WooCommerce vs. Magento – Which Ecommerce Platform Is Right for You?

Choosing the right e-commerce platform for your business can prove to be a daunting task, with so many options available in the market. Most businesses tend to choose between WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, OpenCart, SquareSpace, or Wix. There are several other platforms but businesses tend to veer towards the most popular platforms because of the community support available, easy customizations, and extensive documentation.

Among these, WooCommerce and Magento stand out as the most popular because of their ease of use, open-source nature, and the availability of various plugins and extensions. While Magento is popular with larger e-commerce stores, smaller businesses often choose to set up their store on WooCommerce. However, the size of a store alone isn’t enough to make a decision on choosing either Magento or WooCommerce.
In this article, let us take a detailed look at both these e-commerce platforms so that you can decide for yourself which one is right for you in 2019 and beyond.

What is WooCommerce and what are its benefits?

WooCommerce is an open source e-commerce plugin that works with WordPress websites. Though the plugin can be used by both small and large businesses, it can only be used on websites that use WordPress as the CMS. If your website is built using Drupal, Joomla! or another CMS, WooCommerce cannot be used on your website. It is also important that WordPress is more suitable for bloggers, news agencies, and content-heavy websites. Larger e-commerce businesses tend to have their websites custom-built using PHP, HTML 5 and JavaScript, or they may simply use Drupal or another CMS.

Yet, WooCommerce has a number of advantages:

  • It is simple and easy to install
  • As it is an open-source product, it is free to use
  • Requires less hosting capacity and is cheaper to maintain
  • As it is integrated with WordPress, it features a better content management system
  • Gives you access to thousands of WordPress plugins

If you already own a WordPress website, WooCommerce is the natural choice to set up your store. It works well for both small and large sized businesses and offers plenty of customizations. However, most e-commerce stores are not built on WordPress, and medium and larger-sized businesses tend to use more complex development to support their unique requirements. If you do not have a WordPress-based website, it doesn’t make sense to consider WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is the perfect e-commerce solution if:

  • Your website is built on WordPress
  • Your e-commerce business is secondary to your primary business
  • You do not sell too many products and aren’t a huge corporation

What is Magento and what are its benefits?

Magento is a complex e-commerce platform that is written in PHP. The platform was released in 2008 and is used by close to 650,000 stores worldwide. As the tool is written in PHP, it is easy to integrate it with your CRM, ERP, and other backend tools, which helps in creating a unified interface. In addition, Magento is perfectly suited for both small and large e-commerce businesses, which focus solely on selling products online. Magento is fully customizable, secure, and provides shop owners with advanced reports and statistics. Progressive ERP integration ensures that reports and insights are richer, and derived from larger datasets.

Here are some specific benefits of using Magento

  • You can easily integrate with backend tools such as CRM, ERP, accounting software, and HRMS
  • Well-suited for businesses that focus on selling products online
  • Attractive themes and design help create online stores that attract more visitors

If you plan to focus on your e-commerce business and grow in size and stature, Magento should be your natural choice. Magento offers greater flexibility, customizability, and security. You can scale quickly and choose to integrate it with other software tools. You will also benefit from the advanced admin area which WooCommerce lacks.

Magento is perfect for

  • Businesses that do not use WordPress-based websites
  • Stores which plan to scale
  • Businesses that have complex requirements which can only be met with custom development
  • Businesses that need stable and robust backend software integrations with their e-commerce store

A brief comparison between Magento and WooCommerce

Assess your business needs or seek a technical consultation
As long as you don’t run a huge store or your e-commerce store is secondary to your primary business, WooCommerce should be more than enough to help you. If you already own a WordPress website and would like to set up a store, WooCommerce has absolutely stunning features that will help even medium and large sized businesses.

However, if you are planning to scale your online store is your primary business, then it makes sense to invest in a custom-developed Magento store. Magento can help you integrate your storefront with your backend tools easily, and streamline your business processes.

If you find it difficult to make a decision, speak to us today for a technical consultation. We will help you choose the right e-commerce platform based on your unique needs.