In 2019, total e-Commerce sales in the Netherlands were about 25.8 billion euros. A growth of 10% compared to 2018. And sales are expected to grow by at least 10% again in 2020. Webshop shoppers in the Netherlands are spending serious amounts of money online. Do you want to have a webshop created? Then you will need a solid base to ensure that part of the turnover will come your way. There are countless systems that you can use to lay that foundation. We put the number 3 and 1 of the Netherlands side by side: Magento and WooCommerce.
What is important when choosing a web shop system?
When choosing an e-commerce platform, you can naturally compare countless factors. To make sure you don't get caught up in the weighing and weighing, it's important to decide in advance which factors are really important to you. We recommend that you at least consider the topics in this list.
- User-friendliness - How user-friendly is the system for you and your team?
- Performance and scalability - Switching to another platform always takes extra work. So it is preferable to choose a platform that will grow with you for as long as possible and keep running smoothly even with large volumes of products and visitors.
- Security - Criminals? You'd rather keep them out. From your software and from your customer data. Maintenance is therefore very important.
- Cost - Because investing is smart, but in a business sense.
Key features - Magento vs WooCommerce
Both platforms have a fine reputation, both offer many different types of features and both have a sizable fan base. So which do you choose? Before you know it, you're in the middle of analysis paralysis. And that's a waste of time Let's start by telling you a little more about both platforms.
Magento
Magento is a stand-alone e-commerce platform. It is known for its stability and scalability. As a result, many large e-commerce companies choose Magento. Magento is available in a free version (Magento Open Source), in a paid version (Magento Commerce) and in a version combined with web hosting (Magento Commerce Cloud). Some 9% of e-commerce platforms run on Magento. The most recent version is Magento 2.
Pros
- Very easy to set up multiple web shops side by side, for example by country or by target group (B2C / B2B).
- Ability to display content based on customer groups and/or segments.
- Possible to link multiple warehouses and manage stock per warehouse. Manage.
- Links to existing software such as PIM or ERP systems are easy to make.
- You can use extensions to extend features and add additional features.
- Magento is really designed for e-commerce and also offers the ability to add a blog.
Cons
- You need at least a solid basic knowledge of web development to use this platform properly. Even if you "only" want to choose a different theme. The system is not suitable for people without technical knowledge.
- You don't have much choice in themes. This is mainly because most companies choose to have a custom theme built.
- The free version has fewer features, so you soon have to opt for the paid version.
- The premium version is quite pricey.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce has by far the largest market share at 28%. It is a free extension (plugin) for the WordPress platform. WordPress has two variants: WordPress.com (paid) and WordPress.org (free). WordPress.com is an online environment where you can create a blog within five minutes. Hosting is included. You need almost no technical knowledge, but are limited in choosing themes and plugins. WordPress.org you can download and install in a hosting environment that you have arranged yourself. You need more technical knowledge for this, but are then free to use any theme or plugin you want or develop it yourself. In this article, we will assume WordPress.org.
Pros
- Creating new pages, adding products and blogs, and expanding the webshop is very user-friendly and approachable.
- You need little technical knowledge to get started with WordPress and WooComerce.
- You can choose from both free and paid WordPress themes to customize the look and feel of your shop. You can install these yourself.
- There are many free and paid plugins you can use to extend the functionality of the web shop.
- It is relatively lightweight software and also open source. The large community around WordPress continuously provides improvements.
Cons
- Although you can come a long way yourself, for a professional webshop you often need the help of an expert.
- You can only create 1 webshop by default, aimed at 1 target audience.
- Creating a web shop in multiple languages with shared products and inventory is difficult.
- WordPress was developed as a Content Management System and offers the possibility of adding a web shop. So the basis is not e-commerce.
Usability: Magento vs WooCommerce
Who is going to create your web shop? Are you going to build it yourself? Or do you prefer to outsource everything to an agency? The technical knowledge required to use and manage the software is quite different. So really take the time to think about this.
Magento
The Magento community has numerous developers offering free and paid extensions and themes. Despite this, custom extensions and themes are generally chosen with Magento. You need to install extensions and themes with code commands in a terminal environment. Knowledge and experience as a developer is necessary here.
However, adding content, both products and pages, and adjusting settings is user-friendly. Once the shop is up and running, you can start filling and maintaining it yourself without any technical knowledge. Keep in mind that the free version does not have a page builder and you have fewer layout options.
WooCommerce
WordPress has a library that offers approved free plugins and themes. In addition, you can find a lot of paid plugins and themes. You can install and configure these themes and extensions with just a few clicks. No technical knowledge or knowledge of code is required for this.
Adding content, both products and pages and blogs is very user-friendly. If the theme used does not have a pagebuilder to set up pages with, you can use WordPress' default block editor. This offers plenty of options for creatively arranging a page or blog.
Performance & scalability: Magento vs WooCommerce
When you start an e-commerce platform, you may dream of becoming the next CoolBlue. And of course you don't want those dozens, hundreds or thousands of visitors using your webshop at the same time to see timeouts or error messages. Does your website not load quickly or smoothly enough? Then your visitors are gone in no time, and won't return as quickly.
The core software of both Magento and WooCommerce are built to handle large assortments and large volumes of visitors. Of course, they both have pros and cons. But when things go wrong, it often has to do with the settings of the core software, the amount and quality of extensions used, the size of images used or the quality of web hosting.
Magento scaling up
Compared to WooCommerce, Magento uses more storage space and processor power. Therefore, you should run it on at least VPS hosting from the beginning, but preferably on a dedicated server. To keep the platform running smoothly even with larger numbers of products and visitors, it is important to fine-tune your caching, monitor your server security and update regularly. If you don't have enough knowledge and experience to do that yourself, you'll need to hire Magento specialists to do so. Magento itself states that you can add an unlimited number of products.
Scaling up WooCommerce
WooCommerce platforms you can go a long way in streamlining by using good quality web hosting, caching plugins and possibly CDN. Again, though, we do recommend using dedicated WordPress hosting (we are fans of Kinsta). It's often said that WooCommerce can't handle that many products, but if your hosting is good and the shop is set up properly, you can fink off with WooCommerce as well. There are WooCommerce stores with over a million products.
What is also important: as the pressure on your platform increases (due to more products and/or visitors), it becomes increasingly important to look critically at your theme and plugins. After all, they often load a lot of features you don't need at all. It may then be smart to switch to a custom theme and custom plugins that do nothing more and nothing less than what your specific shop needs. Opinions are divided about the number of products you can add to a WooCommerce shop. There are examples of shops with over a million products, but if you want to add about 100,000 products to your shop, you can't do without very good hosting and experienced developers.
Security: Magento vs WooCommerce
To gain the trust of your visitors and maintain the trust of your customers, the security of your e-commerce platform is super important. You need to make sure you secure your platform with an SSL certificate anyway. This certificate ensures that all data sent through your website is secure. In addition, it may be smart to secure your accounts with 2-factor authentication. And always choose a reliable hosting party that already takes the necessary security measures itself.
Magento
At the beginning of 2021, more than 2,000 e-commerce platforms in the Netherlands are still running on Magento 1. No security updates have been made for this version since June 2020. This has created a significant security risk for both the owners of these webshops and their visitors. If someone with criminal intentions now finds and exploits a leak, no security update will be released for it.
Magento 2 offers an advanced security scan tool. In addition, security updates are released for regularly. You cannot simply update Magento 1 to Magento 2. Extensions and themes from Magento 1 are not compatible with Magento 2. Therefore, it is best to use a version Magento 2 installation and import your content from your Magento 1 installation into it. In terms of extensions and themes, you will have to start over.
WordPress
For the WordPress core software, security updates are released as needed. If you keep up with the updates, you can continuously upgrade to the latest version. In theory, maintaining WordPress and WooCommerce is very simple. You can do everything in the dashboard by yourself. In practice, an update still sometimes leads to an error message. This is one of the reasons that business owners still outsource maintenance to an agency.
WordPress is often said to be susceptible to hacks. This is partly because with every update, a changelog is published explaining exactly what has been changed. Hackers therefore know where the weaknesses are in a previous version. If your shop has not yet been updated, it is more vulnerable. However, if the updates are kept up to date and you choose reliable themes and plugins, there is nothing to worry about.
Costs: Magento vs WooCommerce
Open source licenses or not, building and maintaining an attractive and user-friendly web shop involves one-time and recurring costs. Consider:
- the (one-time) cost of having a design created that strikes the right chord with your target audience;
- The (one-time) installation and configuration of the core software and extensions;
- Custom (one-time) development of extensions;
- the (one-time and/or periodic) costs of developing links;
- (periodic) costs for domain names, web hosting and security certificates
- (periodic) costs for maintenance and optimization
Magento
A quick scan on the Internet tells us that for about €3,000 you can have a completely bare version of Magento with a standard theme installed and configured. If you want more extensions and a custom design, you're quickly approaching €10,000. And if you need customization, you should think about €30,000 to €250,000. The annual costs depend on the paid extensions used. In addition, the paid version of Magento also has annual costs that are calculated based on the gross annual sales of the webshop. These costs range for Magento 2 from $22,000 to $190,000 per year.
WooCommerce
For a basic WooCommerce shop with a standard theme, you should think about €2,500. If you want a custom design, then the cost is between €5,000 and €10,000. And if you need customization, then the one-time costs are probably between €10,000 and €50,000. Annual costs depend on the paid plugins and links used.
Which system suits you best: Magento or WooCommerce?
So before you choose a platform, you have to weigh quite a lot. Now, let's not get carried away and say that the best choice depends entirely on your situation. Although actually it does 😉 Or actually it depends more on your ambitions.
Do you want a shop in multiple languages, aimed at multiple target groups, links to PIM or ERP systems or just lots of products and have a large budget? Then Magento is the best choice.
Want to get started yourself, max 100,000 products, one language, have creative options in formatting your content, few complex links and your budget is less than €20,000? Then WooCommerce is a great solution.
