DROPSHIPPING WORDPRESS VS SHOPIFY

Whenever business owners come across Shopify and WordPress, they tend to question which one of the two is better and why. Therefore, WordPress vs Shopify? This post will give you a thorough take on the two platforms. Therefore, you are encouraged to read to the end to get in-depth information on the two. Additionally, this article will help you make informed decisions as to which platform will be more efficient for your upcoming e-commerce website. You will also receive alternative sites if you wish to expand your options.  

That said, let’s dive in!

WHAT IS SHOPIFY?

Shopify is an app that allows you to come up with or launch a simple e-commerce store. It has many high end features. Even so, it is well known for it’s ease of use which tends to accommodate everyone: even those with little to no tech or design experience!

Therefore, if you are a merchant who has goods or services to sell online, then perhaps this is a good solution for your needs.  

Here is why: Suppose you need to make any modifications, it also allows you to edit its code: the HTML and CSS. And if you don’t know how to edit code, you could easily hire a Shopify store developer to do it for you at highly affordable prices.  

Therefore, as a merchant, it gives you the freedom to align your business to attract and fulfil your customer’s needs.

In addition, Shopify is a hosted SaaS tool solution. Therefore, you dont have to worry about paying for web hosting and software installations. However, since you don’t own the software copy, you will be required to pay a monthly fee to keep using it.  

Shopify is also a web app. This means that it is run in the cloud or rather, the web; so, if you are already online, it is possible to run your store from anywhere in the world.

WHAT IS WORDPRESS?

Currently, there are only two versions of WordPress available on the internet i.e.:

• Hosted WordPress
• Self-hosted WordPress

Hosted WordPress

This version of WordPress, is similar to Shopify in that it is also a software as a service (SaaS) tool. By paying a $180 yearly fee which is $15 per month, you gain access to a wide variety of features that allow you to build and retain a simple online store, website, or even a blog.

Such features include:

• Up to 50 GB of storage space for your data
• Premium support
• High end premium themes
• Selling products with WooCommerce

Self-hosted WordPress

Self-hosted WordPress is an open source software, available at wordpress.org. To use it, you will need to acquire it from the wordpress content management system and then proceed to install on your self-owned web server.  

Websites that are built with WordPress tend to be customized a lot. This is because WordPress is a very volatile platform that if used to its maximum capabilities, can satisfy any website project requirements.

To clearly understand how a wholly hosted solution, i.e., Shopify, can be compared to an open-source platform that needs more manual configuration, i.e., WordPress. We shall focus on the self-hosted version of the latter.

That said, lets start by look at…

WHAT KIND OF USERS DO SHOPIFY AND WORDPRESS TARGET?

Owing to the simplicity of usage that Shopify comes with, it is fair to state that their main target consumers are peope who lack both:

• Web development knowledge and skills
• A sustainable budget that allows them to hire someone to build their store

These consumers go for Shopify because they can create an e-commerce store without code, and also because their businesses are not that big and technical.  

On the other hand, WordPress tends to attract consumers who:

• Have a budget to hire a web developer
• Have web development skill  
• Web design novices

Although both shopify and wordpress easily accommodate people with little to no web development skills, setting up a Wordpress site will require one to go through a steep learning curve.

That said, the other audience that WordPress targets are users who have a knowledgeable background in web design and development. In addition, they also target users with a large budget that can accommodate a WordPress development team to build a custom-made website that can run on super-fast servers.

When analysing the two websites, you may ask yourself…

WHAT IS THE AUDIENCE SIZE FOR SHOPIFY AND WORDPRESS?

According to Builtwith.com, both Shopify and Wordpress have a very large following.  

Although there isn’t a clear number of self-hosted wordpress sites, Wordpress manages and runs over 30 million sites! This ammounts to around 35% of all websites in use!  

This is a great number, when compared to Shopify which is estimated to host around 3.9 million stores. Although Shopify has a generally lower followinghttps://www.shopify.com/plus/about" target="_blank" >, it has managed to work with big brands like Nestle, Pepsi, and GE.

Get this…

Knowing the audience size for each platform is great since it helps you get a clearer picture of which platform works best for other merchants or business owners like you, thereby helping you make a wiser decision from the word go.

WHAT IS THE PRICE OF USING SHOPIFY AND WORDPRESS?

Shopify costs

As stated earlier, Shopify accommodates most of its customers through 5 pricing plans:

• Lite @ $9 monthly
• Basic @$29 monthly
• Shopify @$79 monthly
• Advanced @$299 monthly
• Plus @ around $2,000 monthly (negotiable)

There is also a free trial for Shopify that normally lasts for 14 days.

• With the Lite plan, you can easily add products to any of your websites or blogs and accept credit card payments.
• Phone/mobile support is only covered by plans that cost $29 and above.
• The number of users who have access to your account also varies by plan i.e., you get 2,5,15 staff accounts on the basic plan and advanced plans respectively.
• Transaction and credit card fees tend to decrease as the plans become more and more pricey.
• To fully utilize the point-of-sale functionality that allows you to use Shopify to make sales in physical locations, you may have to pay for a ‘Shopify POS pro' add-on of $89 per month and location.  
• You get a more refined international selling feature on the 'advanced' plan or even higher if you include an option to price the products differ according to the country they are being sold to or in.
• The ‘Shopify Plus plan’ is aimed at larger organizations and those with advanced requirements when it comes to APIs, task automation, support, and server uptime

WordPress costs

When it comes to Wordpress, the cost you will incur solely depends on the type and quality of site you are going for.  

For instance, if you want a high end site that is highly efficient both for you and your customers, you will have to pay more for things like plugins, or even a Wordpress developer if you don’t have the technical know how of building a Wordpress website.

Although you get to have a content management system (CMS) for free, you are still required to pay for hosting services which depending on your needs can either be:

• Managed Wordpress hosting- provided by companies such as Hostpapa or HostGator
• Shared hosting- Provided by companies like Kinsta or WP Engine

In addition to that, you may still incur other costs for:

• A template design for your site
• Plugins that can help your site more user friendly and functional
• Ecommerce intergrations to help you sell your products

That said, suppose you want a website that is secure and quick, the managed wordpress hosting will be very handy for you. With it, you will be required to pay around $25-$30 per month. (based on Kinsta or WP engine prices)

On the other hand, if you only need a simple business website, you can as well choose to go with the shared wordpress hosting which will cost you as little as $4 to $5.

That said, if you are looking forward to building a business with WordPress, here are some of the costs you can expect yearly.

Below I have listed some figures that show some costs that you should expect when building a website;

• Annual hosting, using managed WordPress hosting from Kinsta or WP Engine as an example: $300 (recurring cost)
• Premium theme: $175
• The annual cost for e-commerce integration (if we use Ecwid as an example): is $150 (recurring cost)
• A WordPress maintenance service (they keep the site up to date with all the latest theme, WordPress, and plugin updates): $50 per month
• 4 paid-for WordPress plugins: $100

Therefore, based on the figures stated above, it would cost you a recurring annual cost of at least $1050 to run a professional site. In addition, if you were to hire a developer to help you bold, configure and maintain the WordPress site you would have higher expenses but for a much better product.

In comparison to the costs of using Shopify, we may need to use examples i.e.:

• On the lower side of the pricing scale, if you are using the Shopify ‘basic plan’ $29 plus one $10-per-month app, it would cost you around $468 annual pricing.
• On the higher end of things, if you were on the Shopify $299 per month and using three $10 per month apps you could end up committing to $3,948 per year on your website.

If your needs and requirements are simple, using Shopify can be ideal as compared to WordPress despite it being the ‘paid-for ’option and WordPress being the open-source option. However, it all depends on how you set up both platforms as both can turn out to be equally expensive. To figure out which is more economical and efficient for you long-term is to make an elaborate list of all your requirements and price them up for each platform in the best way possible. The financial cost should not be the only thing to consider in your Shopify vs WordPress decision-making.it is very crucial to also compare the platforms in terms of features, efficiency, and functionality.

Let us proceed to that, starting with the visual aspects.  

Templates

Quantity and quality

The most important aspect of a website is how it looks. Shopify offers a fair variety of templates (currently there are 15 free and 74 paid ones available on the theme store. The paid-for themes range between $150 and $350 in price.

All of the Shopify themes are professionally designed and easily edited. They are also responsive and interactive meaning they will automatically self-adjust to display appropriately on any kind of device be it a phone, tablet, etc. with such templates you can be sure of great support from Shopify in case of the free and paid-for templates. If the provided range does not satisfy your requirements you can purchase from third-party Shopify theme designers such as the popular Theme Forest and Shoptimized.

However, the enormous number of templates available for WordPress often overwhelm the number of Shopify templates available. Although we cannot quite tell the exact number of WordPress themes in existence, we can confidently talk about thousands that are both free and paid-for. You can access WordPress templates from the official WordPress theme directory or even third-party stores like Template Monster. The WordPress theme directory consists of over 9,400 free themes. Since Shopify is designed with a lot of consideration for non-tech users, it is fair to say that its templates are easier to customize. On the other hand, configuring a curated WordPress template should not be difficult.

Personally, WordPress is the winner in terms of template availability due to the numerous options to choose from. However, with great options it is likely for one to face a few issues:  

• Choosing a template is more difficult
• You may have to ensure that you choose a ‘safe’ and convenient option

By ‘safe’ template I mean getting it from a reputable source because some WordPress templates tend to have malicious code that may put your site’s security at risk. You do not have to worry about safe templates with Shopify templates as long as you purchase them from the official theme store. If you happen to buy Shopify templates elsewhere you may need to worry about malicious code as well.

Response/performance on mobile

As earlier stated, all official Shopify templates are responsive meaning they can self-adjust on any device to be correctly displayed. Currently, it is quite easy to get a responsive WordPress template too but you may have to double-check its suitability across devices before using it. A few WordPress templates still happen to be unresponsive.

You can implement the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on both WordPress and Shopify. The AMP is a Google-backed project that accelerates the loading time of the pages on mobile devices by stripping out particular parts of the code. Using AMP gives your content visibility in search results as well as a speed bump for the content.  

Interface and ease of use

The basic layout of Shopify and WordPress are similar i.e., the left-hand side consists of the menu which you can choose content to modify. Shopify is relatively more contemporary and polished in appearance. Both platforms have a similar way of editing and editing content (you can edit your content on the backend first and then publish it). You can utilize visual editor plugins in WordPress to create a real-time editing interface that may appeal to people who are new to web design.

Content management in WordPress and Shopify

Email marketing

The ‘Shopify email’ feature allows you to send e-newsletters directly from Shopify without having to download a dedicated email-marketing application. You can send up to 10,000 emails for free as part of your Shopify plan and going beyond that figure will cost you $1 for every 1,000 emails you send.   As for WordPress, there is no inbuilt email marketing tool but it can be made possible using plugins such as AWeber, GetResponse, etc.

Flexibility

Site maintenance and security

Maintenance

Shopify users do not have to concern themselves with issues of site maintenance because all the technical aspects of running a website such as software updates, hosting, etc. are covered by the company. When it comes to WordPress, you are the one in charge of ensuring that;

• You are using the most updated version of WordPress
• Your server is correctly configured
• Your plugins and themes are updated

Although some of these can be handled automatically, it is still important to keep a watchful eye because an out-of-date WordPress software or plugin makes your site more vulnerable to being hacked.

Security

The security of a Shopify site is usually the company’s responsibility. However, it is important to stay at par with cybersecurity basics e.g., using strong passwords and 2-factor authentication but the technical side of security is mainly Shopify’s problem.

When it comes to WordPress, if you have not paid an agency or developer to maintain the site, you are the one responsible for its security. It is your responsibility to keep everything up to date.

Control over your content

If you are using Shopify you need to be aware that they can remove content or even the whole site if it does not resonate with their acceptable use policies. Unlike Shopify, WordPress lets you do as you please with your content.

SEO in WordPress and Shopify

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to every website's performance. Without proper visibility in the search results getting traffic or sales. Of course, you can utilize social ads to drive traffic to your site but a decent placement in the organic search results goes a long way. If we cover general content i.e., static pages and posts then I bet that WordPress is a winner in the SEO.

WordPress allows you to install Yoast which is one of the best SEO tools available. It analyses your content with depth from an SEO perspective and gives a list of key ways in which you can improve the page and post quality. WordPress allows one to come up with clean URLs i.e., short and simple URL structures. As for Shopify, the SEO features are strong as well. Implementing SSL is straightforward; editing the alt tags as well as Meta descriptions is quite simple; you have full control over the bots and more. Shopify has also provided a new site speed report that helps you to improve your page speed which is beneficial from the SEO perspective.

Blogging in WordPress and Shopify

Blogging is often ignored but it is a very critical aspect of running e-commerce. Blogging provides efficient inbound marketing (a sales strategy that allows one to use blog posts to increase traffic to a site). This engages the readers and helps increase sales. Both Shopify and WordPress provide the blogging ability but WordPress has a better functionality because;

• It autosaves your content
• Gives you more control
• It keeps a record of archived changes to existing posts
• it allows the use of categories and tags in blogs  

Customer support

I think Shopify has better support as compared to wordpress especially if you are building a site solo. When you get the Shopify plan, customer support accompanies it. You receive live chat, email, and phone support on all plans except 'Lite'. A variety of online support materials is also provided.