eCommerce Battle 2021: Shopify vs WooCommerce vs PrestaShop

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So, you have decided to open your online store? Congratulations on taking a step in the right direction! More than half of UK consumers are now shopping online, and UK online spend is forecast to increase by 29.6% between 2019 and 2024, according to retail analysts at GlobalData. With such a vast market to reach, it is essential to choose the right platform for your shop, as you will likely stick with it for years to come. Some of the most popular platforms are Shopify, WooCommerce and PrestaShop. This article will offer you a deep comparison of the biggest players in the e-commerce market with all pros and cons. And if you also need a website to accompany your shop and haven’t decided yet which system to use, feel free to check our post: Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress – Which platform should you choose in 2021?

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Ready for the ride? Put your seatbelt on, or grab a cup of coffee and let’s begin. Here is an in-depth comparison of leading eCommerce systems in 2021. Focused on:

Ease of use
Design
Features
Compatibility (with all the leading marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, eBay)
Marketing & SEO
Store management
Customer Support
Security
Cost
Summary

We will rate them using a “thumbs up” system measuring their performance in each category.
– outstanding
– good
– average
– poor
– better avoid

Shopify

Shopify is a subscription-based all-in-one platform, a market’s leading online store builder. It includes hosting, domain name and an online builder. It allows you to sell physical and virtual goods.

1. Ease of use

Shopify is a joy to set up, even for inexperienced users. You create an account, log in, choose your shop’s name, fill in the basic info about your business, and pick the domain name (you can complete this step later). Everything is straightforward, and you can start building your shop within minutes. After choosing the template, here called a “Theme”, you are all ready to go. The “drag and drop” system leaves no place for confusion.

2. Design

Shopify offers over 70 professional-looking themes. They differ from free to premium ($180) and are customisable and mobile-responsive. The choice of themes isn’t the greatest, comparing with competitors, who offer hundreds of thousands of themes to pick from; for example, WooCommerce has over 50k.

Once you got a theme, it is quick and easy to install and tailor to fit your brand. Sadly, you only have options to change editable elements, like logo, colours and fonts, and you can’t drift from the original design too far away. For example, you can’t change the product’s layout. If your choice’s theme presents you with a front page with three columns in a row, followed by one wide picture and another row of three pictures, you can’t change that without editing the themes file. Shopify uses its front-end programming language, Liquid. You can or learn it, hire a Shopify developer, or stick with the platform’s functionality.

3. Features

Payment Methods

Shopify includes its built-in payment gateway, named Shopify Payments. The gateway is easy to use as it process most major credit cards. Shopify Payments charge a flat rate for online of 2.2% + £0.20 and 1.7% for in-person credit card transactions for the Basic plan, decreasing slightly per each transaction for higher plans.

If you want to keep your shop customer-friendly and would like to add another well-known payment solution, like PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, you can easily integrate those and other payment gateways with your shop. They will be added and set up for free, but they’ll come with a transaction fee of 0.5% to 2.0%, depending on your payment plan. Those payments come on top of Shopify fees.

Abandoned Cart Recovery

This feature comes as standard in Shopify. You don’t need to add additional modules or extension. The functionality is there, straight out of the box, allowing customers to complete an abandoned order without filling out their details again. It also sends an e-mail reminder inviting them to finish the sale.

Shipping

For its overseas customers from United States, Canada or Australia, Shopify offers a convenient way to manage all your shipping. It has built-in integration with USPS, DHL Express, UPS, and Canada Post. However, if you are trading from the UK, Europe or another part of the world, you need to look for an external application that will allow you to ship seamlessly. As a built-in option for shops from Europe and UK, Shopify only offers local pick-up. There are plenty of apps on the market that will easily integrate with your shop and do all the hard work for you, like Starshipit, but they all come with additional monthly fees. For example, for Starshipit the payment plans differ from £20/month (up to 250 products send) up to £200/month (10k products sent). If you want to save money, you can also look for integrations from every courier you planning to use. Some of them offer free solutions like Royal Mail. Royal Mail integrates Shopify with its Click and Drop system and provides a step by step guide on doing it. You can read about it here.

Discounts

Shopify offers easy to use and built-in system to manage your discount codes. You can access them from your backend menu – Discounts. You can choose the type and value of the discount, define which products it will apply, set up customer eligibility, usage limits, active dates and minimum requirements. It is a very well designed functionality.

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Managing Customers

Once your shop is live and operating, and you already have customers, Shopify allows you to create customer groups. Yeap, that’s right. You can’t create customer groups in advance when setting up your shop. The way to generate a customer group is to search or filter your existing customer base and save the result as a new group.

Customer groups are a crucial tool when planning your marketing strategy. You can combine them with different discounts or shipping options; you can grant them access to various parts of your store and use them along with loyalty programs.

Unfortunately, Shopify doesn’t offer customers loyalty programs as a standard. They are available through an external app, like Smile: Rewards & Loyalty. The app comes without charges in the most basic version, but using the free plan will add smile branding to your website.

If you want to introduce customer group-specific pricing, you will need an external app like Wholesale Club, Wholesale Pricing Discount, or Wholesaler. They all come with an additional monthly fee, and among them, Wholesaler offers the cheapest plan of $4.99/month.

Multi-language

Shopify doesn’t have a multi-language function built-in. If you want your store to attract customers from different countries, having a multi-language store is a way to go. You can achieve that with an app from Wiglot that allows you seamlessly translate your store’s content.

The app isn’t free. The pricing depends on how many words you want to translate per year. You have the option to chose from Standard and Enterprise Plans. The cheapest in Standard, Starter Plan comes at €99/year and allows you to translate up to 10k words. The most expensive from this category, The Advanced Plan, comes at €1990/year and up to one million words translated. The Enterprise Plans are starting from €4990/year, depending on the number of words and languages used.

The Basic Plan, letting you translate 10k words, might look like a good option only before thinking about what you want to translate. If your site has Terms & Conditions, a specific Return Policy, various delivery options, an About Us page if you sell products with multiple combinations and longer descriptions, you might want to translate them all. And with that in mind, 10k words is not enough, even if you only want to add one language.

Let’s sum it up.

Shopify comes with built-in payment gateways with flat-rate charges, and you are the best at sticking to it; otherwise, you will generate additional bills to pay.
Abandoned cart recovery comes as standard in Shopify. You don’t need to add additional modules or extension.
Shipping integration is a pain if you are not living in America or Australia. You need to add manually various couriers or let an application do it for you – again for an additional fee.
Discount management is spot-on. Easy to use with various options.
Managing customers is tricky and expensive. You can’t create customer groups in advance when setting up your shop. Depending on what features you want to use – loyalty programs, wholesale pricing, you might end up paying for few additional apps monthly to make it work.
Shopify doesn’t offer multi-language options built-in. You need to purchase an additional app, generating another bill to pay.

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4. Compatibility

Shopify comes with pre-installed integration with eBay, Facebook, Messenger and Google Shopping. To sell and advertise through those platforms, you only need to click on sales channels – add channel, and the system will do the rest for you. The fees for selling and advertising on those platforms will apply.

Adding Amazon or Etsy is also simple. You need to go to your App section and find the right app. The basic installation is free but only allows you to add 10 products per month to the marketplace. If you are planning on selling larger quantities, you are bound to pay monthly for the plan. If your customer base uses Groupon or a country-specific marketplace like Allegro, Ceneo, Walmart, you will have to install an external app with a monthly subscription plan.

5. Marketing and SEO

Shopify comes with some pre-installed marketing tools. As mentioned before, you have already integrated Google Shopping, Facebook and Messenger, where you can sell and advertise your products. There is also a tab in your shop menu called Marketing, where you can create a campaign or activate pre-installed marketing apps such as Snapchat Ads, SMS Bump, E-mail marketing or more. The apps are free, but you will have to pay the fees for advertising on various platforms.

Working with Shopify on your SEO is a piece of cake. The system comes with pre-installed basic SEO that allows you to add metadata to all your products. You also have a wide range of various additional plugins that can boost your SEO. Overall, Shopify is good for SEO and marketing, but some of the marketing tools designed for specific customers group or loyalty programs come with a hefty price tag.

6. Store management

Staff Accounts

Shopify allows you to create staff accounts to help you manage your store. The number of staff account you can add depends on your plan. With the cheapest Basic plan ($29/month), you can add 2 staff accounts, with Shopify ($79/month) – 5 accounts and the most expensive Advanced Shopify ($299/month) allows you to create up to 15 staff accounts.

Multi-store

The platform doesn’t allow you to run multiple stores from the same back office. You can only link your account with between four and eight physical retail locations (depending on your chosen payment plan). But if you want to run various stores with different designs – for example, for specific countries, offering locally sourced products or created for one particular market, in that case, Shopify doesn’t have a plan for you.

Stock Management

Shopify allows you to add multiple products in no time using the CSV file. Once uploaded, you can set up inventory tracking, which will enable you to manage stock levels. There is also an option to hide the sold-out products. Pretty straightforward.

7. Customer Support

Shopify offers various channels to offer customer support. You can use their excessive knowledge base, chat with their representative via live chat (24/7), write an e-mail, call them or use Twitter to communicate.

8. Security

Shopify protects the security of your store. However, your shop is only as secure as the weakest human element. Ultimately, if you won’t protect your store with a strong, regularly changed password, you are putting it at risk, the same as if you won’t log off at the end of your session. That also goes for every person who has access to your store. Shopify doesn’t provide you with additional plugins that could increase your security. For example, you won’t have a unique login link, which could prevent breaking into your store.

9. Cost

The biggest downside of Shopify is its cost. Shopify is expensive, and it can make it impossible to grow your business there.

The platform comes in three pricing plans: Basic ($348/year), Shopify ($948/year) and Advanced Shopify ($3588/year). But this is only the beginning of your bills. A professionally designed theme will add another $180 in your first year of using Shopify.

All Shopify’s sale comes with a transaction fee of 2.2% + 20p in Basic plan and 1.6% + 20p in Shopify Advanced. If you want to add Paypal or Amazon Pay, those fees come on top of Shopify charges. The apps to manage your customer base, loyalty programs, shipping – they all come with monthly payments, charging you on average £12/month/app. Using only apps for loyalty program and shipping whoops your yearly bill by another £288 if you decide on the cheapest plans. Your expenses can go out of control if you choose to use various apps.

At the time of writing this article, Shopify came out with Shopify Plus. This is their offer for bigger companies with higher volume trade and its priced at $2000/month.

10. Summary

Shopify is a brilliant platform for a small business. It’s easy to start, and you don’t need any technical knowledge. Almost everything is ready out of the box. Shopify isn’t free and comes with a hefty bill even with the basic options, and with your business growth, it becomes unprofitable to run a shop on Shopify.