What is WooCommerce?

From the 1st of May Hypernode is supporting Managed WooCommerce Hosting. It’s an exciting addition to our managed hosting portfolio. WooCommerce has earned its reputation as a straightforward and intuitive shop system with a smooth customer journey. For those who aren’t already familiar with WooCommerce, and even for those who are, we thought it would be a good idea to introduce the platform and the advantages it provides.

What is WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the most popular and well reviewed ecommerce plugins for WordPress. Unlike other ecommerce platforms it exists only as a WordPress plugin and does not stand as its own separate platform. As a result you can only use WooCommerce on a WordPress site. Like Magento Community, WooCommerce is open source and has almost infinite customization possibilities, backed up by an enthusiastic and dedicated open source community.

Why use WooCommerce, Pro’s and Con’s

WooCommerce is open source

As an open source platform and WordPress plugin WooCommerce enables any user to alter and create advanced and niche functions without the need to subscribe to premium plans and increase overall costs. If you have previous experience with WordPress you will also feel at home designing your ecommerce store as you don’t need to engage with separate systems and user interfaces.

Limitless customization

Despite it’s plug and play nature WooCommerce offers a bevy of customization options. You can find hundreds if not thousands of themes, which themselves can be customized to your heart’s desire. If you want to dive down into the details you can also use CSS, HTML and PHP code to alter the basic fundamentals of your store. Whether you are a professional or beginner it means you can push the boundaries of your ability. The same customization is found in its ecommerce capability. WooCommerce can be used to sell physical, or digital goods as well as affiliate sales and programs.

WooCommerce security

Being a major ecommerce solution WooCommerce is updated frequently to keep up with emerging cybersecurity threats and any discovered flaws. Payment is also secure with integration for payment methods like Paypal, iDeal, Apple Pay, and Credit Cards. Some security features like SSL-certificates, backups, attack monitoring and prevention, support, and a server firewall aren’t included and should be found via a trustworthy host.

Open source community

With an open source platform a large community is part and parcel of what you can expect. Knowledge sharing is a unique advantage of an open source environment. In the case of WooCommerce you can expect documentation, guides, tips, videos and more. If you have any questions or concerns you can also visit the many forums where users can ask their questions and a passionate community is more than happy to help out.

Spoilt for choice

WooCommerce allows you to install and use a vast array of plugins, however using too many may slow down your store performance, as so many plugins can take up a large amount of memory. If functionality is added efficiently, through for example CSS or jQuerry codes, the chance is smaller that you’re adding as much load to the pile. This is something to keep in mind and watch out for rather than scare you away from the platform, and can be a challenge in any ecommerce platform.

Not everything is for free

Using WooCommerce extensions instead of your own bespoke solution can also bring additional costs along with it. While the flexibility to add (paid) features is also a strength of the platform it means you don’t always immediately have a realistic picture of your total costs. Not everything will be included free in the box. Long term though you can of course start small, and as you grow and need more features and functionality your additional revenue will more than justify the increased expense.

WooCommerce vs Shopware/Magento

There are plenty of great players in the ecommerce space, and we’d rather recommend the best fit for you than push you down one particular path. If you’d like to know more about how WooCommerce compares to other popular platforms take a look at our comparison articles WooCommerce vs Shopware and WooCommerce vs Magento.

Hypernode Managed WooCommerce Hosting

As mentioned while discussing the pro’s and con’s of WooCommerce, a distinct disadvantage of the platform is the lack of more extensive support and security features. By using a trusted host you can secure your store and operate safely with 24/7 support. Hypernode’s Managed WooCommerce Hosting provides automatic backups, performance gains, a free migration service, razor fast SSDs and 24/7 monitoring and support. If you’d like to know more about WooCommerce and our Managed WooCommerce Hosting please contact us.