Which one is better for your eCommerce start-up- WooCommerce or OpenCart?

Online shopping has become a trend today. As more and more startups and business are now turning their ways into the online market, eCommerce websites have become more important as of now. Businesses are making some serious effort and investment to launch their online presence as soon as possible. eCommerce is in boom today and there is no sign of being suppressed by the physical market anyhow.  So, everyone is just trying to earn some extra dollars with their eCommerce websites. And, for those who are not online yet, they are trying their best to match up with the rest. However, creating successful eCommerce sites is not just enough here. Competition is very dense and you have to kick start your online venture to gain some visibility in the audiences.

What are the options?

There are multiple options that come to our mind when we think of a perfect eCommerce platform. The choices are both paid and free, but how would you decide the best ones? This is what we are going to see in our comparison today between the two very popular eCommerce platforms- The OpenCart platform or the WooCommerce platform?

Both of these tow leading eCommerce platforms make the task of launching an eCommerce platform easy. They have tons of possibilities and a great flexibility for customization. Let’s have a closer look to decide which one is good for you- OpenCart Website development or WooCommerce website development?

OpenCart- The beginning

OpenCart was launched in the year of 2008, with an aim to present a simple, open-source shopping cart system that will handle every aspect of an eCommerce website. With this was introduced the OpenCart website development services. OpenCart is a free, Open-source, feature rich and fully packed eCommerce platform that comes with tons of possibilities.

WooCommerce- The beginning

Launched in the year 2011 by WooThemes, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin designed for converting a WordPress CMS site to a fully functional eCommerce site. Since its inception, it has become popular among a wide range of eCommerce entrepreneurs. The major reason for its success is the presence of a reliable and already trusted company behind its back. It’s robust and provides a range of engaging features to the visitors.

How the installation goes on on the two platforms?

OpenCart is installed very easily on your localhost or web host. You can do that in two ways. One is manual installation, and other is by using a single click automatic script installer. Though the first option on manual installation is a bit tricky, it provides some good options for customization. However, the automated, quick installation is the fasted way to install the OpenCart.

On the other hand, WooCommerce is quite different from OpenCart in terms of installation. Since OpenCart is a separate, stand-alone eCommerce platform, it requires an environment setup before going for installation. However, WooCommerce is not a stand-alone eCommerce platform- it’s a WordPress plugin. So, it gets installed like any other WordPress plugin on your website. It can be installed directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Flexibility with Extensions and Plugins-

OpenCart presents an excellent front end from the default installation itself. However, you get an option to choose from thousands of OpenCart themes and templates. There are both free and paid themes available for it, but you can also get the best-customized themes by availing the OpenCart website development services. OpenCart developers like knowband and many more always have some great deals on OpenCart add-ons available with them. Moreover, OpenCart has a great affinity to integrate add-on for Google Analytics, Social Login, Social sharing and many more.

WooCommerce, on the other hand, lacks some fundamental functionalities when compared to the OpenCart platform. So, it is a sure case that you might have to spend a little to get some basic features that are already present in the OpenCart platform. Basic payment extensions like Paypal is also a paid one on WooCommerce, while it comes in-built with the OpenCart. Moreover, the WooCommerce forum is not a freely accessible community. You will have to pay for the access to the forum.

The scope of customization in both the platforms-

OpenCart could be a little tricky in terms of theme and template customization. You might hit your head hard understanding the pieces of codes and database structure. Webmasters find the OpenCart customization as a difficult task. You might require the assistance of OpenCart website development services to get your job done.

On the other hand, WooCommerce is found to be blessed with some easy administrative tools that simplify the overall functioning of the site. Moreover, you can have a better control when it comes to customization in design.

Multi-shop functionality-

OpenCart being an independent eCommerce platform, provides a very simple set up to configuration multiple eCommerce stores using the install OpenCart installation. Webmasters find OpenCart a better option to setup multi-shops easily.

The feature of multi-shop is not available with the WooCommerce as it is not an independent platform. It can be used only on WordPress sites and you need to have multiple installations for each shop you want to create. Therefore, it is not feasible to have this popular functionality on WooCommerce.

Which one is Search Engine friendly?

WooCommerce and practicing SEO on the same platform is limited by the skill of the users and his/her choice of extensions they wish to install. Adding the features like custom URLs, Google Analytics, robots.txt, and a lot of other SEO tools can be easily added to WooCommerce by installing extensions and plugins.
On the other hand, when it comes to OpenCart, the users can alter the meta titles, descriptions, meta tags and keywords. However, the user needs to be more tech-savvy in order to put it all together.

Maintenance of the platforms

WooCommerce is free of cost when it comes to the WordPress. However, you have to pay an annual fee for the commercial extensions that you buy for your WordPress website. There are options for buying free or paid themes and designs. Moreover, you also have to think about the expenditure for hosting and payment processing as well.
Opencart on the other hand, is also a free open-source shopping cart with paid themes, extensions, cost of hosting and other features that you can use to customize your website.

Which platform serves as a better option in terms of Multiple store setup?

WooCommerce doesn’t support multiple-store feature on the websites leaving out WordPress. You would be needing multiple installations to create multiple shopping carts.
Opencart being an independent eCommerce solution makes it exemplarily easy to set up multiple eCommerce websites with a single installation. With the flexibility offered by Opencart works stupendous for your website including WordPress.

Bottom Line-

Both the eCommerce solutions are quite easy to set up and start a ready-made eCommerce site. However, there are certain aspects on which OpenCart beats the WooCommerce solution. These two solutions through work for the same motive but their structure and functionalities are quite different from each other.

If you are a tech-savvy and can handle some tricky customizations in OpenCart website development, then OpenCart could be a better option for you, Plus you will never get short of the amazing OpenCart add-ons. While WooCommerce proves its significance in the same area where OpenCart lags. That is the customization in website design. It is simple and comparatively easier on WooCommerce.

Finally, it’s an Open choice to choose any solution as you know much about both of them now. Choose according to your priority.