Both OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce are open-source ecommerce platforms that can help you build an online shop. OpenCart offers out-of-the-box features that can get you started with a basic store after installation, and WordPress WooCommerce is a plug-in that can turn any WordPress site into a fully-functional shop.
Both give business owners full control of how they design and set up their sites—but which one’s right for you?
A Side-by-Side Comparison
Choosing the right website builder is key to getting the ecommerce site that you want. Many novice business owners, typically those with a bit of coding know-how, decide between OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce because both are open-source, giving more flexibility for customization, integrations, and growth. Here’s how the two compare:
Cost
For those wondering how much WooCommerce costs–it’s free. The same is true with OpenCart; however, there are additional necessary costs that you have to pay in order for your site to function, such as hosting, domain, and security, as well as for paid themes, marketing tools, and help from Guru’s freelance WooCommerce developers.
Ease of Use
To install OpenCart, you can either use their one-click installer or set it up manually. With the former, you don’t have to do much–once it’s done, you have a basic store ready for you, which is ideal for most store owners. Manual set-up, on the other hand, requires coding skills, though it does provide you with more options for customization.
To install WordPress WooCommerce, you simply add the plug-in to your WordPress site, then follow the steps in their quick installer. That said, if you don’t have an existing WordPress website, you’ll have to set one up beforehand.
Both OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce have easy-to-use interfaces that are pretty straightforward; they’re especially understandable if you have basic web development knowledge or experience working with ecommerce dashboards.
Design
OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce give you access to free and paid themes that you can apply to your website, eliminating the need of having to design everything from scratch yourself. WordPress WooCommerce has thousands of themes to play with, ranging from $0 to $100. Meanwhile, OpenCart has a more limited selection and, though customizable as well, may require more extensive coding skills to tinker with.
Customization
Being open-source platforms, both OpenCart and WordPress WordPress WooCommerce allow for limitless customization—as long as you know how to code. WordPress WooCommerce gives you direct access to the code via FTP, which means you can modify almost anything. OpenCart is a bit more complex–you can work with the underlying code, but you’ll need a more advanced set of technical skills to customize it.
Store Management
Both OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce support all the basic ecommerce processes: inventory management, order fulfillment, sales tracking, payment processing, shipping, and analytics reporting. You can adjust these on each platform by coding and can add a wide range of functional extensions depending on your needs.
OpenCart also allows for multi-store creation under one installation, which you can also do in WordPress WooCommerce, though you’d have to install another plug-in.
SEO
WordPress WooCommerce has the advantage of WordPress’ Yoast SEO plug-in, which makes it easier to get your site higher in search engine rankings. This comes in addition to other extensions and plug-ins that you can utilize to boost rankings, such as flexible URLs and Google Analytics.
OpenCart also markets itself as SEO-friendly, but it has more limited capabilities. To perform more advanced SEO functions, you may have to learn a bit more about PHP coding.
Sales and Marketing Tools
OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce both have a large library of plug-ins and extensions that you can use to enhance the sales and marketing capabilities of your ecommerce shop. WordPress WooCommerce, however, has the upper hand, with a wider variety of impressive tools.
Support
Open-source platforms typically don’t have dedicated customer support–which is true for OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce, although both have active forums, extensive documentation, and tutorial videos that can help you with most issues. WordPress WooCommerce also accepts support tickets to further help you, while OpenCart offers customer support plans–for a quoted price or $99 per month–for extra assistance.
Which Is Better: OpenCart or WordPress WooCommerce?
Both OpenCart and WordPress WooCommerce provide site owners and developers with a lot of control over their ecommerce shops, but WordPress WooCommerce has the upper hand, thanks to its easy-to-use platform, high customizability, and a rich library of themes, extensions, and plug-ins. To maximize your usage of the platform, hire a freelance WordPress WooCommerce developer from Guru who can help you build the best site possible.
