Shopify vs. WooCommerce

Thinking of making the switch from WooCommerce to Shopify for your eCommerce store? We get asked about this all the time, and wanted to put together a few quick considerations to help you on your journey. Short answer... make the switch to Shopify, it's beyond worth it.

1. WooCommerce is Open Source, Shopify is Not - One of the things that many people get a bit frustrated with Shopify at first is the fact that you can’t access every little thing. However, in my experience, there is usually always an app for any functionality that’s needed. Yes, you may still have app conflicts (i.e. one app doesn't play nicely with another), I’ve found it to be less than with Woo commerce since the apps are a bit more regulated. Additionally, the core framework of Shopify is an eComm platform, Wordpress is just not.

2. Apps / Functionality - I would make a list of the functionality that you have on your website, in the form of Plugins and then ensure that either A) The theme has that built in or B) There’s an affordable app that solves the need.

3. Cost - Your costs will breakdown into the following 3 groups

A. Shopify plan - I would recommend the “Shopify for Small Businesses” plan. Looks like it’s $79/mo if you pay annually. You get all the reports and for most businesses, you don't really NEED Shopify+.
B. Credit Cad Processing - This is pretty standard across the board, so I’m guessing no different than your current setup.
C. Apps - This is very TBD depending on what ones you need. From my experience, you can get a solid app to do most site functionality for under $15/mo. Once you get into referral programs and that type of thing, they do get more expensive, but at that point it’s not just an “App” but rather more of a marketing software tool to handle that type of functionality.

4. Themes - I would just browse through https://themes.shopify.com/themes to see if you find ones that align with the general look/feel you want. It feels like there are always new themes, so I’m hesitant to recommend one as it may already be outdated. I built a few sites off the Turbo theme since finding a fast theme is important. You also want a Shopify 2.0 theme, but I would imagine that all of the ones listed on their site are 2.0 themes since that change has been around for some time. This essentially gives you a better customization experience utilizing content blocks and such.

All in all, making the switch to Shopify from WooCommerce can feel a bit scary and you have less ability to control ALL elements (i.e. Shopify locks the checkout process down pretty hard unless you're on Shopify+). The stability and support of Shopify is incredible though and from our end, the integrations with systems (i.e ShipHero) are significantly better than with WooCommerce.