WooCommerce vs Magento

WooCommerce vs Magento* – both pack a punch when it comes to features, as well as being wildly popular. It’s not easy to pick an overall winner, and weighing up the features of each platform could leave you scratching your head in confusion, while leaving your customers without a way to purchase from your site.

Fortunately, we’re here to help you make an informed decision. There’s no one ultimate solution when it comes to ecommerce, but you can always make the right choice for your unique needs – as long as you have all the facts at hand.

Every platform has their own group of die-hard supporters championing its cause, and claiming it’s the best. We decided to wade through the noise and take a look for ourselves, giving you an unbiased opinion to help make your decision.

In this article, we’ll compare WooCommerce vs Magento – their key features, performance, security, pricing, beginner-friendliness, and even product management. By the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll know exactly which solution is right for you.

Let’s get cracking!

*Magento was purchased by Adobe and is now officially known as Adobe Commerce, but since most people continue to refer to it by its legacy name, we will do the same throughout the remainder of this article.

What’s unique about WooCommerce vs Magento?

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful plugin for the WordPress platform. It offers all the features you need from an ecommerce solution, while retaining the ease-of-use of its parent platform.

Adobe Commerce (Magento) Logo

Magento (Adobe Commerce) is an ecommerce platform tailored to web development professionals, and medium to large online stores. It offers one of the most robust feature sets in the field, which makes it ideal for stores with high aspirations.

WooCommerce vs Magento: A look at their features

WooCommerce vs Magento
WooCommerce Magento
Completely free platform. Offers a free open source version, as well as several premium services.
Requires you to find your own web host. The open source version is self-hosted, but their premium offerings include hosting.
Supports unlimited products. Enables you to add unlimited products.
Supports nearly all WordPress themes, and offers a myriad of customization options. Offers a theme-based system and a decent variety of options.
Comes with an extension system and hundreds of options. Supports extensions and offers a wide variety of them too.
Includes basic security features to protect your store. Offers advanced security features, as well as dedicated patches to close any vulnerabilities that arise.
The platform is remarkably easy-to-use. Recommended for users that have (at least) a basic level of web development knowledge.

What each platform has to offer

For those of you who want the whole picture, we’ll cover all the information you’ll need to know about both platforms. Then we’ll go over the results together and decide which one deserves the crown.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a familiar name to most WordPress users. This wildly popular ecommerce platform is home to almost 400,000 sites. It comes with almost all of the functionality you’ll need to open an online store, and it also has several advanced capabilities through its extension system.

Key features ⚙️

Pros 👍

Cons 👎

  • If you don’t use WordPress, you need to learn two new platforms.
  • Premium themes and extension costs can add up quickly.

Is it good for beginners? 🤔

WooCommerce is a good pick for users with no ecommerce experience – doubly so if they’ve used WordPress before. Even those who haven’t will find WooCommerce’s excellent documentation, and abundance of online tutorials appealing.

Price 💰

This is a fully open-source ecommerce platform – anyone can download and set it up on any server they want. That being said, its premium extensions tend to be expensive, and some require annual subscriptions. Aside from that, your web hosting costs will depend entirely on the size of your enterprise and the packages your provider offers.

There are a handful of quality web hosts that work well with WooCommerce, but the top ones we always recommend to our customers are SiteGround and InMotion. You can get either for around $5-9 / month (try not to opt for any of the cheaper plans, as they might not be optimized to run ecommerce setups).

Magento

Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Whereas WooCommerce bills itself as a community solution, Magento is more geared towards companies. However, that doesn’t mean small businesses can’t benefit from its functionality too. Magento offers both a free open source edition – which is plenty powerful on its own – and two pro versions (Adobe Commerce Pro and Managed Services) for large companies. For this comparison, we’ll focus on the open source edition’s features.

Key Features ⚙️

  • Supports an unlimited number of products, as any respecting self-hosted platform should!
  • Comes with its own theming and layout system.
  • Includes efficient APIs that can connect with any third-party solution.
  • Intuitive admin interfaces and product creation tools.

Pros 👍

  • It’s built for scalability. Magento should have no problems handling large stores, as long as your host can manage them.
  • Shoppers can check out faster thanks to a streamlined process. Plus, guest checkout is turned on by default.
  • Integrates with PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Braintree right out of the box.

Cons 👎

  • Magento feels more geared towards developers than regular users, what with its steep learning curve.
  • Its Pro and Managed Services editions can be quite costly, but that’s to be expected due to their target market.

Is it good for beginners? 🤔

Out of the box, Magento doesn’t feel as beginner-friendly when we look through the lens of WooCommerce vs Magento. However, users can overcome that by referring to the extensive documentation – and the platform does offer additional advantages for those who stick it out. It’s perfect for ambitious users who want to scale their shops quickly, and who also have the necessary time for mastering the platform.

Price 💰

Magento’s open source edition is free for anyone to use, so your only cost will be based on your current hosting provider. On the other hand, users who are interested in the Pro or Managed Services versions will have to shell out a pretty penny.

What about performance?

Loading times are a big deal for any website, but doubly so for ecommerce. If your website takes too long to load or feels sluggish, some people will leave, taking their money – and ultimately your income – with them.

When it comes to performance, it’s complicated to figure out which solution is the overall winner. Each online store – regardless of platform – will behave differently due to its functionality and size. Furthermore, there are several more factors at play here, such as your choice of web hosting provider for Magento, whether you’re using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), or even whether your images are optimized.

To put it simply, the performance of your online store will depend mostly on you, and your hosting provider. This round is a tie.

What about security?

The importance of security when it comes to ecommerce platforms can’t be overstated. Customers expect both their private information and payment details to be protected – and you need to deliver.

Similarly to performance, your online store’s security is in large part up to you. Both WooCommerce and Magento enable you to implement several advanced security measures, but mostly through extensions and manual tweaks. However, while no platform can be 100% secure, Magento takes the lead in this aspect by offering dedicated security patches to its users.

The downside here is that Magento security patches aren’t particularly easy to apply. Ecommerce newbies might feel out of their depth doing so on their own, which in turn leads to a significant amount of Magento stores being out of date.

Nevertheless, if you take security seriously – and you have some experience with web development (or don’t mind paying for help) – Magento is the clear winner.

What about product management?

If you’re looking for the perfect ecommerce store, good product management is likely on your list of priorities. WooCommerce offers a no-nonsense approach to product management, with options for both physical and digital products. Setting up new items is remarkably simple, especially if you’re already familiar with WordPress. Furthermore, you can always expand on the platform’s functionality using extensions such as Product Add-Ons:

The Product Add-Ons extension for WooCommerce.

Magento, on the other hand, offers several features that WooCommerce lacks without purchasing additional extensions. For example, it supports product reviews, grouped items, wish lists, advanced pricing rules, and product personalization. It clearly has an advantage in terms of functionality – but with that brings a steeper learning curve.

Overall, WooCommerce is the better choice for users who don’t need advanced features on their stores from the off. It enables you to get a store up and running quickly, which is preferable for small ventures, and you can choose to expand its features at a later date using extensions. Round three of WooCommerce vs Magento goes to the former.

What about pricing?

The last key consideration when it comes to deciding between WooCommerce and Magento is your budget. As mentioned previously, WooCommerce is completely free, whereas Magento only offers a free open source version alongside multiple premium services. Unfortunately, pricing for Magento’s premium options are only accessible via a chat with their sales team.

Either way, it’s entirely possible to get an online store up and running with both platforms without spending a single dime, aside from web hosting costs, that is. How much it costs to keep your store running will depend largely on your choice of hosting provider, which is a topic we’ve covered extensively in the past, plus a couple of paragraphs above.

Moving on, even if both platforms are virtually free, costs can pile up quickly if you rely too much on extensions. There are plenty of free extensions for Magento and WooCommerce, but premium offerings tend to be quite expensive.

Two paid extensions for Magento.

If you’re going to need to add extra functionality to your site, make sure to research which extensions you’ll need before committing to either platform, and compare their prices. That way, you’ll get the functionality you need, without making your wallet scream.

All things considered, both WooCommerce and Magento are excellent choices for budget online stores, albeit the latter only in the case of its open source version. As you scale your store, WooCommerce remains the cheapest alternative, since you don’t need to install more powerful (and premium) versions of the platform, as may be the case with Magento.

Hosting a WooCommerce store is also likely to be cheaper and easier since more and more hosts know how to optimize their platforms for WordPress these days. As mentioned above, you can get a quality host for around $2.99 per month from a company like SiteGround (our top recommended host).

WooCommerce vs Magento: The winner

As far as beginners go, the choice is simple – we recommend WooCommerce. It’s easy to use and cheap to set up, which makes it perfect for small operations that need to get off the ground quickly. It enables its users to set up almost any kind of online store, such as at home entrepreneurship

The Mini Learners homepage.

…and selling tickets for a major event:

An example of a WooCommerce extension for selling tickets online.

However, Magento is still a fantastic ecommerce solution. For a start, it shines when it comes to scalability, which makes it the ideal choice for existing companies that want to move into ecommerce. If you can swallow the high price tag of its Enterprise Edition, you’ll be more than happy with the results. Don’t believe us? Ask Bulgari – they’re proud Magento users:

The Bvlgari homepage.

Ultimately, this comparison was all about how difficult it would be for a new user to jump into either of these platforms. WooCommerce wins handily in this aspect, thanks to its lower barrier of entry for ecommerce enthusiasts.

Conclusion

Picking a winner between WooCommerce vs Magento wasn’t easy, since no single platform will fit the needs of every user perfectly. While some of you may agree with our decision to pick WooCommerce, others may find themselves more at home with Magento. You’ll need to take into consideration several criteria including performance, security, product management, and your overall budget – along with your own unique needs.

In the end, our decision in this WooCommerce vs Magento title fight was based on the following reasons:

WooCommerce is simpler for new users to pick up – especially if they’re already familiar with WordPress.

The platform has a wide library of great extensions. Plus, it’s cheap to set up, too. Although your mileage may vary according to the scope of your store, of course.

Magento, on the other hand, is generally a solution for more advanced ecommerce setups and stores.

Here’s a quick summary to give you a better overview of the differences between WooCommerce and Magento:

WooCommerce vs Magento comparison
WooCommerce Magento
Price Free Freemium
Requires hosting?
Supports unlimited items?
Does the platform offer extensions or plugins?
Can it be customized?
Does it offer analytics? (extensions) (out the box)
Is it beginner-friendly?
Does it offer extensive documentation?

Which is your favorite ecommerce platform between WooCommerce vs Magento? Tell us why in the comments section below!

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smadasam
July 6, 2018 5:40 am

I use WP for our blog, and Magento for our store, so I know how to use both fine.

One question I have is how they compare for SEO. I noticed our WP blog seems to fare much better in terms of pagerank. I would guess that applies to woocommerce too?

Another big factor for me is what payment and shipping methods plug in. PayPal is probably good enough for most small to medium shops, but we also use Authorize.net which is built in to Magento. Also, it integrates with FedEx and DHL for us. I don’t know what woocommerce supports on this front.

Updates are another big difference. Patching on Magneto, at least the 1.X series, is annoying. You actually have to run shell script. Also, you can’t skip non-critical updates because future critical update diff off of them and won’t apply cleanly without them. WP updates are infinitely easier.

Can you please talk about how they compare in these areas?

suthan alley
March 1, 2018 8:40 am

That is true that choosing the right platform for your online store is one of the important part. Before choosing any CMS it is better to do research that will save your time and cost. If we compare Magento with WooCommerce then Magento is easy to use in terms of features, support for large stores, UI/UX design, security, 24/7 support etc.

Patryk
January 25, 2018 10:12 pm

As Magento developer and enthusiast there is 2 main factor that this system is better than other : 1) security – it is the most important key in that area. Shop need to be secure and patches need to work without breaking shop. I won’t say that about other platforms on the market. 2) stability – one time created don’t need fixing it as much as other platforms. Magento 2 just start and have some issue right now to overcome, but previous version just work as advertised. About 2-3 years and no problems in shop. THAT is the main factor to choose. Other need fixing and help of programmer all the time (and this cost is really huge). Example: Magento 1.9 – cost 5 000 euro to invest. One time of 100 euro yearly to patch or fix some api change (other have same problems and cost). Woocommerce – cost 1000 euro to invest. 500 euro every year to upgrade theme, plugins etc because they are monthly subscribe (or pay extra money like 1000 euro for every plugin). Even that, wordpress will change often so api break will change. No update and you are on security risk. Magento have more… Read more »

Antonio Crocombe
December 26, 2017 10:24 am

The good thing about Magento is, It is a handy platform that can not only be run by large organizations but also benefit entry-level businesses. If you require an online eCommerce store, Magento will work seamlessly. If you already have an E-commerce web site than Brush Your Ideas is best for you. Brush Your Ideas is a complete web-to-print e-commerce solution for Magento that allows your online store customers to create unique printable designs for their products

Attila Szabo
December 20, 2016 1:24 pm

The single biggest disgust I have with magento, is that even in the community edition, to install a “Free” extension, you cannot truly simply download it and install it on your own You have to go get “a key”, and then “install” it via that key. So no, it’s not geared towards developers, it’s made by control freaks, operated by control freaks. Sorry, but that’s just the facts. Woocommerce beats magento every time, high time !

Travis
February 27, 2017 5:26 am
Reply to  Attila Szabo

…except that’s not true. Nothing is stopping you from downloading a magento extension and installing it manually. The key system is just there to make it easier. The fact that you can’t figure out how to download and install them manually kinda proves their point that some people need their hand held.

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