Woocommerce VS Shopify
I wanted to address the conversation we had the other day (don’t worry im not billing you for this lol i just felt the need to explain my position a bit deeper lol) in regards to using woocommerce and wherein “everything needs a plugin and there’s a cost for it.”
just so we are comparing apples to apples on Dollars and Features i went to the list of pricing at Shopify …
To do all of the specific things we are doing with the current WooCommerce system it would be carried under the “Advanced Shopify” which sells for 299 per month. That comes out to $3588 per year. When you compare that to what we are paying for 4 WordPress plugins from WooCommerce
- Zapier Woocomm ($59)
- Shipment Tracking ($61)
- UPS Woocomm ($49)
- A pro zapier account ($240 a year)
- WP Engine Hosting ($420)
When you compare the annual of $829 a year to the $3588 that Shopify comes out to it is indeed less. Also more than anything… your site is owned if it is in WordPress/WooComm .. you can pack it up pick it off the WPEngine server and move it anywhere in the world to any other host and address it there. With Shopify the moment you don’t pay one month. your site is gone. Gone … all the work you put into it it isn’t yours. You are essentially leasing your website from them and it cant be moved anywhere and can only exist on Shopify’s servers. This also means that you are *locked in* to the set of functionally and layouts only available with the features and layouts they currently offer. That means if you want to create a custom layout that is not offered with them or do something from a functional aspect that they don’t currently do then there is no option for you on their platform.
Also lets say for devils advocate sake we would be able to get away with Shopify’s mid-grade package at $79 a month even that comes out to $948 a year which is about $80 more than what you are paying now for an owned vs a leased solution.
If you cant tell yes i’m passionate about this lol i wrote a blog post all about this long ago on my company site nolagraphics.com check it out :
One thing we can get you a cheaper rate than you currently have or what even shopify offers is your merchant processing. Currently with STRIPE you pay 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction with no monthly. We can likely get you a professional FirstData account wherein your transaction cost would be .02% + 25¢. This is a much better way to do it but the entry for it is a bit longer than stripe. While stripe has made themselves a leader in the industry there are definitely other more professional merchant gateways that offer much better rates. If you like we explore other ones that work with WooComm and how much their rates are. FirstData is the first one that comes to mind as they are the leader in the Payments Gateway and Transactions space … http://www.cardpaysolutions.com/woocommerce
is their current pricing (1.89% + $0.23 $19.95/month) I have seen other companies who sell FirstData directly offer FD at a much cheaper rate. One such company in New Orleans i worked with is Bonita Payments
Elliott of that company handled all my merchant accounts for many years his site and logo were also created by me 🙂
So, what do you think ?