Magento 2 vs WooCommerce: Which Is Better For eCommerce Website?

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Overview of E-commerce Trends

E-commerce is now no longer a strange term to Internet users around the world, the most prominent form of which is Business to Customer (B2C) – online retail or shopping.

According to statista.com, e-commerce share reached 12.2% of the total global retail sales in 2018, and it is predicted to hit 22% by the year 2023. 

Also in statista.com, by 2018, the number of online shoppers was estimated at 1.8 billion, the resulting total online retail sales reached a peak of 2.8 trillion U.S. dollars.

It is no surprise that this lucrative business attracts an unlimited number of sellers/ companies, which creates ideal conditions for e-commerce platforms to arise and flourish in just a few decades. 

Why choose Magento for e-commerce stores?

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# Key features:

  • An e-commerce platform specially designed for professional developers, fit for online stores of medium to large size.
  • Community version: Free and Self-hosted
  • Premium services: Paid, but hosting offers included
  • The community version allows users to connect and contribute to bettering the product.
  • Various themes and layouts offered
  • Direct administration interfaces and assistant tools 
  • APIs System for third-party integrations
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# Pros:

  • The CMS for e-commerce, so large stores are not a problem, provided the host can bear. 
  • The dashboard is extremely user-friendly: a smart navigation system, which is also responsive and can be operated by a mobile phone.
  • Guest checkout is always feasible while logged users can manage their accounts and order history easily.
  • An outstanding level of customization: The built-in features allow admins to create catalogs and fill in their details quickly and easily.
  • Flexible pricing policies: Prices and discounts can be differentiated for different customer groups or store views. Within an admin panel, it is possible to manage several shops with different languages, currencies, and pricing methods. 
  • User interface meets the latest trends in UI and UX design: Any design or theme can be applied to a particular store view or category. Various payment methods are supported, plus an advanced navigation system.
  • A smart reporting series: Everything can be monitored on the Magento website and reports are updated permanently. 

# Cons:

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  • Users with limited knowledge of developing may have difficulty in using this CMS.
  • Too many features and functions available, beginners may find it complicated: Magento is surely rich in features, therefore it is suitable for sophisticated stores. 
  • There are not many experts at Magento as at other CMS or e-commerce platforms. However, the huge Magento community can be of help, providing professional services that are good value for money. 
  • Maintaining a commerce version can be quite costly, which can amount to a minimum of $2000/ month. However, the target market and scale of the store are certainly worth the investment. 
  • Limited web hosting: Only specific servers can support Magento requirements, those that can hold up the configurations necessary for Magento stores. Choosing an ordinary web-hosting service provider may result in slow performance of the e-commerce website and decreasing sales. 

What are WooCommerce Specialties?

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# Key features:

  • A powerful extension for the WordPress e-commerce platform, offering an easy e-commerce solution for the outstanding CMS.
  • It costs absolutely nothing to download but still provides the most advanced features.
  • WooCommerce comes with a variety of free and premium themes.
  • As a part of WordPress, Woocommerce supports lots of extensions and plugins. 
  • It supports a wide range of products, with a highlighted list of cross-selling and up-selling choices. 
  • It fits well for Digital Marketing, too. A blog is already integrated into the WordPress e-commerce website, sharing ideas and attracting users become much easier. 
  • Simple and convenient customization for e-commerce stores: It is easy to not only modify blocks and elements but manage stores with a system of reports and analytic tools. 

# Pros:

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  • User-friendliness: WooCommerce, the open-source e-commerce platform, can be ideal for users already familiar with WordPress. Also, there are detailed documents from installing the plugin to integrating other extensions. 
  • Besides web hosting, it costs nothing more to set up a store with WooCommerce. 
  • Easy integration with Google Analytics through some extensions. 
  • SSL support included, but customers manage their own certificates. 
  • Great flexibility: Products and catalogs can be added and modified painlessly through the friendly dashboard. It also comes with a wide variety of choices for payments, shipping or taxes. 
  • A secure choice as WordPress is trusted by users around the world. Through regular updates, bugs and issues are in good care. Support is also available through a community and in various documentations. 
  • Users do not have to reach out far for SEO solutions anymore. The SEO team offers in-depth analysis and answers for businesses. 

# Cons:

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  • For users new to WordPress, choosing WooCommerce means learning two new e-commerce platforms. 
  • The costs of extensions and premium themes can accumulate to a substantial amount. Yet those premium items can add up the security for financial transactions on the WordPress open source e-commerce website. 
  • Limited features available: WooCommerce does provide the primary features for e-commerce stores. However, when extending the potential functions, it costs a considerable amount to get add-ons. 
  • Update issues: The regular updates are sometimes not frequent enough, and WooCommerce versions may not catch up with the latest updates of browsers.
  • WooCommerce may be simple to use with basic needs, but when it comes to upgrading the stores, professional help is usually needed. 
  • WooCommerce works with WordPress only, therefore it is not so independent. Additionally, hosting a WordPress e-commerce website with WooCommerce requires careful picking of hosting service providers. 

Magento Vs WooCommerce – A Tough Fight!

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# Features

Both e-commerce platforms allow for adding unlimited products to the stores. The two also provide a list of free and paid themes and templates. Users who want more functions and premium design can opt for paid ones. 

Discount and coupon codes can be installed more easily and with more functions in Magento than in WooCommerce. 

With multiple languages and currencies, Magento provides several built-in languages while WooCommerce requires the use of an extension called WPML.

For SEO care, Magento certainly takes the lead here. A lot of SEO extensions are built for higher ranking and boosting sales in Magento stores. 

# Magento Vs WooCommerce – Price Differences

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To get a store running, both platforms require only web hosting expenses. The effectiveness and costs depend on the service providers, therefore store owners need to search well before choosing.

Although the Magento community version and WooCommerce are completely free to download, relying on extensions and themes from outside can increase costs quickly. The more premium, the more costly. 

WooCommerce, the WordPress e-commerce platform, may appear a great choice at first for being totally free. Gradually, a lack of features and functions allure you to obtaining extensions, and costs pile up.

Thereupon, the Magento community version could also be considered from the very beginning. 

As WordPress becomes increasingly popular, hosting companies get more experienced with it. Consequently, quality hosting costs for WooCommerce could be cheaper compared to Magento. 

# User-friendly Level

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As Magento offers more functions and features, wading through all the documents might discourage new users. To utilize all the platform’s potential, certain knowledge of coding or so is recommended. 

WordPress is now a powerful CMS all over the world. Requiring little or no knowledge of coding, WooCommerce allows customers to configure as they wish through simple steps.

Therefore, WooCommerce is often referred to as more user-friendly of the two e-commerce platforms. However, for users who are new to WordPress, choosing WooCommerce may mean learning two new platforms.

# Speed and Performance

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These two criteria play an important role in the success of an online store. A slow website will turn customers away and cannot gain pretty pennies. 

Some factors that affect the performance and loading speed of an e-commerce website: 

  • Web hosting service provider
  • Image optimization
  • Number of plugins/ extensions on the website
  • Volume of traffic
  • Internet connection

Magento is sometimes complained of slow interactions and not-so-responsive back-end. Yet it’s the way stores and back-end are optimized that influence the performance of the e-commerce website. Therefore, here we have a tie, neither Magento nor WooCommerce wins at web speed and performance.  

# Support

Both e-commerce platforms have a community version, which attracts a great number of users and communities. Also, instruction documents and tutorials are abundant, giving users choices to learn and get guided. 

Magento is still relatively older than Woocommerce, with the former released in 2007 and the latter in 2011. Moreover, in case users want to scale up their business and seek help, the enterprise version of Magento offers dedicated and exceptional support.  

# Magento Vs WooCommerce – Security Issue

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Security is a matter of top priority, especially with e-commerce stores, where customers’ personal and payment details are stored. Both platforms allow some actions for security, but mostly manually or through add-ons.

Being a totally free WordPress e-commerce platform, WooCommerce has limited features. As time goes by, the costs for adding extensions for more functions may become a burden for their users. 

Magento has a higher level of security offered from the start. Magento Patches, the Free tool for security scanning, is frequently updated, allowing users to monitor their open source e-commerce website and check for malware.

Also, there are tons of Magento security extensions available in the marketplace. 

# Add-ons

For more functions and website configurations, developers of both e-commerce platforms have created lots of extensions. Magento extensions range from the very first interaction customers make on the open-source e-commerce website to after-sale support.

One drawback of these is that customers may have to get developers to install the extensions for them. Compared to Magento, WooCommerce extensions cost relatively less.

However, the ‘good-value-for-money’ principle can be applied here, meaning the more costly extensions of Magento can correspondingly make the stores much more powerful ones. 

Conclusion for the Magento Vs WooCommerce Duel

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As the choice depends on the budget and demands of store owners, there is no clear champion. No perfect CMS here, just the more suitable one. 

For a small and new online business, WooCommerce can be a good start. However, for scaling up a store and more features, Magento is definitely the better choice. 

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