So you have made up your mind to get started on your dropshipping business – a great choice you have made! But the real big deal you are about to face right now is that question troubling your mind, “Which is the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping”? Shopify dropshipping vs WooCommerce dropshipping?
You have heard that WordPress-owned eCommerce platform, WooCommerce is the best while real guys in the business might have suggested you go for Shopify.
Well, those guys suggested both of the two eCommerce platforms mentioned above to kickstart your dropshipping business. But at the end of the day, you are confused about which of them to choose.
We are not going to decide for you.
Since you have already known that WooCommerce and Shopify are the two giants to start an eCommerce website, then we will be reviewing the two right in this blog post (in terms of pros and cons).
At the end of the day, you are going to choose between Shopify dropshipping vs WooCommerce dropshipping – the best eCommerce platform.
Although there are others like BigCommerce and Wix eCommerce, the scope of this blog post is limited to Shopify dropshipping vs WooCommerce dropshipping.
We are not going to beat the bush before we take the bull by the horn but, we are going to touch on the key factors and in-depth comparison to clearly show you which one is best for you.
Now let’s start!
Shopify Dropshipping VS WooCommerce Dropshipping – Best Ecommerce Platform
In this comparison, we are going to take a look at:
- Price
- Payment Options
- Security
- SEO
- Customer Support
- Flexibility
- Full Ownership
Okay…. Let’s start by comparing these 6 crucial factors to decide which one is the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping.
1. Price
The first thing you need to check especially if you are going to launch your business based on budget (which is wise enough). Let’s see the price disparity between WooCommerce and Shopify.
Shopify provides three packages that are not negotiable if you are really going to start any eCommerce or dropshipping website on the platform. The packages are dubbed “Basic, Standard & Advance”.
- Shopify’s Basic plan starts at $29 per month and permits you to sell unlimited products and charges 2% for non-Shopify payments.
- Shopify’s Standard package provides you with an option to provide gift cards, the ability to view abandoned carts and a 1% charge for non-Shopify payments. It starts at $79 monthly.
- Using the Advanced Shopify package, you get automatically calculated reports, shipping rates are automatically calculated. There’s a 0.5% fee for non-Shopify payments and this plan goes for $299 a month.
And you are charged an additional $14 for a (.com) domain name.
In an estimate, if you choose the basic package, you should know that a yearly plan will cost $348, the standard package will cost $948 and the Advance plan will cost $3,588.
If you will need to customize your Shopify store professionally, you may need to buy Shopify Apps which are also charged monthly. And if you hire a web designer, you will also pay again!
Are they not expensive? Don’t decide yet. Let’s talk about wooCommerce packages and pricing.
WooCommerce doesn’t have specified packages so it’s 100% free!
Hey, don’t be hilariously happy yet.
Although WordPress is said to be a free publishing platform but to add spice to your business (to be more professional), you will need to buy a custom domain name and web hosting. Also, you may need to buy premium plugins.
Let’s break this down;
Averagely, a domain name will cost $10 and web hosting will cost around $8.88/month ($106.56 per year) on Namecheap (steller hosting) which is okay for you as a start-up in eCommerce or dropshipping business.
You will buy an SSL certificate (which is very essential) at a rate of $7 per year.
There are free dropshipping plugins for WooCommerce but with limited features. If you need to go for premium versions, you should consider plugins like the alidropship plugin.
Now let’s add everything together. It’s equivalent to $123.56/yr – No hidden charges!
The cost may be higher than this if you choose other hosting services. Reliability is the best, that is why we recommend Bluehost for starting a dropshipping store with WooCommerce.
Okay, let’s say you can’t set up the dropshipping website and you decide to hire a web designer, the charges start from $100 upwards.
Considering the prices, let us ask you “Shopify or Woocommerce, which one is the best platform for dropshipping”?
The answer is really clear, right? Now, let go of the next factor.
NB: Prices may change in time without prior notice. At the time of publishing this post, the figures were precise.
2. Payments Options
Shopify provides lots of payment options which should make it convenient for your customers. Popular brands like PayPal make up the list. Also on the list of payment processors are the likes of Stripe, Authorize and many more.
They have got their own payment processor which is Shopify Pay, users who use other payment options get charged. But using Shopify Pay is free.
Unfortunately, Shopify Pay is only available to a few countries which means you may probably end up being charged for using other payment processors.
WooCommerce also comes with its fair share of payment processors, the usual suspects — PayPal and Stripe are available for free. Others, like Authorize, and Amazon Pay require payment which should incur more expenses.
Pitch both side-by-side in terms of payment options we will say both have done a great job in providing a variety of payment options but WooCommerce should be applauded for providing a variety of payment methods for free using plugins or custom codes.
So, Shopify and WooCommerce are actually having head-to-head here but WooCommerce wins!
We are not going to sit here though…. Let’s go take a look at the security measure of both eCommerce platforms.
3. Security
We all want a seamless transaction for our site users, don’t we? When creating your eCommerce store, the security of your customers must be put into consideration.
Security on an eCommerce website is not a choice but a “must”. Because customers are going to be entering their personal details which include their credit card numbers, names, and the CVV.
If your eCommerce store is not security enabled, it will be risky to your customers but the gospel truth is that those customers already understand if a website is secured or not.
Even modern web or mobile browsers will block users from visiting a non-secure website.
So, let’s see how both eCommerce providers are fair in terms of security.
Shopify has an awesome security system in place for its users. They do this on the backend which you don’t see most of the time, providing regular updates to prevent security breaches.
They have got a 256-bits Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption that protects customer card details who make use of the site.
There is even a bounty for anyone who would successfully hack the site, they do this to figure out possible weak links. They have also got a level 1 PCI compliance which is mandatory if you did be accepting online payments through credit cards.
But….
WooCommerce, unlike Shopify, is just a WordPress plugin so your guess is as good as mine.
Since they are not particularly in charge of the server side, it is much more likely to get security threats. WooCommerce isn’t PCI compliant and this could mean potential threats. They also lack SSL encryption which comes by default with Shopify, but you could work it out with your hosting provider which shouldn’t be difficult.
As stated earlier in Factor #1 above, you will need to buy an SSL certificate from your hosting provider. It is free for the first year on Namecheap.com and you will be paying $7 per year after the first year might have expired.
Also, there are different plugins to help you keep your WooCommerce security stronger.
Which of them do you think is the best eCommerce platform for drop shipping when considering security?
Shopify no doubt takes home the price of the PCI compliant.
Don’t let us decide which one is the overall best now. Let’s talk about search visibility and organic traffic.
4. SEO
Even if you have the most attractive eCommerce website in the world, you won’t sell without visibility.
Yes, visibility is the core requirement to make money from your dropshipping website. But what do we mean by visibility?
Internet jargon refers to visibility as “traffic”.
The best way to get high-quality traffic that will convert to leads and finally to sales is to target those interested in your products. Social media marketing and other types of marketing aren’t as effective as “Search Engine Optimization”.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of making your website “search engine friendly” in order to receive free and organic traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and others
All eCommerce entrepreneurs or drop shippers want their websites to rank high on search engine results. If you want to make more money, then a proper SEO structure should be in place.
But the question is……
Shopify Vs WooCommerce – Which One Performs Better on Search Engine?
Let’s find out!
SEO is more on content, quality, and relevant content. Site structure also comes into play and here is where these providers come in.
For Shopify, its URLs seem to be more static, there is no room for efficient customization which you did like to have. Although meta description and tags seem to work perfectly which should also help your site’s performance in search ranking.
There are popular SEO Apps on Shopify such as SEO Doctor but it is not okay to rank your online store. It is also expensive to buy these apps.
If you can’t work on HTML, it is quite difficult to structure your meta information on Shopify.
But WooCommerce does pretty much well with SEO. As you can take advantage of different and free WordPress plugins (SEO plugins) to optimize your products and rank them on search engines.
That’s the joy of WordPress — there is a plugin for almost everything you crave, and there are SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO, RankMath, etc. that does pretty much better when put against Shopify.
Optimizing your images, minifying your codes, caching and a lot of things are already injected in different plugins which are free.
Here is the big deal…..
Remember you are hosting your WooCommerce dropshipping store? This means that every SEO strategy you pull will always be there for you and your brand.
But on Shopify, you are doing 50% of the hard work in vain…. Sorry to say that but we will explain why it is in vain right in this article, just continue reading.
Now let’s ask the question again, which one is the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping regarding SEO?
It’s WooCommerce!
Yes, WooCommerce defeated Shopify when it comes to SEO and we think you agree with us.
Okay, let’s talk about the customer and technical team relationships. Probably, this should be taken into consideration before you choose between Shopify Dropshipping or WooCommerce Dropshipping.
5. Customer Support
Why do we include this factor to vindicate the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping between WooCommerce and Shopify?
It is simply because setting up your eCommerce store for dropshipping may be complicated along the way, you did need some help to get over some hurdles and here is where customer support comes in.
Shopify has got many packages to choose from and luckily, they provide full customer support for any package you wish to go for. They have provided email, phone and live chat options to choose from when contacting them. Whichever works best for you, you are at liberty to choose.
The best part is, that they offer 24/7, so you could buzz their phone line and someone will be there to attend to your issues, or you could use the live chat or email in order to attach graphic details.
WooCommerce isn’t an independent platform as a CMS provider, they have got no official support platform. But you get some helpful tips when along the way when opening an eCommerce store for dropshipping.
You can Google your way out of any problem if you get stuck, answers to various questions can be found in some online forums like the official WordPress forum, Stack Over Flow and different blogs like Wpbeginner, Shoutmeloud, Wpcraft, etc.
What if you need more direct and detailed information, sorry you may not find them with WooCommerce except if you do your research.
And that is why Shopify takes this round.
We should have said they are having H2H (head-to-head) because there are thousands of blogs that focus on WordPress (+WooCommerce) than Shopify.
And your hosting providers are there to help you in case of anything that happened on Cpanel or Server, but notwithstanding, Shopify still wins.
6. Flexibility
Setting up your eCommerce store for dropshipping via Shopify would be a breeze. They have got an almost automated system with lots of templates to choose from. If you are not into the technicalities of things, no problems as they offer guides throughout the setup process to help you in creating a dropshipping platform you could be proud of.
As a first-time user, setting up your WooCommerce account could be much more complicated, the technicalities involved during the first-time set-up could be stressful for you, setting up plugins, hosting your site, etc. Afterwards, subsequent setups should be much easier.
Since this post seeks to address first-time users we will say Shopify does perform better than its opponent. Although WooCommerce is quite easy to use after the initial hurdles (which your hosting provider can even help you with).
Talking about Flexibility, Shopify is a nice choice.
7. Full Ownership
Before you finally decide to choose the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping between Shopify and WooCommerce, let’s talk about the full ownership of the online store.
If you choose to go with Shopify, bear in mind that you are going to live in a rented apartment. Although their packages are far more expensive than WooCommerce. The gospel truth is that you are building your huge mansion on borrowed land.
This is technically what that means:
Since you didn’t host either the website or domain yourself, you can lose your investment any time you violate any policy. Because Shopify won’t ever allow you to separately host your own eCommerce website but they will rather host it on their server.
If you wish to migrate out from Shopify, getting your content may be difficult because there may be no backup file available for you.
On WooCommerce, you are assured in case of unforeseen occurrences. Web hosting like Namecheap or Bluehost will automatically help you back up your website every 3 days and this is very great.
If you decide to leave WooCommerce, you can export your content to another CMS platform. WordPress is just a free content management system, so they have no right to confiscate your hard work even if you violate any policy.
In clearer explanation….
Using WooCommerce means you are living in your own house where you can do anything you want. But using Shopify is like living in a rented room where you are not free to “do” and “undo”.
If you are to choose the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping considering “full ownership”, we are sure that you will surely choose WooCommerce.
Wrapping Up
You have checked on those 7 factors above and by now, you would have decided to choose between Shopify and WooCommerce…. Right?
But wait;
There are differences between both and we can’t choose one for you but recommend both for your next dropshipping website. Because none of them seems to have got a slight edge over each other.
WooCommerce is cheaper, SEO friendly and you take full ownership. While Shopify has its own official customer care team, it is not too technical for newbies and provides the best level of security.
So we can say they are both good.
If you have some bucks, you can choose Shopify but if you are limited on a budget, go for WooCommerce.
Now, that’s all we can say about the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping between Shopify and WooCommerce.
In case we have any updates, we will edit them right away. But we will like you to be notified and that is why you should (please) put your email in the subscription or Newsletter found on this website.
Over to you…..
What’s your take on this? Let us know in the comments box below and don’t forget to share this blog post with your friends on social media.
