Wish to start an online store or ecommerce business but have no idea where to start from? Don’t worry, we have your back.
First step to owning and running a successful online business is making the right choice while choosing the online platform. Although it sounds simple and easy, it is a lot more complex because the market is flooded with choices.
To help you in making a better decision, we made a comparison of two of the most popular ecommerce platforms – WooCommerce and OpenCart.
Let us analyse which is the best solution for your business:
OpenCart
OpenCart is a free, open-source platform. It is flexible and scalable, and also allows you to customise your online store as per your idea. It also allows you to manage multiple online business stores from the central dashboard. It might be a breeze for some people but if you lack technical knowledge, you will find it difficult to set up the store. You have to research hosting providers and security applications because OpenCart does not provide these. But the good news is that any good host will act as a solution for many of the potential issues.
WooCommerce
WooCommers is the first preference in terms of platforms for anyone who wants to start an ecommerce store. There are millions of live websites currently operating on WooCommerce. Like OpenCart, WooCommerce is also flexible and scalable. It is an open-source platform, which allows you to gain control on the creation process. It is based on WordPress so in order to create a store, you will need a CMS. You will need to get a hosting, but for such a popular platform, it will not be much of an issue.
We compare the two platforms based on their features. Here is what we found:
Ease of Use
OpenCart is easily downloadable, but setting up the store requires technical skills, and can be tricky for some people. If you get a hosting provider, their technical team might be able to support you in setting up the store.
WooCommerce is also easily downloadable, but setting up might require some technical skills, as in the case of OpenCart. WooCommerce being the most commonly used platform for an ecommerce store, the hosting provider’s technical team can provide support while setting up the store.
WooCommerce’s admin dashboard is easy to understand and navigate. You won’t have trouble using the dashboard.
WooCommerce being a WordPress login, will show up on the left side of your WP dashboard. In case you have multiple stores to manage, you will require a MultiStore extension or a similar extension to work with WooCommerce. OpenCart does not require multiple extensions to manage multiple stores. It allows you to do that from a single dashboard, increasing accessibility.
OpenCart and WooCommerce provide vouchers and coupons to add more discounts. But they have one major difference. OpenCart provides integrated payment options, but WooCommerce requires add-ons for this.
For SEO features, OpenCart provides the ability from the start, but WooCommerce requires plugins for SEO.
You will get reports from both the platforms without any additional applications and plugins.
You might get the idea that WooCommerce does not have many features to offer and requires a plugin for the majority of the features. You could not be further from the truth. Considering order management, WooCommerce is one of the best, if not the best. It also eases your work by calculating shipping and taxes, including the live shipping charges from different courier services.
OpenCart also has a lot of offerings when it comes to inventory management. There is no limit set for uploading the amount of products, without any additional fees.
It has become obvious that OpenCart offers more choices than WooCommerce. But that is just the start. A Google Search will display thousands and thousands of WooCommerce themes and plugins. These plugins will help you run your online store smoothly and provide additional features to give a better user experience.
Security
If you go ahead with the platform OpenCart, you must know that you will be the only person responsible for the security of your store. The company does not provide any security features, so you have to rely on the additional plugins for the security.
In the case of WooCommerce, it is the same scenario. You do not get any security measures from the company. Instead you have to get plugins and extensions which would provide security features for the online store.
But, in both the cases, you cannot overlook the help which can be provided by the hosting company’s technical team. A good hosting service provider will always help you manage the security of your store or website, and even help you perform the security measures yourself.
Support
WooCommerce, being the most widely used platform, provides a forum, a community and a helpdesk. All the support features can be accessed from the admin dashboard. The support team can also help with the store-related issues and marketplace extensions.
In the case of openCart, developers only provide a basic support, but if you need additional support, it costs extra.
Pricing
Both these platforms are free. So you won’t have to spend money while buying them. But you will need to chalk out all the other details such as the hosting provider, plugins, extensions, security and support.
Choosing the right hosting provider will help you lower all these additional costs by providing a one-stop-solution for all the add-ons.
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