modify and customize anything you like.
• It comes with a fully integrated and easy to use coupon configuration.
• WooCommerce comes with preinstalled cash on delivery, PayPal, and BACS payment method.
• You can easily manage the products with the help of WP centric UI.
• It provides varieties of shipping options that will be able to configure once it is installed.
• WooCommerce comes with an extension system and hundreds of options.
• It is a free platform where you will get a support for unlimited products.

Pros and Cons: Magento vs WooCommerce

Everything has its own pros and cons so here Magento and WooCommerce also have their pros and cons. While one might be better at something, it might not deliver the same with every element and factors included. So for the convenience of our user and further understanding, here is what we found about both Magento and WooCommerce.

Magento

Pros of using Magento:

• Magento is an open source platform where you can modify the modern source code as per your preferences.
• It has a wide range of features that allows you to manage multiple stores, support locations, pricing, language, and currencies.
• It is one of the popular eCommerce platforms that is used by the large community in the world.
• Magento is mobile friendly as it allows you to create a mobile site without any difficulty.
• It can support around five hundred thousands of product and thousands of transactions.

Cons of using Magento:

• The community version is for free whereas the enterprise version will cost you more than fifteen thousand dollars.
• Magento has a large number of users as well as developers, this will be difficult to find the authentic Magento developers.
• A dedicated server is needed to host Magento.
• It has a slow loading time where the customization is difficult to make in the comparison of other eCommerce platforms.

WooCommerce

Pros of using WooCommerce:

• WooCommerce comes for free.
• You can easily add unlimited products and attributes.
• It works perfectly well on all the devices.
• To use the intuitive interface, you don’t require any coding skills.
• It is very simple to add on any WordPress sites.
• Your customers can easily rate your products that helps the visitors to check the reviews before buying.

Cons of using WooCommerce:

• Though it comes free, you need to pay for hosting.
• It has a limited storage space and inventory.
• WooCommerce only works on WordPress, so if you are not a WordPress user then it’s not for you.

Ease of use: Magento vs WooCommerce

If you are a user of WordPress based website and would like to open an online store then WooCommerce is the best choice. It will be really easy to use because you are already the use of WordPress and got familiar with it. You will find numbers of video tutorials on how to use it perfectly. This platform is easily customizable from the WP admin dashboard. You can make several changes until and unless you are not satisfied. It makes WordPress user a lot easier when it comes to creating an eCommerce site. Overall, this plugin works well with all the features by making it easy to use the platform.

Although Magento includes the video tutorials and detailed documentation yet it will take a little bit time to get used to it for a new one. Usually, it is said that it is built under a complex method. Even getting to the admin area of Magento, people will find it difficult. The software itself comes with a difficult frontend to maintain that will be tougher for people without much tech knowledge. Magento is not a user-friendly platform so it is not perfect for beginners. But, for advanced users, it offers all the useful features that help to make a perfect online store.

Security: Magento vs WooCommerce

With the growth of advanced technology, the hackers are getting more smarter. So, it is very important to keep your site secure. As your eCommerce site will host a lot of customers detailed information, the foremost thing you need is the security lapse.

Both the platforms, Magento and WooCommerce let you implement the security measures. But neither of them are hundred percent secure. But as Magento releases the security patches, it gives you the great source of comfort. The new users may find Magento a difficult platform but they are released frequently that helps to secure your store. So, here Magento wins.

Price: Magento vs WooCommerce

These are an open source platform that can be downloaded and set it up on any server of your choice. This gives the users the best option to start an online store without investing a huge amount. But the premium extension is expensive and some of them even require annual subscription too.

WooCommerce is a great option for the one who wants to open a  beginners level store. You need to register a domain name, WordPress hosting and SSL Certificate to open can WooCommerce store. It will cost you $14.99/year for the domain name, $69.99/year for SSL Certificate and $7.99/year for WordPress hosting. Apart from this, using paid extensions and themes for WooCommerce will affect your cost too. But, it gives them access to more than 55000+ WordPress extensions and thousands of free themes. And also you can find free WooCommerce plugins.

On the other hand, the free version of Magento gives you greater flexibility and features which helps to scale up the store without getting any difficulty. But, you need to get VPS hosting or Cloud host to run it. This means that although you are using the free version, your hosting bill will be quite higher. It comes with two edition; the first one is the community edition where you can download and use any hosting provider. This will not include all features and you will not get any support. And the second one is Magento commerce that includes the paid plans with cloud hosting. The paid plans are quite expensive so it’s not the right option for startups.

Magento vs WooCommerce Which platform is the better one?

Picking the best one is not easy because both of them are a great choice for eCommerce websites that have the capability to develop profitable and advanced store. But each of them doesn’t fit all the requirements of the users perfectly so to choose the better one is really difficult.

Magento is ideal for ambitious eCommerce sites like large enterprises or companies because it features are well suited for larger stores. If you are not ready to spend thousands on the developers then don’t try to run your store on Magento. If you are a beginner or want a site for heavy content then we recommend you to go with WooCommerce. Especially, if the content is the focus and eCommerce is secondary. It is cheap, easy to use and set up which is perfect for small operations. The users can easily set up almost any types of online store.

Conclusion

Both Magento and WooCommerce include some of the innovative features. But their user base might be different from each other. WooCommerce is quite safe to say that it is mainly designed for any types of businesses. And Magento is more popular among big companies because it is highly scalable making it perfect for the people who have big plans.

If you have any experience using these platforms then feel free to share your opinion. This will be a great help for us to compare the eCommerce software better in future.

Have any queries or suggestions regarding our services or blog then leave us a comment below.

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