We often have clients come to us wanting to start a new e-commerce website, or rebuild their existing e-commerce website, tailored for the Australian market.
Platform is often one of the first considerations – there are many out there, but for small to medium sized businesses (and even some large ones!) the decision comes back to WordPress/Woocommerce or Shopify.
While we specialise in WordPress and Woocommerce E-commerce based websites, we also have experience with shopify, and are largely platform agnostic. We believe in finding the best platform for your business – event if that means you don’t end up partnering with our agency.
What’s the difference?
Well, the first difference is really a structural and/or ideological one.
WordPress.org websites are what we call open-source and self-hosted. That is, the core application code is open to everyone, and is hosted by the end-user on their own server. (WordPress does have some options for hosted websites but we’ll exclude them from this discussion as you wouldn’t consider WordPress.com for an e-commerce website.)
Shopify, on the other hand, is what we call a hosted solution. While you can edit elements of the website code (such as theme code + styling and frontend scripts), the underlying core code is not open to the public. Additionally, a Shopify website must be hosted by Shopify. As a result, you enter into a month to month contract with Shopify and if you wish to exit this contract, your website will cease to function and cannot be transferred elsewhere.
Is hosting my own website better?
Maybe.
Hosting your own website with a platform like WordPress.org allows you to have full control over the website and you can move it around as you wish. You are the full owner of the website’s intellectual property.
With this comes a level of responsibility, in that you must choose a secure host that has adequate resources to run your web application. A $5 per month plan is unlikely to satiate your website’s thirst for computing power, hosting really is an area where you get what you pay for.
On the other hand, while you lose a significant degree of independence and sovereignty when using Shopify, you do outsource the website’s resourcing requirements as well as security. Simply put, you do not need to concern yourself with the hard-core technicalities of running a website and can focus on the e-commerce trading side of things.
What does this mean in the real world?
I’ll talk to two real world situations. Business W with WordPress and Business S with Shopify.
To ensure their website remains secure and stable, Business W employs the services of web developer to conduct monthly website audits and updates to ensure their WordPress core and plugins remain up to date. Additionally, backups are made monthly with automatic overnight backups. Additionally, they utilise a trusted Australian based host on a shared hosting plan that is reasonably priced while allowing for adequate resources and good customer service.
Business W has mitigated the risks of using WordPress – allowing them to enjoy the significant benefits that the platform offers.
Business S is using Shopify for their E-commerce store, and are largely happy with the platform. They find that the platform is largely set and forget, to an extent, with plugins being maintained by the author and Shopify managing resources for their website. They had previously enjoyed an integration between Shopify and Mailchimp – however found that this was switched off due to a disagreement between Shopify and Mailchimp. This impacts negatively against their marketing activities, as they can no longer automate communications using Mailchimp.
Business S has run up against the limits of a hosted platform – in that their autonomy has been lost due to a disagreement between their chosen platform and a vendor of their choice. This risk cannot be mitigated against, as when you choose a hosted and proprietary platform, you hand over a significant degree of control (and your fate) to the platform.
What next?
If you’d like to discuss your platform options further – don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to chat!
