If you are an entrepreneur considering selling products online, you probably have heard of two of the most popular e-commerce platforms: Magento and WooCommerce. Today’s businesses continually strive to improve their brand visibility and rank on search engines.
As one of the leading e-commerce platforms, Magento development is a popular choice for online merchants to sell online. Whereas, WooCommerce is quickly becoming the most popular eCommerce solution in the world.
Both platforms have pros and cons, and both have been around for quite some time with vast communities of loyal users. This is why picking one of them as an open source platform is an excellent choice. But deciding what platform to use for your e-commerce website can be daunting. Which one is the best fit for your business? Read this article to find out!
What’s the Difference Between WooCommerce and Magento?
The choice between Magento and WooCommerce can be difficult. While both platforms offer similar functionality like inventory management, payment processing, and shipping options, there are also crucial differences that make one a better fit for your business.
Magento and WooCommerce are free software, meaning there are no costs associated with setting up an online store. They’re also open source, which means that the code behind them is available to be examined by the public. In addition to being free, they’re also relatively easy to learn how to use—you don’t need any prior coding experience to get started.
WooCommerce is an easy-to-use e-commerce platform that allows you to create a shop and sell products. It’s free, but if you want more features, it’s also possible to buy extensions from the WooCommerce Marketplace. Magento is an easy-to-use e-commerce platform but offers more features and support than WooCommerce. However, some services cost money through a monthly subscription or buying the software outright.
WooCommerce comes with a WordPress plugin that lets you create and manage an online store. But it doesn’t come with any e-commerce features out of the box. You have to install them yourself as add-ons. Magento is an all-in-one e-commerce platform that includes everything you need to run an online store. It supports payment systems, shipping methods, and inventory management.
WordPress developers created WooCommerce; it’s an eCommerce platform built on top of WordPress which means there are no restrictions on what content types can be used within your store (such as products or blog posts). Additionally, it has a built-in payment gateway, so opening an online store is simple, and you don’t have to bother about incorporating outside services into the code of your website.
Since 2008, Magento has been an open-source eCommerce platform. Magento was created by Varien that runs on the Zend Framework. It’s built on top of MySQL and PHP, making installation and maintenance simple. It features a robust catalog system, product filtering, and promotional pricing options. The software can handle large amounts of traffic and offers store owners and developers flexibility.
You can easily integrate third-party apps into your site by adding them through the admin panel or installing them from an app store like Magento Marketplace, where over 2,000 plugins are available for free or paid download.
WooCommerce offers an outstanding stock of pre-built themes & extensions for your website. On the other hand, Magneto provides a decent number of pre-built themes & extensions but unlimited customization possibilities to build one from scratch.
Comparison between Magento and Woocommerce
The ability of these two platforms to manage high volumes of traffic is the primary distinction between them. Magento has been around since 2008, while Woocommerce was released in 2011—but this doesn’t necessarily mean that Magento will outperform Woocommerce just because it’s older.
Many people who’ve used both solutions say Woocommerce is more scalable than Magento due to its newer architecture.
1. Features
Magento has more features than WooCommerce, but WooCommerce is faster and easier to use than Magento (in most cases).
2. Ease of Use
WooCommerce is easier for non-technical users than Magento because it’s more straightforward and intuitive than Magento. It’s also easier for developers because it’s built on WordPress, so they can use their existing skills instead of learning a new system from scratch whenever they want to make changes or add something new (which is pretty much always).
3. Support Team
Magento has better support than WooCommerce because they have more users, which means they’ve had more time.
4. Pricing
The plugin WooCommerce is available for free. The only costs you’ll need to consider are hosting, premium themes, and plugins, as well as monthly charges for shipping and payment gateways. Pricing becomes a little bit more complicated with Magento.
Magento Open Source is free, and your only costs will be those associated with third-party systems, monthly fees, and Magento development. However, the license rates for Magento Commerce and Commerce Cloud are $22,000 per year and $40,000 per year, respectively. The commercial versions offer more sophisticated functionality and hosting, so you might save on the related costs mentioned.
5. Speed and performance
Online buyers abandon a website if it does not load quickly, so retailers cannot afford to have a poor-performance e-commerce website. Performance in the Magento vs. Woocommerce debate is heavily influenced by the hosting company, the size of the files, and the number of extensions you add to your online shop. Unfortunately, WooCommerce isn’t the fastest e-commerce program available. According to Google, it takes 776 milliseconds for a cart page to load, exceeding the “under 500 milliseconds” guideline.
6. Scalability
WooCommerce can process hundreds of transactions per minute and supports an infinite number of SKUs. However, if your hosting is robust and you prioritize, you will not experience a negative impact on your website’s speed. Magento can manage up to 250,000 products in a catalog and was built with scalability. Magento will manage all the traffic experiencing no page load issues, even if your sales increase by five times from one day to the next.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve had some time to look over each platform, which one is the best for your business? WooCommerce might work for you if you’re seeking a simple approach to building an online store where you can sell your goods. But Magento may be the better option if you want more options and flexibility when managing your business online. Ultimately, both of these platforms have a lot to offer online store owners and entrepreneurs, and each provides its distinct advantages to consider.
