Shopify vs WordPress | Which Is Best for You in 2024?

Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers. Learn more

shopify vs wordpressWho is the best website builder for your online store? WordPress is an old titan – most of the internet runs on it. Shopify, by comparison, is newer on the scene, and a platform dedicated to ecommerce. In this battle of old vs. new, there can only be one winner!

In our best ecommerce platforms list, Shopify takes our top spot thanks to its incredible sales features perfect for stores of all sizes. But its customization is limited compared to WordPress, which allows you to make any store you want using plugins…so which one will take the crown?

The main concern you want to solve with your store is whether it can not only manage your business but grow it to larger heights.  We’ve done the research and had hands-on experience with every platform to give you this definitive breakdown and see once and for all who’s the victor between Shopify vs WordPress.

Best for Sales-Specific Features

4.8

out of 5
Top Choice
Ease Of Use

4 out of 5 stars

Design Flexibility

4.4 out of 5 stars

Sales Features

4.7 out of 5 stars

Website Features

4.6 out of 5 stars

Customer Score

4.4 out of 5 stars

Help and Support

3.9 out of 5 stars

Value For Money

3.6 out of 5 stars

Flexible Content Management System

3.4

out of 5
Ease Of Use

3.2 out of 5 stars

Design Flexibility

2 out of 5 stars

Features

2.2 out of 5 stars

Customer Score

3.9 out of 5 stars

Help and Support

1.3 out of 5 stars

Value For Money

4.8 out of 5 stars

In a rush? Wishing someone would just tell you exactly which platform is best for you instead of reading this whole comparison? Well, the good news is, we have a quick and easy quiz for you! Simply answer a few questions to get a personalized recommendation…

What type of website do you want to create?

Find Your Builder

What’s the Difference between Shopify and WordPress?

Shopify is what’s known as a ‘website builder’. So to understand what Shopify is, we first need to know what a website builder is.

A website builder is an online tool that helps people with limited or no technical knowledge build their very own website. They then pay a small fee each month to the website builder platform in order to keep their site live.

Shopify is built specifically for ecommerce, so it’s only ever used for creating online stores (as opposed to blogs or online résumés).

a store template with t-shirts and a cute illustration of a couple on a lake

WordPress is a little different. It comes in two forms – WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

WordPress.com is a blogging platform that works in the same way as a website builder, allowing you to easily create your own website. WordPress.org is self-hosted software, and is far more technically advanced.

You can create just about any type of website with WordPress.org – including online stores – so it’s this version of WordPress that we’ll be comparing to Shopify.

WordPress.org pattern homepage

Staggeringly, WordPress.org is the force behind almost a third of all websites on the internet. On the other hand, you have Shopify – a world-renowned ecommerce platform that’s used by major businesses and celebrities alike and powers over 600,000 online stores in total.

Shopify is made to help people start their own online stores, meaning it has all the tools you could need right at your fingertips. Unlike Shopify, WordPress doesn’t come set up for ecommerce, but there are some great plugins you can install to start selling online we recommend the WooCommerce plugin to turn your WordPress site into an online store.

To set up a store with Shopify, all you do is create an account, choose a theme, add your products, and you’re off. In contrast, WordPress takes a little more time. You need to find hosting first (we recommend Bluehost), then install themes and plugins to get started and customize your website.

Further Information:

We Recommend Shopify if

  • You have limited technical knowledge and want to create your own online store
  • You want to keep good track of your budget
  • You value convenience

Check Out Shopify Here!

We Recommend WordPress if

  • You have some form of coding knowledge
  • You have the budget to pay for a developer’s help
  • You want total control over your site’s customization

Check Out WordPress Here!

Shopify vs WordPress: Quick Comparison

Shopify WordPress
Ease of Use
Winner: Shopify
Easier to use, and requires little to no coding knowledge. More technical but gives you almost limitless customization.
Build Time
Winner: Shopify
Quick to get your store up and running with bulk product uploads and an intuitive dashboard. Slightly lengthier process unless you’re a coding whizz. You’ll need to choose and install an ecommerce plugin.
Pricing
Winner: Shopify
Offers a 3-day free trial and three main pricing plans which range from $29/month to $299/month. Free to use but can quickly escalate to a few hundred dollars when you pay for themes, hosting, plugins, and tutorials.
Themes
Winner: It's a Tie!
Over 100 themes to pick from which are all mobile responsive and designed in-house. Thousands of themes to look through but they vary in quality.
Ecommerce Features
Winner: Shopify
Comes with all the ecommerce features you need to sell online and scale your business, and our top-rated platform with a 4.8 out of 5. Most of the main plugins have decent ecommerce features, but you may need to search for separate tools for things like analytics.
Payment and Transactions
Winner: It's a Tie!
Over 100 different payment options and its own gateway. It does charge you its own transaction fees, though. Depends on the plugin you use, but most support the major payment gateways with no transaction fees of their own.
SEO
Winner: Shopify
Built-in SEO features allow you to optimize your website and improve your web page’s rankings. You’ll need an SEO plugin and will have to pay extra to access premium features that come as standard on Shopify.
Marketing
Winner: WordPress
Has a decent amount of marketing plugins plus lets you sell on most sales channels from Amazon to TikTok. Unfortunately, WordPress just beats it with its massive amount of integrations. Offers tons of third-party integrations. If you want to market your site, WordPress has the widest amount of channels to operate from, even if slightly less consistent than Shopify
Performance
Winner: Shopify
Updates won’t impact your website as everything is taken care of in-house. Depending on the theme, hosting, and security you go for, updates may affect your site.
Help and Support
Winner: Shopify
24/7 help is available via phone, email, and live chat. There’s also a Help Center and advanced support for Shopify Plus users. No form of personal support, but there’s plenty of technical information in WordPress forums.
Are You Ready? Try Shopify For Free Try Your WordPress Site With Bluehost

Shopify vs WordPress: Pros and Cons

Shopify Pros

✔️You don’t need any coding or technical knowledge to use Shopify

✔️It’s purpose-built for ecommerce websites, so all the sales tools you need are set up for you

✔️You don’t need to pay for hosting or security externally

Shopify Cons

❌You have to pay extra transaction fees (0.5% – 2% per transaction) unless you use Shopify’s own payment gateway, Shopify Payments

❌If you choose to change your theme, you will have to reformat your content

❌It’s still not as basic or as simple to use as a drag-and-drop platform, like Wix

Shopify is our number-one rated ecommerce platform. See for yourself why we rank its sale features the best!

WordPress Pros

✔️More powerful and flexible than Shopify, allowing for total customization

✔️Its newest version, ‘Lionel‘, makes it slightly easier to use

✔️There are a huge amount of helpful resources online, both from user forums and professional developers

WordPress Cons

❌You will need a decent level of technical knowledge to use the platform

❌It can get very expensive, very quickly

❌You will need to source things like web hosting (we recommend Bluehost), security, and a domain name yourself

WordPress gives you full customization for your website. See why one-third of the internet is built with this platform!

How Easy Are They to Use?

shopify
The Winner

Shopify is easier to use

Unlike WordPress, you don’t need to have an understanding of code, nor do you need to install extra software that allows you to sell online. With Shopify, all the necessary ecommerce features are built-in.
Visit Shopify

Coding is the biggest difference when it comes to Shopify vs WordPress. With Shopify, you can create and customize your online store without needing to know a single line of code.

You’ll start off by telling Shopify a little bit about your current position – whether you already sell online or in person and, if so, what your current revenue is.

From here, you’ll enter Shopify’s dashboard. Think of this like your control room, from which you can manage anything to do with your online store. There are even prompts and tips to help you know how and where to start.

a backend screenshot with text boxes for inputting product info
The backend is where you add your products. Shopify wanted us to add them before editing our store's design.

Adding products is really simple, too. You can either add them individually – by uploading your product shots and adding product descriptions and variants – or in bulk, by importing an existing CSV file with all your product information.

The interface is similar to a word document, so you shouldn’t get stuck inputting any information. And even if you do, there’s always support on hand. One of the users we spoke to said it best:

“I loved the option to add products to the collection either manually or automatically (based on conditions) – Shopify thinks one step ahead for the user.”

If that’s not all, Shopify recently added AI integration in the form of Shopify Magic. This AI tool auto-generates product descriptions for you, cutting down the mental and physical toll of having to write them all yourself. You even can change the tone of voice, or give it specific instructions like adding emojis.

Shopify Magic generating a product description for a t-shirt
I asked Shopify Magic to generate a product description for a t-shirt.

WordPress, on the other hand, is a little more complex. For starters, you’ll need to know how to code – even if it’s just at a basic level – to use the platform.

It’s also not naturally set up to sell online, so you will need to install a plugin to make your website ecommerce ready.

There are plenty of ecommerce plugins out there – such as WooCommerce, Ecwid, and BigCommerce – so it’s important to spend some time reading up on them before deciding which to use.

Like Shopify, WordPress has its own centralized dashboard where you can manage your website. Because WordPress is such a vast platform, it can get a little overwhelming as there are simply so many tools and options.

a dashboard, with a charcoal side menu and blog posts with blue text
This was the first site that greeted me in WordPress.org. It can look confusing at first, but it's been designed for blogging.

It’s pretty simple to create content and add products, but when it comes to customizing your site’s appearance, things can get a little tricky.

Your best bet is to either spend plenty of time learning all the tricks of the WordPress trade, or pay for a developer to help you – although they can charge eye-watering fees.

Further Information:

If you want to test Shopify before you commit, you can join its free trial to see if it’s the platform for you!

What's the Build Time Like with Shopify and WordPress?

shopify
The Winner

Shopify has a quicker build time

Again, everything you need is built-in, which saves you bags of time otherwise spent deciding on which ecommerce plugin to use on WordPress – not to mention sorting out hosting and security.
Visit Shopify

Build time is directly linked to ease of use. Naturally, the easier a platform is to use, the quicker it will be for you to set up.

Shopify is undoubtedly the quicker option when creating an online store. It’s a website builder that’s specifically designed to help you make an ecommerce website and provides you with templates and easily movable components to place on your site, like making a collage out of craft paper.

Shopify is not suitable if you don’t want to sell online. So if you just need a regular personal or business site – and value your time – then something like Wix or Squarespace is far better suited.

Sidebar of settings in Shopify's website editor

WordPress offers you the chance to build both ecommerce and non-ecommerce websites. However, the set up time is longer for two main reasons:

Firstly, WordPress is far more technical and therefore harder to get your head around. Plus, you have to install extra ecommerce plugins if you want to build an online store.

Secondly, you have to set up things like web hosting and a domain name separately.

Good to know…

Bluehost is our top-rated hosting provider. It offers both WordPress and WooCommerce hosting plans, with prices starting at just $2.95/month. Depending on which plan you choose, it will come packed with lots of helpful features, such as one-click WordPress installation, a free domain name and SSL certificate, and WooCommerce auto-install. This makes the setup process a whole lot quicker and simpler, saving you time to build and design your WordPress store.

Further Information:

Shopify has a much quicker build time than WordPress, thanks to its easier to use editor and its intuitive onboarding

How Much Do They Cost?

shopify
The Winner

Shopify is cheaper overall

Plans range from $29/month – $299/month and include everything you need. WordPress is free to use, but you’ll need to fork out for hosting, themes, and plugins all separately.
Visit Shopify

Cost is one of the most important factors when deciding to invest in anything, and deciding between Shopify and WordPress is no different.

Shopify offers a 3-day free trial and three main plans, along with Shopify Starter (which allows you to sell products through social media and messaging channels), and Shopify Plus (an enterprise-level plan sold on a quote by quote basis).

99% of you will probably be best off with one of the three main plans, so that’s what we’ll discuss. Below, you can see a breakdown of the prices, as well as the savings you can make on each if you commit to a longer term:   

Shopify Pricing Plans Shopify Basic Shopify Shopify Advanced
Monthly $39 $105 $399
1-Year $/month $29 $79 $299
Savings 25% 25% 25%

25% may not sound like a lot, but these savings can add up really quickly. For example, if you sign up to the Advanced Shopify plan, you’d save $1,200 by signing up for a year in advance. This is an easy saving for businesses to make if they get on well with Shopify and have a steady business. A little forward planning can mean a huge saving.

Shopify offers a 3-day free trial, and savings of up to 20% when you sign up for a longer contract.

Most small merchants will find Shopify Basic perfectly adequate. You’ll receive access to all the themes, use the same editor, get 24/7 support, and have the majority of ecommerce features.

The benefit of upgrading to the Shopify plan is that, on top of all that, you’ll have a detailed reporting tool and abandoned cart recovery. Two massive bonuses to any business.

The Advanced Shopify plan again goes one step further, letting you in on advanced reporting and real-time shipping.

For us, the Shopify plan at $79/month is the best value for money. The abandoned cart recovery in itself can easily help you recoup the $50 difference in upgrade cost each month.

WordPress on the other hand is entirely free to use. Don’t be fooled, though, it’s far from free once you get up and running.

Here you can see exactly how much everything will cost you to set up, and how ‘free’ can quickly become a few hundred bucks.

WordPress Website Hosting CostsMonthly Costs: anywhere between $5 – $100

  • Self-hosted shared hosting: $5 – $20
  • Fully managed hosting: $30 – $100
WordPress Tutorials & Courses CostsMonthly Costs: free to $50+

  • Time to Learn Basics: A few hours
  • Time to Learn WordPress: Weeks
WordPress Theme CostsOne-time Cost: free to $5,000+

  • Basic Templates: $35 – $50
  • Premium Templates: $80 – $200
  • Template Alterations: $300 – $1,000
  • Custom Design: $5,000 – $10,000+
WordPress Plugin CostsOne-Time Cost: $50 – $500
and/or
Monthly Costs: $5 – $150

  • Payment Software:
  • $100 – $500 (one-time cost)
  • $30 – $80 (monthly cost)
  • Membership Gateway Software:
  • $100 – $300 (one-time cost)
  • $50-$150 (monthly cost)
  • Email Marketing Software:
  • $5 – $99 (monthly cost)

On the upside, WordPress’ WooCommerce plugin is free to use. Ecwid also has a free plan, but you can only sell unlimited products with Ecwid Unlimited, which costs $99/month.

A good way of thinking about Shopify vs WordPress in terms of costs is through hotels.

Shopify is the all-inclusive package that seems more expensive at first, but once you’re there, everything you need is included. WordPress is initially the more budget-friendly option, until you realize you need to pay for everything, from your food and drink, to beachside sunbeds.

Shopify currently has a deal where you get 3 months of Shopify for only $1 each! Claim the deal now by clicking below!

Templates and Theme

The Winner

It's a tie!

Shopify themes are excellent quality right out of the box, but WordPress themes are more customizable. However, both have price tags for their best templates, with Shopify only having 12 free themes. WordPress has 80, but have the downside of being harder to edit.

Templates (often referred to as themes), are the basic layout of your website. Think of them like a PowerPoint design, where you choose how your slides will look before adding in the content.

Shopify has over 100 themes for you to pick from.

12 of these themes are free, while the other 60+ start from $140. That sounds steep, but it’s a one-off investment that helps bring your website to life.

Importantly, these are all mobile responsive, meaning your site’s layout will adapt automatically to fit different screen sizes when people are browsing on their mobile or tablet. Over 65.49% of global internet traffic came from mobile devices in 2023, so it’s not an area one should dismiss!

Catalog of Shopify online store themes
I could choose from a range of professionally-designed online store themes.

When it comes to choice, WordPress blows Shopify out of the water. WordPress offers over 1,000 themes – and that’s just for ecommerce!

There are also plenty more themes that plugins either provide themselves, or that are made by third party developers.

WordPress.org pattern homepage
I loved the variety of pre-made patterns available on WordPress.org since it took away a lot of the hassle of designing a stunning page.

Inevitably, with such a large range to pick from, some WordPress themes are better than others. Not all are mobile responsive, and the ones not designed by WordPress itself may clash with the platform when updates roll around.

WordPress recently made this easier in its 6.3 version update with the introduction of ‘Patterns’. These are pre-made blocks in certain styles, which you can add and remove as one element, syncing across all your other pages.

For this reason, we’d recommend using one of WordPress’ own ecommerce themes. You’ll also be able to customize them to your heart’s content. If you have a sound knowledge of coding, the control over your site’s aesthetic is pretty much limitless.

Further Information

Ecommerce Tools and Features

Shopify logo 2
The Winner

Shopify has the better ecommerce features

Shopify has the best ecommerce features of any website builder we’ve tested. From its product inventory to its analytical tools and its amazing multichannel selling across both social and other online marketplaces, Shopify reigns as the king of ecommerce. Plugins like WooCommerce or Ecwid give WordPress ecommerce capabilities, but the added hassle of having to add them loses it for WordPress this time.
Visit Shopify

Tools and features are the meat and bones of an ecommerce website. They’re what help you market and sell your products.

Shopify has its own in-house ecommerce tools for you to use, whereas WordPress relies on ecommerce features provided by third party plugins.

Shopify Features

Shopify allows you to sell an unlimited amount of products on any pricing plan. You can also sell both physical products, and digital downloads.

All the main marketing, shipping, inventory and analytical tools are built-in, with alternative or more advanced versions of each offered in Shopify’s app store at an additional charge.

Shopify has hundreds of ecommerce features. We’ll drill down into  the top ones, and why they’re so important:

  • Abandoned Cart Recovery – Set up your site to send email reminders to customers who leave your website with items in their cart before checking out.  
  • Discount Codes – Create unique codes that customers can use at your checkout for money off. These are also great to use in email marketing.
  • Multi Channel Integration – Don’t just limit yourself to your website, sell directly across major social media platforms and global marketplaces, like TikTok and Amazon.
TikTok Shop dashboard in Shopify admin
It took me 30 seconds to connect my Shopify test website to TikTok.

WordPress Features

To clarify, WordPress does not have any ecommerce features to start with. These need to be added via third party plugins.

Because each plugin offers tons of different ecommerce features, it’s impossible to say what your specific website may have. To give you a flavor of what you could expect, though, here’s what two of the most popular plugins – WooCommerce and Ecwid – offer:

WooCommerce Features

woocommerce features
WooCommerce is built by the same company that created WordPress.
  • Sell unlimited products, both physical and digital
  • Built-in blogging option
  • Product reviews and ratings
  • Product sorting and filtering

Ecwid Features

ecwid features
Ecwid integrates with WordPress or Wix seamlessly and can be used for free.
  • Guest checkouts
  • Save favorite products
  • Shipping calculator
  • Multilingual translation

Shopify has the best ecommerce features in our research, and trusted by over 2 million active users each day

Payment Options and Transaction Fees

The Winner

It's a tie!

While Shopify is the best-rounded in terms of payment options, you will incur extra charges if you use anything other than Shopify Payments. None of WordPress’ plugins can match Shopify for payment options, but there are no extra charges.

How you accept payments could be the difference between making a sale or not. It’s important to present your customers with the most popular options, and as ecommerce gets bigger so will the money making its way through payment gateways. The global market for payment gateways is expected to hit $162 billion by 2031, so it’s vital to get a clue now and not miss out.

Shopify supports more than 100 different payment gateways, including all the big hitters: PayPal, Stripe, Square, Amazon Pay, and Apple Pay.

It also has its own payment gateway – Shopify Payments – which can process orders in most major currencies.

The benefit of opting for Shopify Payments is that you won’t be charged an additional transaction fee.

With the other payment gateways, you can expect charges of between 0.5% to 2% per transaction, depending on which Shopify pricing plan you sign up to.

Shopify provided payment habits to help me localize.

Similar to its ecommerce features, WordPress’ payment options are provided through its plugins. WooCommerce, Ecwid and WP eCommerce all cover most major gateways, and you won’t be charged anything more on top of each one’s own transaction fee.

Below, you can see which major payment gateways are supported by each platform/plugin:

Platforms / PluginsCredit/Debit CardsPayPalStripeSquareAmazon PayApple PayOwn Payment Gateway
Shopify
WooCommerceX
Ecwid
XX
WP eCommerceXXX

Which is better for SEO?

shopify
The Winner

Shopify has better SEO tools

Not only are most of its SEO capabilities built-in, but you can also install SEO-specific apps if there’s anything more advanced you want to do. WordPress has a large amount of SEO plugins like Yoast, but this will cost you a subscription fee.
Visit Shopify

Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) is the process of increasing your website’s visibility on search engines, like Google and Bing, by tweaking certain aspects of it. 39% of purchasers for online stores are influenced by relevant search results, so it’s important your website shows up for the right people. Here’s the features that Google looks for when ranking your SEO:

  • Add and edit meta titles/descriptions – the headline and text that appears in Google
  • Customize URL slugs – the text that comes after your domain, e.g. www.websitebuilderexpert.com“/ecommerce-website-builders/comparisons/wix-vs-shopify/”
  • Attach alt text to images – text that Google reads to understand what your images actually depict
  • Get further guidance with SEO best practice prompts

Shopify allows you to do this in a number of ways, including adding specific titles and descriptions that appear in search results for each web page (metadata), and customizing your URLs and site structure so it’s easier for search engines to understand, or ‘crawl’.

There are a whole bunch of other neat SEO features too, but we’re not going to get bogged down in that here. Instead, head over to our Shopify SEO review for a full breakdown of exactly what you can and can’t do to optimize your site.

shopify vs woocomerce Shopify SEO example
I was able to change the meta title and meta description in Shopify, altering how it appeared in the Google Search.

WordPress SEO, you won’t be surprised to learn, is done through external plugins. The most popular SEO WordPress plugin is Yoast, which can either be used for free, or for $69 to get its advanced features.

Further Information

Shopify has both in-built SEO and plugins for when you want the depth. Use both and get your website top of the SERP!

Marketing Tools and Features

wordpress.com logo
The Winner

WordPress has better marketing tools

WordPress offers an incredible number of plugins for both email marketing and social media integration. While Shopify has great multichannel selling and integrations with Mailchimp, WordPress’s sheer number of avenues means you can truly advertise your site from every angle, increasing your traffic.
Power Your WordPress Site with Bluehost

As an all-in-one ecommerce website builder, Shopify offers some important features to help you keep in touch with your customers, including:

  • Abandoned cart recovery emails that you can customize and even add discount codes to
  • Confirmation emails that you can customize for whenever a customer places an order

If you want to go the extra mile in terms of email marketing, Shopify offers integrations with some third-party tools like Campaign Monitor and Constant Contact.

a grid of various graphs for measuing analytic data
I could track my Shopify store’s marketing metrics in the dashboard. This is vital to maintain a store’s growth.

WordPress also relies on third-party apps for email marketing, but the selection is much wider. For example, plugins for MailChimp, GetResponse, and other powerful email marketing platforms only scratch the surface of WordPress’ seemingly endless library of third-party tools.

As far as social media integration goes, every Shopify theme comes with social media icons to help you make your profiles super accessible. Plus, you can sell across Facebook and Instagram.

However, most of Shopify’s social media integrations require you to install an app first. This is also the case with WordPress, but again, you’ll have a lot more options to choose from in the WordPress plugins store.

What sets WordPress apart from Shopify (and the winner of this category) is that it’s easier to integrate with Google Ads. The dominant ad service on the web, it is responsible for 60% of all online ads you see and promises businesses a return on investment of 8:1. That means for every $1 you spend you’ll get $8 in return. It’s such an important marketing tool, and with WordPress, you get a WordPress kit built by Google itself for you to advertise your site.

It’s important to be on as many channels as possible, and WordPress gives you the most options to market your store

Performance and Security

shopify
The Winner

Shopify beats WordPress

Shopify updates are automatic, and SSL security is always included for free. WordPress’s security is dependent on your hosting provider. While Bluehost provides great security, you will have to access it from a different panel, and if you choose unmanaged hosting it can get very technical very quickly.
Visit Shopify

Both Shopify and WordPress will carry out their own routine updates.

While using Shopify this will happen automatically, and won’t affect you in the slightest. However it’s something you may have to keep an eye on with WordPress.

WordPress’ main software, themes, and plugins can all update at different times, and if you’re not using a theme or plugin that is built by WordPress itself, you may lose track of things.

Think of this like paying your bills. If you live in rented accommodation and have your bills included, you don’t need to worry about the individual cost of each utility. However, bills can become harder to manage if you need to sort out your water, heating, and electricity separately.

To avoid the hassle, we recommend using a hosting provider that takes care of updates for you. Bluehost came top of our hosting research for WordPress websites, offering one-click installs and automated daily updates.

The same applies for your website’s security. With Shopify, you get an SSL certificate included in each plan which protects you and your site’s visitors data. This is yet another thing you will have to research and pay for individually with WordPress.

Shopify takes care of all your security, with built-in SSL certificates and automatic updates. You won’t have to think about it!

Customer Help and Support

shopify
The Winner

Shopify has stronger support options

The sheer number of ways you can contact Shopify for support makes it the obvious winner over WordPress. Shopify’s 24/7 phone support and live chat are huge perks, especially for users needing instant support, no matter the time of day. WordPress had no support to speak of, making it quite difficult to find any help.
Visit Shopify

Shopify’s customer help is second to none. You can receive 24/7 help in a variety of ways, including by phone, email, live chat, and via Shopify’s onsite Help Center.

On top of that, customers on the Shopify Plus plan will gain access to their very own merchant success manager, who is responsible for providing you with constant guidance.

Shopify email support screenshot
You can access Shopify's email support through its Help Center, or do it the old-fashioned way.

One of the users we spoke to had this to say:

“Shopify does well at preempting and predicting what a merchant might need next in all aspects of creating a website.”

WordPress is different in that there is no direct help. There are only resources, such as forums, that provide support.

As we know, WordPress is a far more technical platform, and as such, it doesn’t anticipate that its users will need their hand holding. It’s also free, so you’re not paying to get quality service.

wordpress forums
WordPress only has a forum packed full of technical information.

There is a wealth of information online about WordPress, but you’ll have to sift through some ‘fake news’ to find the really helpful stuff.

Shopify’s Help Center can help you through any query, but its 24/7 email support means you can talk to a real person

Shopify vs WordPress: Final Thoughts

Shopify is a popular ecommerce builder that’s designed solely for helping people create their own online stores. On the other hand is WordPress, which needs a plugin like WooCommerce to sell online, but gives you total flexibility over your store. It’s a powerful platform, especially if you have some technical know-how.

Shopify vs WordPress is a great battle between two web building heavyweights.

Shopify is an ecommerce website builder that allows you to create an online store without being a master of code.

This makes Shopify perfect for beginners and time-pressured startups, whereas WordPress takes a little more time and effort to set up. Knowing how to code is a benefit that unlocks a better level of customization, making WordPress ideal for ambitious and tech savvy sellers.

WordPress is free, but you’ll need to pay for hosting, plus any premium themes or plugins you might want to use for your store.

This makes WordPress pretty hard to budget for, as there’s no set pricing, but does mean you can control your own costs. Shopify, meanwhile, has three main price plans for you to choose from, starting at $29 per month.

Which one you decide on ultimately comes down to your budget and skill level. For us, Shopify is the better overall platform for ecommerce websites. You have everything you need to be successful and grow, all packed into one, easy-to-use dashboard.

This builder offers all-in-one convenience and excellent template designs. No wonder its #1 in our ecommerce rankings.

Shopify vs WordPress: FAQs

Generally, it depends on what you need from your online store. The best overall plugin we’ve come across is WooCommerce. It’s built by the same company that created WordPress, has tons of useful features, doesn’t charge its own transaction fees, and can be used for free.
No! With Shopify, hosting is taken care of for you and is provided as part of the monthly fee you pay to use the platform. This is the same for any website builder. It is only self-hosted platforms, like WordPress, where you need to source your own hosting separately.
Many web hosting providers have hosting specifically designed for WordPress websites. From our research, Bluehost has the best WordPress hosting service, with features like one-click installs and automated updates. Why not read more about all the Best WordPress Hosting Providers.
Yes! WordPress actually has a Shopify plugin. This allows you to use a Shopify theme on your WordPress site and gives you ecommerce functionality. It also lets you link your WordPress site to Facebook and receive 24/7 support, all for just $9/month.
If you’re not interested in selling online – or just want to shift the odd product or two – Wix is the platform for you. It’s incredibly easy to use, with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, and comes packed full of quality features. Read more in our dedicated Wix Review.

Website Builder Expert aims to provide you with honest data. That’s why we conduct our own research and obtain direct, personal insight. Click here for further information.
Written by:
It's my job to research website builders and find out which one's really are best for your specific needs. Having tested numerous builders, I'm in a great position to help you guys not only get online, but have great success once there.

3 comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *