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Ecwid vs WooCommerce: Which Ecommerce Platform Should You Choose in 2024

Updated on February 14, 2024

10 Min Read

Struggling to choose between WooCommerce and Ecwid for your online store? You’ve landed on the right article.

Running an online store is tough, but what’s tougher is to choose the right platform to build your store on mainly because there are so many options available such as WooCommerce and Ecwid.

In this article, I will take you through a series of comparisons between WooCommerce vs Ecwid so that you can make an informed decision about your online store.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: Overview

WooCommerce is the biggest ecommerce platform in terms of market share, powering 15% of all online stores worldwide. This stat might make you think that WooCommerce is the right platform for you.

However, I would advise you to read this article before you make your decision because what’s right for 15% of online store owners might not be right for you.

Woocommerce marketshare

-Source: BuiltWith

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that transforms your regular WordPress site into an online store. Just download the plugin, install it on your WordPress site and you have a store ready.

But, it’s not that simple, as I’ll discuss later in the article.

Ecwid is a free ecommerce platform that allows users to sell on multiple platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. It’s ideal for users who are interested in selling their products on platforms other than their online store.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: A Quick Comparison

WooCommerce Ecwid
Pros
  • Open source – allows for integration with thousands of extensions
  • Quickly and easily convert your website to an online store
  • Free of cost – the plugin is essentially free. Just download and install
  • Users can sell across multiple channels such as Facebook and Instagram
  • 100% customizable – you can practically change everything about your online store to fit your needs.
  • User friendly – beginner users can easily get their hands on Ecwid and start selling
  • Flexible – Adapts to all kinds of stores. Easily configured to sell anything, both physical and virtual
  • Design options are limited which means you can only use specific themes and templates.
  • WordPress-specific – It only works with WordPress which means you would need to have a WordPress site for WooCommerce to work.
Cons
  • Plugins and extensions may bloat your store which results in poor performance and speed.
  • Not ideal for very large stores – There is a possibility that you might run into limitations as your store grows.
  • Free plan has huge limitations – If you are a serious store owner you will most likely need to start off with their paid plan which costs $12/mo

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: Pricing

WooCommerce

I have already mentioned that WooCommerce is a free plugin at all levels which means if you have a store with zero sales or a store that generates millions of dollars, you won’t have to pay a penny for WooCommerce.

woocommerce

Having said that, does it mean that building an online store with WooCommerce is completely free? The answer is no.

While the plugin itself is free, there are multiple other costs associated with building a WooCommerce store, such as paid extensions, premium themes, and web hosting. Here’s a breakdown of how much a WooCommerce store costs you.

Extensions

One of the main selling points of WooCommerce is that it has thousands of extensions available, all designed to make your store more usable. A number of these extensions are free of cost, but these naturally come with limitations. If you’re a serious store owner, always choose paid extensions.

A paid extension would cost you around $10 to $100, depending on the function it performs.

Themes

 Just like extensions, WooCommerce has paid and premium themes. A premium theme from ThemeForest can cost you anywhere from $35 to $150.

Web Hosting

Web hosting is essential to not only start your online business but also to grow it to new levels. For a WooCommerce store, it is advised that you choose cloud hosting over shared servers. A well-managed cloud host, such as Cloudways WooCommerce Hosting, will cost you around $22/month.

Ecwid

Ecwid has multiple plans that are suitable for different types of users, starting with a free plan for store owners who are just starting out. This allows them to start building their stores, but it practically has no features that will make the store functional.

This means as a store owner, you will automatically look for their paid plans that start from $14.08/month
pricing ecwid

The Venture plan has basically everything you need to run an online store with store management, social media tools, SEO features, discount coupons and mobile POS.

The Business plan, Ebay US integration, abandoned cart saver and wholesale pricing groups, is for store owners looking for growth opportunities.

Finally, the Unlimited plan, with features like Square POS integration, is for larger stores that are already generating significant revenue.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: User Friendliness

As a store owner, the last thing you would want is to spend a huge chunk of your time on the backend of your online store. This is where both platforms’ user friendliness comes in. How easy is it to build an online store with WooCommerce and Ecwid? Let’s find out.

WooCommerce

Since WooCommerce is a plugin, the usability and functionality of your store will be that of a WordPress website, except with ecommerce features. Here is how your backend will look once you install the WooCommerce plugin on your store.

WooCommerce is known for its user friendliness. To make your WooCommerce store more functional, all you have to do is install an extension that does the job that you require. You won’t have to worry about coding or getting your hands dirty with all the technical work.

However, for advanced features such as custom post types, you would either need to know coding or hire a developer to do it for you.

Ecwid

Ecwid, on the other hand, has a completely different setup. It is a standalone ecommerce platform that integrates with WordPress, which means you have to navigate through two different dashboards. This can get tricky sometimes.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: Design

A successful online store requires a good design where you can use your brand colors and elements to make it stand out. Let’s have a look at how WooCommerce and Ecwid compare when it comes to design.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce offers great design options in the form of free and premium themes. Its open source nature means thousands of themes are  available to you on themeforest and other online marketplaces.  Once you download and install a theme, you can make several changes to it, such as changing the colors, fonts, adding a slider, adding a sidebar and much more.

Ecwid

When it comes to design, Ecwid has its limitations. It only allows you to use the themes it has on its marketplace. Though the themes are professionally designed and crafted to suit a variety of customers, it still doesn’t match with the thousands of WooCommerce themes available.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: Support

As a store owner, you want to spend more time focusing on growing your business than fixing technical issues. This is where support comes in. Ideally, you should choose a platform that offers customer support, so let’s see how WooCommerce and Ecwid compare in this section.

WooCommerce

Since WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin, it doesn’t come with support. There is basically no way you can get chat or phone support with WooCommerce.

However, there are multiple ways you can find solutions to your WooCommerce problems, one of which is the plethora of online resources available on the internet. With WooCommerce, whenever you run into a problem, search for it on Google and you will find a blog post written on it with a solution.

Apart from that, WooCommerce has a huge community. If you choose WooCommerce, you should join different forums and groups to find fellow users who could help you with your issues.

Ecwid

Ecwid support varies throughout the different plans it offers.

The Venture plan offers Live chat support while the business plan offers phone support.

The unlimited plan offers both phone, plus live chat in addition to priority support and 12 hours of custom development. This is especially important if you run into technical issues during a sale period and want to get it fixed as quickly as possible.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: Integrations and Extensions

Integrations are essential for your online store as they allow you to add various functionalities and features to your store. Let’s dive into both WooCommerce and Ecwide extensions to see how both platforms compare.

WooCommerce

This is where WooCommerce really stands out, with thousands of possible integrations of different extensions to make your online store more functional.

For example if you want to add a payment gateway to your checkout process, all you have to do is install a PayPal payment gateway extension, configure it on your store and you’re done.

Similarly, you are just an extension away from getting a slider on your home page or a zoom-in feature on your product images.

You can find these extensions on various marketplaces such as Envato and templatemonster. If you’re just getting started with your online store, you can try out free extensions from the WordPress repository as well for a glimpse of what these plugins have to offer.

Ecwid

Just like themes, Ecwid only allows you to use extensions that are available on its app market which means the options are fairly limited if you compare it with WooCommerce.

However, since WooCommerce is open source, you may find a number of buggy extensions that could mess up your store. But with Ecwid, that’s not the case. The extensions are developed by Ecwid developers and are thoroughly tested for any bugs and issues before being released in the app market.

You will find a number of useful extensions such as for Google ads, product comparison, Hubspot for analytics and tracking, and Spocket for dropshipping features.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: Customization

Customization is essential if you’re planning to grow your online business into a brand; you would want to use your brand colors, logos, elements and maybe a mascot on your ecommerce store.

Without customization options, none of this is possible so let’s look at to what extent you can customize both the platforms.

WooCommerce

The open source nature of WooCommerce allows users to customize their stores beyond their imaginations. As a store owner, you can remove and replace almost anything on your store whether it’s the font, colors, logos, header, footer, sidebar and much more.

There is really no limitation on how far you can go with customizing your online store. However, doing so is not that simple.

As mentioned earlier in the article, starting off with WooCommerce is simple, but as you go deeper into customizing your store, you should either know coding yourself or hire a developer to do it for you. The possibilities are endless, but they require a lot of backend technical knowledge.

Ecwid

Even though Ecwid is not an open source platform, it offers a wide range of customization options for your online store. First, there are the built in store design settings that allows you to change product card details layout, enable or disable store elements, SKU numbers, and much more straight from your Ecwid dashboard.

Ecwid also lets you customize your store design using CSS. It provides a Ecwid CSS codebook that contains all the codes you would need to customize various elements of your store. You can also use various themes on your Ecwid store, such as Wix themes, WordPress themes and much more.

WooCommerce vs Ecwid: SEO

To make your online business a success, you need to have the right SEO strategy in place and a platform that allows you to put that strategy into action. Both WooCommerce and Ecwid have SEO functionalities so let’s take a look at how both of these platforms compare in this section.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce comes with a standard out-of-the-box SEO feature that allows you to perform basic SEO functions such as setting up MT, MD and altext.

In addition to this, you can use a number of SEO tools available and integrate them with your WooCommerce store, some popular ones being Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, and Rankmath. These tools allow you to perform advanced SEO functions such as analyzing paragraph structure, keyword density, permalink cleanups and more.

Ecwid

Ecwid offers great SEO features for your online store, including SEO-friendly URLs. Whether you are building your site on WordPress or Wix, you get good URLs that are easy for crawlers to crawl and help in ranking your store.

Apart from that, the features cover a number of basic functionalities such as MT, MD, tags and more.

Expert Opinions on WooCommerce and Ecwid

I’m Morshed, the Founder of Savvy Programmer

“WooCommerce is more widely used and therefore has a larger community of support. WooCommerce is more customizable than Ecwid, so if you have specific needs or wants for your online store, it’s more likely that you’ll be able to find a plugin or extension to suit your needs.”

 William Westerlund, Co-Founder at Almvest.

 Ecwid and WooCommerce both provide a comprehensive range of tools and app connections to help you run your online store. Here are three primary reasons why I believe woocommerce is superior to ecwid.

  • However, the possibility to get paid in as little as 30 minutes with Instant Deposits, in my opinion, puts WooCommerce apart from Ecwid. This service costs 1.5 percent of the transaction amount. Ecwid payments are timed differently depending on whatever payment processor you choose. Customers can use either e-commerce service to pay with cryptocurrency, but this needs a third-party integration.
  • DHL and USPS provide discounts when you purchase shipping labels through WooCommerce. Ecwid does not offer shipping discounts, however if you ship a lot of parcels, you can negotiate with carriers directly and integrate your own shipping account to take advantage of any benefits.
    Using a third-party connection, WooCommerce allows you to create a shopping app for your store. Ecwid, on the other hand, offers a native shopping app for $590 if you have a subscription plan.
  • Ecwid’s theme and plugin selection is adequate. They offer almost 3000 different designs in 15 different categories. Other products, like themes and plugins, are available on their website under each category.
    WordPress, on the other hand, has over 9000 themes available on its official domains. Aside from that, WordPress includes a plethora of free and paid plugins for building online stores. If you want to build an e-Commerce website, woocommerce is a great option.

Why You Should Choose WooCommerce Over Ecwid?

“There are a few reasons why you might want to choose WooCommerce over Ecwid. First, WooCommerce is more widely used and therefore has a larger community of support. Second, WooCommerce is more customizable than Ecwid, so if you have specific needs or wants for your online store, it’s more likely that you’ll be able to find a plugin or extension to suit your needs. Finally, WooCommerce is simply a more polished platform overall – it’s been around longer and has had more time to mature into a robust ecommerce solution.”

Which Platform Should You Choose?

It’s time to choose between WooCommerce and Ecwid.

From what has been discussed in the article, we can conclude that WooCommerce should be your go to platform if you want to start and grow your online business to newer levels. WooCommerce supports growth and basically has no limitations on how much you can grow your online business. It has unlimited customization options and an endless repository where you can find extensions and plugins to make your store highly functional.

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Mohammed Moeez

Moeez is a WordPress community manager at Cloudways. He loves to work closely with customers to understand their problems and come up with solutions that are not only beneficial but are long lasting as well. He also actively participates in the community to share his knowledge regarding Cloudways and hosting in general. In his free time he likes to watch football, workout and spend time on his PlayStation. Get in touch with him at [email protected]

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