Building up an online store is the initial step in the lengthy, complex but pleasing eCommerce journey. These steps of building an online store are also very tricky as one needs to take several hard decisions that determine your online business’s success.
Out of various decisions, choosing an appropriate eCommerce platform is one of the crucial and toughest decisions. There are various eCommerce platforms available in the market. But here, we will get insights about OpenCart Vs WooCommerce security eCommerce platforms.
WooCommerce Vs OpenCart is like a healthy competition. As both of these are among the most popular eCommerce platforms, favoring OpenCart Vs WooCommerce is impossible.
This eCommerce platform offers many features that make it quite simple to build an online store for beginners. Both OpenCart and WooCommerce provide customers with a shopping experience.
It also provides analytical tools and offers various enhancing and customization options. That helps you to design your online store the way you want.
In this competitive space, we have discussed OpenCart Vs WooCommerce and explained various aspects of these eCommerce platforms in the text of online business.
However, suppose you want to interact with experts and know which among them is best. Then an eCommerce development agency can help you through your way.
A Brief for OpenCart Vs WooCommerce
Before starting the comparison, let’s have an overview to understand better what OpenCart and WooCommerce are all about. How do they operate and function, its design, extensions, plugins, SEO, customer support, and many more?
1. What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is one of the well-known eCommerce platforms in the eCommerce market. According to Built With data, WooCommerce currently has a 29% market share of the top 1 million sites using e-commerce technologies in 2021.
One of the most exciting things about WooCommerce is that it is a WordPress Plugin. Thus, once installed for your website, it helps develop an online eCommerce store with basic functionalities. Like reporting and analysis, Processing, inventory management, and many more.
Even though WooCommerce was installed a few years later after OpenCart. It tends to exceed the user base, and popularity, and one of the major reasons is its open-source nature.
It means that WooCommerce provides users with space where users can create their plugins and themes and install them all on their WooCommerce store without any restrictions.
Many essential WooCommerce plugins that revolutionize user experience to increase sales on your eCommerce website. Another important aspect of Woocommerce has gained such immense popularity because it works on a WordPress website.
Thus anyone who already runs a WordPress site is automatically smooth with WooCommerce as well. Check out to learn more facts and stats of WooCommerce development.
2. What Is OpenCart?
Like WooCommerce, OpenCart is an open-source platform. It comes intact with strong store management, a host of themes and extensions, and a support system that will help you in each step of your journey.
Although OpenCart does not experience the same success as WooCommerce in the eCommerce market.
One major reason is that it does not have many themes and extensions like WooCommerce, which mainly binds the functionalities and customization of the online store.
OpenCart is quite popular with beginner store owners. It is best for one who is searching for a quick free setup as it provides adequate out-of-the-box features that are quite capable of running a small store with various products.
WooCommerce Vs OpenCart: Detailed Comparison
1. Ease of Installation and Usage
WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. Therefore, one can install it the same as they install other plugins for their store.
Thus, WooCommerce is free, open-source software, and it demands no requirements for any monthly fees.
It is quite easy to install WooCommerce. All one needs to do is go to “Plugins” in the left sidebar and search for WooCommerce.
Then they have to click on “Install Now.” After activating the plugin, it leads to the setup wizard, which requests one to fill in a little basic information about your online store.
Once all of it is done, you’ll be guided to your online eCommerce store.
On the other hand, in OpenCart, users have access to two options while talking about store setup. The first and foremost step is the easy setup option, as it is a one-click installer with hosting providers.
It may cost you around $3 – $15. Secondly, one can install an OpenCart store manually. The process might feel quite complex as you need to have some basic technical skills, like using FTP to share the OpenCart archive to your server than developing a database via PHPMyAdmin.
Therefore, OpenCart can be difficult and complex for those who don’t have technical skills and knowledge.
2. OpenCart vs WooCommerce – Design and Themes
WooCommerce Development Agency provides store owners with approx 2000+ free themes, and about 30,000+ paid themes.
For your endless requirements of magazine themes, eCommerce themes, SEO-powered themes, business-specific themes, and many more. You name it, and WooCommerce has it.
WooCommerce developers, also known as the WooThemes team, are quite aware of the importance of design. It further explains that all of it is forced to develop a platform that can cooperate well with almost every theme in the market.
It implies users can select any WordPress theme and make it work perfectly fine with your WooCommerce platform. Apart from that, one can also focus on the themes built-in with WooCommerce.
That is correctly tailored to enhance your service/product page listing. If you are very concerned about your eCommerce store’s design, you should look for themes specially made for WooCommerce.
Storefront themes are known as the official themes built for WooCommerce that meet your WooCommerce website’s standards.
It also provides merchants with the capability to sell through an online store with an eCommerce-oriented look. It offers most of its themes at the price of $39.
The scope of WooCommerce is great. OpenCart themes are very limited in comparison to WooCommerce themes. OpenCart development agency offers users 500 free and paid themes in total.
The cost of these OpenCart themes revolves around $60 – $70. The advanced templates offer users the ability to modify the look and feel of your eCommerce store effectively and efficiently.
For instance, it enables users with various pre-customizations so that you can add to your website conveniently.
However, it might be not very easy if considering deep customisations and requires one to have intensive CSS and HTML knowledge. It may give you a hard time, and you may require help from the OpenCart development agency.
3. WooCommerce Vs OpenCart: Pricing
OpenCart Vs WooComemrce are both free open source eCommerce platforms. Despite this, you need to focus on the additional costs closely linked with complete store running.
Like hosting, domain name, and additional extensions and SSL certificates. Getting to the point, one would require to pay monthly to get a hosting service.
It may cost around $5 – $100 per month. Hence it all depends on the types of hosting one will choose. Secondly, one would also require to pay $10 per year for the domain name.
The last one will require an SSL certificate whose charges may range from free to more than $1000/year. So you should estimate the cost to develop a WooCommerce online store before developing an online store.
Keeping aside all the decent basic costs to operate a website, additionally, paid premium themes to come. For those who are looking to enhance or upgrade the online store look of their store.
One can also take advantage of extension stores that may enhance the features and functionalities of your online store, and that will also be an additional expense you need to add to your budget.
4. WooCommerce Vs OpenCart: Features & SEO
If users wish to beat their competition with Google rankings, WooCommerce has it all. It provides various extensions and plugins that one can take advantage of for a better experience with various features and functionalities.
Go through some of the best plugins for WooCommerce development to rank in Google SERP pages. Like flexible URLs, Google Analytics, robots.txt, meta description, generate sitemap.xml, and blogs.
For instance, one may be able to modify on-page SEO and add meta descriptions from the backend. WooCommerce users are in their right to experience Yoast SEO, which is the #1 SEO plugin. It assembles more than five million site users.
Yoast SEO provides users with features & SEO, Like:
- Meta Editing
- Suggestions for internal linking
- Redirects
It has all the capabilities for the SEO optimization process that the plugins have to offer.
On the other hand, OpenCart pushes itself as an SEO-friendly platform. The limitations of features & SEO restricts user’s capabilities to make definite and crucial SEO modifications.
While one can edit, modify or update meta titles, descriptions, keywords. One would require to mess around with code.
Thus performing 301 redirects and rel canonical can arise as the tasks require you with PHP coding. For beginners and startups, this process can be too inconvenience.
5. OpenCart Vs WooCommerce: Customer Support
OpenCart development agency provides its users with various video tutorials, documentation, blogs, and forums. Thus, one can take advantage of the OpenCart forum, which is extremely active, and one will easily get answers to all their questions.
If one may require advanced assistance from dedicated support, then OpenCart provides a monthly fee of $99.
On the whole, if you are taking into account OpenCart customer support, then it is quite solid and strong. Users get access to support from top to bottom in each step of launching and growing your online store.
WooCommerce is free to install and use, but direct support is unavailable. However, this doesn’t mean that the problems of WooCommerce are unsolvable.
For example, if one may require any support, they can head straight to official WordPress forums. It has a large community, and people over there are very happy with the support they get from features and functionalities.
WooCommerce also offers one with several documentation pages and video tutorials. Yet another way that users can use to get support is by opening a support ticket on the WooCommerce website.
All the complainants and queries are assured of getting a response within 24 hours. Thus the actual response times will depend on the complexity of your technical and advanced questions.
Conclusion
All the aspects covered till now will help you to go through your knowledge of what benefits OpenCart and WooCommerce offer. So what’s your opinion on OpenCart Vs WooCommerce?
The truth can’t be denied that WordPress is a strong powerhouse and respected eCommerce solution. If you are operating a WordPress eCommerce site, it is quite easy to get started with WooCommerce.
These platforms certainly provide many advanced features, plugins, flexibility, customer support, customizations, SEO environment, and enhanced design.
Although OpenCart provides easy-to-use eCommerce solutions. If one may not be equipped with technical skills, installing an OpenCart store will help you get through this tech mess.
However, it can also charge you a definite amount of cost. As mentioned earlier, OpenCart has some issues with SEO, and it can be a real headache.
Hence in comparison to themes quantity, OpenCart cannot provide the absolute ability to customize your online store as WooCommerce. Therefore WooCommerce can be proved as a much better choice.
Choosing an appropriate platform for your online store is not an easy task. However, all is well when one reaches the final lines of this in-depth OpenCart Vs WooCommerce security comparison.
Most of your doubts might have cleared. If you already have a running online business on OpenCart and are now motivated to switch to WooCommerce.
It can be an opportunity for us to actualize your wish. As already done with tons of store migration in general and plenty of OpenCart to WooCommerce migration.
Top eCommerce development agencies can guarantee to deliver you with hassle-free and decent migration experience. So schedule a call now and share your ideas, and together we will bring them into existence.
