The two biggest platforms are Shopify and WordPress (with WooCommerce). But what is the difference? Is one more expensive than the other?

There are some major differences between how the platforms work.

Shopify is a dedicated ecommerce platform built for that purpose. They’re not meant to host regular websites (it wouldn’t make sense), and they provide a complete integrated platform for ecommerce.

WooCommerce is an ecommerce extension built on top of WordPress. WordPress is the worlds most used Content Management Platform and there are almost 50mio websites hosted on WordPress.

What do we recommend? This certainly depends on the purpose and content if your site. If your site is a pure shop-only website, you can use either. It might be quicker to get started with Shopify, but it also carries a monthly cost, which can add up if you need several modules. If you’re running a site with a mix of content and ecommerce, you absolutely need to do it on WooCommerce.

If you’re selling subscription services, it tends to get more complicated. Those are available on Shopify, but are somewhat expensive, and due to Shopify’s integrated platform, they are built externally. This means you are no longer using the Shopify platform entirely, and it can get a tad messy from our point of view. This can be solved easier on WooCommerce, but it does require additional modules, but has not extra transaction cost.

Shopify advantages:

• Integrated platform
• Great themes (costs between $100-$500)
• Good statistics
• Payment systems provided

WooCommerce advantages

• Complete control over everything
• Cheaper to get started
• If your website has both regular content and ecommerce you can do a lot more

So unfortunately the answer to “What do we recommend” is – it depends. As much as we hate that answer ourselves, it really does. We do lean towards shopify for ecommerce, since the backend is easier to manage for most non-tech people, and the whole interface feels a lot more streamlined, but it depends on what your goals are for your site.

You can go and buy some very nice themes, which good. These can be pretty cheap, and you can be up and running in no time. But there are a couple of caveats to doing it this way. First of all not all themes are built for fast load speed, and secondly you’re in the hands of the theme builder. Is the theme still being updated? If not, it will likely break sooner or later when a new version of WordPress comes out.

A better way to build a site is with a fast base theme, such as GeneratePress,  and use a page builder such as Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder etc. In our house we use both Elementor and Divi, but prefer Elementor as it’s geared more towards customization, where Divi is focused more on prebuilt layouts. Over time Divi has also become a bit bloated and not as streamlined as Elementor. This might of course change, and Elementor might end up being bloated as well.

If you’re building an ecommerce site, selecting a theme focused on this is advantageous as Elementor and Divi are weak on this point. It will require quite a bit of m a manual coding to layout the cart, checkout and account pages to make them look good. Instead we would recommend WooCommerce’s own Storefront theme which is specifically built for this purpose.

With Elementor (or Divi) you can build the website visually with only a minimal amount of coding involved. Many people are using Elementor to built a site from scratch without having a pre-defined layout first. You can use it either way – having the design done beforehand by a designer, who creates the layout in photoshop, or you can play around and built it without having a predefined layout.

In our experience how to do it depends on the site of the website. If you’re creating a small website with a page or two, you can do that without having it designed first. However, if you’re building a larger site, such as an ecommerce site, we do recommend having it designed first, to ensure there is a coherent layout throughout the website and on all pages. Otherwise the website builder will also have to spend a lot of time while building each page to make sure the layout is coherent.

Rarely would we recommend using a prebuilt theme, as we feel the downsides are too big. But there are many ways to accomplish what you’re after, and it all depends on timeframe, budget and future plans.