The beauty of dropshipping is that you have less to worry about. Shipping, storage, and stock levels are all in the hands of your suppliers. However, the other side of the coin is that the decisions you do have to make — like which platform to host your ecommerce site — have to be made with the utmost care. Choices like WooCommerce vs. Shopify can make or break your entire business.
For dropshippers, the extra time you save not having to worry about logistics should go back into your site. You need your online store to look and function at optimal levels the same way brick-and-mortar retailers need to keep their stores organized and swept daily. But to have the most effective ecommerce site, you need the platform best for you and your business style.
In this article, we compare the three most popular ecommerce platforms for dropshipping. These aren’t the only choices, but they are the most popular overall. While they’re all effective ecommerce platforms, this guide examines which are the best for dropshipping specifically.
WooCommerce Dropshipping Store
Let’s start with WooCommerce, a user favorite for ecommerce.
Technically, WooCommerce isn’t a platform itself — the platform is WordPress, and WooCommerce is just a powerful plugin that adds ecommerce functionality like product pages and checkout. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. WordPress is a well-respected name in site hosting and still enjoys a robust community of third-party designers.
That means all the advantages of WordPress are advantages of WooCommerce. You can use any plugin you want, ecommerce or not, to add special flair and uniqueness to your site. That includes our own Spocket plugin, which makes adding dropshipping products to your site as easy as a click of the button.
On the other hand, all the disadvantages of WordPress affect WooCommerce sites as well. For one thing, WordPress is targets broad audiences of any industry, so they lack some ecommerce-specific features that sites like Shopify have in abundance. Also, unless you’ve used WordPress before, you made need to familiarize yourself with how it works.
What really makes WooCommerce stand out in this list is its customization capabilities. Even though all these sites are template-style site builders, WooCommerce still gives users the most options for design and personalization, via the WordPress interface. But those options aren’t free; you’ll have to buy the right plugins and templates for full customization.
It also puts the much of the design work in your hands, for better or worse. If you don’t have much design experience, you might want to study up on some common design mistakes to avoid.
If your marketing strategy involves exemplary site design, originality, and a strong brand personality, WooCommerce can do the most for you creatively.
Pricing:
- Free. However, you’ll have to pay for hosting separately, and also plan to spend some money on third-party plugins and templates.
Pros:
- Lots of design customization options.
- Low-cost. The plugin itself is free, so you only have to spend on hosting and whatever feature plugins you buy. You can easily find a full list of web hosting solutions for e-commerce websites.
- Great for content marketing. WordPress originated as a blogging platform, so its content editors set the standard.
Cons:
- More hands-on site building, which involves a small learning curve and extra time spent searching the plugin store for the right features.
- You have to deal with hosting on your own.
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