eCommerce today is becoming one of the fastest-growing industries. With people turning to online platforms, developers strive hard to get more innovation and create robust solutions for businesses. However, to stay in trend and develop robust solutions, developers must use the best eCommerce platforms like Magento or WooCommerce. These platforms are scalable, functional, agile, and can offer great designs. If you, too, are thinking of developing your eCommerce store, you might be considering which one to for. Thus, in this post, we have compared these two platforms to help you decide and go with the right platform.
Introduction to Magento
Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform developed by Varien Inc that is widely used for online businesses. With a flexible modular design and several control options, Magento helps developers build user-friendly and SEO-optimized websites without hassle. In addition, this platform allows you to complete eCommerce solutions that are simple, quick, versatile to use, and automatically update the website.
The platform is fully responsive that supports all the devices and screens. It also offers you to integrate different payment options to allow your users to make payments through their preferred gateway. Supporting many extensions for developing an online store, several businesses hire Magento developers to develop their robust eCommerce store.
Introduction to WooCommerce
WooCommerce is another powerful eCommerce platform providing easy-to-use solutions. This platform is typically used to transform any WordPress website into an online store perfectly. Implying the best WordPress practices, WooCommerce acts as a reliable eCommerce plugin if you are looking to build an online store out of your existing website or blog.
As it is simple to use, you don’t necessarily have to be much experienced in its coding to use this plugin. This plugin is gaining huge popularity among WordPress users due to its functionality, simplicity, and flexibility. It also includes several themes and extensions with exciting customization options. So as you hire a WooCommerce developer, you can have a fully customized website, just as you have desired.
Features of Magento
- Magento is completely SEO optimized and is known for its SEO capabilities. Being SEO-friendly, your store will raise the search engines’ rank and attract more and more traffic.
- It allows you to integrate different payment options to your website, such as PayPal, credit card, Google Checkout, money order, etc., to allow your users to make payments at their convenience.
- Magento supports multiple languages and different currencies that help you to reach a wider audience.
- This platform helps you to manage the orders easily via an intuitive admin panel.
- Magento includes features like image zoom in and checking stock availability, making it easier to browse your website’s product.
- It filters the product and displays an on-grid and list format.
- Magento provides the history and order status of the product.
- Has efficient APIs for the third party integration
Features of WooCommerce
- WooCommerce is an open-source that allows you to modify and customize your website just as you like
- This platform comes with a completely integrated & easy to use coupon configuration.
- WooCommerce has pre-installed cash on delivery, PayPal, and the BACS payment method.
- It allows easy management of products with the help of WordPress-centric UI.
- It provides several shipping options that configure as soon as it is installed.
- WooCommerce comes with an extension system and offers hundreds of options.
- A free platform that supports unlimited products.
Magento Vs. WooCommerce in terms of:
As both the platforms are strong and offer robust solutions in developing an eCommerce store, the question arises “which one to choose?”, well here is a comparison between the two platforms that can help you decide which one to go for based on your requirement:
Pricing: While you decide to go with one of these great platforms, the budget is the most critical consideration. Also mentioned earlier, WooCommerce is a free extension that gives you all the basic e-commerce features. On the other hand, Magento Community Edition is also free, which offers even more basic functions. However, Magento Enterprise has more premium options.
Another factor that adds up to the cost is the hosting cost. This cost depends directly on your service provider and the size of your online store. The bigger you are planning to develop your online store, the more space it will require. Thus, to host a large online store is more expensive than a small or medium one. In this process, extensions are another point where costs can increase quickly. Both platforms have free extensions for both platforms. Still, the premium extensions are more advanced.
Ease of use: Magento platform is created for developers, and the advanced setup requires proficient developers as it is complicated for beginner developers. If you have a skilled developer on your side, you can use tons of built-in features offered by this powerful platform. However, if you have simply no experience with Magento, it can be hard for you to install it without a developer.
On the other hand, WooCommerce is an easier option. Before you set up WooCommerce, you will have to install WordPress. Most hosting providers automatically install it, but if your hosting provider does not automatically install WordPress, you can do it easily using an auto-installer. You can then set up payments and shipping, creating pages, and choosing the currency. Similarly, the plugins and themes are also easy to install.
Scalability: Since Magento is a resource-intensive software, you will have to hire a Magento developer to scale up your eCommerce website using the Magento Community edition. You will have to look after the backup management website optimization & caching and do other technical routines. This will also cost you to scale up your operations further.
While scaling up the WooCommerce store, you might face some technical challenges. However, the best part is that you can grow your store without spending much on your budget.
As you plan to scale up your store, you should move to WordPress hosting providers to help you meet your business goal.
Security: One of the essential factors to consider is security. It would be best to keep in mind that no platform is 100% safe, but you can take several measures to ensure that your eCommerce store is secure. For example, WooCommerce offers an SSL Certificate. On the other hand, Magento gives users dedicated security patches to boost their e-commerce websites’ security. Like in other cases of integrating something with the Magento website, you will have to take assistance from e-commerce developers.
Extensions & Integrations: Magento platform has a huge community of developers and agencies. You can avail several free and paid plugins depending on your requirements.
You can pick any add-on and enrich your existing feature list with a new one whenever you want. If the existing extensions do not meet your requirements, you can hire a developer to create a custom extension for your particular needs.
WooCommerce is an extension of websites powered by WordPress. Thus, to add more features to your online store, you can use any WordPress plugin from thousands of paid and 55,000 free plugins. Furthermore, as there is a huge choice of extensions, it allows you to connect your website to any third-party services, including CRM software, payment gateways, etc.
Conclusion
Comparing both the platforms, it is evident that both the platforms have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. It is clearly hard to say which one is better but depending on your eCommerce store’s needs and requirements, you can compare their offerings and choose the right one. Once you choose your platform, you can hire your developers and start with your own eCommerce store!
