Magento vs. WooCommerce: Which is the better choice?
What do I choose for my e-commerce website? Magento or WooCommerce? And why?
Expert Answers
Sort by Date
Sort by Votes
Jul 21, 2018
Magneto and WooCommerce both are leading platforms for e-commerce sites. Both can make your e-commerce site more functional and effective, but both have some advantages and limitations. Here, I am describing which one should you choose for your e-commerce site and why?
• WooCommerce is a completely free platform. On the other hand, Magneto offers a free community version and as well as some premium versions.
• With WooCommerce, you need to find your own web host. For Magneto, the community version is self-hosted, but premium services include hosting.
• WooCommerce supports unlimited products. While Magneto allows you to add unlimited products.
• WooCommerce supports most of the WordPress themes and offers various customization options. But Magneto offers a theme-based system and a decent variety of options.
• WooCommerce comes with an extension system and provides you with hundreds of options. Magneto also supports extensions and offers a wide variety of options.
• WooCommerce gives basic security features to protect your store. But Magneto offers advanced security features. It also gives dedicated patches to close any vulnerabilities that arise.
• WooCommerce offers all the features you need from an e-commerce solution. Magento, on the other hand, offers several features that WooCommerce lacks without purchasing additional extensions. For example, it supports product reviews, grouped items, wish lists, advanced pricing rules, and product personalization.
• WooCommerce is an easy-to-use platform and hence, this is ideal for the people who are a novice in this field. On the other hand, Magento is an e-commerce platform tailored to web development professionals, and medium to large online stores. Thus, Magneto is recommended for the people who have some basic knowledge of web development.
WooCommerce platform is the better choice for users who don’t need advanced features on their stores from the off. It enables you to get a store up and running quickly and thus, Woocommerce is ideal for small stores. But if you have a big dream and looking for some big platforms for your e-commerce store, then Magneto would be the best choice for you.
Jul 24, 2018
Have you checked out the best picks on this very site? https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7707-best-ecommerce-software.html
Oct 10, 2018
If you are a startup, then I suggest you choose a platform based on two factors:
-Cost
-Ease of use
Taking these two points into consideration, I think WooCommerce is a better option. Both the platforms are open-source, but the Magento offers two editions. First, you have a community edition. You can download and install this yourself on any hosting provider. It does not include all features, and it does not come with any support. Second, you have Magento Commerce which includes paid plans with cloud hosting included. While WooCommerce is completely free of cost.
Magento offers tons of built-in features that work out of the box. WooCommerce is a little easier to use compared to Magento. The installation is simple as many WooCommerce hosting providers will automatically install it for you along with WordPress.
Jul 24, 2018
WooCommerce is a powerful plugin for the WordPress platform. It offers all the features you need from an e-commerce solution while retaining the ease-of-use of its parent platform.
Magento is an e-commerce platform tailored to web development professionals, and medium to large online stores. It offers one of the most robust feature sets in the field, which makes it ideal for stores with high aspirations.
Feb 11, 2019
Without any doubt, Magento is way better than WooCommerce. Magento is developed explicitly for e-commerce business. It has the power to support small to the large range of e-commerce businesses. Magento has many out-of-the-box features that can’t be compared with others.
Primarily, the support of Magento is beyond the expectations. Magento Community is doing very well to keep the latest trends on track within the platform, and it also helps newbie’s to learn and understand the platform within no time.
Pros and Cons of Magento >
Advantages:
• Magento platform supports an unlimited number of products.
• Includes APIs that can connect with any third-party solutions.
• Product creation tools and admin panel is very versatile and simple to learn.
• If your hosting server can store large data, Magento has no problem handling them.
• The feature of guest checkout in enabled by default, making the purchase without login possible.
• Integration with PayPal, Gpay and other payment modes can be done quickly.
• Magento has strong B2B eCommerce capabilities.
Disadvantages:
• Its enterprise edition may feel costly due to its yearly payment model.
• It has a larger learning curve to use.
• Not fit for content heavy sites.
• Maintenance cost is high.
• Most of the extensions are paid.
• Hosting this platform is a costly affair.
• Building the front-end website theme is complicated.
Pros and Cons of WooCommerce >
Advantages:
• It is an additional plug-in to WordPress so absolutely free.
• WooCommerce platform has an easy learning curve.
• It has a large number of themes to choose from.
• Many of the extensions are free.
• It has the largest open source community.
• In most cases, hosting is very cheap.
• Easy to pick up if you have experience with WordPress.
• Integrates with Google Analytics using an extension.
Disadvantages:
• When it comes to scalability, database architecture proves to be weak.
• Most of the features are very basic, not unique.
• Only one (free) version of WooCommerce.
• Large sites find it difficult to scale with the WooCommerce platform.
• Weak product data capabilities for complex catalogs.
• Paid extensions and premium themes can cost more.
Jul 20, 2018
Magento is a far more complicated and robust eCommerce platform than WooCommerce, which is really just a plugin on top of the core WordPress software. In a nutshell, despite their similarities, they are also very different and the use cases of both platforms are often fairly different due to their strengths and weaknesses.
Oct 8, 2018
The beauty of Woocommerce lies in its plugins, which make makes it so easy to customize. And importantly most of these are free. For example, if you want to personalize your Woocommerce product page, which is not part of the default feature, you can use the Woocommerce product add-ons plugin from Wordpress.org website. You could get this feature free - it's that easy!
Jan 10, 2019
Could you expound on your needs more? For example, if you were only selling subscriptions and digital goods, Easy Digital Downloads is better IMHO than WooCommerce - And I use both (on different sites). If you're shipping products and such, I'd take a serious look at Shopify.
Jul 2, 2020
Hey There,
I don't know whether you will be satisfied with my answer or not but I will give you my best suggestion..
Behind The Scenes of Magento Commerce:
Magento is a powerful platform with both a free open source edition and an even more powerful Enterprise edition that you can use as a cloud edition via Magento itself or as a self-host. Magento is by far the most powerful eCommerce platform for small business websites and very large eCommerce websites on the market.
The main contrast between Magento and WooCommerce being that Magento is filled with eCommerce functionality, which is missing in WooCommerce, rendering it a much more efficient alternative. Nonetheless, it is also a more costly program to manage and build on because of having such a large application.
Pros:
Enterprise focused with incredible scalability
Multiple versions with Enterprise, Open Source, Cloud, and other products
An enormous community of quality developers and high- agencies
A large amount of out of the box eCommerce first product functionality
Model View Controller (MVC) scalability framework
Strong B2B eCommerce capabilities Multistore out of box
Strong product data capabilities for large and complex catalogs
Robust Order Management
More advanced payment and shipping capabilities
More robust promotion capabilities
Cons:
Higher cost of ownership
The larger learning curve to use
Weak Content Management System capabilities for content-heavy sites
Larger application with higher maintenance overhead typically
Most extensions cost money
Frontend theming is more complicated
Hosting is fairly costly
Behind the Scenes of Woo-commerce:
WooCommerce is a brilliant WordPress plugin. WooCommerce itself is a pretty lightweight eCommerce network, and it’s useful for simpler eCommerce websites, too. In many cases, WooCommerce depends on a lot of plugins because the main module WooCommerce is very small. That is where WooCommerce becomes difficult to scale, which later requires several plugins to reach the desired features, and inevitably, all these plugins can become very tedious to manage together.
Pros:
A plugin of WordPress (You get the value of WordPress CMS)
Typically lower cost of ownership
Easy to get started with
Lower learning curve
Works well with content focused sites that can leverage WordPress CMS capabilities
A large number of themes to choose from
Great for sites selling content like eBooks, podcasts, etc
Many free plugins available
Cheaper to host in most cases
Largest open source community and user base of any platform
Cons:
Weak database architecture for high order volume and scalability
Often requires many additional plugins to achieve ideal functionality that can lead to version conflicts and bugs
Minimal out of the box features
Weak product data capabilities for large and complex catalogs
Only one version of WooCommerce (no enterprise edition)
Tough to scale for larger sites
Conclusion - I will suggest you all to go with Magento as it has a waste popularity across the globe along with that you will get several plugins for your project that could make your work easy. I agree with the aspect that it is expensive then WooCommerce but with that we get enough security which is mandatory for us at the end of the day.
Oct 11, 2018
According to the experience in supporting worldwide e-commerce store retailers for long years, we realize that Magento is the best choice for opening an e-commerce store.
Magento is user-friendly,
It is highly secure compared to other platforms.
Can customize the store suitable for your selling products.
Magento provides a list of extensions and features.
Allows you to add an unlimited number of products.
...and many more.
So if you are looking to start an e-commerce business, Magento will be the right choice.
Oct 21, 2018
I would say that the answer to this question depends on many other factors like the number of products, the type of products, the geography and target audience etc. My answer would be, if you don't have a large number of products and you're not planning for a huge marketplace then Woocommerce would be ideal for you. The beauty of Woocommerce is that it is built on WordPress and, subsequently, you're given a lot of plugins for each of the features that require a customization. E.g., if the Wooocmmerce product page requires an additional feature of collecting some custom inputs or to set a custom price for each addon, you could simply download this plugin from Wordpress and get this done within a few minutes: https://wordpress.org/plugins/woo-custom-product-addons
(This would actually take a few days of effort if you're going to code this and do it yourself)
Oct 22, 2018
Anyone here looking to start an online eCommerce store, must read this post published in Inc magazine: https://www.inc.com/bill-carmody/top-5-ecommerce-platforms-for-2017.html
Nov 21, 2018
As an eCommerce Startup, it’s our job to provide the best products & services to the customers. So your each and every decision improve the user experience of your customers.
Let’s take a look at some facts and figures.
WooCommerce owns 47.3% market share making it the most widely used eCommerce platform at present.
Magento has a market share of 13.1% which makes it the second most used eCommerce platform.
WooCommerce is the most used platform so it is obvious that they would provide some security, but being a free platform has its limitations. WooCommerce allows its clients to enable many security measures but all of them are no compare to Magento’s security.
Magento takes a hefty fee every year from its users so it is but obvious that their security is of very high standards. Magento developers deploy security patches regularly with the latest of threats and attacks in mind.
Mar 3, 2019
Magento vs. WooCommerce, both are good eCommerce platforms along with other major platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce.
Oct 9, 2019
Magento is better than WooCommerce for e-commerce web application development because Magento offers all functionality for developing your e-commerce store with up-gradation, migration, bug-free website, maintenance, support, and business intelligence.
If we talk about the restaurant industry then Magneto is the best choice for developing an e-commerce store. Magento's e-commerce platform has much variety of themes compare to WooCommerce for any industry. Also, Magento gives the best POS and ERP Integration solution
If you want to read more about why Magneto is better than WooCommerce for e-commerce business then read more on: https://i-verve.com/blog/magento-for-restaurant-industry
Mar 11, 2020
Go for Magento if you have thousands of products. Otherwise, WooCommerce or Shopify is enough.
But you need to have a little bit of technical knowledge about WordPress and WooCommerce customization because WooCommerce is not that easy when you compare it to Shopify. I recommend you to Google WooCommerce vs Shopify for more information.
But if you are looking for really easy drag and drop builder for your eCommerce website, then I guess WIX is good for you.
Apr 21, 2020
I know it's pretty late to reply to this question But want to recommend you go with Magento if you have the massive budget.
Because if you go for Magento, then you have to hire a Magento developer or if you are choosing a Magento enterprise plan then it is very expensive. Still, if you have a small budget and bit information about development, then WooCommerce and Shopify are the best options for you.
Let make this more specific, Go go woocommerce, Because plugins, as well as woocommerce shortcode, will help you a lot in making your store successful.
Jul 2, 2020
Depending on your budget - because Magento is more costly, otherwise both the platforms are good for an eCommerce website.
Jul 3, 2020
Magento is the superb platform compare to Woocommerce for e-commerce development because of multi-functionality for developing your e-commerce store with up-gradation & migration.
WooCommerce is an open-source, completely customizable eCommerce platform for entrepreneurs worldwide.
Oct 30, 2020
Both Magento and WooCommerce are open source platforms, which is already a sigh of relief for ambitious projects.
The brightest difference between these platforms is that WooCommerce, a plug-in for WordPress websites, is highly intuitive in installation and use, while for Magento it’s mostly necessary to hire an experienced team of developers. In a word, a better choice would be both Magento and WooCommerce, depending on what starting point and what expectations you have.
Here are mentioned some the most criticals aspects of the platforms:
Magento is famous for its scalability, due to which opens endless perspectives for businesses. But the cost in one of the disadvantages, especially when you have limited budget for the beginning;
WooCommerce as a plug-in of WordPress will be easier in configuration for those, who have already dealt with WordPress before, and it’s a fact. But for the reason WooCommerce includes less features than Magento, some tools will be less powerful, for example product-filtering feature.
Follow the link, and perhaps this article will better help you to detect which eCommerce platform is able to make your dream closer to you.
Depending on your needs there are other solutions as well. Most are mentioned in the link above as well, such as Shopify.com.
https://www.wix.com is another one to consider.