Shopify vs Wordpress+Woocommerce+CC gateway

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martyyn

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#222810 29-Aug-2017 14:30

I'm just looking at this and was wondering if anyone has crunched the numbers on a site likely to do a small number of transactions a month with lots of items at a very small price point.

From what I can work out with Shopify you pay the monthly free + 30c for each transaction + 2.7% for a kiwi CC + 2% if they don't use the Shopify Payments gateway. Is that correct ?

Building a Wordpress+WooCommerce site is easy, but am I right in thinking the only fees above hosting the site and a theme (and maybe a plugin) would be the CC charges for a payment gateway ?

So if I understand it correctly with Shopify 100 transactions of 1*$5 item would be $82.50 a month. Where as 200 transactions with 2*$5 items would be $183 a month. Whereas for those with WP+WC it would only be the CC fees on the gateway we choose.

Am I on the right track ?

Benjip

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#1854827 29-Aug-2017 15:00

You are definitely on the right track.

The only fees with WooCommerce are hosting, SSL cert (you could probably just get a free Let's Encrypt one) and the transaction fees. I believe Stripe fees are 2.9% + 30c (slightly higher than Shopify's 2.7%).

martyyn

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#1854837 29-Aug-2017 15:13

So if I use Shopify Payments rather than an external gateway to save the additional 2% fee and base the decision purely on transaction costs there is no real advantage to DIY with WP+WC+Stripe is there ?

Obviously it would give me complete control of the site, but costs wise it's just the hosting (WP vs Shopify) which is minimal per month.

It's been a while since I last looked into this :)

Benjip

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#1854848 29-Aug-2017 15:26

Correct - if you're basing it solely on transaction costs, I believe Shopify (using their new-ish Shopify Payments option) is the winner.

And yep, WooCommerce would give you more control but in all honesty there's not a lot of customisation that you can't do in Shopify - I'm currently building three separate stores on Shopify and they're all custom HTML/CSS/JS.

I've been impressed with Liquid (Shopify's backend language) and how versatile it is, but that might be because it seems quite similar to PHP which I'm experienced with.

mattwnz

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#1854851 29-Aug-2017 15:36

Benjip:

The problem though with software as a service is what happens if the pricing changes and if it becomes really expensive. Or if the company closes down or decides to phase out the product. eg crashplan and pandora NZ recently. You can't usually easily move it to a new system. If a host closes down, you can just move the website, as long as you got a backup, but that doesn't usually apply with software as a service, as the website isn't owned but rented . There are also other software as a service options that don't charge a percentage of the sale price. All things to keep in mind. Wordpress and woo maybe relatively easy to setup. But it is when things go wrong, eg the site gets hacked, and update goes wrong, a theme breaks due to incompatibility etc, where people often run into problems.

Peppery

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#1854881 29-Aug-2017 16:12

We run a few Shopify sites and a WooCommerce site at work. We've used eway and now Stripe with Shopify. (I don't recommend eway as trying to navigate their site is an exercise in frustration, but that's beside the point)

I'd really recommend Shopify over WooCommerce. The cost is fair, and it's really nice that they handle hosting/security/upgrades for you. Plus the product is really polished. Definitely worth it in my book.

martyyn

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#1854883 29-Aug-2017 16:15

mattwnz:

The problem though with software as a service is what happens if the pricing changes and if it becomes really expensive. Or if the company closes down or decides to phase out the product. eg crashplan and pandora NZ recently. You can't usually easily move it to a new system. If a host closes down, you can just move the website, as long as you got a backup, but that doesn't usually apply with software as a service, as the website isn't owned but rented . There are also other software as a service options that don't charge a percentage of the sale price. All things to keep in mind. Wordpress and woo maybe relatively easy to setup. But it is when things go wrong, eg the site gets hacked, and update goes wrong, a theme breaks due to incompatibility etc, where people often run into problems.

All good points and as I would be looking after any WP site, those points are not a problem. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing anything on the cost differences before making a decision.

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Snowflake

#1854905 29-Aug-2017 17:58

Check out www.storbie.com. A local startup (wellington based) with great pricing and features.

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mattwnz

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#1854936 29-Aug-2017 20:21

martyyn:

mattwnz:

The problem though with software as a service is what happens if the pricing changes and if it becomes really expensive. Or if the company closes down or decides to phase out the product. eg crashplan and pandora NZ recently. You can't usually easily move it to a new system. If a host closes down, you can just move the website, as long as you got a backup, but that doesn't usually apply with software as a service, as the website isn't owned but rented . There are also other software as a service options that don't charge a percentage of the sale price. All things to keep in mind. Wordpress and woo maybe relatively easy to setup. But it is when things go wrong, eg the site gets hacked, and update goes wrong, a theme breaks due to incompatibility etc, where people often run into problems.

All good points and as I would be looking after any WP site, those points are not a problem. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing anything on the cost differences before making a decision.

I think you do have to buy plugins for Woo. You probably also need to pay for things like backup services, and potentially site monitoring. Shared hosting may not be suitable either, as some hosts can struggle running wordpress with slow loading, or lots of small micro outages. So you may need VPS hosting. The other thing is risk, as if it gets hacked, and personal shopping info is stolen, who is then responsible, and how do you get it audited? Whereas with a Software as a service, the hosting and software backend is all managed for you.

One way to look at it, is that with Shopify you are 'renting' the website. Whereas with Woo and WP, you essentially own the website, so you have more control in that respect.So there are a lot of pros and cons either way.