Sean Conklin – Shopify vs. WooCommerce

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION

According to BuiltWith, Shopify and WooCommerce, combined, represent 46% of e-commerce platform use. The two have very different origins, one being proprietary and cloud-based while the other is free and open-source.

Shopify and WooCommerce share much in common despite their different formats. Each has pros and cons when compared to the other. Neither is perfectly performant nor bug-free.

They both offer excellent turn-key integrations with popular services for the online storefronts that they power, such as payments, shipping, social feeds, and taxes. It’s not uncommon to use both or to pair a Shopify subdomain with a WordPress primary domain.

WooCommerce has been innovating closer to Shopify with its newer Woo Express service that maintains the open-source core.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Sean Conklin discussed what people like and dislike about each platform and shared tips and tricks for understanding and getting the most out of these competing technologies.

Sean Conklin has been a full-stack PHP web developer since 2002. He has specialized in WordPress-powered sites since 2011 and WooCommerce-powered shops since early 2017, adding Shopify in 2023. Sean helps his clients efficiently build and customize their storefronts, delegate with proper user roles, and gain confidence and stability through his maintenance and support services.

SUMMARY

The Key Differences and Similarities Between Shopify and WooCommerce

In today’s digital age, e-commerce has become an essential part of any business looking to thrive in the online market. With the rise of online shopping, businesses must choose the right e-commerce platform to meet their specific needs and goals. In this detailed presentation, we will explore the key differences and similarities between two major e-commerce platforms – Shopify and WooCommerce. Our speaker, Sean Conklin, is a highly experienced full-stack web developer who has specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce since the early 2010s. More recently, he expanded his expertise to include Shopify as well. With his comprehensive knowledge and unique insights, Sean provides a nuanced and detailed comparison of these two leading e-commerce platforms.

The Importance of Choosing the Right E-commerce Platform

Before diving into the differences and similarities, it is important to understand why choosing the right e-commerce platform is crucial. During a recent pool party conversation, Sean had an interesting encounter with a fellow web developer. After discussing the merits of WordPress, his colleague surprisingly recommended Squarespace as the go-to solution for e-commerce. This anecdote highlights an important point – WordPress is not the only solution, and there are numerous popular platforms available that cater to different needs. It is essential to carefully evaluate and compare platforms to ensure the best fit for your business requirements.

Sean Conklin’s Journey into WooCommerce and Shopify

To provide valuable insights into the topic, Sean shares his journey into both WooCommerce and Shopify. In 2017, after working at a marketing company that extensively utilized WooCommerce, Sean decided to delve into this platform. He acknowledges the benefits of WooCommerce, including its open-source nature and the freedom it offers for customization and flexibility. However, Sean also discusses his unsuccessful attempts to join the WooExperts program. Despite being a highly skilled developer, he faced repeated rejections, being told that his business was perceived as “just a one-man show.” This experience prompted him to explore Shopify more seriously, as he noticed that Shopify seemed to excel in managing its affiliate and vendor ecosystem compared to the more open and decentralized WooCommerce community.

Exploring the Similarities Between Shopify and WooCommerce

To establish a comprehensive understanding of these platforms, it is important to explore the similarities they share. Both Shopify and WooCommerce provide essential e-commerce functionality, including online stores, product management, checkout processes, and customer account management. In addition, both platforms offer themes and rich content editing capabilities, enabling businesses to create visually appealing and user-friendly websites. However, Sean points out a key difference in the editing experience between the two platforms. While Shopify offers a more straightforward and “2D” editing experience, WordPress/WooCommerce provides a more immersive and “3D” experience with its block editor.

Furthermore, both platforms offer enterprise-level offerings. WordPress VIP and Shopify Plus provide advanced features and support for larger businesses, with costs typically around $2,000 per month. These premium options cater to businesses with greater demands and specific requirements.

Analyzing the Differences Between Shopify and WooCommerce

As we delve into the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce, it becomes clear that these platforms cater to different needs and preferences. Firstly, the fundamental difference lies in their nature. Shopify is a proprietary, cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform, while WooCommerce is an open-source and self-hosted solution. This distinction has significant implications for customization and control over the platform.

Shopify prides itself on its turnkey experience, providing more built-in features and integrations. This makes it easier for businesses to set up and manage their e-commerce stores without extensive technical knowledge. In contrast, WooCommerce offers a higher level of customization and flexibility. This platform allows users to tailor their online stores to meet specific requirements and preferences. For businesses seeking complete control over their e-commerce operations, WooCommerce is the preferred choice.

Another noteworthy difference lies in the control and management of app ecosystems and vendor relationships. Shopify maintains a more centralized approach, exerting greater control over its app ecosystem and vendor partnerships. This centralized management ensures a higher level of quality control and compatibility for Shopify users. On the other hand, the WooCommerce community is more decentralized, allowing for a wider range of choices and options. While this decentralization offers greater freedom and diversity, it may also lead to inconsistencies or compatibility issues.

One key aspect that sets WooCommerce apart is the freedom and ownership it provides to users. With WooCommerce, businesses have direct access to their database, enabling them to collect and analyze customer data more effectively. Additionally, WooCommerce allows users to change hosting providers and integrate directly with payment gateways like Stripe. This level of control empowers businesses to optimize their e-commerce operations according to specific needs. In contrast, Shopify is more restrictive in terms of ownership and control, as it operates within the confines of its proprietary platform.

Another significant difference lies in the update and maintenance processes. Shopify updates happen automatically behind the scenes, ensuring that users always have access to the latest features and security updates. In contrast, WordPress/WooCommerce updates require more manual maintenance and compatibility checks. Although WooCommerce users have more control over updates, they must allocate time and resources to ensure a smooth transition with each update.

Finally, Sean shares his perspective on the suitability of each platform for different types of businesses. He believes that Shopify is better suited for standardized, shorter-term, or subdomain-based stores. The ease of setup and turnkey experience make it an ideal choice for businesses that prioritize efficiency and simplicity. In contrast, WooCommerce excels in highly customized, long-term, and content-rich sites. Businesses that require extensive customization and control over their online stores will gravitate towards WooCommerce.

Hybrid Approaches and WooCommerce-Specific Solutions

To conclude the presentation, Sean discusses hybrid approaches and WooCommerce-specific solutions. In some cases, larger entities may benefit from utilizing both platforms for different purposes or departments. This hybrid approach allows businesses to leverage the strengths of each platform while mitigating potential drawbacks. By using Shopify for certain aspects of their e-commerce operations and WooCommerce for others, businesses can tailor their online presence to meet specific needs.

Additionally, Sean highlights a WooCommerce-specific solution called WooExpress. This solution aims to provide a more “Shopify-like” experience while maintaining the open-source nature of WooCommerce. WooExpress offers a streamlined and user-friendly interface, simplifying the setup and management processes for businesses that desire a turnkey experience without sacrificing the benefits of WooCommerce’s customization and flexibility.

Conclusion

In conclusion, choosing the right e-commerce platform is a critical decision for any business looking to establish a successful online presence. Shopify and WooCommerce are two major players in the e-commerce landscape, each offering unique features and benefits. Through Sean Conklin’s personal experiences and expert insights, we have explored the key differences and similarities between these platforms. While Shopify provides a turnkey experience and centralized control, WooCommerce offers extensive customization and ownership. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, businesses can make an informed decision to align with their specific needs and goals. Whether it’s Shopify’s efficiency or WooCommerce’s flexibility, these platforms provide the necessary tools for businesses to thrive in the competitive e-commerce market.

RESOURCES

• Websites:
  • https://codedcommerce.com
  • https://seanconklin.com
• Email: sean@codedcommerce.com
• Slack: https://woo.com/community-slack/
• Meetups: https://www.meetup.com/woocommerce-los-angeles-meetup/
• Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DbK4Abgx9LjB1MLA74lVJBKg4w-b_jzWTO-dc8oapdI/edit#slide=id.p

TRANSCRIPTION

Rob Watson:

Welcome everyone to the third Thursday Meetup of the West Orlando WordPress meetup group I’m Rob Watson a co-organizer and host West Orlando WordPress is an official WordPress Meetup Group affiliated with the WordPress Orlando and word Camp us meetup groups according to builtwith Shopify and woocommerce combined represent 46% of e-commerce platform use the two have very different Origins one being proprietary and cloud-based while the other is free and open source Shopify and wuk comers share much in common despite their different formats and each has pros and cons when compared to the other neither is perfectly performant nor bug free they both offer excellent TurnKey Integrations with popular services for the online storefronts that they power such as payments shipping social feeds and taxes it’s not uncommon to use both or or to pair a Shopify subdomain with a WordPress primary domain woocommerce has been innovating closer to Shopify with its newer woo express service that maintains the open source core Sean Conklin will discuss what people like and dislike about each platform answer questions and share tips and tricks for understanding and getting the most out of these competing Technologies Sean Conklin has been a full stack PHP web developer since 2002 he has specialized in in WordPress powered sites since 2011 and woocommerce powered shops since early 2017 adding Shopify in 2023 Sean helps his clients efficiently build and customize their customize their storefronts delegate with proper user roles and gain confidence and stability through his maintenance and support services at this point I’d like to invite everyone to mute their microphones for the presentation Sean thank you for being our presenter this evening the time is now yours

Sean Conklin:

All right well good to meet everybody and thank you for that wonderful introduction Rob and Brian for inviting me to speak here uh glad to meet this group and hopefully you guys like this topic and we’ll have a fun Q&A session uh coming up here but uh this topic is is dear to my heart because uh my background is more in woo Commerce but I expanded into Shopify last year uh passed their certification exams and um you know really take it seriously one of my bigger clients uses it quite a bit wouldn’t say it’s been a big driver of business for me uh woo really is that for me um but Shopify is very important and has an important place and I I think as we look to the Future both of these platforms are going to continue to to grow and do well in their own in their own ways uh and so we’ll talk about some of those differences to hopefully help you with your projects and picking the right platform or serving both uh or having hybrid setups where you can kind of use one to do one thing and another to do another or or mix sites um so I wanted to start off with a story I’m going to get my slides going here so you guys can have a peek at that um quick story here I was at a pool party swimming pool party oh this was about two and a half years ago up in the Hollywood Hills underneath the Hollywood Sign by the way the person who hosted had quite the quite the location um and at this party I was talking to somebody about word press uh this guy is also a web developer and um while we were talking somebody came over interrupted and said it was talking to this other person that I was speaking to and said you know uh somebody I know needs a website can you do it for them and uh his response after we had just you know talked about WordPress for the last five minutes uh his response was oh yeah um yeah okay that’s a a lawyer’s website yeah easy just go to Squarespace uh you know sign up put in a credit card maybe um upload your logo pick some colors and you know if you want me to do it it’s like 300 bucks you know whatever that kind of threw me because uh well especially at the time I was I was more you know oh it has to be WordPress uh oriented um and after we had just talked about WordPress for a while it was kind of surprising to hear his goto solution be something very non-wordpress um but so I thought about that and you know it does make sense that there’s a variety of platforms out there a lot of popular ones and you know they each have their Market they each have their their purposes and uh and and sort of where where they shine and WordPress doesn’t necessarily Shine for everybody I don’t think it really needs to um but we especially those of us in the WordPress ecosystem heavily embedded in it you know we we have to know that it’s really not all about WordPress out there um it may be for those of us who do development who get really deep in it who been with it for a long time uh who you know take it to new heights so to speak but there’s a lot more out there and uh my business I uh got into Woon WordPress goes back wow probably 2009 um but woo Commerce I really go back to early 2017 at I worked at a marketing company where we were releasing a lot of sites in woo and uh I ended up launching my business a year later just in woo so it’s been really an adventure uh and we’ll talk a little bit about some of the things I’ve done in woo as we as we get ahead here but um it’s a very powerful platform it it does require maintenance and support for the store owners that are not as deeply technical or that need a lot of customization uh some development even though it has all these pre-built modules there’s there’s always the development side of it same with Shopify but there’s a difference there they have more on the pre-built and we’ll we’ll we’ll get into some of those nuances but um so for me shopy came about because I had lost a couple of clients to it and then you know this pull party incident I’m starting to think well okay maybe and then the real thing that did it for me I’ll tell you one more story here that uh um maybe I shouldn’t tell the story but I’m gonna anyway um the woo experts program I’ve been trying to get into this thing uh since oh yeah 2018 is when I first tried to get in um and they had it closed down for a while there were it pre-existed to that they they sort of had it on pause to new uh new people signing up uh and then they reopened it sometime around 2020 so you know try applied didn’t hear anything back applied the next year got a rejection applied again another rejection and finally I talked to somebody and they said look you’re not a real agency you’re just a onean show um you know we only work with agencies and then so last year I was presenting at woo sesh a virtual conference and the CEO of woo presented and said hey you know we’re opening up the experts program we want all experts no matter where they are no matter how big their their organization is you know Etc and I so I was like you know my eyes open wait wait a minute you guys have been rejecting me all this time you know just because I work alone um and uh so I we had a slack channel right which I was on because I was one of the presenters so I slack to the guy you know I don’t even know the CEO’s name at this point uh he he told me um he said well uh it’s coming up we’re changing the program I’ve heard this before right you know what he had presented on saying that it’s opening that it’s open what what he really meant was it’s opening well here we are seven months later and you know I I still haven’t heard anything so the point I’m trying to make here with this story is that Shopify sells more when it comes to the affiliate system the uh official app store managing vendors um again not that all their vendors are perfect none of these you know none of these things exist in a vacuum they all have a lot of you know a lot of stuff coming in from third parties uh but Shopify just seems to do a better job when it comes to managing the business end of things um whereas woo Community software you know it’s a big Community there’s a lot of different things going on you have uh I I like to call it Class A B and C plugins you have your official woo vetted plugins from woocommerce decom now wo.com you’ve got your wordpress.org community vetted open source plugins and then you have your third party usually called premium where you download the plugin from a third party system um so different you know sources and uh you know different sort of meanings behind that whereas with Shopify it’s more unified app store and they have a bit more control there so quality and Shopify can tend to be a bit better but depth and woo Commerce can tend to be better in terms of what you can uh build and certainly the block editor I’m a big fan on that I hope in the Q&A we could talk about blocks let me move on to the next slide here so both of these systems are great in their own ways right I before we we go dumping on them like I probably already started here with that woo experts program kind of a joke by the way I don’t know the CEO’s name because to me he’s nothing but a big liar okay so um they’re both great despite some of these problems Shopify for the proprietary side in the cloud software as a service woo Commerce for open source the community background being able to pop the hood get in do whatever you need to do access the database directly uh change the hosting environment change things on it and they’re providing a product shop cart checkout uh uh self-service account portals and both of these systems you know they’re shifting Woo is innovating more in blocks Shopify is replacing some of its systems they just uh uh uh released shopy subscriptions last month um previous to that to do subscriptions you needed a thirdparty app um beyond that they have a whole new customer account portal and you know woocomerce similar thing there’s the new blocks interfaces compared to the traditional templates that come in beded into woo that you could override with uh with hooks or with uh child theme template overrides now you know blocks is a whole new uh Paradigm for woo Commerce and for WordPress in general um and so Shopify you know they went from online store 1.0 to 2.0 you had to basically change out your theme this was a few years back but a lot of stores are still catching up to this day um you know all all these have their shifting Technologies but they cover a huge portion of the site you know your your shop Pages your product pages your cart checkout customer accounts for an e-commerce site that’s mostly what it is you may have a Blog FAQs a few other things but you know that mostly is the site um and then for the admin site order management app or plug-in management and updates and they’re also both offering themes and and Rich content editing uh that that’s a bit where we talked about the WordPress block editor I like to call it three-dimensional because the WordPress block editor you could set up a block and then put blocks in it and blocks in that and you could sort of Stack your way to you know design whatever you want uh shopy is more of that two-dimensional um you know you have a list view you have a bunch of of sections you could add uh whatever your theme approves there is a difference with themes Shopify themes have a great amount of power in thatat platform uh whereas woo themes you have a bit more flexibility with overwriting files or programmatic hooks or um you know uh just block editing in general um when then Shopify the theme tends to control those those items more so when you add a section shopy it’s got its settings that’s it unless you want to go hack your theme or build a custom theme which I don’t recommend in Shopify uh you know that the theme is structuring a lot of that but they but both platforms are offering Rich content editing so you still you still get in Shopify the dragon drop widget visual editing it’s just more two-dimensional let’s say and that’s not necessarily a bad thing I was in a a discussion at uh which group was that Joe Simpson’s group in Santa Clarita I was talking with a gentleman named eagle and he was recommending a a thirdparty page builder not WordPress blocks and so of course that starts a little discussion and debate and you know he says look bottom line uh the thing he was recommending called bricks is just easier uh you don’t have to do as much stacking you know it’s simpler and that means something to a lot of people so I’m not saying Shopify is bad if I say it’s more two-dimensional that may make it easier but not quite as customizable so there’s there’s a little Nuance there but they’re both offering the rich editing so that comes with both and picking your theme and um you know being able to edit templates uh cost wise uh the Enterprise grade you know WordPress VIP versus Shopify plus same cost 2,000 a month starting okay so there they do have a lot in common in terms of what they’re offering it’s just how they go about it that’s different um so Shopify because it is more all-in-one and TurnKey all right this would be a major benefit to Shopify you don’t have to go find your hosting um you could use one of their official themes they have 12 of them they all have the same code base different designs it’s their their own official theme set um you won’t need as many apps in Shopify because it has more built-in uh e-commerce specific settings and features their own proprietary add-ons uh for example their payments platform point of sale integration U markets if you want to have a you know Geographic targeting um if you upgrade to plus then you have more wholesale uh B2B segmentation multi sight so yeah there’s there’s a lot to any of these but with Shopify there’s more baked into the core platform and they charge for that so there is a drawback to it as well um but as I mentioned earlier they seem to have a superior affiliate and vendor management approach more uh contractual more um it seems vendors take Shopify uh more seriously that’s uh for example just last week I was talking with support at uh judge me a product review app and I was like well you know this client has Shopify and woo the particular site I can’t find the setting for is woo you guys just sent a blog post out about this new setting we want it where is it and they said oh yeah that that’s just for Shopify it’s not for woo yet maybe we’ll get to that someday you know uh yeah and that’s not the first time I’ve heard that line okay it I’ve heard it from quite a few vendors where they’re really putting Shopify first woo second which is unfortunate um but I can still do more in woo codewise to kind of work around the issue but why are we the second class citizen you know that that’s all I could say is they they got to manage their um vendors better plain and simple and then you know we go to that woo experts example I think I’m a woo expert been doing it full-time since 2017 but not according to to them I guess so again I just think that suck at vendor management sorry I’m just being honest here um oops okay so you know the idea of keeping store owners safer by having more in the core system you can put up those guard rails and and keep people from you know what vendors might do the silos they might create some of the ways that they might not be giving back to the core system which whether it’s open source or proprietary open source you really need to give back to the core system you need to be engineering around you know the core base and when they come up with things like blocks supporting them like the checkout Block in woo that took forever and to this day a lot of plugins still don’t support it it’s been out for four years already became the default almost a year ago guess what still a lot of plugins don’t support it so with Shopify when they come up with their new online store 2.0 they don’t turn off your OS 1.0 theme you could still run it but whole shw of features you just don’t get you need to upgrade your theme and if you’re delaying it you a lot of Shopify sites do 99% of the Shopify sites I see run outdated themes they have a major problem in that that they’re not admitting to yet um you you really you have to do that work if you want to have all the features and we’re talking about more than features we’re talking about you know security we’re talking about uh accessibility we’re talking about all these quality factors you know um that matter to all of us so that covers that one okay woocommerce benefit is you own it you can open the hood you could do whatever you need to do in that you have the license for that software you can decide you have a bit more division as to who your vendors are um hosting for example uh one of my clients uh recently I I we’ve moved her host quite a bit she was on uh uh let me see she was on she she was on our previous developers host originally we moved her to her own WP engine server and she liked it but it just wasn’t fast enough and it was costing a lot so we moved her to um cloudways definitely faster a lot cheaper um she’s happy with that but then I found well hey you know with spin-up WP now we can uh for 60 bucks a month we can get you a digital ocean server or aimi or vol uh with dedicated CPU now you’re really talking speed when we talk dedicated CPU we can get you the server for a nominal price and then pay you spin up WP 12 bucks a month to manage the control panel now you’re even faster and even cheaper you know so the tech Innovations you could take more advantage of when you could slice things up a bit more another example I tossed in here is you can use stripe directly I really like uh having my own stripe account and being able to use you know the official stripe Plug-In or a third party or my own code which I do have a strip plugin in the marketplace that um you know allows me to interface and I can log into the stripe dashboard and do all the stripe stuff I need to do um with woo you could do it they offer woo payments which is their version of stripe which if you use woo payments you don’t have direct stripe access it’s through wo payments um but it’s a little more TurnKey so they like that Shopify payments a little more restrictive that’s their version of stripe and it is it is there you have to use Shopify payments to get the best rates if you use any third-party payment Suite they tack on a search charge and it’s also not compatible with a lot of their proprietary add-ons like POS and markets Pro so you definitely in Shopify really should use Shopify payments um but also you can’t use stripe directly um they don’t have any apps that allow that believe it’s against the terms you could build a custom app and Shopify just installed in your store um but I I think you would be violating their terms if you did a stripe app uh it’s working around their system so that is you know an example of one of the freedoms I take away another one is user switching in WordPress I could install user switching I could uh see exactly what my clients’s customers see I can switch to any one of them and oh here’s how you go renew your subscription or change your card or whatever and Shop they tell you oh well just m make a pretend customer account for yourself and uh pay for your own pretend subscription do it all yourself you got to be on plus if you want to be able to log in as customers so they they get you on some of those things you know again um they have their reasons for it so it is what it is but some of these little Freedom areas that you find uh and you know as a business you will find it at some point woocommerce can excel at that so so you can keep cost lower through those vendor choices uh WordPress standards if you really appreciate those uh which again is now we’re going to talk more about blocks later I know it um is is is kind of more along those lines um oops here I am messing with my mouse here and then oh modify checkout that’s the other one you have to be on Shopify plus to modify checkout uh whereas in woo you could modify checkout you know with with any plug-in you want um uh to be clear you can uh in shopice theme customizer you could choose you know background color header uh there are some settings for checkout that you have you can enable certain payment gateways and to change the order you typically shut them all off and then turn them on in the order that you want them to appear at the bottom first I think that’s how it worked and keep turn see you have a couple things you could do to check out but you can’t really modify much of checkout other than that unless you’re on plus both of these systems have problems as I’ve alluded you do have a lot of software updates in both um in in WordPress there’s more worry about if I click the update is something going to break uh that is going to depend on on the quality of plugins you’re using the quality of theme and how up to-date it is the chances of an incremental update breaking things is very very low unless that incremental update is a major update and you could typically tell by the version number is this 2.0 that’s probably going to break things is it 2.0.1 feel a little better 2.0.2 okay we’re good just put that one in there right um with uh Shopify the apps update behind the scenes but then you have to go reconnect them a lot so there there is still some maintenance there to have to do a lot of times reconnecting them means I need my client’s account to log into their whatever to connect it so that could be a big pain as well I mentioned the theme updates which are often ignored in Shopify that’s that’s a big deal too we all know what theme updates get us in in WordPress Shopify that’s even more the case because the theme has more they’re they’re bigger they have more files in them they have hundreds of files you know a lot more templates and template parts and things like that that come with a a Shopify theme both of these systems require a lot of setup you know whether it’s importing products figuring out your shipping tiers getting taxes straightened out variable products subscriptions the list just goes on there’s you know any e-commerce site whatever you think it’s going to take to put it together multiply by several factors okay um the vendor Silo problem um app apps in Shopify are silos they they have their own U control panels that are not really tightly integrated the core system there is app embeds that they came up with in U in online store 2.0 which is very nice um that’s like gives you a little control panel you can turn the app on for your entire theme so you don’t have to go hack your themes code or or add a custom liquid section to to get an app to work in your theme you can just turn a little thing on and um and that works but a apart from that feature apps are still very siloed within within Shopify uh just as we’ve seen within WordPress and woocommerce where if I’m using a Class A woocommerce plugin it’s going to add its little its little uh you know additional set where they should go you know fitting within the core system very nicely whereas a lot of these um third party uh plugins will create their own main level admin menu and you click that it looks nothing like anything else in your admin it’s just and then it tries to sell you stuff you know and um I just I call that Silo I call it dumb code you know plugins that that employ their own licensing you’re wasting a bunch of processing resources just for some of these plugins to activate themselves some of these plugins need another plugin to activate its sibling plugins uh it it’s it becomes Madness you know so this problem exists in either system you know don’t pretend that in Shopify that problem goes away I’ll tell you there’s Shopify apps I’ve installed where the app is basically a placeholder you turn the app on it gives you a little admin icon you click it and it opens the dashboard of that service in the window and then you think it’s connecting it doesn’t connect anything the dashboard just tells you copy paste this code go click and customize your theme and and edit it there or or click uh theme code editor and add a section because when you edit your themes code if you add a section and Shopify it will migrate that when you update your theme but if you edit your uh theme. liquid file Shopify cannot update your theme they will they will say You must merge your code manually and people just get stuck and and don’t fix it so okay you know these problems are in both systems you know let’s be realistic about that and then settings all over the place yes both of them you’ve got one control panel after another but again the more of the core system using the more familiar you are if I’m in woo a classic theme okay go to the customizer if I’m in woo block theme go to the site editor right woo itself has its own control panel uh right so I I kind of know where these settings should be they are all over the place but at least it makes sense where they are um and then Shopify you’ve got several places to it makes sense when you get into that system the more you the more you know about it the more it’ll it’ll add up okay so lastly before we get into Q&A here because we we’re kind of getting somewhat close to time I wanted to talk about you know strategically when would I recommend Shopify versus woo uh and what are kind of some things to think about here I I I’ve already put a lot out there from my experience but I would generalize it as you know Shopify is a better fit for more standardized Stores um certainly if it’s a shorter term commitment where you just need to spin something up get it going you’re not sure if it’s really going to go to the next level it seems to me it’s a lower investment you’re you’re paying more transactionally potentially um but and and certainly another one of those restrictions is number of admins uh with woo and word press unlimited admins with Shopify depends on your plan you may have three admins you may have five you know it it’s what you sign up for so it’s more restrictive but it can also help you just kind of jump spring to to get launched um and then shop five plus on the wholesale side it basically is an Erp it’s more than an e-commerce website at that point so if you’re coming from Salesforce or net Suite you’re more familiar with those more expensive Erp tools shop could be a great fit because it’s already it’s cheaper than what those are but it’s also your websites as well and I use websites plural because that has some multi sight capabilities to it and then uh over on the right woo side certainly for techies power users who want all that control longer term operations you know open source is longterm I mean think of Linux this project has been going steady for a very long time and it certainly will continue to um highly customized shops where you you have to put in a lot of uh investment into really you know making that site function the way you want it to the unique way you want to own it so the ownership kind of fits in there and then over here on the lower left larger entities tend to mix and match they’re more multi- Channel where you’re going to have uh probably a main site either custom coded or in WordPress and then shop is typically on a subdomain if you look at Shopify sites on built with you list them out most of them are shop dot store dot you know stuff like that they’re subdomains so uh Shopify does have the ability to do pages and posts but it’s really not so great at those WordPress is much deeper in the blogging area as far as what it could do and what’s just built into core um but Shopify does have those so again if it’s smaller shorter term or if it’s a subsite that may be totally fine but if you’re building a very rich content site that has products and posts and one of my uh clients best Chinese medicines she has um a Blog section A herbal dictionary product categories by uh by Oregon product categories by uh ailment all kinds of things right so she really likes the WordPress and woo approach because we can really go deep in all those areas um so for larger entities you know you could just divide it up think of any company with departments this department runs this that department runs that you you know um and then we we talked about some multi-site options that those could be across any platforms but Shopify pluses within their WordPress has multi sites so there’s those over on the lower right um woocommerce experience can be done in a in a Shopify way using this newer woo Express uh that was introduced um in the introduction today where hosting and plugins are bundled with the software you still own it it’s still open Source but you’re paying woo directly woo Express for you know more of the general stuff that you may need like uh subscriptions probably being a big one um and then there is WordPress VIP hosting we talked about around that $2,000 a month starting point where uh and I’ve used it before they’re very um uh uh you know restrictive about what plugins and themes and stuff you can use and uh they use GitHub so when I want to deploy a plug-in update they actually built UI for too but when I want to deploy a plug-in update I do stuff through git mostly and and it’s um you know takes a little getting used to but they’re you know that’s very enterpris um and then also you have the 2020 themes uh for Block uh theming 2022 23 and 24 so using those default themes um it’s still you know blocks can be more of a blank canvas anyway but using those kind of adds a little style to it it adds more official support long longterm stability even the 2010 theme is still supported to this day so those are some pretty reliable ways to go to have a um a woo IFI experience if we want to bring these names together here so hopefully that makes sense and uh I’d love to answer questions you have and kind of see where this goes so we’ll turn this back over and I will stop sharing now.

Rob Watson:

Thank you so much that’s that’s an amazing presentation lots of dense material that we’ll have a lot of questions on I’m sure.