Selling online has become easier than ever. With so many ecommerce platforms offering unique features, businesses have quite a few options. However, when it comes to making a choice, it’s natural to get confused. In this blog post, we are going to talk about a common dilemma many people face: Magento vs Woocommerce. We will understand what these ecommerce platforms offer and compare them on different aspects to conclude which is better than the other.
An Overview of Magento and WooCommerce
Both Magento and WooCommerce are very popular self-hosted ecommerce platforms. Before coming down to which one is better, let’s take a basic overview of both of these:
Magento
Magento is an “Open Source” content management system written in PHP. Abode Inc. acquired it in May 2018 (originally created by American company Varien in 2007) and renamed it “Adobe Commerce.” The platform allows you to create, administer and analyze your e-commerce for free. However, the platform is not a beginner-friendly option as it’s built to create large-scale and sophisticated projects, making it a suitable option for large or medium-sized companies that have enough resources to put into the operation.
So, to get started on Magento, one needs considerable time, resources, and powerful hosting. There are two versions of Magento, the Magento Open Source, also known as Magento Community, and Magento Commerce, also called Magento Enterprise. In this article, we will mainly talk about the former as it compares to WooCommerce.
Let’s take a look at some of the key features Magento offers:
- Magento is preferred for its scalability. It can keep up with your business growth.
- It facilitates the addition of unlimited products.
- One can easily customize your storefront’s themes.
- It offers abundant free extensions.
- It offers an extensive network of APIs which further allows various features to be easily integrated with third party systems.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce was launched in 2011 by WooThemes, a WordPress theme shop. It was created to be a free online shop solution for WordPress. Although some other WordPress ecommerce solutions already existed at that time, they were not user-friendly. This led to a rise in the popularity of WooCommerce due to its ease of installation and customization. And, it became one of the most widely used ecommerce platforms globally.
So, in short, WooCommerce is a free ecommerce plugin built for WordPress. It’s incredibly easy to set up and easy to use. Even beginners can set up their store with the help of the wizard guide (built-in functionality that can assist you and walk you through the initial configuration of your store) and run it.
Here are some top reasons that make WooCommerce the most preferred ecommerce platform:
- You can add unlimited products
- .It has a huge library of extensions
- You can easily launch your store
- It has in built robust security features
- It offers multiple payment gateways
- Allows to link documentation pages to products and display them automatically on the product pages
There are very few downsides to WooCommerce unless you’re not already a WordPress user. Familiarity with WordPress can help you easily navigate the entire process of launching the store.
Comparing Magento vs WooCommerce
Now that we have understood the basic part about both the platforms, let’s compare them further to understand which platform is more suitable for you.
Let’s compare them based on some crucial aspects such as:
Payment Gateways
Any online business would want to add functionality that can reduce the friction for a customer during their shopping journey. Adding multiple payment options is one of them. This can become easier when you choose the platform that facilitates almost all popular payment processors.
Although both Magento and WooCommerce support various payment options, WooCommerce has taken a lead as it enables built-in support for Stripe, PayPal, bank transfers, and cash options. It also offers extensions for additional payment gateways such as Google Pay, Alipay, and more.
On the other hand, Magento Payments facilitates Authorize.net, Braintree and PayPal.
It also features extensions for 2Checkout, Google Checkout, and any other additional payment gateways.
So in the aspect of payment gateways, none of these platforms are any less better than others. With both, you are getting the popular payment methods supported, along with plenty of add-ons.
Ease of Use
Ease of use really matters, especially when you are a beginner. In this aspect, WooCommerce is ahead of Magento as it offers a setup wizard that can help users set up crucial ecommerce elements. On the other hand, Magento is inclined toward developers who already possess basic programming knowledge.
To get started on Magento, you will need to learn basic code whereas WooCommerce is extremely easy to use. All you have to do is add this CMS plugin to your website. Once you activate it, a set up wizard can help complete all the steps of launching your store.
Although Magento’s dashboard is also user friendly with intutive navigation system but carrying out set up and configuration process requires developmental knowledge. For example, during the process if you’ll need command, you’ll need to install it first or set up the server that meets platform’s needs.
Performance and Speed
Speed and performance are the vital functionality of any ecommerce store. Speed and performance issues in online stores can lead to cart abandonment and bounce rate. Quanta compared the performance of the most used ecommerce platforms in its recent research and found that Magento had faster loading times than WooCommerce. However, concluding which platform offers the best performance and speed is quite tricky as there are a number of factors that come into play, such as the hosting plan you use, the content delivery network, the plugins and extensions you install, and whether your images are optimized or not. All these factors greatly impact the speed and performance of ecommerce stores.
Product Management
When it comes to product management, which is one of the crucial aspects of ecommerce, Magento offers extensive features that surpass WooCommerce. It facilitates grouped items, wish lists, product personalization and product reviews. WooCommerce, though, offers a simple and uncomplicated way of setting up new items, but its product management approach is not as advanced as compared to Magento. But you can enhance it by leveraging extensions like Product Add-ons.
Security
Online businesses cannot afford any risk with their store’s security aspect, especially in today’s time when threats are at an all-time high. That’s why choosing the right ecommerce platform is crucial.
Among Magento and WooCommerce, both platforms are open-source, which means your store requires proactive measures to safeguard itself.
If you choose to go with Magento, you will need fewer plugins than WooCommerce. The lesser you use plugins, lower its the risk of security vulnerabilties you will face. Plus, Magento offers dedicated security patches that’s adds extra layer of protection to your protection. However, you will need professional developers to implement it.
Scalability
As your customers, operation teams, and transaction volume grow you need extensibility on your store to scale to match your own and customers’ needs. In terms of scalability, Magento is way ahead of WooCommerce. By opting for Magento Enterprise, you can process orders in large numbers without facing any downtime issues.
While choosing platform is important, it’s also crucial to consider you are choosing a powerful hosting that can handle sudden spikes in traffic.
Extensibility
With Magento, you get many impressive features, like complex configurable products, multi-store capabilities, and language options. WooCommerce does not originally have many features, but it is highly extendable, which means you can easily add features through plugins, themes, or various add-ons.
Usually, WooCommerce’s extensions are more affordable, and Magento has more complex and powerful add-ons.
Because Magento’s extensions are more complex, they take a lot of time to setup and configuration. On the other hand, you can easily install plugins on WooCommerce.
Marketing and SEO
You don’t just set up and launch a store but also have to perform SEO and other marketing efforts on it.
So, it’s really important to choose a marketing platform where marketing and SEO features are easily accessible. Woocommerce was built on WordPress, which initially focussed more on blogging. Hence, this platform is inclusive of various marketing features and functionalities. Using WooCommerce, you can easily carry out content marketing campaigns. Moreover, you can pair it with dozens of other plugins to give it a boost.
If we talk about choosing Magento, marketing is where it lacks a bit. Magento does not offer any built-in blogging functionality. For this function, you would require an additional extension, but yes, you can easily integrate add-ons and go ahead with your marketing campaigns.
Support
Being increasingly used, both WooCommerce and Magento have very large active communities that can help you find resources, plugins or answers to your questions. WooCommerce has also taken one step forward and provided a public knowledge base which includes helpful tutorials and guides.
Pricing
Price is a crucial factor that helps you decide between these platforms. Magento and WooCommerce are open sources, which means you can download them and use the core code without paying; however, the free plan does not allow you to customize your store. The price of these platforms will depend on which premium add-on features you are going to use. To know about this aspect in more detail, it’s better to visit their respective website and come to a conclusion.
WooCommerce vs Magento – Pros and Cons
| WooCommerce | Magento | |
|---|---|---|
| Pros | 1.Offers all customizing tools that are available in wordpress.
2. It has a setup wizard that allows you to set up and run the store without any technical expertise. 3. Multiple payment options are available. 4. Advanced reporting due to the inclusion of Google Analytics. |
1. Built to handle a large traffic and transaction volume.
2. Allows centralized multichannel selling. 3. Supports adding unlimited products in all types. |
| Cons | 1. Requires you to buy your own web hosting.
2. Limited scalability. |
1. Third-party modules are low quality.
2. Customizing checkout is difficult. |
Recapping
| WooCommerce | Magento | |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Fee | 0 | 0 |
| Design and Themes | All WordPress themes are accessible | Various themes (Paid+free) |
| Discounts/Promo Codes Functionality | Case sensitive and tied to product IDs | Automatic discounts Supports Multiple promo codes at once |
| SEO Tools | WordPress SEO extensions Available | In-built SEO functionality |
| Number of Add ons | 400 (free and paid) | Upto 4000 (free and paid) |
| Security | Depends on your website’s hosting | Dedicated security patched and SSL-Certified |
Conclusion
We hope we helped you figure out which ecommerce platform is suitable for your needs. If you are finding any development agency that can help you set up an online store, Kinex Media can greatly help you. We have more than a decade of experience in designing and developing scalable ecommerce solutions for various B2B & B2C businesses. No matter which platform you are planning to choose or migrate to, we possess the expertise to make things smoother for you. Got questions? Get them answered anytime with Kinex media.
FAQs
1. What’s unique about WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a CMS plugin. It’s ease of use and setup wizard have led it to wide popularity and use cases. WooCommerce allows you to create a user-friendly experience by allowing you to focus on what matters the most: products.
2. What’s unique about Magento?
Magento is highly customizable allowing businesses to create an online store that can easily meet customers’ needs. Moreover, it offers excellent security, API integration and scalability. It’s best if your business idea is enterprise-grade.
3. Why Magento is better than WooCommerce?
Magento has rich extensibility, and it offers scalability to a much greater extent than any other platform, making it an ideal choice for large-scale online businesses.
4. What are the limitations of WooCommerce?
WooCommerce lacks scalability. It can be preferred for online businesses that don’t plan to extend their business operations or expect growth in their customer base.