There are several eCommerce systems exist in the market, but very few are well known for their advanced features like Magento, Woo-commerce, Shopify etc. Here we are going to explain the difference between Magento 2 and WooCommerce as both have several features. At the end of this article you can decide which platform you need to choose for eCommerce application.

Magento 2  is complete eCommerce solution, while WooCommerce is plugin for WordPress. WooCommerce has limited features and have less opportunity than Magento 2. However, WooCommerce have capability to run an eCommerce store for you. Magento is specific eCommerce platform so it has more opportunity and great resource for managing your eCommerce application.

Before proceeding, take time to analysis all aspects about both platform, your future plans and opportunities. 

• What are your target customer groups?
• How many products & categories will be severed by you?​
• Are you planning to extend this with ERP system in future?
• Will you hire a developer to secure and manage your eCommerce website or you will manage most of the website yourself?

What make Magento 2 and WooCommerce similar to each others?

Magento and WooCommerce serve several same features. Both can be customised by anyone because they are open source systems. On these both platform, lots of developer have been working and these have a big powerful community.

WooCommerce was developed by some WordPress developers, while Magento has dedicated teams and developer and strong community to contribute in the improvements of Magento.

More substantially, the two systems have some common features in terms of product management and communication.

Both system have ability to store unlimited number of products in the database.

Magento and WooCommerce, both of these provides feature to add page content dynamically from back-end that a non-technical person can easily manage it as well.

In both platform you can run blog page, for Magento you need to install extension but WooCommerce is WordPress based so its in built.

You can see several general similarities in both platform.

What are the differences between Magento and WooCommerce?

Setting Up

In starting a business you have to face several obstacle and you do not want the e-commerce platform that you have chosen to be one of them. Obviously, if you have already WordPress and you want to start eCommerce, your first priority will be WooCommerce. It will be easy for you to add e-commerce feature because you do not need to move your data from one platform to another.

WordPress is one the most simple and easy user interface. For setup eCommerce you just need to add eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce to it. WooCommerce provides well documentation and video tutorials for setting up.

Magento has easy user interface as well but it becomes more complicated and complex as it start installing additional extension to it. Number of extension will increase the complexity of the system and you need someone who has expertise into this.

Costs

Fundamentally, both platforms are free of costs. However Magento provides two edition Magento open source and Magento Commerce edition, and Commerce edition has charges. In these platform you need to pay only to extend its functionality. For that you need to install either free or purchased extensions.

When you plan to hire a developer, you will find WooCommerce developer more easily because it is WordPress based. Magento developers are harder to find than WooCommerce developers and you will need to install a single extension properly.

Features

With e-commerce platform, you always want to have shopping cart facility, infinite products, order management and great customer experience. You get these basic features from both platforms. Now question comes which platform offers better further customisation for your shop and enhance customer experience?

At this point, Magento wins. Magento provides great customer experience by showing customer up-sell, cross-sell, compared products, discount codes, discount offers with advanced filter option to navigate to product.  With this Magento provides facility to have multiple store linked to same account. WooCommerce is simpler, it is best to start out your business. You can rate product and feature best seller through available widgets. If anything else more complex require additional plugins.

Magento admin area provides a vast array of options to improve you business. Apart from the basic features like manage product, order and customer, Magento offers several kind of reports and spastics to analysis your business.

Design

Today the conversion and revenue rate have increased through mobile and tables. Every eCommerce site must be mobile responsive and compatible to all devices from smartphones to PCs.

WooCommerce is plugin of WordPress so it can be integrated with WordPress without a hassle, thus responsiveness is usually not a problem. Magento 2 is built with latest technologies and with focus to compatible to all devices.

There are number of themes available for both platform. They can be free or premium and can be altered according to your requirements. However, Magento 2 comes with responsive built-in theme Luma.

Security

You may have heard about the vulnerability of WordPress (WooCommerce) sites. These sites need extra care to protect it from attack. WordPress (WooCommerce) is one of the most attacked type of platforms. WordPress security can be enhanced by using sophisticated passwords, on regular basis updating the WordPress and its plugins, adding additional security plugins.

Where Magento is highly secured platform and has less chances to be hacked. This is because Magento has several built-in features that make it strong, robust and secure. With Magento it’s recommended installing all security patches and changing the default /admin URL to a custom URL right at the beginning. 

The Final Choice

Magento tends to be popular with medium to larger businesses. If you looking for long term, it’s perfect choice to execute you grand plans. It has a few more basic features and once installed by a developer, the extensions are brilliant too. However, you’ll need a big budget to set this kind of store up.

WooCommerce can be nicely integrated into WordPress websites and it is easy to handle. It is perfect for selling your products and you can add additional add-on to enhance the customer experience. It’s also the best solution if you’re used to the WordPress interface or already have a domain set up and you now want to make products available to buy through your site.

One thing to remember is that Magento was designed specifically for e-commerce stores. WooCommerce is a plugin of WordPress, it will not work standalone.