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When starting a new e-commerce business, selecting the best platform for your website is a tough choice to make. Content Management System (CMS) plays a vital role in the success of your online business. Statistics show that the e-commerce market is expected to amount to $8.1 trillion by 2026. Among the many options available for choosing an e-commerce platform, WooCommerce and OpenCart stand out as two of the most popular choices.
To make it easy for you, here we have provided a comprehensive comparison of WooCommerce vs OpenCart for eCommerce, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each of the platforms. Read on for a detailed comparison to understand the essential differences, and make an informed decision on which platform is better suited for your needs in 2024.
WooCommerce was launched in 2011 as a WordPress plugin that was designed to transform any WordPress site into a fully functional online store. The popularity of WooCommerce has grown over the years and its growth has been remarkable, with over 6 million live websites utilizing the platform. It has become a popular choice for e-commerce businesses with a vast collection of themes and plugins, secure payment options, and flexible shipping configurations.
OpenCart was introduced in 2008 as an independent PHP-based platform that powers around 600,000 websites worldwide. OpenCart has gained a reputation for its ease of use, rich functionality, and great potential for use in small to medium-sized stores.
When comparing WordPress vs OpenCart, WooCommerce, being a WordPress plugin, benefits from the large WordPress ecosystem and enjoys a larger market share relative to OpenCart, running 66% of the online stores as compared to 0.1% of OpenCart. Both platforms continue to evolve with WooCommerce announcing Woo Express as a cloud-based solution while OpenCart introduces OpenCart Cloud to enhance ease of use and scalability.
Let us now do a detailed comparison of OpenCart vs WooCommece in 2024 on various parameters like usability, scalability, SEO capabilities, community support, etc.
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin, but you need to pay for the web hosting, domain name, premium themes, plugins, and extensions. Hence, the cost of running the WooCommerce store can vary widely depending on your needs. You will also need to
OpenCart is also a free and open-source platform, and like WooCommerce, there are costs associated with running an OpenCart store. You need to spend on premium themes and extensions to style or add specific functionality to the store. Hosting costs are another concern, yet OpenCart's codebase is quite efficient, so it can often perform very well on some of the more inexpensive hosting plans.
Find below the estimated cost comparison between both platforms for various parameters:
The two, WooCommerce and OpenCart, are almost the same when compared on the features of cost and functionality. WooCommerce comes with the power of the extensive WordPress ecosystem and hence lower starting costs with free themes and plugins, and ease of use. Meanwhile, OpenCart can be more cost-effective in the long run due to its inbuilt functionalities that scale better for larger stores. Your decision on choosing one or the other should be based on your business needs, level of experience in e-commerce, and budgetary requirements.
WooCommerce, as a WordPress plug-in, makes the integration with WordPress sites easy, and one can install it much like any other plug-in. A setup wizard will then take users through the configuration of basic store details without having to upload files or create databases, which is quite simple for even someone who has limited knowledge in this area to use.
While OpenCart is also very user-friendly, its installation requires slightly more technical proficiency. Where a plugin installs upon activation, OpenCart is a standalone platform that will require users to download their files from their website, upload them to their web server, create a new database, and then run the installer. While some web hosting providers provide one-click installations, the manual setup process requires a user to use FTP and phpMyAdmin, which new users might find a little bit complicated.
A detailed comparison of WooCommerce vs OpenCart on ease of use is given below:
To conclude we will say, that WooCommerce leads in the ease of installation and setup process, especially for those users who have some experience with WordPress. OpenCart may require more effort to learn technicalities for users who never had any technical experience regarding web development.
Themes and Design:
WooCommerce has a huge library of thousands of themes, most of them free or available for a very small amount. Since WooCommerce is developed on WordPress, it supports all WordPress themes, so it is pretty versatile and customizable. It also has drag-and-drop page builders that allow users who are not technical at all to configure the design more easily.
While OpenCart has a reasonable amount of free and paid choices in themes, even then the choices are not as many as those offered by WooCommerce. Most OpenCart themes require some level of technical expertise to be customized since most of them require direct editing in code files.
Customization and Flexibility:
WooCommerce is very flexible and, in most cases, can be highly customized without the need to edit any code directly. It provides thousands of free plugins that will help in adding new features and functionalities to your store. Many changes can also be made within the WordPress customizer, thus making the process available to those who are not particularly technically savvy.
While OpenCart is fairly customizable, it requires slightly more technical expertise than WooCommerce. Far-reaching changes in the functionality and appearance of your store require the editing of coded files. This depth of personalization may be out of reach for non-coders.
Here is a detailed comparison of OpenCart vs WooCommerce for customization and flexibility:
What makes WooCommerce truly best in class about customization options pertains to user-friendliness, extensive plugin support, and theme compatibility. Conversely, OpenCart surely opens up a window for customization; however, it requires more technical knowledge and expertise for big changes. If one is to opt for something more accessible and versatile, then the first choice that will come under consideration here has to be WooCommerce.
WooCommerce provides strong product management and scale integration with WordPress. It can easily sustain large and very complex product catalogs but offers its users extensive performance optimization options from leveraging caching plugins to image compression, and everything in between, that helps in improving site speed. WooCommerce upscale as your business grows, drawing on the greater WordPress ecosystem for additional performance tools.
OpenCart is famous for its overall light structure and ease of product management. While it handles basic product tasks with ease, it struggles and will not perform very well when working with large and complex catalogs. There is also no great richness in different performance optimization options, for example, caching and some other methods need manual configuration. It scales fairly well for medium to volume shops but may require robust server configuration for larger catalogs and high traffic levels.
Find the key differences between WooCommerce vs OpenCart in the table below:
WooCommerce has better performance and product management compared to OpenCart, due to the scalability and the extensive optimization options. WooCommerce will serve best for businesses expecting growth, and needing a platform to handle large inventories and high traffic loads without losing performance.
WooCommerce or WordPress has been designed in an SEO-friendly way, with the full range of excellent SEO plugins available today, including Yoast and RankMath. These plugins grant full control over on-page SEO elements, such as meta titles, descriptions, sitemaps, and schema markup. Customizing URLs, meta tags, and alt texts is easily done without technical knowledge in WooCommerce. SEO strategies of WooCommerce are further enhanced with the advanced features of the plugins like internal linking suggestions, automatic redirects, and metadata editing.
OpenCart has basic SEO features, like meta detail editing and setting up SEO-friendly URLs. Advanced tasks call for technical knowledge and often require tweaking code to put in place things like the 301 redirects or the rel canonical tags. There are not as many SEO plugins available for OpenCart compared to WooCommerce, and this makes optimizing its SEO performance difficult.
While WooCommerce has direct implementation into WordPress, enormous plugin support, and is more user-friendly, the SEO functionalities of OpenCart remain quite basic and would need a developer to optimize them. This puts WooCommerce way above OpenCart in driving maximum search visibility and organic traffic.
Migration to any e-commerce platform is not easy. Now, if you're moving from OpenCart to WooCommerce or vice versa, many services can help to do so. For example, Cart2Cart has an automated migration of products, customers, orders, and other data between 85+ carts. However, it's important to note that customizations and some design elements may be lost and will need to be recreated in the new platform. A strong plan for all your data and customizations should be in place before changing the e-commerce platform.
Both platforms are pretty efficient at handling migrations with the help of services like Cart2Cart. However, WooCommerce goes far better in integration and customization due to the large plug-in ecosystem and strong community supporting its back.
You can also learn about step by step guide on migration from WooCommerce to Shopify.
When considering OpenCart vs WordPress, it's evident that WooCommerce, being a WordPress plugin, offers a more robust and user-friendly solution for most e-commerce needs.
Even though both WooCommerce and OpenCart give the top priority to security, they do so in very different ways, each offering their own range of properties for security. WooCommerce benefits from its integration with WordPress, offering a robust security framework with regular updates and a vast array of security plugins. This makes it easier to secure your store against various threats like malware, brute force attacks, and unauthorized access.
On the other, OpenCart also offers enough security features with regular updates and supports SSL encryption, but it has fewer security plugins available in comparison to WooCommerce. It requires more manual intervention for updates.
You want to make sure that your e-commerce platform is secure and data of your business, coupled with the customers, is not in any kind of danger. Below we have provided a comparative analysis of the security features of WooCommerce vs OpenCart.
Building an online store often requires community support and reliable resources for guidance and troubleshooting. WooCommerce benefits from its integration with WordPress, boasting a vast and active community, WooCommerce forum. It includes numerous forums, Facebook groups, meetups, and other resources, making it easy to find help and share knowledge. The broader WordPress community also contributes to the wealth of available resources. OpenCart, while also offering community support, has a smaller and less active community compared to WooCommerce. It provides forums, documentation, and video tutorials, but the support ecosystem is not as extensive as WooCommerce’s.
Here, we compare the community and support offerings of WooCommerce and OpenCart.
Comparing OpenCart and WooCommerce to Shopify, one has to view the latter as a fully hosted and subscription-based platform. This allows for ease of use and comprehensive support but lacks the depth of customization and control that one gets with WooCommerce and OpenCart. Shopify may be more appropriate for those who want a managed solution and do not have to worry about technical details.
Whether you select OpenCart or WooCommerce, it all depends on your business needs. If you already use WordPress, then with WooCommerce, you have a host of advantages: unlimited customization possibilities, a huge community, and perfect integration with WordPress. It's very good for any size of business and is targeted more at companies interested in scalable solutions with good SEO opportunities.
While OpenCart offers a user-friendly interface and efficient codebase for smaller to medium-sized stores, it is not so affordable and simple regarding deep customization, as it requires more technical know-how; also, there has always been a lack of extensive community support like WooCommerce offers.
So, whether you opt for the versatility of WooCommerce or the simplicity of OpenCart, think about the costs, especially in terms of necessary technical expertise, and your strategy for long-term growth before making your decision.
WooCommerce can handle large catalogs and high traffic with the right hosting setup and optimization due to its integration with WordPress.
WooCommerce is best for flexibility and integration with WordPress. Shopify excels in user-friendliness and all-in-one solutions. OpenCart is straightforward and suitable for basic e-commerce needs.
OpenCart and WordPress are very different. WordPress is primarily a content management system (CMS), while OpenCart is specifically designed as an e-commerce platform. However, WooCommerce, a plugin for WordPress, turns it into a full-fledged e-commerce solution.
Navjot Virk is an experienced SEO content marketer, specialising in creating high-ranking, engaging content. She excels in digital marketing, delivering impactful results through strategic SEO and meticulous keyword optimization.
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