Welcome to the 10 Days to a Better Shopify Store Series! To see the rest of the series, click here. If you’re in the process of deciding between WooCommerce and Shopify, be sure to keep reading!
When I decided to open my own store, I had no idea it would even do well. It was a chance I took. I jumped in head first, not knowing a thing about running my own store.
It’s been a FUN learning curve and I am amazed at all of the things I have accomplished over the past year. My store is my baby. I feed it with new products, pay attention to its weaknesses, and work on it every day to build up my empire.
After coaching many people with WooCommerce and Shopify alike, as well as having my own business, there is a CLEAR winner in my book.
If you are deciding between WooCommerce and Shopify, I hope this post helps you to understand why one is DEFINITELY better than the other!
Deciding Between WooCommerce and Shopify
WooCommerce sounds so nice. Doesn’t it?
Think about it, you have your own blog and store platform to sell your products in. Lovely right?
Well, in my opinion and experience I’ve realized that WooCommerce isn’t that great and I don’t personally feel like you can reach great success on this platform because of its massive limitations.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons why Shopify is clearly lightyears ahead of WooCommerce
1- Your store can get hacked with WooCommerce
WordPress accounts get hacked all the time, and there’s not really any one-on-one support unless you decide to pay lots of money. So, one thing to consider is your blog getting hacked. But, can you imagine having your store be a part of that hacking? Your customer lists, emails, orders, they can get in there, see it all, and do some REAL damage to not only YOUR stuff, but your entire customer base as well as all your products you’ve set up in your store.
With Shopify, you are paying for a SERVICE and they will take care of those stressing needs. I sleep in peace every day, knowing that my customers information is very WELL protected. I don’t have worry about a security breach or anything like that like I would a hacker. With WooCommerce, I wouldn’t be able to feel that peace.
2- Your site runs slowly because of WooCommerce
Now, lets talk about plugins! Not only are they a pain with every update that WordPress does, but they also make your website run VERY sluggish because of the amount of plugins you have to install to make WooCommerce work. And what customer service are you really going to have with a slow site?
People expect FAST service, so you want to have a fast website. Otherwise people are going to leave and there goes your revenue, walking right out the door. Every plugin you add to your blog adds a weight on how fast your blog will display and load content. Imagine adding another 30-40 plugins just to have a decent looking WooCommerce store! Seriously, don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
3- Updates don’t work right with WooCommerce
Along with having those plugins slow down your site, they also don’t always play well together. One person I know, had over 65 plugins, and 45 of them were for WooCommerce.
Whenever WordPress sent out an update, their whole blog broke.
Come to find out, after going through and uninstalling one plugin at a time to see which one it was that broke their blog (which took them days!), it was a WooCommerce plugin. The plugins don’t always play nice with each other. Sometimes there are glitches and with so many plugins, you’re asking for trouble.
Now let’s say they didn’t know how to fix their own problem? Most people don’t! If you don’t, you will be spending a long week with your technician to find and solve the problem, and a technician at their cheapest rate is like $60/hour. It’ll take a good 3-4 hours to find the problem. You’re looking at $240. Shopify is $30/month and doesn’t slow down your site, have glitchy plugins to deal with or anything like that.
As a general rule for your blog, whether you use WooCommerce or not, keep your amount of plugins as low as you possibly can. Every 6 months, I go into my plugins and make sure I have ONLY what I need and what I’m using.
4- Outside forces cause your blog to crash
Let’s talk about blog crashes, outside of WooCommerce.
Let’s face it. It happens to everyone, because things fail from time to time.
This month, my whole blog crashed! It was down for several hours before getting it back up and running again. Had my store of been on Woocommerce, I would have been without not only revenue from my blog (ads, affiliate income, etc.), but also from my store!
Having my store on Shopify, didn’t cut that portion of my income at all. It goes without saying, we should never have all our eggs in one basket.
5- You won’t see as much success
To be completely transparent, I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s because Shopify is a more professional platform with a more professional checkout system.
Maybe it’s because it’s a separate site.
Maybe it’s just trusted more or customers like the set up better.
I’m not really sure, but across the board, all those I’ve coached have made more sales with Shopify over WooCommerce, many seeing immediate results without changing anything else, EXCEPT the platform.
At the end of the day, I want you to succeed. And that’s why I highly recommend that if you’re going to open a store, you do it right! Go with a platform like Shopify over WooCommerce.
Sarah, for those starting their first shop with Shopify, do you recommend their initial $30/month, or so you recommend jumping in and getting the $80/month because of the added features with analytics?
Thank you for these posts, by the way. I have a WooCommerce store and the updates, crashes, etc haven’t been pleasant to deal with. You’re convincing me more and more to use Shopify.
Glad you like the posts. 🙂 I would just do the $29 when you first start to save money. Like in my new stock photography store, I just have the $30 reports right now and with the orders, I go through and manually write down which products sell so I know what to make more of. Eventually, I’ll move to the $79 store for the reports, but right now, it’s just getting started and I can get away with several months at the $29 price so that’s where I’d start. 🙂
Thank you so much, Sarah.
Hi Sarah,
Just finished your series here and it’s awesome – so helpful.
Question: Did you ever look into using Gumroad?
Love, Hugs, and Prayers,
NanaPennypockets
I did. It wasn’t a good platform for what I wanted. If people were going to take me seriously, and my products seriously, I needed to be on the right platform. It’s like having a WIX blog and trying to be a professional blogger. Doesn’t work. No one will take that seriously. :/
Thank you for sharing this information. I had never thought about my blog getting hacked. I am familiar with Shopify but how can I link the shop from my blog as you do?
I’m working on a full tutorial about it as we speak. It’ll be in the Shopify Binder coming this week or next. 🙂
Excellent! Thank you!
Absolutely. 🙂
I just wanted to let you know that I purchased the GBTK (I’m also an affiliate). I LOVE LOVE LOVE your “Top 13 Things…” in the Toolkit! I love the ideas you presented, but even more so I love your authenticity and testimony shown throughout. It’s refreshing to see your love for God shared unashamedly. And not just in words, but in the way that you run your business.
I also appreciate your wisdom and experience in regards to Shopify. I have been trying to make WooCommerce work since I thought I could get away with using a free system. It’s been nothing but a headache. It wants to force people to pay for shipping even for digital downloads. I’ve confirmed with WC that I’ve set it up correctly, but even when I delete it and try again the same thing happens. It’s been insane for more than a couple months when I realized that I was literally paying for what I got: nothing. But even worse than that, I was losing out on potential income.
In treating my business like a business, I know I need to invest in it, myself, and what God has called me to do. I’ll be starting a Shopify store as soon as I have made more products and am excited for the next chapter. Thank you for sharing your knowledge even though you could easily hoard it for yourself.
Sorry to hear about your experience with WooCommerce. I’ve heard many similar stories of it being a complete pain and ruining their blog. So glad you’re moving to Shopify. YAY! 🙂
Just FYI for Sarah B. There is a button in the product section next to digital that says “Virtual” in WooCommerce. Click that and it will stop trying to charge shipping.
It will help until you switch over to Shopify which I am totally convinced to do as well after reading this.
Thank you, Sarah Titus for all your helpful information! Fantastic and so clear.