Shopify handles the technical stuff

Might seem counterintuitive choosing a paid service over a free one, but here’s the trick: the money you put upfront is money saved in the long run.

Using WooCommerce you generally need to think about

Hosting Setting up SSL Making sure there are no security holes on your server Making sure the site is working all the time Set up a CDN to speed up site loading times

Now, if you have no idea about those things right above, then simply don’t think about it, and use Shopify. Your monthly fee includes the servers, speed is great, and there are whole teams whose duty is to make sure everything is secure and running 100% of the time.

The only alternative for getting this on WooCommerce is to pick a specialized hosting company that does this for you, but then you need to spend a premium for that, you can’t expect to pay cheap hosting and have you covered.

Security

Handing payment and security is not a joke, and Shopify implements PCI compliance by default for all the shops.

PCI compliance alone should be a reason to use Shopify over platforms that need you to manage this on your own.

You have support

While every hosting has (or should have!) support, they cannot solve everything, and if there is a problem in the payment process for example, it might come from the server software, from WordPress, from WooCommerce, the theme, or any other plugin you have installed that interferes. In this case, you might spend weeks before determining what’s the issue, talk to many different people, reach out plugins developers, paying to access support, or pay an expert to solve it on your behalf.

Shopify on the other hand is straightforward. If there is a problem on the site, you’re pretty sure it will be solved, and it’s all included in your monthly fee, and you can reach them out 24/7, even by phone.

Hosted means always evolving

One of the key difference in Shopify is that once the store is set up, you don’t really need to touch anything in the underlying platform. You just focus on your products and what your customers see.

WooCommerce on the other hand has many updates, WordPress has updates, you need to login (or have someone competent login) from time to time in the website to backup, apply those updates, run through the checkout process to make sure all is still running again as before, because some changes in the updates might have introduced a bug.

You don’t have such issues with Shopify. Consider that you hired their developers to always make sure everything runs smoothly, to introduce new features you can use to sell more, and never ever worry about the technical details of a website.

Advanced functionality

Both WooCommerce and Shopify can have their functionality enhanced by plugins/apps, if you need specific features that the standard packages do not handle.

Additional features for real-world shops

Shopify is not just an online platform. It grows up with you, and you can start by using the iPhone / iPad POS App, which syncs with your inventory, and you can expand their POS offering with other specialized hardware, something that WooCommerce does not provide.

Content marketing

While WordPress is considered among the best platforms for blogging, Shopify allows you to have a blog as well. Don’t be tricked by the fact that it builds e-commerce sites: they know perfectly well that content marketing is a great way to expose you and be found by search engines, so they make it easy to have a blog.