Choosing the right platform for your website development is a big decision before doing any investment. Both eCommerce platforms, WooCommerce vs Shift4Shop, are famous and have their advantages for development. They made adaptable eCommerce platforms that make website design and development more accessible. Specific companies demand various types of eCommerce software. To learn which service fulfills your requirements, think about comparing different solutions feature by feature including their conditions and prices. Similarly, you can get a fast idea of their general performance and customer feedback. But the question is, which eCommerce platform is better to grow your business online? Here, we have a detailed discussion of WooCommerce vs Shift4Shop and see which platform better fits your demands.
Table of Contents
What Is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is an open-source and customizable eCommerce platform built on WordPress. It is designed for all small to large-sized businesses. WooCommerce has become the most popular eCommerce platform because it is easy to use, and simple to install and customize. It was launched on September 27, 2011.
What Is Shift4Shop?
Shift4Shop is a full-featured eCommerce platform serving thousands of businesses of all sizes in a wide range of industries all over the world. It allows you to create an online store. It offers pre-built eCommerce templates and thousands of built-in features to ease your eCommerce store. There are also conversion tools for add-on sales and 24/7 active customer support.
What Features You Look For In An eCommerce Platform?
While choosing the eCommerce platform, you should look at these features in an eCommerce platform:
Robustness
You are not sure about this digital world. It is pretty unpredictable. Always go with that platform that provides you robustness. Your store traffic may increase by following new trends. Your website must always be prepared to manage such spikes. Most eCommerce platforms offer robustness and scalability at additional expense. But, you should look for a platform that provides scalability with low or no cost. WooCommerce allows easy scaling depending on the type of hosting that runs the store.
Platform Cost
Platforms require ever-increasing levels of investment. Many eCommerce platforms bring changes when sales increases. Users often consider this as a limitation on the growth of the business.
Easy To Use
Most eCommerce business owners don’t have the technical background and they face difficulties to manage such requirements of platforms. So, a beginner and non-technical person should choose a platform that is easy to use and provide instant support to avoid blockages.
Customization
If you design your website, you cannot depend upon only those features provided by the eCommerce platform. Every platform needs customization to fulfill your business demands. Always choose an eCommerce platform that offers you customization in the store’s design and development. Not all eCommerce platforms offer customization, so look into your choices.
WooCommerce vs Shift4Shop: Features
Here, we have discussed in detail WooCommerce vs Shift4Shop features. Kindly, have a look at these features:
Owning The Platform
Ecommerce requires a platform that gives full control of the online store to owners and offers user-friendliness and affordability.
WooCoommerce
WooCommerce provides complete flexibility in design and customization. It is easy to scale, offers platform-level security, and has a flourishing community. And its simple interface makes adding/removing product listing easier.
Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop does not offer customization like WooCommerce, but users can find ease in its pre-built eCommerce template and built-in features. You can also get all rights to your content.
Protection & Privacy
When you run an eCommerce store, you cannot compromise on security and privacy. Here is the comparison between WooCommerce and Shift4Shop’s security and privacy.
WooCommerce
If you choose the WooCoomerce eCommerce platform, it strengthens its security and allows store owners to add plugins to their websites to safeguard your website from malware, spammers, and brute force attacks. It also allows owners to keep data safe and private. Owners can also add SSL certificates to improve security.
Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop also offers a secure checkout process and allows you to add additional SSL before they can affect your business. Shift4Shop is PCI-compliant, which means it follows all the strict standards for secure payments.
Design & Usability
Design and usability directly affect user experience and offer a first impression to your customers.
WooCommerce
The websites designed on the WooCommerce platform are easy to manage, attractive, and have a user-friendly interface. It also offers plugins to its users so they may customize and better the UX to fulfill their brands’ demands.
Shift4Shop
Its Admin panel is very simple and easy to use. If you are a beginner and a non-technical person, you can build your online store from scratch, without having any technical knowledge.
Also, the pre-built responsive designs, add-ons, and customizable features further improve the user experience.
Reliability & Growth
Every eCommerce owner wants to grow his business. That’s why their eCommerce platform should support reliability to fulfill their growing business requirements.
WooCommerce
Using WooCommerce, you can scale your websites according to your business needs. It does not limit users by the number of product listings or orders processed. Also, it allows store owners to integrate payment methods of their choice by installing plugins. You can also list 100,000+ products or more and manage thousands of transactions per minute with premium hosting support. So, if you looking for a reliable web hosting company, Temok is one of the best web hosting companies where you can get all premium hosting features at a very low cost.
Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop also supports scalability through free and paid add-ons that you may combine into an eCommerce store. It offers multiple growth tiers ranging from a single user to a business level. It also integrates with all the eCommerce apps for easier payment, shipping, and accounting processes.
Cost-Effectiveness
Users who have a low budget also need affordable options to lower their total cost.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source and free platform. Using WooCommerce, you can start and set up an eCommerce store with a few clicks. It also offers free plugins to further customize your store and increase your business growth.
Shift4Shop
At the start, Shift4Shop charged its customers for the eCommerce platform. However, when Shift4Shop became popular, it revised its payment model and offered its services for free. It also adds features like unlimited products, staff users, bandwidth, 24/7 support, and much more. Shift4Shop only offers its free services to US customers only but they charge non-US customers.
WooCommerce VS. Shift4Shop: Which Ecommerce Platform Is Better?
WooCommerce and Shift4Shop both are very popular eCommerce platforms but to know further which one is better. Here is the comparison between WooCommerce and Shift4Shop according to Google Trends.
WooCommerce is quite famous, as indicated by the search volume above. On the other hand, the chart shows how Shift4Shop In contrast, the trend chart below shows how Shift4Shop’s growth varies but remains still with a lower search volume than WooCommerce.
WooCommerce VS Shift4Shop: Pros & Cons
Following are the advantages and disadvantages of WooCommerce vs Shift4Shop:
WooCommerce Pros
- Combines well with other applications
- Customization options
- Free and open-source
- Active Support & Community
- SEO-friendly
WooCommerce Cons
- Lacks proper shipping fee management
- Difficult to implement multi-currency
- Paid extensions
Shift4Shop Pros
- Built-in features
- Easy to use
- Unlimited products and monthly data transfers on all plans
- Various integrations
Shift4Shop Cons
- Weak support for non-US customers
- Charges non-US customers
- Outdated templates & features
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the features, pros, and cons of WooCommerce and Shift4Shop. After analyzing both eCommerce platforms, I believe that WooCommerce is a better platform than Shift4Shop. WooCommerce has become the most used platform by entrepreneurs starting an online business that aims for long-term growth. Shift4Shop is expensive and doesn’t provide as many features or customization flexibility as is required to launch a business.