WordPress Vs Shopify, Which is Better For Your Website?

wordpress vs shopify

WordPress Vs Shopify, these are two of the biggest heavy hitters when it comes to creating an online website. They are both phenomenal tools that help entrepreneurs, web designers, and creatives to build an online presence. They both have their unique advantages and disadvantages and which one you prefer will largely be based on what you’re looking for in your website.

Before reading this WordPress Vs Shopify article, we’d recommend taking a few minutes to think about what answers you’re hoping to gain. Think critically about your business or the reason you want to create a website. Think about questions like:

What type of functionality is most important for me?
Do I need a lot of control in my business?
Do I want to fly the plane or hire a pilot to fly me around?
What is the endgame for my website?
In a few months or years, what do I want my website to look like?

Taking a moment to ponder these questions will help you get more out of this article as you read it. After you’ve done that, it’s time to dive into it! This is a detailed breakdown of WordPress Vs Shopify.

WordPress Vs Shopify, What Is WordPress?

The technical definition (from Wikipedia) for WordPress is “a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to within WordPress as Themes.”

In layman’s terms, WordPress is a place where you can go to create a website. In fact, it’s one of the easiest places to create a website, depending on the kind of website you want to build.

WordPress is perfect for blogs, personal websites, and beginners. That’s why starting your website with WordPress is easy. It guides you through the steps of creating and managing your own website.

Wordpress Homepage Signup WordPress Vs Shopify

Pros

  •  It’s free! – You can’t beat free. Especially considering the fact that it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to build a website from scratch. Since this is a non-option for many lean operations, WordPress is an obvious alternative.
  • Flexibility – WordPress has really built up its database of available plugins
Wordpress Vs Shopify WordPress Plugins Toolbar

This gives WordPress users incredible flexibility as to what they can and can’t do on their site. It also means that you’re no longer limited to your ability to code. With WordPress, you can simply search for the proper plugin.

A few examples of their most popular plugins are:

  • SEO Optimization
  • Contact forms to collect email addresses
  • Anti-spam protectors
  • eCommerce solutions to allow users to sell things on their sites
  • Page builders for easy web page construction
  • Enhanced analytics to get stats behind traffic
  • Mailchimp and other email marketing integrations
  • Plugins to enhance page speed

In total, WordPress has just under 50,000 plugins. This means that any functionality you need in a website can most likely be implemented in your WordPress site.

  • User Friendly – You don’t need to be a technology genius by any means to use WordPress. It’s incredibly simple and user friendly. You’ll most likely get the hang of it simply by clicking around for a few hours.
  • SEO Friendly – As mentioned, there are multiple plugins that can be added to automatically increase the SEO optimization of your site. Even without these plugins, WordPress sites are designed to be as SEO friendly as possible.
  • Open Source Platform – This means that developers can use, change, and study the code without having to create it from scratch. This helps in saving a lot of time and cost of writing & implementing a new codebase for minor or major changes.

Overall, there are quite a few advantages to using a WordPress site. This is especially true if you don’t know much about coding and don’t have a lot of needs in a website.

Cons

Despite all the advantages of using WordPress, there are still a few cons.

  • Customization – In the event that the functionality you need isn’t offered by a plugin, you could have quite a difficult time trying to customize a WordPress site to suite your needs. Not to mention you could risk breaking some of the core WordPress functionality if you’re too aggressive in trying to reshape it.
  • Vulnerability – One of the advantages of WordPress is also a disadvantage. Since it’s an open-source system (which is great for innovation and creation) it also leaves it exposed to hackers. One of the best ways to avoid getting hacked is to always review the quality of a plugin before installing it. Make sure that any plugin you install has a history of good reviews and high ratings.
  • Lots of updates – Similar to an iPhone, it’s a quality product that is constantly being improved on. Unfortunately for the user, this means you’re constantly needing to update your software and occasionally get used to a new interface. It’s the price you have to pay for innovation.

In this WordPress summary, we would definitely recommend getting started with WordPress if you’re a beginner and are just looking for something basic. For example, if you want to start a blog or create a personal website for your business, WordPress is a great option. However, if you need more functionality that is specific to your business, then you might want to consider another option.
It’s a little bit like buying a car. If you live in the city and just need a car that can drive you from point A to point B, then you’ll be fine buying something like a Toyota. However, if you live in the mountains of Colorado on a ranch and need to haul timber 40 miles every day, then you might want to look at buying a truck.

Now let’s take a look at another incredibly popular website building platform.

WordPress Vs Shopify, What is Shopify?

Shopify Homepage WordPress Vs Shopify

Shopify is a sophisticated eCommerce software that helps you get started running an online business incredibly easy and incredibly cheap. However, just because it’s cheap don’t let that fool you into thinking that they don’t offer a powerful solution. Recently, Kylie Jenner opened up a cosmetics company called Kylie Cosmetics that she later sold for a couple hundred million. The software that the company was built on? Shopify.

Pros

  • Easy to get started – Just like WordPress, Shopify is incredibly easy to get started. They walk through the process with you and ask you things like what kind of business you run, what you sell, how you sell it, what kind of functionality you need, etc. They then offer templates for beautiful websites so you don’t even need to design anything. As many entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate with other things (marketing, order fulfillment, sales, etc.) it can be incredibly refreshing to not have to deal with the monotony of building an online store from scratch.
  • Marketing – Speaking of marketing, Shopify has built-in tools to help you create and execute marketing campaigns on Facebook or Google.
  • Streamlined – Shopify does a really good job of putting everything in one place for you. From the dashboard, you can see everything you’ll need to know in regards to your business.
  • Cheap – The baseline package is only $29/month, about as cheap as it gets. Additionally, they’ll let you try it free for 14 days.
  • Scale – While their base package is cheap and easy, they also have additional options to help you grow and scale your business. The more expensive packages will give you things like more staff accounts, gift card options, more professional reporting, competitive shipping rates with USPS and UPS, and high volume packages.
  • Themes – As mentioned earlier, they have a large database of storefront themes to choose from. This can be valuable because an online store that sells makeup should have a very different look than one that sells hardware supplies. You can choose a theme that mimics the tone of your brand.
  • App and 24/7 Support – Take your store on the go and get help whenever you need it.
  • Supports multiple channels – Shopify is a good option regardless of whether you need to sell on Facebook, Amazon, or another site.
Online shopping - Website Builder

If you already have a thriving business that you’re looking to give an online presence or want to get started from scratch, Shopify is definitely a solid solution. It’s cheap but provides maximum functionality for its users.

That said, no platform is without fault.

Cons

  • Liquid – Shopify uses its own PHP language for its stores called Liquid. All of the themes are coded in this language. This means that it can be incredibly difficult if you want to customize a Shopify store besides what is readily available for you.
  • Many of the add-ons are not free – Contrary to WordPress, where many of the plugins are free, Shopify usually has a charge for added functionality. For example, implementing the Quickbooks app will cost an additional $29.99. If you’re not careful, adding multiple apps to boost the functionality of your site can really start to creep into your profits.
  • No email hosting – Shopify does not support business emails. This means that you cannot host a domain-based email address like ⦁ info@mydomainname.com.

Now that we’ve taken a look at some of the pros and cons of both platforms, let’s examine which one of these platforms is best for you.

WordPress Vs Shopify Summary

Choosing between WordPress and Shopify is a little bit like choosing where to shop between Walmart and Target. They are both great businesses, offer quality products at a good price, and the differences are negligible.

However, we would recommend choosing WordPress if:

  • You’re just getting started in the world of websites and don’t have any previous knowledge.
  • The main purpose of your website isn’t to sell someone something.
  • You’re not worried about putting in the time to optimize the performance of your website.
  • You’re working with a very lean budget.
  • The main purpose of your site is to inform, post content, or do something else.
  • Selling a product isn’t that important to you.

Additionally, we would recommend choosing Shopify if:

  • The main goal of your site is to sell a product to someone.
  • You plan on growing and scaling your site/business over the next few years.
  • At some point in the future of your website, you plan on selling things as your primary business model.

We hope that you found this WordPress Vs Shopify article valuable and that it helped you understand the differences between WordPress and Shopify. If you are interested in becoming or hiring a freelancer, check out our most recent article here. Freelancers can do jobs from logo design to programming.