It’s not easy to pick a choice among many attractive ones. It confuses you and makes it harder for you to decide which choice will prove to be the most optimal. You may face this dilemma when choosing an ecommerce platform for your online business since you have many of them to choose from. What makes this decision even harder is that every platform promises distinguishing features and that every business has different goals and requirements.
WooCommerce and Magento 2, the two widely popular ecommerce solutions, are often the first choice of online vendors. Both of them are packed with great features and trusted by famous brands worldwide. To decide which platform is best suited for your business, you need to know the performance, pricing, user friendliness, ease of use, product management, scalability, customization capabilities, etc. of each of these platforms. Without this knowledge, you may end up making a poor choice.
Quick Read: Shopify Plus vs. Magento 2 - In Depth ComparisonIn the following lines, we are going to compare WooCommerce and Magento 2 with respect to their key features. We will leave it to you to decide which platform offers a better solution for your unique business requirements. This comparison will serve you to make an informed decision.
WooCommerce:
Almost every research article on ecommerce platforms has featured WooCommerce in the top 3. Over 4 million online vendors have expressed their trust in WooCommerce by choosing it as the engine to run their stores. WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that turns a WordPress site into an ecommerce store. So it’s more easy and popular among WordPress users.Pros:
- WooCommerce is free to use and distribute.
- It supports an unlimited number of products.
- It’s easy if you know how to use WordPress.
- It gives you full control of your content and store.
- It has a wide variety of themes and plugins.
- A large community, extensive documentation, and tutorials make it easy to solve any issue.
- It has readily available support.
- It comes with a built-in blog.
- Offers multiple payment methods like Apple Pay, Stripe, Paypal, etc.
Cons:
Even though the core WooCommerce extension is free, many extensions are not. Capital costs for a WooCommerce site need to be budgeted for. It is not cheap. If you are not familiar with WordPress, you need to learn both WordPress and WooCommerce.Magento 2:
Magento is another open-source eCommerce heavyweight with over 250,000 stores relying on its powerful features. Magento is most suited for medium-sized businesses and large enterprises owing to its high pricing. Although the Magento 2 Open Source edition (previously Community edition) is available for free, you will require many extensions to customize it. It also requires expert knowledge to create & customize an online store in Magento 2.Pros:
- Magento is 100% flexible and scalable so you can add unlimited products to your store.
- You get excellent SEO features.
- Magento has faster checkout plus guest checkout.
- Magento is mobile friendly.
- You can customize your store the way you want.
- Store management is easy.
Cons:
- Magento is expensive.
- It’s not easy to create an e-store in Magento.
- Magento needs a good hosting environment.
- Magento has poor technical support.
Comparison with respect to Performance
40% of users abandon a store if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. 47% of users expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. Knowing this, the page load time is the primary concern of all online retailers.
When it comes to performance, it’s difficult to declare a clear winner since there are many other factors that contribute to this. For example, the functionality and size of your site, the efficiency of your hosting provider, whether or not your images are optimized, and whether you are using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) or not.
The performance of Magento 2 has been greatly improved by the introduction of Varnish and a full-page caching system. So if you can afford a dedicated Magento hosting, it gives optimal performance when compared with WooCommerce.Comparison with respect to Cost
WooCommerce is free to download and install on any server. However, you have to bear the hosting expenses that depend on the package you choose according to the size of your business. This varies from $6.99 per month to $499 per month. Many web hosts work well with WooCommerce but the recommended ones for new stores are Siteground, Bluehost, and Godaddy.
Apart from hosting expenses, you may need to use premium extensions to extend the functionality of your store. The good news is that many extensions are free and those that are premium are not very expensive.
The Magento 2 community (now called open source) edition is available for free but lacks B2B features. The license for Magento 2 enterprise (now called Commerce) edition starts at about $22,000 a year for up to $1M USD revenue per year. It’s an up-front fee. On top of this, you also have to pay for hosting services that will cost you about $1,000 per month. Moreover, Magento extensions and development is more expensive than WooCommerce.
So when it comes to pricing, Magento will hurt your pocket more than WooCommerce.Comparison with respect to Security
The security of an online store is another important factor that every merchant must consider. Nothing is more important for a customer than the security of his private information and payment details and for a store than its trust and reputation.
Although both WooCommerce and Magento provide features and tools to provide a secure shopping experience to their customers, WooCommerce tends to be more vulnerable to security threats through themes and extensions. Although WooCommerce itself is secure, the third-party free and low-quality extensions and themes are often the sources of attacks for most hackers. According to a WordPress security infographic, more than 51% of WordPress sites were hacked due to a vulnerability in the themes and plugins they were using.
Magento, on the other hand, frequently releases dedicated security patches and updates apart from offering many built-in security features. Moreover, all the Magento marketplace extensions are approved after passing the security test. So Magento takes a slight lead when it comes to security.
Comparison with respect to Ease-of-Use
WooCommerce is a clear winner here as it is more beginner-friendly and requires little or no knowledge especially if you are already a WordPress user. About 70% of users opt for WooCommerce because of its ease of use.
The WP-admin dashboard allows you to effortlessly customize your website, insert content, install plugins, and do what you want with your website. You can add an unlimited number of products, create pages, set up payments, manage orders, etc. The massive WordPress community and extensive documentation further make it easier to solve any problem.
Magento, on the other hand, is for web development professionals. It’s not the job of a newbie or even an amateur to build a store in Magento. Even Magento installation may require the services of a Magento professional.
Conclusion
Still having a hard time deciding between the two platforms? Let’s make it simple for you.- If you are not tech-savvy and want to build a low-budget small online store, go for WooCommerce.
- If you can work with WordPress and want to implement all the basic functionalities of an online store within a limited budget, go for WooCommerce.
- If you are a web professional with a limited budget and want to build a basic online store, go for Magento 2 open source edition.
- If you are a large business or have high future aspirations with no budget issues, and prefer unlimited scalability, super performance, and security, Magento 2 Commerce edition is your go-to solution.