Selecting between WordPress and Shopify is a significant choice.

These are both very good platforms for online stores. However, the decision you choose will rely on your unique requirements and objectives.

We have simplified the process by outlining everything you need to know to decide between WordPress and Shopify when creating your next online store.

Now let us get started.

Reasons to Use Shopify vs. WordPress

Shopify is an e-commerce platform designed especially for those seeking a pre-made solution for creating an online store.

For those who have huge ideas but lack the technical know-how to start an online store from scratch, it is a viable solution.

This is the reason why:

• Shopify takes care of your website hosting.
• The Shopify setup tutorial makes it easy to get your store up and operating fast.
• When logged into your account, Shopify offers a specialized support team that you can contact by chat, message, or phone callback requests.

• It does not take a coder to create a stunning, mobile-friendly shop.
• You do not have to bother about handling domains from third-party platforms if you purchase your domain from Shopify.
• Selling products through other channels, such as Amazon and TikTok, is made simple with Shopify.

Let us now examine the reasons WordPress might be a wise option.

Reasons to Use WordPress vs. Shopify

A lot of companies use WordPress, a well-liked website building tool, to build e-commerce websites.

The main factor that makes people choose WordPress over Shopify is that WordPress is a more reliable and flexible platform that can manage more intricate websites.

It can also grow with your company. Thus, if your company grows, you will not have to worry about moving platforms later on.

Here are a few more reasons why you might consider WordPress vs. Shopify:

• You can choose from thousands of WordPress plugins to customize your site
• Because WordPress gives you complete control over your hosting provider and the plugins you use, it can help you keep costs under control.
• WordPress provides you greater control over how relevant keywords you show up for in search engine results.
• You may translate your websites into an infinite number of languages using WordPress, each with its own currency.
• WordPress’ Multisite functionality allows you to set up several sites under a single account.

Note: There are two versions of WordPress available: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. This page talks about WordPress.org. which, when most people refer to “WordPress,” is what they mean.

Comparing Shopify vs. WordPress Side by Side

Let us now examine the differences between these systems in more depth.

Here are some details to think about:

Web Hosting

Before you can build a website, you need a reliable web hosting service to keep your site running. 

This is how it operates:

You must save all of your files and data, including website code and photographs, in a secure location before you can publish the content of your website online.

For a monthly charge, web hosts store your stuff on servers. Moreover, make sure your website is accessible.

Since Shopify is fully hosted, all of your website’s files are kept there.

For those who would like not to go through the hassle of looking for and choosing a hosting provider, this is fantastic news.

But there is a cost associated with this convenience.

If you do not select your host, you have less control over the configurations and server environment.

For instance, without access to server logs, it is impossible for you to effectively debug—that is, identify and resolve—problems on your own.

That is acceptable to certain people. Maybe you are not interested in (or knowledgeable about) handling bugs yourself. Others, nevertheless, might desire that degree of power.

You are in charge of selecting your own hosting platform when using WordPress. it increases your authority over the server environment.

It also implies that there will be an extra charge.

The cost of hosting options varies based on your site’s size and traffic volume, among other considerations.

For instance, Siteground provides hosting with a monthly starting price of $2.99 for the first year. This includes up to 10,000 visitors every month.

Platform Design and UX

The user interfaces of WordPress and Shopify are both simple and easy to use, making it easy to discover what you need. and efficiently run your website.

This is the appearance of a new website in Shopify admin:

And here’s the WordPress admin panel for a new website: 

Let us examine Shopify and WordPress’s user experiences (UX) in more detail.

Let we start with Shopify.

The setup tutorial provided by Shopify is one feature that makes it stand out:

Store owners can select a template, add products, and set up their store with the aid of the setup instructions in order to begin selling goods.

It is very easy to add products. You have two options for adding products: using a CSV file to submit products in bulk or individually.

Product uploading on an individual basis is simple. Just complete the fields (title, description, price, etc.), and when you click “Save,” Shopify will add products to your shop.

WordPress e-commerce store setup is more complicated than Shopify e-commerce store setup. because selling goods on a WordPress website requires the usage of an ecommerce plugin.

Some popular (and free) ecommerce plugins are WooCommerce, WP EasyCart, and Easy Digital Downloads.

WooCommerce (shown below) is the most widely used plugin for building an e-commerce WordPress website, with over 5 million installations. 

WooCommerce guides you through seven steps to get you ready to sell your products:

Additionally, posting items is comparable to Shopify. They can be added one at a time or via a CSV file.

To add products to your shop, fill out the form for each product you want to publish, then click “Publish.”

Still, Shopify’s the clear winner when it comes to UX. The setup guide is comprehensive and takes users through every step.

But if you’re confident building websites, you likely won’t need this type of guidance.

Storefront Design

Users of WordPress and Shopify can select from a selection of predefined themes or build their own bespoke storefront.

First, let us discuss Shopify’s themes.

There are over 140 themes available on Shopify:

Furthermore, each theme is nearly ready to use as soon as it is installed. Simply tweak the branding and alter the wording to better represent your company.

In a few hours, your storefront may be ready.

Additionally, thousands of free themes are available in WordPress‘ theme library. Additionally, you may view ones made especially for e-commerce stores by filtering them by “E-Commerce”:

Additionally, WordPress’s great flexibility allows you to alter almost any aspect of the appearance of your website.

But setting up a shop using WordPress might require more work.

It can take weeks or months to perfect most themes because they are not ready right out of the box. particularly if web design is new to you.

Fortunately, you can expedite the process by purchasing page-building plugins like Divi, which offer ready-made templates and drag-and-drop page builders.

Ecommerce Functionality

WordPress and Shopify take distinct approaches to e-commerce capabilities. Your needs will determine the one you select.

In general, Shopify and WordPress allow you to:

• Market both tangible and intangible goods
• Personalized shipping costs
• Offer a variety of product options.
• Include the ability to customize products.
• Plan and implement sales and incentives
• Establish safe payment processing.
• Make and accept gift cards.
• Create manual or automatic tax rates.
• Combine dropshipping and print-on-demand systems.
• Integrate upsell and cross-sell features to boost revenue.
• Link your online store to a physical location’s point-of-sale (POS) system.

Shopify is an e-commerce specialist. It therefore offers all you require to launch and grow an online store.

And in Shopify’s App Store, you can search through different categories—like “Finding products” and “Selling products”—to find a free or paid app that suits your specific needs:

WordPress also provides both premium and free plugins. Additionally, more than 1,000 plugins are made especially for e-commerce features:

However, Shopify’s categories make app discovery easier. To find what they need, WordPress users must go through pages of plugins.

Multi-Channel Commerce

You can use WordPress and Shopify to sell products in addition to your online store. However, Shopify simplifies things.

“Multi-channel commerce” refers to selling outside of your e-commerce site.

Selling your goods through several channels can involve the following:

• Internet markets such as Etsy and Amazon
• physical storefronts
• pop-up stores similar to seasonal marketplaces
• Social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (Meta)

Everything syncs to your web store with multi-channel commerce, allowing you to manage orders and inventory.

For instance, if you run out of scarves at your weekend pop-up shop, your website will indicate that they are “out of stock.” Thus, you can avoid performing manual updates.

First, let us examine Shopify’s multi-channel commerce features.

Shopify allows you to link your store to Handshake, Facebook, Instagram, and other wholesale marketplaces.

You will require additional apps if you wish to sell on other platforms. You can sell goods using these applications on:

• TikTok
• Etsy
• Amazon
• eBay
• Walmart

Additionally, Shopify integrates with POS systems, which are the equipment needed to conduct in-person sales and take payments. so that you can set up business at places like markets or physical stores.

WordPress is also capable of connecting to many channels, such as Google, eBay, and Amazon. However, WordPress multi-channel commerce setup is more complicated than Shopify multi-channel commerce setup.

It first relies on the e-commerce plugin you use. It takes extra plugins to be downloaded if you use WooCommerce before you can connect with other channels.

For example, you need to download the free Facebook for WooCommerce plugin if you want to sell products on Facebook. 

Additionally, a different plugin is required if you want a POS integration.

One advantage of WordPress’s extensive plugin library is that there are frequently free solutions available.

Search Engine Optimization Capabilities

Compared to Shopify, WordPress gives you more control over search engine optimization (SEO), which is a collection of techniques meant to increase your exposure in search engine results.

Why is this relevant?

Because generating organic traffic (unpaid visits to your website from search engine results) helps you reach more people and drive more sales.

Assume you are a vendor of knit cardigans.

You want your shop to appear on the first page of Google results when someone searches for “knitted cardigans.”

And you accomplish that by making sure your website is search engine optimized.

Among the various strategies used in SEO are technical SEO, which focuses on enhancing your shop’s technical aspects, and on-page SEO, which optimizes specific pages.

Technical SEO

WordPress users have more control over technical SEO. Technical SEO includes things like submitting your sitemap to Google, creating a logical website structure (shown below), and improving your site speed.

Users are able to select their own hosting company, for instance. in order to guarantee a quick website.

They can also add custom code to configuration files, such as the.htaccess file, to speed up the loading of their shop.

These activities are not compatible with Shopify.

But tools like Yoast (available for Shopify and WordPress) help users manage aspects of their technical and on-page SEO.

On-Page SEO

Both WordPress and Shopify have great on-page SEO capabilities that allow you to make sure your individual webpages are optimized.

Both WordPress and Shopify users can:

• Write custom title tags (the titles that appear in search results) and meta descriptions (the body copy that appears below titles in search results) for each page. If you want to generate converting meta and product descriptions with the help of AI, try the Ecommerce Booster app. 
• Optimize content with keywords (the words and phrases you want to rank for in the search results).
• Manage internal links (the links on a page that point to another page from the same domain).
• Add alt text (the text that describes an image) to images.
• Customize URL slugs (the last part of a URL, underlined in the picture below):

And whether you use Shopify or WordPress, you can perform keyword research for your site using the Keyword Strategy Builder tool.

Here’s how.

Open the tool. To collect keywords automatically, add your seed keywords, pick your country, and click the green “Create list” button. (You can also add keywords manually or from other Semrush tools.) 

Then, you’ll see a list of topics and pages (groups of keywords relevant to a specific topic):

Choose which keyword clusters you want to include in your blog posts and other webpages. Once you’re ready to create content, click “Write content.”

Select which device you will write for (desktop or phone) and click “Send keywords.”

This launches Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant—a tool to help you optimize your content for search engines.

Either copy and paste your content or type directly in the text editor:

The tool will then make recommendations for improving originality, tone of voice, readability, and SEO. That you can use to improve your content.

If you use WordPress, the SEO Writing Assistant plugin can analyze content in the WordPress editor:

GDPR Compliance

Both Shopify and WordPress have tools to help users meet the requirements set by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

GDPR is a body of legislation designed to safeguard people’s data and privacy rights within the EU.

You can take the following actions to comply with GDPR:

• Cookie consent banners
• Giving consumers the choice to refuse data gathering
• establishing a procedure for deleting data upon user request
• alerting users when a leak of personal data occurs

Shopify users can download the Privacy & Compliance app to:

• Show banners requesting approval to use cookies.
• Give consumers the option to refuse data gathering
• Include a cookie preference banner so people may choose more about the information you gather.

WordPress also has various plugins users can add to their shops to make them GDPR-compliant:

Regardless of the platform you select, you should speak with a lawyer to determine what steps your store must take to ensure compliance with privacy regulations.

Multilingual Sites

Shopify and WordPress are both multilingual, but WordPress allows you to convert your store into more languages and currencies than Shopify does.

This is significant because it provides a better user experience to have distinct websites that use the language and currency of a specific location.

For example, if your website is available in German, visitors from Germany will view the German version, which has prices stated in euros.

WordPress users can create multilingual sites with different currencies through plugins like WooCommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency with WPML. 

If you use WordPress, you can add as many languages as you want to your shop.

However, bear in mind that adding too many languages may slow down your website, which may have an impact on your SEO results.

Additionally, Shopify makes it simple to add several currencies and languages to your store without having to start from scratch with each edition.

Up to 20 different languages can be added to your shop with Shopify’s Translate & Adapt tool.

And you can add different currencies.

Multiple Sites

Shopify does not permit users to create several shops inside a single account, whereas WordPress does.

Assume you open a storefront where you sell dog leashes.

After that, you open a brand-new store where you sell abstract art.

The two markets are extremely dissimilar. Additionally, you ought to divide them among two distinct websites.

You must register for a new account if you utilize Shopify. which, for some, would be acceptable.

However, it might be a pain for individuals who manage numerous e-commerce stores to sign in to various websites using separate usernames and passwords.

You may activate the Multisite feature with WordPress. It enables users to switch between several websites within a single account.

If you’re comfortable with code, you can enable WordPress Multisite by adding this line of code in your wp-config.php file:

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

Then, configure your Multisite Network by logging into your WordPress site and going to “Tools” > “Network Setup.”

You can also use a tool like InfiniteWP to manage multiple sites.

Mobile Apps for Shop Owners

Apps for WordPress and Shopify allow users to manage their stores while on the road.

Let us say you unexpectedly need to delete a product from your business while you are not at your computer. It is possible that there are problems with your manufacturer and that a product has to be taken offline.

Shopify’s free iOS and Android app lets users manage products, process orders, run marketing campaigns, and communicate with customers.

If you’re using WordPress and WooCommerce, you can download the WooCommerce Mobile App to create products, manage orders, print labels, and track stats.

Mobile Shopping Experience for Customers

Both Shopify and WordPress are appropriate for mobile sales. However, Shopify makes it easier to make your store mobile-friendly.

And nearly half of ecommerce purchases will come from mobile devices by 2024, according to Shopify.

Therefore, you must make sure that customers can purchase merchandise directly from your mobile shop.

To be compatible with mobile commerce, your store should:

• Feature a responsive layout that simplifies shopping on smaller screens.
• Quick loading will prevent clients from leaving before completing a purchase.
• Provide payment choices for mobile devices.

Let’s look at each point in more detail:

Responsive Design

Every Shopify theme is responsive, so it looks fantastic on any kind of device that your visitors may use.

It is challenging to ensure that any WordPress theme will be responsive because there are so many to select from. Thus, before using any theme, make sure to examine it.

Load Time

Websites built with WordPress or Shopify are often quick.

Remember that the data you upload, the apps and plugins you install, and the theme you choose can all affect how quickly your website loads. Thus, you may need to address the issue if your website is running slowly.

Mobile Payment

With no additional setup required, Shopify Payments provides users with fast access to mobile payment alternatives such as Apple Pay.

It varies depending on the e-commerce plugin you install with WordPress. However, well-known plugins like WooCommerce integrate mobile payment methods.

Customer Support

When it comes to support, Shopify offers more options than WordPress.

Contacting support is the quickest method to find answers to your queries on anything from setting up a test order to connecting your online store to a physical location.

Shopify provides you with immediate access to a chat support area, a message form where you can ask for a callback, and a discussion forum where you can interact with other Shopify users.

You can find solutions to almost any problem thanks to the abundance of resources.

WordPress is open source, which allows for public access to and modification of the code. It therefore does not have the same degree of backing.

Although there is not a support chat, there is a lively online forum where community members may ask issues and get helpful answers from volunteers.

There will be dedicated support teams and forums for every plugin and theme. For responses, you can therefore get in touch with them directly.

Pricing Specifics

Shopify can be substantially more expensive than WordPress. However, it relies on the hosting company, plugins, etc. that you select.

Let us examine the details:

Shopify Costs

Shopify starts at $39 per month for the basic plan on a month-to-month subscription. 

Shopify states that small enterprises and individuals can use their Basic plan. You can connect to numerous sales channels, add an infinite number of products, and conduct worldwide business.

Additionally, you must pay Shopify $14.95 a year for a domain.

WordPress Costs

You may use WordPress for free.

However, you still need to locate reliable web hosting and pay for a name.

As we have already indicated, hosting costs differ. Domain names cost between $10 and $20 a year.

Final Verdict: Shopify or WordPress?

If you’re still asking yourself, “Should I use WordPress or Shopify?” here’s a quick way to tell:

You’ll love WordPress if you:

• Desire a website with lots of customization options
• Are at ease using code, or own the funds to employ someone

And you’ll love Shopify if you:

• Want a quick and easy way to create a website?
• Not interested in coding and lacking the funds to hire assistance

Whichever option you choose, it’s a good idea to use Site Audit after you launch your online shop to gauge your site’s overall health.

Start by creating a project by clicking the “+ Create project” button.

Enter your domain and project name:

On the next screen, you’ll configure your basic settings (pictured below). This detailed setup guide will help you go through the settings. 

When you’re done, click the “Start Site Audit” button.

When the audit is complete, it gives you an overview of your site’s health:

For additional in-depth information, click on any of the many tabs and metrics. to comprehend the steps you must take to enhance the SEO of your store.

While Site Audit works perfectly for both WordPress and Shopify, the Ecommerce Booster app is focused specifically on Shopify stores. You can audit and optimize your store for better conversions with this app. 

The user experience, page speed, accessibility on your website, and text and graphic content are the primary components of page performance. You may also create product and meta descriptions, enhance image quality, create alt texts, and eliminate image backdrops with the aid of its integrated AI.