The tendency of buying products online has tremendously increased in this era. A stat from Statista shows that last year eCommerce sales reached 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. So, this is high time you should come forward to create your own eCommerce store and take advantage of this trend.
When we are talking about creating an online store, there are two most trusted platforms to rely on – WordPress and Shopify. Though both of these solutions are capable enough to host your online store, their approaches and procedures are different.
So, which one is to choose? Actually, it depends on your requirements and budget.
In this article, we are going to make an in-depth analysis of these platforms – Shopify vs WordPress for dropshipping, so that you can understand which platform could meet most of your needs. Without any further ado, let’s get started with our analysis.
What is Dropshipping – A Short Overview
Dropshipping is an eCommerce retail model that allows stores to sell products without keeping any physical inventory.
That means if you are into drop shipping, you act as a storefront that customers visit and order products from. Once they place an order, you purchase the item directly from a third party (a manufacturer, wholesaler, or another retailer) and ask them to ship the product directly to your customer.
In a nutshell, it works as follows-
- The customer places an order with you.
- You alert your dropshipping partner – either the manufacturer or the wholesaler who packages and ships the product to the customer.
- The dropshipping partner charges you for the service, and you charge your customer.
That’s it!
How Many People Use Shopify and WordPress for Dropshipping?
Shopify is one of the leading eCommerce platforms that help entrepreneurs start, manage and grow their businesses. It powers more than 1 million online stores since its launch in 2004.
Shopify’s user-friendly site builder allows anyone to build a fully customizable online store. You can list as many products as you want because there are no inventory restrictions. This is a massive opportunity for those who turn over large quantities of products with a small profit margin.
WordPress is not a dedicated eCommerce builder, however, it offers a free plugin named WooCommerce that helps to create any type of eCommerce site professionally.
WooCommerce is the most widely used eCommerce platform around the globe. It has a market share of almost 29% percent in overall eCommerce stores and the major credit for this goes to being free and easy to install the plugin.
Shopify vs WordPress for Dropshipping – What’s the Difference?
Ease of Use of Shopify
You may know that Shopify is a subscription-based service. It offers out-of-the-box features and functionality that are pretty much easy to use even if you’re a beginner. After getting started with Shopify (registering on Shopify), you’ll get the option to upload and showcase your products with all the other functionalities. It’s that easy!
Shopify is liked by many because it’s much more than just a tool to create a dropshipping store. It also offers an extensive ecosystem of apps and services, both free and paid, that can help you manage your dropshipping business from A to Z.
WordPress Ease of Use
Coming to WordPress, this is extremely easy and flexible to use. Being an open-source platform, WordPress is essentially free. Further, it has a very easy and intuitive UI making it highly efficient even for a non-technical person.
When you’re intending to create your online store with WordPress, you have to use the WooCommerce plugin. The level of ease with WooCommerce can be seen from the fact that as soon as you activate this plugin, it automatically creates Shop, Cart, Payment, and other pages for you instantly.
Once you start using it on a daily basis, you’ll see why it’s loved by millions of people who select it as their ultimate eCommerce solution.
Shopify Setup Time for Dropshipping Site
Shopify is all about delivering an out-of-the-box solution in the quickest time possible. You just need to sign up and you can set up your own Shopify drop shipping store from scratch in less than 30-40 minutes (if you have a little bit of prior knowledge of using Shopify before)
But if you do not want to go through all the hassle of making a store by yourself and setting up all the extra apps you will need to run your dropshipping business, you can always buy a Shopify dropshipping store and ask for it to be made as per your requirements.
WordPress Setup Time for Dropshipping Site
When it comes to WordPress, you can set up your eCommerce store from scratch within an hour (if you are a little bit experienced with WordPress). All you have to do is after installing WordPress on your cPanel, you’ll have to install the WooCommerce plugin on your site.
Once your store is ready and if you want to create another store, you can just duplicate the whole store with a WordPress plugin. Everything will be copied from one store to another in a couple of minutes.
Voila! You have a new store in 5 minutes!
Though it may take a little bit longer than Shopify to create your first online store with WordPress, however, creating a second store is always easier and faster with WordPress than with Shopify.
Shopify Design and Customization for Dropshipping Site
For eCommerce websites, the design is everything! Customers are likely to avoid sites that don’t have an aesthetic design or don’t function as per the expectation. Therefore, every website owner wants their web store to look beautiful and have a forward-looking design.
Shopify has just over 100 themes to choose from of which only 10 are free to use. The rest of them start from $100 and go up to $180.
One downside is Shopify themes force you to adhere to their design. You can’t really change the design as per your wish.
WordPress Design and Customization for Dropshipping Site
In simple words, WordPress beats Shopify in its design with hundreds of thousands of themes it has to offer. Check some of the popular WordPress themes compatible with the Gutenberg editor. Moreover, many of them are free and offer complete customization giving you complete control over your dropshipping store.
Decide what your store looks like on a computer or mobile device. You are not bound to anything. You are free. This is the way it should be.
Shopify SEO Optimization for Dropshipping Site
Shopify is good for SEO. It ensures some SEO optimization options like Automatic sitemap, 301 redirects, and URLs personalization for your eCommerce store. Its CDN allows your online store to load quickly around the globe. Also, there is a wide variety of apps supporting you in improving your SEO performance.
But when we are comparing it with WordPress, Shopify lacks in some cases, e.g.,
- It’s difficult to edit URL structures.
- You don’t get access to the Robots.txt.
- Sitemaps are generated automatically so you can’t edit them.
- WordPress SEO Optimization for Dropshipping Site
WordPress is much more SEO friendly than Shopify. It is easy to add and edit content as well as meta information to ensure that your pages have a high chance of ranking for specific keywords.
WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math can help you make your WordPress site highly SEO optimized, and let you be in full control of nitty-gritty SEO details.
However, this does not mean that you will suffer from Shopify for SEP optimization. It is just that WordPress is much better at SEO than Shopify since WordPress gives you more SEO-specific options overall.
Price Comparison between Shopify and WordPress
Unlike WordPress, Shopify isn’t free. Shopify’s basic plan starts at $29 per month. And as it’s a hosted platform, you don’t need to pay for hosting service. That means if you run 5 dropshipping sites with Shopify, you’ll have to pay at least $145 per month.
On the other hand, WordPress and its eCommerce plugin WooCommerce are free to use. However, you have to pay for your hosting service as WordPress is a self-hosted platform. Hosting service will cost you an average of $10 per month. So, running 5 dropshipping sites with WordPress will cost you at least $50 per month.
Now it’s not very hard to decide on a winner here. Clearly, WordPress dropshipping is way cheaper than Shopify dropshipping.
Help and Support
Shopify has great customer support. They are available 24*7 over the phone or chat to help you out if you get stuck anywhere.
WordPress and WooCommerce don’t have live chat support. But both of them provide extensive documentation to seek help. Also, you can get support from WordPress forums.
In a nutshell, WordPress is so popular that if you have a problem, there is a pretty good chance that other people have faced the same problem before you and have found a solution already!
Related Read: Best WordPress hosting for growing and high-traffic websites
Shopify or WordPress: Which is Better for Dropshipping?
After coming this far in this article, if you already haven’t made up your mind on which one is right for you, let us tell you our verdict.
If you’re looking for a quick solution to create your dropshipping site with a few clicks, go for Shopify.
And if you are up for a solution that will give you more design flexibility with thousands of free and pro themes and plugins, SEO benefits, and last but not least budget-friendly platform, choose WordPress undoubtedly.
FAQs on WordPress vs Shopify for Dropshipping
Yes, you can use WordPress with Shopify. You can use Shopify to create an online store and then use WordPress to create a blog or website. You can also use Shopify to create an online store and then use WooCommerce to create a blog or website.
Shopify is better than WooCommerce because it is easier to use, has better customer support, and is more scalable.
You can use Shopify with WordPress by using the Shopify Buy Button or Shopify plugin for WordPress. WordPress plugin allows you to connect your Shopify store to your WordPress site.
Yes, Shopify is faster than WooCommerce. Shopify is a hosted platform, which means that your store will be hosted on Shopify’s servers. This means that your store will load faster because it is not being shared with other sites on the same server.
If you are looking for an eCommerce platform that is easy to use and has great customer support, then Shopify is the better choice. And if you are looking for an eCommerce platform that is more customizable and has more features, then WooCommerce is the better choice.
Yes, you can use Shopify for non eCommerce. Shopify is a flexible platform that can be used for a variety of purposes. You can use Shopify to create a website, blog, or online store.
Appreciate the recommendation. Let me try it out.