Magento has always been THE most sought-after platform for the webmasters contemplating on starting an Ecommecerce website. The ease of website development, the savorous features, the user-friendliness – everything leaps with Magento. But now, there is a new player in town: WooCommerce. And it is giving Magento a serious run for its money.
WooCommerce has had a meteoric rise in the web development community. And it is surely fuelled by some very authentic reasons. This highly powerful Ecommerce platform is being increasingly sought-after and there is no dearth of webmasters who are preferring it over Magento.
And this begs the question: is WooCommerce better than Magento? Or does it fall short of the mark. Let’s decrypt the answer more structurally:
How do they compare
To begin with, Woocommerce is also an open source platform, like Magento. The business model used in either of the platforms is freemium. And if you wish to have a blog site integrated to your Ecommerce website, both allow you to add the same. When it comes to integrating more and more product listings, you have an infinitely long option with Magento as well as WooCommerce.
So, when Magento and WooCommerce are so similar in so many respects, what makes them different?
In Terms of Hosting Space
When you start with your website, you may not need a lot of bandwidth or web space. But as you grow in business, you will keep on adding products in the listing and that’s when the hosting space or the lack of it will play a major role.
Now, when it comes to Magento, it does not demand as many resources as you would imagine. A standard Magento website has a great sense of structure and a system in place that can handle heavy loads even if the hosting space is not far too elaborate. Yes, you would require a powerful server, but even with the low memory allocation, the website may do the job just fine.
On the other hand, the increasing load on a WooCommerce website does deter the website’s loading speed and its overall operation and makes it a little too unwieldy. So, when you have astoundingly large numbers, then a web space with large allocation would serve you well.
Where Magento Scores
Magento proves to be highly resourceful when it comes to hosting more than one online store under the same domain. Also, you might need just one backend. This single backend lets you manage several number of Magento websites from a single installation.
Cross selling and upselling prove to be the differentiators for any Magento site. The site admin finds enough customization capabilities to let the store be operated in the manner most controlled. Not to mention, the Magento extensions that really go a long way in taking the site’s functionality beyond the standards and initial specifications. Also, on the Internet, there is a truckload of beguiling Magento themes that also happen to be compatible and highly responsive.
Where Does WooCommerce Hold the Edge
WooCommerce has its own highly interactive and user friendly product rating mechanism that makes it amazingly simple for users to rate products by writing reviews. Based on the reviews, you can further make alterations in terms of some coupon codes for the reviewers. This further encourages them post reviews and goes on to increase the engagement between your brand and the consumers.
Navigating through WooCommerce website proves to be a clinical affair. But one area where it falls behind Magento is that it does not have a versatile filtering option. When you are looking for products with certain specifications, you will have to be contend with the facility of filtering the product based on just one of the attributes, which eventually takes more time in finding a product.
But it more than makes up with its provision of affiliate product selling, amounting to which you can list products for selling even if you don’t own them. And when it comes to displaying widgets, it has a pretty WordPress-ian way of getting them up on your website.
Concluding, it can safely be said that WooCommerce is arguably a great platform for beginners. But when you are looking for a long term value with expansion in hindsight, Magento will provide you the room to spread your wings.