Over the last few years, e-commerce solutions such as Shopify and WordPress, has become an indispensable sales channel for business owners as more consumers are turning to make purchases online, driven by the accessibility of internet access and technology adoption.
One of the most prominent drivers in e-commerce is the unprecedented usage of mobile devices. Smartphones have accounted for more than 60% of worldwide retail website visits in 2019. According to JP Morgan, mobile commerce (m-commerce) makes up 42.3% of all e-commerce transactions today in Singapore and this figure is expected to grow over the years (J.P. Morgan, 2019). That being said, it doesn’t mean that physical stores are any lesser in importance, however it is crucial to maintain a well-balanced omni-channel strategy.
Shopify or WordPress?
Among the numerous website builders available in the market, Shopify and WordPress are two widely used platforms. Under WordPress, there are 2 different versions of it, namely Hosted WordPress and Self-hosted WordPress.
Unlike Hosted WordPress where users pay a monthly fee to gain access to a wide range of features to build and maintain a website, the Self-hosted WordPress is a free and open-source website builder that gives users maximum control over their website. In this article, WordPress will be used to refer to Self-hosted WordPress (Singleton, 2021).
At EasiSell, we are often asked to recommend which website builder is better, but the truth is, each website builder has its own pros and cons. So it really depends on your needs.
Who are the target audience of Shopify and WordPress?
It is fair to say that Shopify’s main target audience are users who are lacking web development skills but want a sleek-looking website. WordPress, on the other hand, caters to users who are more experienced with web designs, possess a certain level of web development skills and want lots of personalisation (Singleton, 2021).
Ease of Use vs Customisability
Coding is the biggest difference when it comes to Shopify versus WordPress. As WordPress is open-source, the ability to tweak the codes enables greater customisability to the website – which is good news for users with web development skills. However, for users without technical knowledge, this can be a steep learning curve, and to some extent, frustrating for some.
Shopify, on the other hand, enables users without any technical or design skills to create a store easily without resorting to coding. Users can easily create and customise their online store using a range of templates provided. However, Shopify also allows you to edit the HTML and CSS of your website, which means that users with coding skills will be able to customize their stores to a greater extent.
Time Required to Set Up
Are you looking to build a robust store, but want it to set up quickly and start selling?
With its easy implementation and customisation of theme templates, Shopify allows users to set up their online store quickly and easily without getting technical. On the other hand, building online stores on WordPress is often more time consuming as it involves more manual work. However, this aspect offers more creative control and the end result is often better and more personalised (Singleton, 2021).
Pricing Plans & Costs Involved
It is a common misconception that WordPress is a totally free solution. At the same time, it is also difficult to determine the exact cost of a WordPress website because there are alot of variables to consider.
While a user can install WordPress for free, we have to take into consideration other costs such as web hosting (typically $13.99 per year), domain registration ($7.99 per month) and Secure Sockets Layer – SSL certificate ($15 per year) that come along with setting up a WordPress website. These features are inclusive in Shopify’s plan that users pay on a monthly basis.
However, when we compare the above costs to Shopify’s cheapest plan – Shopify Basic, the S$29 monthly fee that users pay to use the software-as-a-service solution is still relatively more expensive than hosting a WordPress website.
| Shopify | WordPress (powered by Bluehost) |
| Shopify Basic Plan ($29/month) | Starter Pack ($13.99/month) |
| Shopify Plan ($79/month) | Plus Pack ($17.99/month) |
| Shopify Advanced Plan ($229/month) | Pro Pack ($31.99/month) |
One other consideration to include for WordPress would be maintenance service cost as someone needs to constantly keep the website up to date with the latest theme, plugins and WordPress updates (Carmichael, 2021).
All in all, the only way to work out which platform is more economical for you in the long run is to make a clear list of all your requirements and price them up for each platform as best as you can.
Plugin Integrations
Both Shopify and WordPress provide apps and integrations that supplement your store. However, WordPress boasts more than 50,000 plugins for users to build a bespoke website as compared to Shopify, with over 1,200 reliable free and paid apps (Carmichael, 2021). As an open-source software which relies heavily on plugins for most of its features, WordPress definitely outperforms Shopify in this aspect.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
When it comes to SEO, WordPress vs Shopify is a debatable one. Both are robust ecommerce platforms, and they’ll help to make sure your products are appearing in front of the correct audience.
WooCommerce, WordPress’s e-commerce, is built using code optimized for SEO, and it comes with an impressive range of SEO plugins (e.g. Yoast). You can dig deep and add detailed meta descriptions and titles to your pages, to allow Google to crawl your website (Carmichael, 2021).
Some of our favorite SEO features include the ability to customise your URL to help users find your pages easily, and the helpful SEO guides and prompts provided throughout the building process.
On the other hand, Shopify also makes it easy to add basic SEO information to your store such as descriptions and titles for your images, products, and pages (Carmichael, 2021). Shopify has its own range of SEO plugins in the App Store like the free SEO Booster, which scans your website and offers fixes for issues that might be hindering performance.
In this area, while both platforms are comparable in terms of supporting SEO, WordPress wins by being able to offer a greater choice of SEO plugins than Shopify does.