Deciding on the best ecommerce platform for your online store can be a difficult choice. Two of the most popular options are WordPress with WooCommerce and Shopify. While both platforms have their advantages, there are some key reasons why we ultimately chose to build our store with WordPress and WooCommerce over Shopify. In this article, we’ll outline seven of the most compelling benefits that led us to pick WordPress for our ecommerce needs. From more design flexibility to lower long-term costs, WordPress offered advantages that were better suited for our business.
More Design and Customization Options
One of the biggest differentiators between WordPress and Shopify is design flexibility. With WordPress, you have access to thousands of themes and templates to create a truly unique storefront. We had a very specific vision for our brand aesthetic, and WordPress made it easy to execute on that vision. Shopify provides some nice looking themes, but they are more cookie-cutter in style. With WooCommerce, we could also easily tweak and customize different design elements like fonts, colors, page layouts, and more to get the exact look and feel we wanted.
Greater Flexibility and Control
Beyond just design, WordPress also gave us more flexibility and control over every aspect of our online store. With Shopify, you are largely limited to whatever features they provide through their platform. With open source WordPress, we could leverage thousands of plugins and integrations to add any functionality we needed. This allowed us to customize the user experience and build a store that aligned perfectly with our business processes. From complex product configurations to advanced marketing tools, WordPress offered solutions to every challenge.
Lower Overall Costs
When calculating long-term costs, WordPress was the more affordable option for running our ecommerce store. Shopify charges a monthly subscription fee based on your sales volume. While fees start low, they can quickly add up as your store grows. With WordPress, we only paid for web hosting, a theme, and any plugins we needed. There are no recurring fees or commissions. This helped us keep our operating expenses low, leaving more room for investing back into the business. The open source nature of WordPress also meant we could find high-quality free extensions to replace paid apps on Shopify.
Better SEO Capabilities
Solid SEO was critical for getting our products found online. WordPress gave us better SEO capabilities out of the box. Plugins like Yoast SEO made it easy to optimize pages and content for search engines. Shopify also has some SEO features, but they are more limited. With WordPress, we had more control over SEO best practices like URL structure, meta descriptions, alt text, and more. This helped us rank higher in searches and drive more organic traffic. The customizable nature of WordPress themes also allowed us to build a site structured for SEO success.
Access to More Extensions and Add-Ons
One limitation of Shopify is that you can only use apps and extensions from their app store. With WordPress and WooCommerce, you can leverage thousands of plugins across the web to add advanced functionality. We were able to find plugins and integrations for everything from product reviews and user registration to advanced shipping and tax calculations. Shopify locks you into their closed system. With WordPress, no feature is off-limits if you can find the right plugin. This flexibility and extensibility enabled us to create a truly custom store tailored to our specific needs.
Open Source Platform
WordPress is open source software, meaning the code is free for anyone to use and modify. This provides a few key advantages. First, there is a worldwide community of developers constantly improving and expanding its capabilities. With Shopify, you are limited to whatever features they decide to create. With WordPress, you benefit from the innovations of thousands of contributors. Open source also future-proofs your store. If you outgrow Shopify, you have to start over. With WordPress, you own the platform, so you can easily migrate and expand. The transparency of open source also promotes security. Anyone can audit the code, whereas Shopify’s closed model limits visibility.
Larger Developer Community
Due to its open source roots, WordPress also benefits from a much larger community of developers and designers. This makes it easy to find support, troubleshoot issues, and hire help to build out custom features. With Shopify, you are limited to their approved “Experts.” With WordPress, you can leverage talent across the web. TheWordPress repositories on GitHub have over 2 million users contributing. This gives you access to a worldwide pool of talent if you need help with development.
Conclusion
After weighing all the pros and cons, we determined WordPress was the best ecommerce platform for our online store. The increased flexibility, lower costs, robust feature set, and open source model offered clear advantages over the limitations of Shopify. Of course, there are cases where Shopify may be a preferable option. But for our needs, WordPress provided the right balance of control, customization, and affordability to launch and grow our business. The power and versatility of WordPress and WooCommerce enabled us to build our ideal store from the ground up.