Woocommerce and Magento are extremely popular e-commerce platforms for creating an online store. In a search report, it appeared that Woo-commerce powered by WordPress hosts around 28 million online e-commerce store websites. On the other hand, Magento is operating 170,000 websites.
It is very difficult to recommend any one of the platform because each of them has incredible features. Both of the platforms carry die-heart supporters and declare one of them the best among all. But before getting into this confusion, it’s better to understand WooCommerce and Magento, and what features are creating differences in them so that when the time comes for choosing an online e-commerce platform for your website, you should be well aware of both of them.
What is E-commerce?
E-commerce is an online platform on which buying and selling of goods and services occur through online e-commerce stores. Giant online stores like Amazon, Shopify, Olx, etc use e-commerce platforms for selling and buying products and services online.
In global research, it came up that e-commerce global retail can reach up to twenty-seven trillion by 2020 and we can see a big change in online businesses and stores in 2022.
E-commerce stores are undoubtedly very beneficial for everyone as it is faster and an easy way to shop for products and services. WooCommerce and Magento are the two mostly used e-commerce platforms to create these types of online stores and used to operate them.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin for WordPress, used to create and manage an online store with countless robust features, and is one of the most used e-commerce platforms for creating websites. It is affordable and accessible and at the same time, it offers endless customization and versatility.
What is Magento?
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform used to build websites for online shopping with flexibility and functionality. This platform is also used to create an online e-commerce store that is fully optimized with search engines and has magnet tools to manage websites. Magento can be claimed to be a user-friendly application that anyone can use who is not a developer and it is advanced yet easy to use because of its robust system. Magento is acquired by Adobe and many international online stores are made with Magento like Nike, Samsung, Coca-Cola, etc.
WooCommerce vs Magento: Scalability and Features
| WooCommerce | Magento | |
| Pricing | A low-cost open source platform. | High quality of open source but the maintenance cost is high. |
| Plugins and Extensions | There are almost 50 thousand plugins and extensions, some are paid but very cost-effective. | Magento has around free 2k extensions and plugins but the paid ones are quite expensive. |
| Themes and Designs | One theme for customization, moreover, 20 templates are available of which 3 are free and the rest are paid ranging from around $39 to 79. | There are two themes in Magento which are free. The rest are 10 which are paid costing $17 to $339. |
| Security | A web hosting provider sources all the security features. | Magento cares for security, that’s why it has two-factor authentication, and it is automatically PCI compliant. |
| Payment option | There are three payment methods and three gateways in WooCommerce and no transaction fees. | Five payment options with 2 payment gateways. No transaction fees. |
| Built-in feature | A vast range of built-in SEO features. | It is analytically efficient with SEO, sales, inventory, etc. |
Some major differences can be noted from the above mentioned comparisons. As WooCommerce is a part of WordPress, most people trust WordPress as it is great in terms of availability and simplicity. On the other hand, Magento is very extensive and based on a larger scale. It is powerful in terms of e-commerce operations and is used in operating larger e-commerce businesses. Magneto is more expensive than Woo-commerce, but it depends on the type of business your online e-commerce store is based on. WooCommerce vs Magento is not an easy choice as one needs to have complete learning on both of them.
WooCommerce Pros & Cons
As WooCommerce is used by almost 400,000 websites it is better to understand its Pros and Cons when you are about to choose this platform for your online e-commerce store:
Pros:
- In WooCommerce, you just need to pay for the web hosting as the store setup is free of cost
- WooCommerce is easy for those who know WordPress
- Can be integrated with Google Analytics through extension
- If you have your certificate, you can have SSL support
Cons:
- If you don’t have any idea about WordPress, then using WooCommerce would be difficult for you
- WooCommerce is costly when using themes and extensions for making your online e-commerce store
Magento Pros & Cons
As Magento is used by the biggest companies in the world but it has its pros and cons as well, let’s have a look at some of them:
Pros:
- Magento is scalable as it can handle large stores based on several products as your web hoster can manage it
- Checkouts are faster because of the streamlined process
- It is integrated with PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Braintree
Cons:
- Magento seems to be more into the developers than the normal users as it has some advanced, technical features
- Magento’s enterprise edition can cost very high as it is based on the market it needs to target
Conclusion
WooCommerce and Magento both are very famous e-commerce platforms so picking any one of the two seems to be a difficult task as it depends on the user’s needs and the company’s size and requirements.
But before choosing any one of these platforms for your e-commerce online store, you need to focus on some criteria like scalability, company size, store size, performance, security, management, and the overall budget.
The discussion for WooCommerce vs Magento will never end because if millions of websites are based on WordPress using the WooCommerce plugin besides, the users of Magento are no less. The decision is up to you about which e-commerce platform you need to choose for your online e-commerce store.
