WooCommerce vs Shopware: the main differences

There are many differences between webshop applications. Every application has strengths and weaknesses. Which platform is most suitable for you depends on what is important to you. Two of the world’s largest e-commerce applications are WooCommerce and Shopware. Are you curious about where these two excel and what the main differences are? We explain them for you in this article!

In short: WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the most popular webshop applications used worldwide. Originally, WooCommerce is a webshop plugin from WordPress. This has now grown into a mature application with a huge community. You can see it this way: WordPress provides the foundation for your site, to which WooCommerce adds e-commerce features. You can download WooCommerce for free in the WordPress plugin dictionary. With this you can set up a great webshop. If you want to work a bit bigger and more seriously with your shop, you will have to purchase extra ‘premium’ themes/plugins. Furthermore, WooCommerce is an open source system. This means that the software is available everywhere and you can get it for free from the internet. You can also make adjustments to your webshop yourself and set it up the way you want. The code is public, so you can make changes without restrictions.

In short: Shopware

Shopware is an e-commerce application that is rapidly gaining market share. Particularly due to the arrival of Shopware 6. Shopware is relatively unknown on the Dutch e-commerce market. The platform has its origins in Germany, where it is the most used e-commerce system. Furthermore, just like WooCommerce, Shopware is an open source system. The platform is particularly suitable for entrepreneurs who focus on marketing and a pleasant customer experience. Shopware is growing enormously because of the flexibility and the possibilities for webshop owners to make adjustments to their shop themselves. Shopware’s market share is currently 4.7%, where WooCommerce leads the market share at 36.2%.

The differences at a glance

As mentioned before, you can’t say which platform is the ‘best’, as it depends on what you think is important. The things you pay attention to make the difference between the applications. That is why we have listed a number of points for you to properly map out the differences.

Quantity of products and visitors

Both e-commerce systems indicate that they can trade more than 1 million products. In addition, it is also important to look at the addition of products by the administrator and the number of orders that are processed. Both processes should be fast.
While hosting is an important factor, your application can also make all the difference. Shopware is stronger in this area, because they can handle more than WooCommerce in terms of capacity for large numbers.

Content

How important is storytelling? What does your marketing plan look like? How do you want to design your content? These are important questions to consider when choosing between WooCommerce and Shopware. As mentioned earlier, WooCommerce is a plugin of WordPress, which is originally a content system. This makes creating pages, blogs, videos and SEO settings very easy. Despite the fact that WooCommerce is very strong in this, Shopware also has a very good content editor, where they are also very focused on ‘mobile first’. Both platforms are very suitable for easily creating good content!

Multistores

If you have the ambition to manage multiple stores in one backend, this is an important point to look at. Shopware has a standard option to create multi-stores, at the main, sub, and language level. With WooCommerce this is not possible by default. However, you can set up multilingual pages with a plugin. Because it’s included out-of-the-box with Shopware, it’s easier to use multi-stores with Shopware.

Usability

Shopware 6 has a very user-friendly and easy-to-use management panel. This makes it easy to maintain your webshop and catalog. WooCommerce’s dashboard is similarly simple and doesn’t have too many options to understand. Both platforms are seen as very user-friendly. If you are new to both, the Shopware system may feel more ‘logical’. However, if you are familiar with WordPress, it will be easier to get started with WooCommerce..

Available Plugins

Looking at plugins, we can immediately see that WooCommerce has a lot more available! For example, anyone within WooCommerce can develop plugins, which means that many (free) plugins are available. Shopware is somewhat less popular than WooCommerce. As a result, some functions take a little longer.

Costs

In principle, WooCommerce is free, where you pay for the plugins you use. The open source version of Shopware is also free, but there are other paid versions available as well. In short, the functionalities you need determine how high the costs are. In general, WooCommerce is seen as the most affordable option.

Conclusion?

One will find WooCommerce a ‘better’ platform, the other Shopware. If you want to make a choice between the two, it is important to take several criteria into account. It is especially important to look at which functions you need, they ultimately determine your decisive judgment!

Hosting your CMS

It is important to know that as soon as you have chosen a CMS, you have to look for suitable hosting. The hosting of your webshop largely determines the speed, security and other performance factors of your webshop! Want some inspiration? Take a look at our Hypernode hosting.

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact us!