WooCommerce or Magento – which is right for you?
WooCommerce or Magento is a question many new ecommerce entrepreneurs ponder when deciding on a website platform. Both are feature-rich ecommerce platforms and enjoy great popularity. Picking a winner among the two could be really tough. In order to make an informed choice between the two platforms, it is necessary to compare their key features, pricing, performance and other important factors. Before that, here is a little bit about the two platforms:
WooCommerce
It is a powerful plugin for the WordPress platform and offers all the features you will need in an eCommerce platform, while still retaining the ease of use of its parent platform.
Magento
It is a popular eCommerce platform offering robust features, customization ability, unique functionalities and seamless third-party integrations.
WooCommerce Vs. Magento Performance
No one wants to shop from a slow loading, sluggish ecommerce site. So, performance and speed are the two most important factors when comparing two ecommerce platform. A study has shown that Magento is a rather stable platform with an availability rate of 99.71 on average. The average page load time is 665 milliseconds, which is beyond the Google’s “under 500 milliseconds” goal. The same study found that the average page load time of WooCommerce stores was 776 miliseconds and the average cart page load time was 1.32 seconds. The average availability was 99.52%. This shows that Magento fares better in terms of performance and speed. However, it must be noted that regardless if the platform, the performance and speed depend on a variety of factors such as web hosting provider, whether or not the images are optimized, the number of module and extensions used and more.
WooCommerce Vs. Magento Security
Security is of paramount importance in eCommerce. Both magento and WooCommerce allow developers to implement several advanced security measures, however, Magento takes the lead because they offer dedicated security patches to address any vulnerabilities that may arise. However, you need professional help to implement the patches. On the other hand, WooCommerce’s security features are more basic and limited.
WooCommerce Vs. Magento Scalability
As businesses grow, they have to scale up and this brings in new costs and technical challenges. So, it is extremely important that the ecommerce platform is scalable. When it comes to scalability, Magento is a clear winner. It is built for scalability and can efficiently handle large stores, as long as the host can manage them.
WooCommerce Vs. Magento Product Management
Efficient product management is a key factor that decides how good or bad an ecommerce platform is. WooCommerce offers a practical and straightforward approach to product management and has options for both digital and physical products. It is very easy to set up new items and once can easily expand the functionality using different extensions. This involves a bit of a learning curve. Compared to WooCommerce, Magento offers many additional features such as product reviews, wish lists, product personalization and more. You don’t need to purchase extensions for these features. So, for those looking for advanced product management features, Magento is a great choice, but for those setting up a new venture and need to set up a store quickly WooCommerce is a good choice. You have the option to expand later on using extensions.
WooCommerce Vs. Magento Pricing
Magento has different editions-Magento Community, which is free of cost and includes only basic functions; Magento Enterprise, the premium edition offering additional features such as inventory and warehouse management, business intelligence tools etc. that serve large scale and complex businesses; Magento Enterprise Cloud, which offers the same features as Enterprise edition but in cloud. Even with Magento community, you have to pay for hosting services and paid extensions, themes and domain. The licence fee for Enterprise users is based on annual Gross sales revenue with the minimal price being $22000 for up to $1,000,000 of Gross Sales Revenue. Cloud version could cost upwards of $40,000 based on the Gross Sales Revenue. On the other hand, WooCommerce is a free platform and you have to pay only for domain name, SSL certificate, web hosting, themes and design, and plugins and extensions. While Woocommerce is clearly more affordable, it might not offer the same kind of scalability and advanced features as Magento.
Picking a winner between WooCommerce and Magento isn’t easy, since no single platform can fit the needs of every user perfectly. Before you choose an ecommerce platform, you must define your business goals, requirements and define your target audience, only then we can figure out which ecommerce solution with fit best. Please get in touch with our team to consult more on that.
If neither WooCommerce or Magento is right for you, here are some other options. If you need help deciding, give us a call. We can help you make the best decision.