Magento vs. WooCommerce: A Brief Overview
                     Are you also one of those willing to step towards the digital world
and start your own online eCommerce store? If yes, then you must
be  having  several  platform  options  in  your  mind.  Well,  majorly,
people  choose  between  two  platforms  that  are  Magento  and
Woocommerce.  Both  of  the  platforms  are  having  their  own
characteristics,  features,  and  functionalities.  Now,  the  major
question, which is best for your online eCommerce store? If you are
also stuck in such a question, then we are here to help you out. Yes,
here we are going to have an unbiased comparison between both of
the platforms. After going through the details, we are sure then you
will be able to choose the best for you. So, let’s get started.
Magento vs. WooCommerce: A Brief Overview:
Before  getting  in  deep  with  the  comparison,  it  is  necessary  to
understand what these two platforms exactly are and what makes
them stand out amongst others.
What Is Magento?
Magento is actually an open-source eCommerce platform that helps
businesses to create their  online  store and accept  the payments
along with managing the products. The best part about this platform
is its community edition that is available for free to download. From
this, there are several solutions available that come with additional
features  and functionality,  along with  included cloud hosting and
support as well.
What Is WooCommerce?
Woocommerce is  an  open-source  E-Commerce  platform  that  has
been designed on the top of WordPress. At this platform, you can
easily  create  an  online  store  and  accept  payment  along  with
managing  the  inventory  and  others.  This  platform  runs  on
WordPress. Hence you get access to thousands of WordPress plugins
and themes  that  help  you  a  lot  in  growing  up  your  eCommerce
business.
Both of the platforms are open-source software and flooded with a
lot of extensions and themes. Apart from this, you can easily use the
templates  for  designing  your  eCommerce  store.  Along  with  the
given information, it is also necessary to take a look over the pros
and cons that make both the platforms unique and different from
each other.
What Are The Factors That You Must Look In an ECommerce
Store?
If you are a newbie and just stepping towards the digital world, it is
important for you to consider a few factors. The factors that must be
included  in  your  bucket  list  are  budget,  ease  of  use,  payment
methods, and scalability as well.
Budget: It includes the coast that you need to invest in starting a
new store and other recurring expenses that affect your business.
Ease to use: it is important for you to determine how the platform
is for the beginners to use.
Payment Method: It  is important for an eCommerce platform to
support multiple payment gateways. In case you are willing to add
certain payment methods, and it is necessary for you to ensure that
your platform is supporting them.
Scalability: It  is  necessary  for  an E-Commerce platform to  scale
along with your growing business needs.
These are only some of the basic things important to be considered
with you. Some other factors include inventory, Taxes, invoices, and
more.
In this Magento vs. woocommerce comparison, we are going to have
a review on both the platforms on the basis of some major factors.
Cost
Cost is one of the most significant factors that affect the decision of
every  startup.  Whenever  you  are  starting  with  an  e-commerce
website, it is necessary for you to evaluate the cost, and also you
need to understand that how these stores will grow along with other
resources like add-ons and other services
Cost Of Magento ECommerce Platform
Magento is self-hosted open-source software. There are two editions
available, and the first one is the community edition. You can easily
download and install this yourself or any of your hosting providers.
There are no added features included in this version, and you need
to  pay any  short  amount  for  the  same.  Additionally,  it  does  not
come with any sort of support.
The second version available for your Magento commerce is a paid
plan with cloud hosting. The pricing of the plan has not been listed
on the official website of Magento. The small business plan is known
as  the  Magento  commerce,  and  it  is  available  at  a  monthly
subscription amount with a given you please lessons cost.
In Magento, the paid plans are quite expensive. But still, they offer
more  value  with  high-performance  cloud  hosting  along  with
professional support and additional features and functionalities. The
paid  plans  available  at  Magento  include  several  features  that
otherwise needs a paid extension.
It  is  also  necessary  for  you  to  determine  that  the  Magento
community  version  is  not  at  all  cheap.  The  core  software  is,
however, download for free, but still, you need at least VPS hosting
plan  for  cloud  hosts  like  Amazon  Web  services  for  running  it
successfully.
This means that even if you are using the free version, then still the
hosting bill will be quite higher than the shared hosting plans.
In  case you purchase the paid extensions,  themes,  or  you hire  a
Magento developer to work on your store, then all these factors will
significantly enhance the costs.
Cost Of Woocommerce
Woocommerce is  actually  available  as free software.  Anyone can
easily  download  it  and  install  it,  and  also  it  runs  on  top  of  the
WordPress  that  means  you  can  easily  install  it  on  any  of  your
WordPress  sites.  It  is  necessary  for  you  to  determine  the
Woocommerce  itself  is  free,  but  still,  it  is  important  for  you  to
register  a  domain  name,  SSL  certificate  along  with  a  WordPress
hosting  account  so  that  you  can easily  start  your  woocommerce
store. It totally depends upon you that how much amount you are
willing to spend on purchasing the domain name along with the SSL
certificate  and  hosting  plans.  As  compared  to  the  self-hosted
community  edition,  it  is  quite  cheaper,  but  still,  there is  a lot  of
money you need to spend just for a startup.
There are several woocommerce hosting companies available that
can provide  discounted  hosting  plans  to  reduce the  startup  cost
significantly.
Simply, it can be stated that the cost of starting the woocommerce
store is a lot lower as compared to the Magento community edition.
There are several choices available for woocommerce hosting plans
as compared to Magento that helps a lot in choosing the plan that
actually suits your pocket. Apart from hosting, the extensions and
themes for woocommerce also affect your cost. However, it is true
that at the woocommerce platform, you get access to more than
55000  WordPress  extensions  and  thousands  of  free  WordPress
themes.
There are several free woocommerce plugins available that can be
considered as the alternative extensions. In order to reduce your
cost  further,  you  can  also  use  the  free  woocommerce  themes
available online. With the affordable hosting plans along with a lot of
cost-free extensions and themes,  it  is  undoubtedly  less costly  as
compared to Magento.
Security Comparison
According to a recent study, there are more than 30000 websites
that get hacked every day. Considering the statistics, it  becomes
quite  a  challenging  task  to  keep  the  sites  secure  and  save,
especially for the E-Commerce online store owners. There is a lot of
customer information along with the payment details that usually
get stored in the database of an e-commerce website. Hence the
optimum security  has  become a  top  priority  for  the  users.  Both
platforms  of  commerce  and  Magento  help  you  in  implementing
several security measures.
Woocommerce is actually a great option for all those who are at the
beginner level, and after a short period of time, you will realize that
there are some limitations  when it  comes to its  ability.  You may
need to invest quite  more amount of  cost  as compared to other
platforms.  However,  at  starting,  you will  feel  like you are paying
less, but with time and along with enhancing your requirements, the
costs will automatically get increased.
As compared to woo-commerce, Magento provides stronger security
for all the online stores. It comes with the latest free security scan
tool that helps a lot in monitoring the site and updating the malware
and finding out all the unauthorized exercise. Apart from this, there
are some amazing security extensions that have been added to the
Magento 2 platform in a much better way.
Taking the security factor into consideration, Magento clearly wins
over woocommerce platform.
Support Comparison
Both of the Magento and woocommerce platforms are open source
and providing the advantage of attracting a large user base and
community. Also, the community has been associated with both of
the  platforms  around  the  world.  The  community  is  always  there
whenever you are in need of actual help with the technicalities and
functionalities of both the stores. Hence here, there is actually a tie
between both of the platforms.
Ease Of Use
This  is  one  of  the  most  important  considerations  whenever  you
select  an  E-Commerce  platform.  Mostly  it  happens  that  the  E-
Commerce  store  owners  are  not  having  in  technical  or  coding
knowledge.  In  such  a  situation,  all  they  want  is  to  have  an
eCommerce platform that is easy and convenient to use. If you are
thinking about getting started the project, then you might feel like
complicated in learning the codes and terms. It will be necessary for
you to learn some of the latest codes in technical terms. Apart from
this, there are several functions and features available in Magento
that need professional users to make the necessary configurations.
When it comes to e-commerce, it is associated with the WordPress
plugin,  and hence it  comes with  a  simple  installation  process  as
compared to the Magento store.  Even if  a person belongs to the
non-technical background, then also he can easily set up and his
online store without putting much effort. It will not be wrong to state
that  woocommerce  actually  is  a  set  of  wizards  that  makes  the
installation  process  easier  and comfortable  for  the  users.  At  this
platform,  all  the  users  need  to  do  is  to  take  all  the  steps  and
configure everything correctly.
Hence, when it comes to ease of use criteria, woo-commerce is the
winner.
Finally
Both of the platforms are having their own advantages. Each one of
them comes with their  own strengths  and weaknesses.  It  will  be
right  to state that  woocommerce is  actually  a more user-friendly
platform, while Magento is actually popular for the variety of popular
extensions. While choosing the E-Commerce platform for you, it’s
necessary  to  put  all  the  needs  of  your  online  store  into
consideration. If you are having a startup or a small business with
enough performance and ease to use then, woocommerce will  be
the best-suited option for you. In contrast, if you are thinking about
scaling your business to a global brand or thinking about stepping
towards the global  world,  then Magento will  actually be the right
choice for you. Hence, this was all in the comparison of these two
platforms for you.