What is the difference between WooCommerce and Magento?

When you start an e-commerce business, it’s important to choose the right platform that will be a perfect match for your needs. Today, we’ll compare 2 popular platforms for online stores: WooCommerce and Magento 2. Let’s see what the difference between them is and what you should choose for your business.

Have no time to read? Watch this 30-second video to learn the difference between WooCommerce and Magento:

Similarities of WooCommerce and Magento 2

WooCommerce	Magento 2
Free Open-source Hundreds of plugins and themes for customization Requires your own web host	Free Community edition Open-source Over 5000 extension with custom features Self-hosted

Both of these platforms are free and open sources. That means they have unlimited customization opportunities. Magento 2 and WooCommerce allow you to extend their default functionality with plugins and create your store based on an attractive UI/UX theme. Though both these platforms require to find your web host, Magento 2 has premium offerings that already include hosting.

Differences between WooCommerce and Magento 2

WooCommerce	Magento 2
Based on WordPress Easy to use without technical skills Comes only with basic security and payment features	Has multiple paid editions Requires technical knowledge or a professional developer Built-in functionality for international stores Offers advanced security and payment features Strong brand community

WooCommerce special features

WooCommerce is based on WordPress that makes this platform easy to use if you don’t have any technical knowledge. But at the same time, if you are not familiar with WordPress, you’ll need to learn two new platforms instead of one.

As soon as the security of your store is one of the most important moments, both WooCommerce and Magento allow you to enable additional security measures through extensions. But WooCommerce has limited capabilities in this area.

Magento 2 special features

Unlike WooCommerce, Magento 2 has several editions:

Open Source
Commerce
Commerce Cloud

They have different features and serve different needs.

Note: Find out what Magento 2 version to choose in our comparison guide: Open Source vs. Commerce vs. Commerce Cloud

Also, Magento isn’t simple for beginners and requires at least basic technical knowledge and skills. If you want to add custom features, you may need to hire a professional developer or agency. But if you get any troubles besides the usual support team, Magento has a strong brand community with supportive people who are always ready to help.

Note: Do you need some customizations? Our technical team is always ready to help you with custom development and Magento integrations of different complexity.

This platform is more suitable for fast-growing and international businesses because it comes with various features for multi-stores, different languages, currencies, and shipping carriers out-of-box.

Finally, Magento 2 is a more secure platform. Their development team constantly issues new security patches to keep your store safe.

Is Magento free or paid?

The difference between WooCommerce and Magento is that Magento has several options. Magento Community is a free platform that powers 25% of all e-shops in the world and suits small businesses. Magento Enterprise is a paid platform that powers the official online stores of many well-known brands and suits medium and large businesses.

Magento 2 vs WooCommerce: what to choose?

It all depends on your business needs and current situation. If you are already familiar with WordPress and want to start a small online store, it’s probably better to give a chance to WooCommerce.

But if you’re looking for a solution that will be easy to extend as soon as your business grows and conquers new markets, Magento 2 will suit you better, than WooCommerce