You've decided to set up your own dropshipping store, but you're undecided about which e-commerce platform to use. Shopify? Woocommerce?

Undoubtedly, Shopify and Woocommerce are the best e-commerce platforms on the market. Since each has different features and powers, both platforms can provide you with solutions in the dropshipping business. The common and best aspects of both platforms are that they allow you to create amazing online stores without having to be an expert and without needing any software knowledge. With these platforms, you can build magnificent E-commerce sites by drag and drop without any design or software knowledge.

Many questions may come to your mind about this;

Which is better for your personal needs?

Which is cheaper?

Which one is easy to maintain?

Which is more flexible?

Which one has the better look?

Which one has more features? Shopify? Woocommerce?

As a former Dropshipping entrepreneur, this guide to Shopify? Woocommerce? I will try to answer all these questions for you by making a comparison for the answer.

By the way, since I am very experienced in WordPress and have been using WordPress for many years, Woocommerce has always seemed more flexible and effective to me. But despite this, I will try to be objective :)

After reading this topic, you will decide which one is advantageous for you.

Shopify? Woocommerce? I will divide the topic into different sections to help you choose the best one for you while making the comparison.

• Pricing and Scalability
• Installation Speed ​​and Time
• Themes
• Features
• Ease of use
• Help and Support
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Now Shopify for Dropshipping business? or Woocommerce? Let's start by going into details about which one is more advantageous.

Shopify? Woocommerce? : Pricing and Scalability

The WooCommerce e-commerce platform runs on top of a free, open-source web software (CMS, content management system) called WordPress. In other words, there is an open source software behind this e-commerce system called Woocommerce, this software is a magnificent system that is constantly being developed by many software developers from all over the world.

Everyone loves open source, that is, free systems, this is a fact. On the other hand, this may come as a surprise to you because approximately 3.5% of e-commerce websites in the world are built with Woocommerce, while sites powered by Shopify are only 1%.

Source: https://w3techs.com/blog/

Although Woocommerce and WordPress software are free for life, you must obtain a hosting account for hosting. However, since hosting prices are quite affordable today, you can have hosting + domain for an annual expense of 200 TL.

There are many powerful companies that give domain gifts to those who buy hosting. So, your annual store expense for Woocommerce is only the hosting cost, which together with the domain amounts to 2$ per month, or 200 TL per year. See: Webhostingpad.com Domain + Hosting $2 per month

Shopify, on the other hand, charges you a store rental fee of $29 every month. Considering the exchange rate, you can use Woocommerce freely for a year with one month's rent of Shopify.

Let's look at the situation from a different perspective;

Undoubtedly, dropshipping is an incredibly profitable business model if done right. When everything is set up properly, product selection and marketing is done well, it makes a lot of money. If one of your stores is successful, it may become necessary to open a second store or even a third or fourth to earn even more money after a certain period of time.

There are people who run many sites at the same time. For example, I cannot imagine the monthly Shopify expenses of an entrepreneur who runs 10 dropshipping sites at the same time. If the same entrepreneur used Woocommerce, monthly expenses would be many times lower.

This situation shows us that whether it is a single online store or multiple online stores, Woocommerce is a cheaper solution in all circumstances.

Shopify? Woocommerce? : Installation Speed ​​and Time

In terms of installation, Shopify is as simple as getting it out of the box and running it. You just need to sign up and make a few adjustments, you can create your store with Shopify and launch it for sale in about 20 minutes.

The situation is slightly different for Woocommerce, the installation time varies depending on usage habits. Personally, it only takes me 15 minutes to set up my woocommerce store, but for someone who doesn't know, this time is about 40 minutes. is up to

If you are going to set up more than one store with Shopify, you will spend the same time doing the same operations in each new store setup. In Woocommerce, you can create a new one with the same store features in minutes with duplicator. After cloning, not much is needed other than choosing the product, logo and color for the new store, which provides you with the convenience of setting up a new store in a short time.

Shopify? Woocommerce? : Themes

Design is very important in e-commerce business. Customers do not trust sites that are difficult to use and slow to use, have an unpleasant design, lack aesthetics, and do not work as they should. That's why every website owner wants his store design to look beautiful and his store to have a modern look.

As it is known, when it comes to design, the first element that comes to mind is the theme. Themes for design are installed in both Shopify and Woocommerce, providing pleasant and modern images to the sites.

There are very few free theme options for Shopify. Shopify, which already offers a limited theme infrastructure, offers very few of them for free. The rest are paid. When it comes to prices, the situation is very depressing. Premium theme prices for Shopify start from $100 and go up to $180.

Theme prices are really expensive on Shopify.

In addition, if you noticed that the themes are all similar in design. Even if you are a very good developer and create a custom theme for Shopify from scratch, it is still similar to others because you cannot intervene in its core.

Another thing I noticed is that all shopify stores are similar to each other, the reason for this is that there are few free themes and that's why all the stores look like copies of each other.

The situation is very different in Woocommerce and WordPress. You can find a world of themes distributed free of charge for Woocommerce. All of them are unique and nice looking. It is a fact that shopify is far behind in terms of theme compared to woocommerce.

Your website turns into a beautiful store with an ultra-modern look, even with free themes. When it comes to paid themes, the choice increases even more and the prices are 4.5 times cheaper.

In this regard, Woocommerce is many times superior, so it is pointless to talk about theme and design any further.

Let's continue with the next steps…

Shopify? Woocommerce? : Features

Shopify is feature-rich and has an app market with plugins to add features. You can install an application from this store to add different features.

There are around 1,500 applications in the Shopify app market, very few of them are free. The rest are offered with a 15-day trial period, after which you pay a fixed amount every month to use the plugin.

There are nearly 150,000 plugins for Woocommerce. While most of these are offered free of charge, those with more advanced features are sold for monthly or one-time payments.

You can find plenty of free plugins for Woocommerce. You can find a free version of almost every plugin, from social media plugins to email marketing, cart recovery, and countdown timers.

Shopify? Woocommerce? : Ease of Use

Shopify works on a subscription-based system. Even if you are a beginner, you can learn to use it as soon as you install it.

In Woocommerce, after the time allotted for installation, a small learning curve awaits you, but it is never difficult. You will learn it in a short time and start using it very easily. In fact, after learning WordPress in the future, you can create websites or web projects in many more categories. Its infrastructure is very flexible and suitable for creating almost all types of websites. Therefore, learning WordPress should not be limited to use only in dropshipping and e-commerce.

Shopify? Woocommerce? : Help and Support

It is a fact that shopify has great customer support. You can get 24/7 support on the phone and correspond with the support team online. There is no official support service for Woocommerce. Undoubtedly, Shopify has an advantage over Woocommerce in this regard. But don't be too hasty in judging, although Woocommerce support is not very easily accessible, it has a better level of support.

Especially since it is open source, it has an incredible infrastructure in terms of forum and video support. It is possible to find many resources for support in Turkish, there is no doubt about this.

You won't encounter many problems with Woocommerce, but in rare cases, when you type your error code into Google, you can access numerous video and forum support. Moreover, in Turkish language. Since it is a widely used platform, someone else has probably encountered a problem you are encountering and the solution can be found on the internet.

Shopify? Woocommerce? : SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

As you know, SEO is a general name given to many adjustments and improvements made to list your site in search engines such as Google. Anyone who knows the importance of SEO in e-commerce knows. However, entrepreneurs who are not interested in SEO use paid ads instead of Google as a traffic source, there is no other way.

No matter how good your product is, the goal is to introduce it to potential customers. SEO is important at this point in support of paid ads. Advertising on the one hand and receiving as much traffic as the ad on the other hand, both increases earnings and reduces advertising costs. That's why SEO optimization is important for the future.

Shopify has an infrastructure that search engines like Google do not like because it creates stores that are copies of each other. That's why Shopify has an infrastructure that is very far from SEO work.

Looking at the WordPress and Woocommerce side, since WordPress is a content creation engine, it was already born with a structure suitable for search engines. Optimization is quite easy and suitable for this task. Working with an SEO expert and promoting your site in search engines will be easier thanks to WordPress than Shopify.

There are also countless SEO plugins and many tools for WordPress. On the other hand, this plugin and SEO propensity may not be enough to instantly rank the platform on Google. There are many factors here, especially competition. If you do not have much knowledge about this, you can contact an SEO expert active in the global market.

Who won?

Shopify is undoubtedly one of the easiest ways to open an online store. You can open your own store with just a few clicks. So, if you want to open your online store as quickly as possible, work with shopify.

However,

If you want a more successful online store, woocommerce is for you. Woocommerce is quite old and experienced in the e-commerce game. Since it is an open source project, it is always ahead of many of its competitors in the market. In addition, Woocommerce gives you many advantages in terms of price, it is SEO friendly, it has plenty of plugins and is free.

Now that you have the answers to your questions, you know which is the best e-commerce solution for dropshipping. Regardless of whether you set up your online store with Shopify or WooCommerce, your next step will be to receive payments from your website. There are many free resources available here for this.

You may also be interested in the next step, the Dropshipping and Alidropship Guide with WordPress