In-Depth Technical Comparison: Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. Magento

In today’s tech-savvy world, businesses are appreciative of the need to establish an online presence. An online presence helps your business marketing and generates leads without spending a sizable amount in traditional ways of marketing. Online marketing tools such as e-commerce website, social media, and mobile applications are efficient, effective, and scalable model where the organization can invest in their product and service instead of spending countless man-hours and money chasing customers in the field. 

The first step in developing an online presence is creating an e-store. An E-store is a website, mobile application, or social media selling pages. Mobile app are an investment and social media selling is spammy and seems less authentic. Hence it is profitable to open an e-commerce website that attracts and engages consumers online and generates leads all the time. 

Now, you might want to hire a website design and development company and stop bothering yourself with this. But it is beneficial to know about the crux of this domain. Knowledge about how your website is being developed helps you in ensuring quality. Here we will help you decide which e-commerce platform is the best fit for your business goals and objectives. 

The three most talked about e-commerce platforms are Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. Shopify can be thought of as a platform that helps you design, create, register, and host your website. Magento is an open-source platform by Adobe that helps website developers create e-commerce websites but does not offer hosting. WooCommerce is another e-commerce development platform that offers shared hosting. Let’s get deep into the technical features of these three.

Technical Question	WooCommerce	Shopify	Magento
What is this platform?	An e-commerce website development platform that is designed to transform basic websites or blogs to fully functional online store.	A plug and play e-commerce platform that empowers website developers to host and create feature-rich and scalable websites.	An open-source platform that is owned by Adobe. Magento offers all the tools required by website developers worldwide.
Who does the hosting?	WooCommerce websites share hosting facilities. The platform monitors and maintains an incredible uptime.	Shopify offers web-hosting with unlimited bandwidth, Level-1 PCI compliance, SSL certificate. The platform has a 99.98% uptime meaning the chances of website crashing are 0.02%.	Magento powered websites have to hosted on private hosting. This is could be a third party service provider or in-house servers.
Who uses this platform?	PageLink, Pro4Mance, FilterGrade	The Los Angeles Lakers, Wikipedia, Johnny Cupcakes, Citizen, Tesla	CocaCola, Ford, FoxConnect, Olympus Rebecca, NIke, Nestle
What popular business tools can I connect with a website on this platform?	Zapier, Taxamo, Xero, FreshBooks, ShipStation, WordPress, Jigoshop, TradeGecko, Veeqo, Mad Mini, Ambassador, UserVoice, Stripe, PayPal, Amazon Payments, FedEx, USPS, UPS	MailChimp, QuickBooks, Fulfillrite, Zapier, KISSmetrics, Chargify, Social Media APIs	Enterprise Suite ERP, Embedded ERP, Bank Payment, eBay, PayOne, ShipWorks, CashOnDelivery, MailChimp, Mandrill, osCommerce, Fontis Australia, Correios, Bee Trailer, Debil-Payment, Social Media APIs, Ingenico
What is this compatible with?	iPhone-iPad, Web-based application delivery	Windows, Android, iPhone-iPad, MAC, Web-based application delivery	Windows, Android, iPhone-iPad, MAC, Web-based application delivery
What sort of customer support do they offer?	Email, Customer Complaint Tickets	Email, Phone, Live Support, Tickets	Email, Phone, Training
What’s the pricing?	Using WooCommerce is free. They charge for license upgrades, extensions, and updates based on the feature you select.	Shopify has three pricing options:$29/month: Basic Shopify$79/month: Shopify$299/month: Advanced Shopify	Magento offers 2 end-to-end solutions for e-commerce:$2000/month: Magento Commerce Starter$3,417/month: Magento Commerce Pro

Benefits of WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento

While all three serve a basic set of features each is versatile in their own methodology of offering these services. If you are just starting your e-commerce expansion a basic set of tools might serve you well for a short time. But the thoughtful selection of a website development company and a suitable platform will serve you for a long time. Let us look at their benefits.

WooCommerce 

• 1. WooCommerce is a free e-commerce plugin that comes with a starter kit of tools needed to develop a basic website. 
• 2. Website development companies enjoy full support from WooCommerce teams and a global community of website developers.
• 3. Powering 24% of the internet websites the platform ensures negligible downtime.
• 4. Streamlined and logical set of tools necessary to run an e-commerce website such as managing listings, tax rate calculations, and order management. 

Shopify

•  1. 70+ mobile commerce ready professional themes for website developers to craft into customized business websites.
• 2. Full Blogging platform with HTML and CSS editing.
• 3. More than 100 payment gateways with automatic tax calculators for hassle-free checkouts.
• 4. Manage refunds on the go with customizable email templates.

Magento

• 1. Magento offers speed and functionalities that can be customized by website developers to serve business-specific needs.
• 2. Built-in upsell and cross-sell features ensure lead generation all the time.
• 3. Easy third party API integration gives you the freedom to upgrade your website anytime.
• 4. Intelligent filtered search with catalog and order management ensure smooth shopping experiences.

As you can understand from the table above. All three platforms serve different needs. If you are an established player in your field you might want your website development company to make a website on Magento. On the other hand, Shopify and WooCommerce have sufficient website design options for small and medium-sized companies. It all comes down to, what level of sophistication you are looking for?  A website design and development company can help you learn applications of all three platforms specific to your business and marketing needs. Contact website developers at Paraminfo today for complete profiling of your business website.