Why do I suggest choosing WordPress instead of Shopify to create your store

At present, the most prominent topic for DTC sellers is the choice of e-commerce store website platform. For those who are ready to do e-commerce, the choice of station building tools is very key. Next, I also share my personal opinions to let everyone step less in the pit. Let's start with the conclusion. Personally, I prefer WordPress for the following reasons. Those with different opinions are welcome to leave a message. I hope this article can help you find the answer quickly.

1. Comparison of store creation mode and learning cost:
   1.1 store development cost;
   1.2 theme and plug-in fees
2. payment method
3. SEO friendliness
4. Product restrictions and store closures
5. Data storage
6. Security
7. summary

First of all, you should know that Shopify is not an independent store, but a kind of store construction tools. There are many foreign station construction tools, including the well-known ones: shopify, Open source WordPress + woocommerce, Magento, bigcommerce etc.

Magento and bigcommerce were excluded first, because there are not many people who can use it. It is not easy to find someone to solve problems. There are no reliable tutorials and Q & A in online search, and other non mainstream novices are not recommended to use it. This article only discusses WordPress woocommerce vs Shopify. 

I don't like to talk about the general trend, so this article will analyze the actual cost, ease of use, operation, etc. of novices entering the pit. I guarantee that this article is definitely more practical than most of what you find on the Internet to tell you what to use to build a station. Try not to give IQ tax. 

1,Comparison of store creation mode and learning cost

Shopify: Based on the SaaS system, i.e. the server environment has been matched well by others. You only need to register an account, select a theme and decorate the store yourself. 

Worpress: one more step, you need to build your own host server, such as WPX. In fact, like Shopify, you need to decorate your own store. As for SSL, some host servers are free, such as Cloudways. 

In fact, many people think it is difficult for WordPress to build its own server. In fact, I tell you, it is not difficult at all. Now go to buy a special WordPress host server, such as SiteGround. Basically, the other party has built the environment for you and completed the installation with one click. 

In my opinion, if we start from scratch, the operation and learning costs are close, and the difficulty is not difficult, it is not difficult to watch online tutorials; As for background management, after a few days of familiarity, WordPress woocommerce vs Shopify have the same difficulty and complexity. 

The pitfall about website speed is that if you don't optimize carefully, Shopify and WordPress will be slow and need to optimize the speed. This website has resources to improve the speed of relevant websites. 

1.1 store development cost

Let's first look at the basic monthly rent: 

• Shopify: monthly rent, basic $29, advanced $79, advanced $299, plus $2000
• WordPress: WordPress itself is free and open source. It only needs monthly rent of the host server. I think compared with Shopify, it starts at $3, advances at $5 ~ 20, and advanced at $20 ~ 50. For super large websites with more than 100000 monthly IP, VPS servers with monthly rent of $100 ~ 500 are used.

You can see that the basic store development cost of WordPress is only one tenth of Shopify! The starting price of Shopify store is $360 plus app theme, etc. at least $500 a year. WordPress I tell you, $60 a year can be very fragrant. Saving $400 + is enough for you to start cold, invest in advertising or SEO to buy the external link. The larger your investment scale, the more money you save. 

In addition, there is a more painful thing. Shopify can only open one store by paying for one account. In other words, if you have a women's dress and a 3C store, you have to pay twice. If you open n stores, you have to pay n times as long as the domain name is different; WordPress generally, as long as the server can load, you can always open countless stores. 

1.2 theme and plugin fees

Many functions of the website need to be realized by buying plugins, such as selling products quickly, importing comments, countdown activities, data analysis, giving up purchase recall, automatic reply robot, SEO, all need plugins, and all have a very complete plugin ecology. But generally speaking, Shopify's apps are much more expensive than WordPress. Usually tens of hundreds of dollars a year is almost as expensive as Shopify's monthly rent. The most terrible thing is that maybe you use Shopify's basic monthly rent of $29, but you spend $100 a month on apps - you spend at least tens of dollars a month on plugins, and many times you really just need them. 

WordPress is more flexible in this aspect, and many functions can even be realized through free plug-ins. Don't forget that there are various money-saving black technologies using plug-ins in China (not so straightforward here. We can make up our own brains and don't know how to communicate at any time. For example, many resources can be downloaded for free on my personal website www.lelinta.com). Similarly, beautiful website themes need to be bought with money. 

It's normal to make a good station and buy paid themes and several paid plug-ins. Anyway, using WordPress can save at least 4-digit plug-in fees every year（ You can also increase advertising expenses or SEO budget). 

payment method

Shopify has a feature of Shopify payment, but if you don't use Shopify payment and use your own payment and payment method, in addition to the handling charge of payment channels (PayPal, stripe, etc.), each transaction will receive an additional 2% handling charge, which is a little bad. For many years, 2% commission is also a lot of cost. 

I haven't used Shopify payments. It's better to open stripe directly from the description of deduction. 

WordPress doesn't have this charge. All you need to give is the handling charge of the payment channels (PayPal, stripe, etc.). 

SEO friendliness

It is very important to do content marketing and SEO in the end. Especially for people who pay attention to content marketing, although Shopify can also do SEO, I have communicated with several old SEO drivers offline. The conclusion is that WordPress is more conducive to SEO than Shopify, and the advantages of WordPress in doing SEO are recognized as obviously better, Even some people are forced to use Shopify to finish the headless backend for order processing, while WordPress is used for front-end display or content station to SEO, so why not use the full set of WordPress from the beginning? 

Product restrictions and store closures

It's a bit mysterious, but don't forget that Shopify is a Canadian company, and the power of life and death is in the hands of others. Recently, some friends have been closed down, and they are not popular, not a group of stations. They are completely legitimate products. They have been closed before they have been advertised on the line. At present, these are very few, and the probability is not high, but judging from the increasingly strict situation of FB and GMC, Tighter and tighter will only be the trend. However, with more and more users, Shopify will review the brand and products. 

And worpress only has a server provider that can seal your store, and why does he seal you if he's okay? And even if one in a billion is blocked, data and programs can be backed up to your hard disk. You can change the server. And Shopify is closed. Where are you going to change for the second Shopify? You can only find worpress or other site building tools. 

 Of course, the above are extreme cases. If you are a legitimate product, it's actually OK, but if it's CA side ball products, station groups, popular models and small black ash, you can't use Shopify and probably close the store.

As for the domestic station building tools, there are good and bad. I don't make too much evaluation here. I suggest using those who focus on station building and are familiar with themselves. Don't use those backgrounds. They are born as sellers. After all, they are referees and players, you know. 

Data storage

Using Shopify, your data is placed on Shopify's own server, so if you want to see it, you can see all your data completely. Of course, you should also believe in other people's professional integrity. 

If you use WordPress, only the server provider can get your data. Generally, the server provider will not view these data, and only you can view the WordPress password. You have complete control of your data and database and code. 

Security

Many people are concerned about whether it will be attacked. Relatively speaking, Shopify is better. After all, it is certainly more difficult for hackers to crack Shopify servers than the servers you buy. In fact, if WordPress does not buy a bad server and is well configured, its security will not be worse than Shopify. The general problem can be solved by the server provider. 

summary

First of all, the two site building tools are excellent. What to choose depends on the actual needs. The above has been analyzed a lot. I have directly given a conclusion on some details. If you want to know the specific reasons, you are welcome to leave a message or send a private letter to me. 

Finally, give me some pertinent suggestions. Now I contact many people who are just starting an independent station, including individuals or mom and pop stores, large factories, teams, and domestic to foreign... Usually if ordinary people ask me, the official tone is, "if you are a novice, it is recommended to use Shopify, which is easy to use". If you are my good friend, I usually suggest: "use WordPress. If you can start a business in the early stage, you can save it. Saving thousands of dollars is enough for your cold start." However, many old drivers are using WordPress, so why don't we choose the right one at the beginning? 

E-commerce traffic is the most difficult, such as store cold start, advertising, SEO, celebrity marketing, traffic realization, user growth, etc. someone needs to break through one by one. Therefore, we create lelinta community and break through one by one according to the theme. Welcome to join us. The theme of this quarter is store cold start and breakthrough.