I: Heard of Nike, Olympus, Gant, or Ghirardelli?
You: Yes.
I: Heard of Six Leaves, Pomegranate Gifts, Copyroast?
You: Ummm….
Nike (Australia), Olympus, Gant, Ghirardelli, and many such companies use Magento. While Six Leaves, Pomegranate Gifts, Copyroast, FOD Control, use WooCommerce. The difference is not the platform they use. The difference is the scale of the company, owing to which the e-Commerce platform has been chosen.
With Magento, you can create large scale e-Commerce stores to cater to a wider audience, and even manage complex products. WooCommerce is apt for small to medium scale businesses, and has been modelled for simple to manage products.
If you’re looking to set-up your e-Commerce store and are wondering which platform you should choose? The points which differentiate the two platforms have to be explored, and that’s exactly what we will be looking at today.
Before deciding on a platform, you need to evaluate your requirements, which will decide the platform feasibility. We’ll focus on the most important ones:
- Type of Business Model
- Number and Type of Products
- Account and Customer Management
- Budget
Type of Business Model
WooCommerce is for those of you, who want to explore online-selling opportunities. Mind you, a purely e-Commerce website can be built using WooCommerce as well. But it’s an option, you should choose when, you have a website and are looking to add an e-Commerce module, as well as maintain focus on the rest of your website.
As compared to WooCommerce, Magento is purely for an e-Commerce website. Your website, is just the shop. And that is what Magento is built for. Large scale websites prefer building their website on a different platform, and then using Magento, just for the shop. This could be an option you could consider too.
Number and Type of Products
A major differentiator would be the number of products and their types. Say you have fewer than a hundred products, and want an e-Commerce solution. For you, WooCommerce is the way to go. Using Magento, would be like hiring an astronaut to drive your car.
With the functionality WooCommerce provides, you could very easily manage the products yourself. Magento, is apt, when you have thousands of products. It provides bulk management tools (to change multiple product attributes at once), and is quicker.
As far as product types are concerned, WooCommerce by default provides standard product types. But you can make use of extension plugins to add a product type you would need. Which makes it simple, when you have only a few products, and need maybe one or two additional types. Magento on the other hand, provides you an option to add various types of products, which can be simple or complex. So, if you have varied products, and do not want to hunt for additional plugins, Magento gets a one up.
Account and Customer Management
Magento provides account management as part of the solution. You have it in-built. CRM systems are also available, to manage customers and customer groups as well.
WooCommerce has to be integrated with an external service, or another WordPress plugin for accounting. Customer and resource management for WooCommerce, is handled by WordPress, which allows creation of various user roles, and groups.
Budget
The one point that greatly stands as a vote-swinger, is the budget factor. With WooCommerce, your investment is low, and it can stay low, because there is a lot you can do by yourself. The popularity of WooCommerce and it’s ease of use, has made it real simple to find readily available solutions for any hurdle you encounter.
With Magento, you’re better off hiring a developer. It has a steep learning curve. Sure, it provides you everything you need. But you have to find the settings in the first place. And paying a developer 10 hours to configure something, you could have done yourself using WooCommerce, in about an hour, is senseless. And because of its complexity, the number of developers available are few as well.
The Final Word
Magento, is a high-end solution, for large scale businesses, whereas WooCommerce is a solution for small to medium scale business models. However, WooCommerce has some high-profile clients as well, such as Mango Languages, and Cambridge Brewing co.
Well, taking the final decision, is definitely not an easy task, and I hope I’ve helped. If you want some expert one-on-one feedback, do leave your comments, or send us an email, and we’ll be glad to help!
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