Shopify vs Opencart: Who wins ?

Shopify Development

Whether you're opening a new online store or are interested in using Shopify as your eCommerce platform, you can find out more information about your options here.

Shopify is considered as today’s industry leaders and its one of the most easiest way to setup your eCommerce store. With no coding required in the setup at all, the Shopify is a boon for the business owners who are least interested in knowing the technicalities and can straight away launch their eCommerce website on their own.

Today, Shopify serves over 325,000 Businessmen all over the world. It is considered as “Pure” eCommerce builder and due it its easy-to-setup feature, all shopify stores combinely have crossed $1B total sales.

Pros of using Shopify

• Easy-to-setup

With ZERO coding required, shopify gives its users an easy option to select theme and start selling their products in few minutes. A user can drag-n-drop using its easy website builder, adding products using its simple admin panel and selecting a payment gateway from the available list, a user can start selling their products very easily.

• SEO Optimised

Shopify is highly SEO-optimised. Editable title tags, meta descriptions, page URLs, ALT tags for images, customizable file names and a lot more. With a few clicks and changes, a user can do good quality of SEO on his own. Also, the results are good and reliable to some extent.

• Customer Support

This is one of the best features of Shopify. It offers 24/7 support to its users and you can reach them via E-mail, live chat or Phone. Also, there are plenty of documentations already available on their website, which one can go through and troubleshoot the issue on his own.

Cons of using Shopify

• Prices and additional charges

Starting with 14-day free trial, shopify offers 3 plans staring from $29 per month for basic plan being the lowest and $299 per month for Advanced Shopify being the highest plan available.

Also, you will have to pay 2.9% + 30 cents per purchase in case of Credit Card used for each transaction. You’ll pay nothing for transactions via Shopify payment system, yet you will need to pay up to 2% using external payment gateways e.g. PayPal. It's going to be a bit expensive to maintain a store, since monthly fees will scale up with the revenue growing proportionally.

• Less-customization

You will have to completely rely on Shopify in case you are looking for some customization to your eCommerce Web Store. They offer very few options when making any changes and getting the changes done by their team is usually costly. As long as you are satisfied with what they are giving, you are good to go with Shopify.

Opencart Website Development

Opencart is free open-source platform and a perfect match for small / medium-sized businesses. This software is based on PHP, therefore any merchant would benefit from background in that programming language.

OpenCart follows a core-extensions model, so if higher level of functionality is needed, you have to install some add-ons which you can find in plenty on their ‘Marketplace’. OpenCart is already loaded with all basic functions user needs from eCommerce solution.

What’s more, OpenCart multi-store function allows its users to manage and monitor multiple stores from a single Admin panel. In addition, OpenCart allows to have shopping cart facilities, upload unlimited products, categorize them, etc.

OpenCart’s one of the main features is the ability of working with multiple languages and currencies. It makes this platform really great for market expansion.

Pros of using Opencart

• Super user friendly:

OpenCart is very user-friendly and effective platform which comes with a highly intuitive, well-designed interface. It’s easier than Magento and consumes less space on the server and works with basic server configuration

• Prices & extra charges:

Opencart is completely free and open source. However, unlike Shopify, where you don’t need any server to launch your eCommerce store, the case is totally opposite in case of Opencart.

Opencart requires a domain name, a server/shared hosting and SSL (which is mandatory for the payment gateways). This may cost some amount, but far less when you consider the highest monthly package of Shopify.

• Easily customizable:

Being an open source software, customizing opencart is possible to great extent and you can even make your own theme. Though it requires fairly good technical knowledge, but the store owner will get exactly what he desired for. The UI can be made more appealing using easily available extensions and thus, the Opencart websites are far more user friendly and attractive.

• Customer support:

Opencart has its own unique and best way for providing support to its users. They have created a community, which is very active and there are super technical people who can solve your queries and doubts.

Also, there is a dedicated support option, where the store owner can ask for a representative who can look after your queries and modifications. The charges are $99 and it is worth every penny.

Cons of using Opencart

• SEO:

Opencart’s default SEO methods and options are of little moderate level and a specialist SEO person is required to handle the things. Though the options and features are useful, its just that they don’t click as much as Woocoomerce and thus it lags behind the race in best eCommerce software.

Therefore, if someone wants to have a more customised eCommerce website, then Opencart eCommerce Website Development is highly recommended. However, if one wants to stick with the default features given by Shopify, then Shopify Website Development is preferrable.