Jeremy (wise-echidna) compares WooCommerce and Shopify for building online stores. He demonstrates installing WooCommerce on Cloudways, highlights WooCommerce's flexibility, large market share (claimed ~40%) and customizability, and contrasts that with Shopify's all-in-one hosted model (claimed ~11% market share, over 7 million users). He compares themes/templates (WooCommerce themes often ~$49/year; Shopify premium themes up to ~$300), product management UI, payment options (both support major methods), pricing (Shopify basic cited at A$56/month with a $1/month for three months trial; card processing fees ~2% for third‑party providers), and Cloudways hosting (recommends a ~$35 plan for starters). His recommendation: Shopify for quick, non-technical setup; WooCommerce for long-term customizability and lower ongoing costs. He also mentions a 30% Cloudways discount code “Jeremy” in the video description.
Questions this video answers
About 40% (claimed by speaker).
Around 11% (claimed by speaker).
Over 7 million users (claimed by speaker).
Over 6.5 million users (claimed by speaker).
A$56 per month (speaker's cited price).
Chapters
If you're building an online store, should you host your website on WooCommerce or Shopify? I'm actually going to break it down in this video. So for me, the way I actually install WooCommerce and use it is using Cloudways Autonomous. They're fully managed WordPress sites that scale with you and they also have a 99% uptime. So if you look at the data, the top e commerce platforms at the moment, WooCommerce is still number one. They have high market share, 40% and then Shopify is around 11%. You've got other platforms like Squarespace, Wix, but the ones that are at the top are Shopify and WooCommerce. So it is interesting to see what people are using at the moment. Now with Shopify they have over 7 million users. So it is popular. People love using the store. It's mostly because it's reliable, it's easy to use and Shopify has been around for a very long time. WooCommerce has over 6.5 million users. It's the largest ecommerce platform that is used and that's because of it's very flexible, it's fully customizable and you can choose whatever host you want. Now with Shopify, it is self host hosted. So when you do pay for a plan, it already comes with all the hosting embedded within it and it's all one system. You can't move your website, you can't migrate it. Now I'm just on Cloudways and I'm going to install WooCommerce. What you want to do is install an application. You can click Add Application, click on your server. I just named mine Online Store. You can click add application, find WooCommerce and then you want to name it and then add that through. Once you do that, you just want to click this little arrow here, this little icon, it'll take you to the website and. And then you can actually click on your website and it will open up. Now, once you're in WordPress, you can see it's already installed WooCommerce. On the side here we've got products, payments analytics. Now the cool thing with WooCommerce, they have a ton of resources online. They've also got extensions. So plenty of ways to upgrade your website. Add widgets, add extensions, add, you know, things like Stripe or Google or. So if you're in WordPress, the cool thing with WooCommerce, it actually goes guided setup. So I can go set up my store, you can see, start customizing store. It Gives you all the steps, 1, 2, 3, up to 6. Now in the WooCommerce marketplace they do have hundreds and hundreds of themes that you can see they're paid most like of them are $49 just for annually, which is pretty cool. So you can buy the themes. I got a lot of different ones, different industries, you know, different styles and you can search by filter maybe you want, you know, health and beauty, they've got that designs and we can click on it and it will show you. On WooCommerce you can buy it. They actually give you payment options, which is cool. Can also view the demo. So let's say we like like this site shows you all the pages, what you get. I think it's a lot faster to get a template and build from that sort of building from scratch. When it comes to Shopify, you have a lot of templates. They literally have thousands and thousands of themes. They do have support depending on whether you get free or premium themes. The premium themes do cost up to $300 and can be pretty pricey when you're looking when you're starting out. But you do have a wide range of different categories. Now in terms of like adding products and the design, I find that Shopify has a nicer UI and UX and it's easy to upload images and add text. With Woocommerce you do have a similar format. Obviously it's in WordPress so that has a similar UI. I like how you can just quickly add your product name at drop in the text and then if you want to add media you can click the button and select files. Full control of product gallery on the side categories, product tags and then you've got other stuff like inventory, shipping, all these things. But obviously you can use other helpful plugins which you can access on the left sidebar, which I think is useful when you need it. Now in terms of payments, both platforms allow you to take all the major payment systems. WooCommerce takes, you know, Visa, MasterCard, GPay, Apple, Pay, Klarna, all those ones even Afterpay as well. PayPal and Shopify is the same. It takes basically anything you need. And you can always download third party apps to help you if you need some extra ones. Maybe you're in a different country from the U.S. now let's look at the cost of Shopify. So Shopify have a few different plans of what basic, grow and advanced. And if we just look at the basic plan, it's $56 Aussie a month. You do save 25% off if you do the yearly plan. But let's look at what you get. The thing with Shopify is you will get charged full card processing fees. So if we look at the card processing fees, you get 2% for third party payment providers, you'll be charged just around 2% as well for online and in person rates. Then you've got some other things, other main features like you get unlimited products, you got 24, 7 chat support, you can have multiple admins, inventory. If you just go down and click on the full list, it will actually give you the full list. Everything there on Shopify, it is pretty long so I'm not going to go through it. But basically everything you need to set up your first store which is with hundreds of products, connect your email marketing, you know, start running campaigns and start selling. Shopify has it all ready to go with that one monthly payment. It's not as technical as, it's not as technical as WooCommerce. I do also like that Shopify gives you a $1 a month for three months. So you can try it out if it's the right platform or not for you. So let's look at the pricing on Cloudways. That's the host that I'll be using if I'm setting up a WooCommerce platform. Now if we look at the prices of Cloudways Autonomous, if you want to fully manage WordPress hosting site, then this is the best plan for you. They have a few plans. I do recommend going with plan one or two. Just look at the amount of unique visits. So if you're just starting out, you probably won't be hitting 30,000. So I think the $35 plan is the best for you and it is affordable compared to Shopify. Now the thing is, you got to keep in mind though with Shopify you have to pay extra for all those extra plugins and third party apps and it can get pretty expensive really quickly once you start adding all these features to your website. So because Shopify doesn't have all the inbuilt features that you need to do like funnels and upsells and all those crazy things. Whereas with WooCommerce you're not paying extra for all these third party plugins and apps, there's a lot of free themes as well and free plugins you can download. And that's the benefit of WooCommerce. You have more variety and more free stuff to get. So let's just do a recap. What should you choose? Shopify or WooCommerce? If you're someone that is just starting out, you don't want to learn any technical things and you just want to get up your store quick up and running and you don't want to customize too much then I recommend going with Shopify. It's easy to get started and start working. If you're someone that wants full customizability, you want it to be a cheaper investment in the long run then I recommend going with someone like WooCommerce. Now if you're going to go with WooCommerce I do have a code with Cloudways the hosting platform you can get 30% off. Just use my code Jeremy I will put a link in the description below if you want to give that a go and start hosting your e commerce website. If you want to watch another video of Shop showing you how to set up Cloudways and get your first server going to build your website then check out this video over here and I'll show you how to do it.
