Tech Reviews

Shopify Vs WordPress – which is better for your business?

If you are a business owner who wants to sell products online or owns a service business, then you must have wondered whether you should use Shopify or WordPress to build your website.

Both platforms allow you to build a beautiful and responsive online store; however, there are definitely pros and cons to each on one of them.

Before investing in Shopify or WordPress, you must understand how they work. It’s also important to know what features they have in terms of improving your SEO. However, if you are a complete beginner, plenty of WordPress and Shopify SEO agencies can help you rank higher on the search engines later on.

In this article, we’ll explore the differences between WordPress and Shopify so you can be ready to set up your website!

Shopify

Shopify is a website-building platform that is mainly focused on e-commerce. It allows business owners to sell both digital and physical products. The platform’s main selling point is that it’s extremely simple to set up an online store. It allows you to create a customer-ready online shop in just a few clicks. Another advantage is that you don’t have to know any coding! Of course, if you want to make some deeper changes to your website, knowing HTML, CSS and Java are beneficial. Still, it’s not a requirement, and many business owners have a successful Shopify store without writing a single line of code.

The signup process is very straightforward. Simply go to the Shopify website, sign up, connect your domain or buy one directly from the platform. Next, choose your theme, which is also free, add products, set up payments, and that’s it! You are ready to sell.

What is more, if you want to improve your pages, such as adding limited-time discounts, pop-ups and any other plugin, you imagine it’s all available on the platform. Some of them are free, and some are paid; however, most of them offer a free trial, so you can test out whether you like the plugin or not.

In terms of customisation, Shopify provides many paid themes and seven free ones. All of them are responsive and highly customisable. If you want, you can go to the website’s code, where you can make your changes, so the website fits your needs. Shopify also allows you to edit your theme via the customisation menu easily. You can make changes to each page, header and footer and set up your colour theme.

Shopify allows you to connect your business account and PayPal so you can offer your customers to pay via their preferred payment method. The platform also allows you to set up which countries can access your page and calculate shipping charges at checkout.

In terms of pricing, Shopify offers three subscription plans for £19 per month, £49 per month, and £259 per month. Depending on your plan, you will receive additional benefits, and your fees will be lower. All plans have a 14-day free trial available.

Shopify is our winner if you are someone who wants to sell products online. However, WordPress might be a better option if you own a service-based business.

WordPress

WordPress is the world’s most popular website platform. You can use it to set up any type of website, such as blogs and online stores. It’s free, has thousands of free and paid themes and is highly customisable.

However, creating a website, especially for e-commerce with WordPress, might be harder than Shopify, depending on your skills. In comparison to Shopify, WordPress is not a website builder. It’s software that allows you to manage content and pages.

To create a website, you must first purchase a domain and sign up with a hosting company. Next, you have to connect your hosting account with WordPress. After that, you should choose a theme, and there is an enormous amount of them, both free and paid, and add relevant plugins. For example, if you are creating an e-commerce website, then the most popular is WooCommerce. It provides you with all the functionality an online shop should have, such as payments, inventory management, checkout cart, etc. There are also other essential plugins such as security, lead capture, if you have a service-based business, or SEO so your page can rank higher on the search engine.

As you can see, setting up a WordPress website is a bit more complicated than Shopify. However, there are some advantages to using it. Firstly, you are not limited to using Shopify hosting and can choose whichever you like. As we mentioned previously, there are thousands of themes and plugins available, and WordPress itself allows for great customizability, so if you know how to code, you can make your website look however you want. That’s why this platform is a great place to build your website if your business focuses on service and e-commerce features are not a must for you.

In terms of pricing, WordPress is completely free. However, it doesn’t mean you can create a page and never spend a penny. Depending on your needs, the costs can range from £10 per month to thousands per month. You must remember that, unlike Shopify, WordPress is not hosting your website, so you have to buy your own. Then there is an SSL certificate which is not provided, and depending if you go with paid theme and plugins, your costs can stack up fairly quickly.

As you can see, both Shopify and WordPress have their advantages and disadvantages. Shopify is better if you are an e-commerce business or someone who doesn’t want to deal much with the technical side. However, if you have a service-based business or prefer extreme control over how your website looks, then WordPress might be the better option. To choose which platform is best for you, you should list your essentials and nice-to-haves, then compare the pricing.

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