Webflow vs Shopify: which e-commerce platform should you choose?
There is no denying that eCommerce has been a massively booming industry for decades. There’s been a steady upwards trend for eCommerce, growing from $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $3.5 trillion in 2019. There were already projections that eCommerce would be a $6.5 trillion industry by the year 2023.
All of that was before Coronavirus/COVID-19. Online retailers have already gathered an extra $107 billion in sales during the first two quarters of 2020. eCommerce is becoming the new normal, and it’s going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. In April of 2020, 24% of consumers reported that they wouldn’t feel safe going to a shopping mall for at least the next six months due to the pandemic.
If you’ve been thinking of starting an eCommerce business, now would be the perfect time. In this article, we’re going to examine two popular platforms for eCommerce — Webflow and Shopify. We’re going to dive deep into these two popular platforms to help you decide which is best for helping your digital dreams come true.
Webflow Vs Shopify: Which Platform Is Right For You?
As we begin our examination of Shopify vs Webflow, we’ll start with the obvious. Shopify and Webflow aren’t the only two eCommerce providers you can choose from. You could even host your own eCommerce site on your own server. However, there are a few reasons you might not want to do that.
We’re sticking with these two giants because they’re a great place to begin if you’re not an expert coder, allowing you to focus on the business side of things rather than getting hung up on technicalities like whether or not your security certificates are up to date. Something that is essential for e-commerce websites with customers entering sensitive credit card information
Both Webflow and Shopify let you get started building a slick, attractive eCommerce website even if you have no programming experience.
Let’s start by examining each platform independently, by way of introduction. This will help clarify the Webflow vs Shopify debate, as it will give you a clearer understanding of each platform.
What Is Webflow?
Webflow is a tool for designing websites, content management software, and server all in one. It boasts one of the sleekest, slickest interfaces on the market, making it ideal for business owners who want to deal with as little code as possible.
Webflow is relatively inexpensive and offers three different e-commerce plans ensuring businesses of all sizes and needs can find a suitable option.
The Standard plan starts at $42 USD/month if you go with a month-to-month plan or $29 USD/month if you sign up for yearly billing. This tier gives you the option of adding 500 e-commerce items and 2,000 CMS items but does charge a 2% transaction fee that is in addition to any Stripe or Paypal fees.
Their most popular tier is the Plus plan which starts at $84 USD/month if you go with a month-to-month plan or $74 USD/month if you sign up for yearly billing. Aside from giving you the option of adding 5,000 e-commerce items and 10,000 CMS items, the highlight of the Plus plan is the 0% transaction fee that is not seen with the Standard plan. Although you may still incur fees if using Stripe or Paypal as the payment processor.
And finally, for those looking to have 15,000 ecommerce items, Webflow offers an Advanced tier that starts at $235 USD/month if you go with a month-to-month plan or $212 USD/month if you sign up for yearly billing.
Webflow’s visual editor is truly best-in-class. It’s sleek and intuitive but there may be a bit of a learning curve. Don’t worry, though, Webflow University features a number of in-depth tutorials to help you master the platform. There are also a number of free and premium templates available if you just want to dive in and get started as quickly as possible.
Webflow also offers some surprisingly powerful technical tools. The platform gives you access to your site’s SEO, letting you modify assets for technical SEO like meta descriptions and page titles. There aren’t any built-in digital marketing tools available directly from the platform but there are a ton of 3rd party solutions to help.
One of the greatest strengths of Webflow is its ability to fully customize the shopping cart and eCommerce portal. Their built-in shopping cart is surprisingly powerful as well, being optimized to maximize conversions. These kinds of powerful tools, backed by extensive market research and industry experience, simply aren’t available if you were to host your own independent eCommerce website.
Now let’s dive into Shopify as the next step in our Shopify vs Webflow investigation.
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is one of the best-known and longest-running eCommerce providers on the internet. It was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after the trio found themselves frustrated with the current options available while trying to start an online snowboarding equipment business.
The platform focuses on ease of use and getting started quickly. If you have an idea for an eCommerce business and just want to launch your online portal with as little fuss as possible, Shopify will help you do that.
Like Webflow, Shopify also has three different pricing plans with each plan giving you your first 3 months for $1/month.
Starting with their Basic plan, you have the option of choosing between monthly or yearly billing. Opt for the month-to-month plan at just $39 USD per month, or take advantage of their yearly billing option, bringing the cost down to $29 USD per month.
The Shopify plan is $105 USD/month if you go with a month-to-month plan or $79 USD/month if you sign up for yearly billing.
And finally, for those who demand the utmost in e-commerce capabilities, Shopify offers an Advanced plan for just $399 USD per month on the month-to-month plan and $299 USD per month if you opt for yearly billing.
While Shopify may be less customizable than Webflow, there’s still an impressively wide array of free and premium templates available so you can create an attractive-looking and well-functioning eCommerce site.
However, If you want to modify any of the templates, you’ll likely need to work with a developer. The templates are written in Liquid code, which is not the most accessible programming language if you’re not a programmer.
The platform’s a little lacking in some of the technical tools that Webflow offers, mainly technical SEO. If you’re hoping to climb the search engine result pages (SERPs) while weighing Webflow vs Shopify, you may want to go with Webflow.
Shopify does boast more digital marketing features than Webflow, however. There have been a number of powerful, useful digital marketing tools added in recent years, such as the ability to create Facebook ads straight from the portal. You can also run your email marketing campaigns from the central dashboard.
The shopping portal is attractive and easy to use. You can modify the shopping portal somewhat, including your own logo, and letting you change the color scheme of the layout. It also supports more payments than Webflow, as it also supports Google Pay and Apple Pay.
Shopify offers a slightly better experience for store owners, as well. There are more in-depth analytics, for instance. You can also print labels and calculate shipping directly from the dashboard.
Now that we’ve looked at each site individually, let’s do some side-by-side comparisons to help settle the Shopify vs Webflow eCommerce debate.
Webflow Vs Shopify: Features
When choosing between Webflow vs Shopify, you’ll need to decide what features you’ll need and what’s important to you. Webflow is designed to be more of a programming portal and puts more emphasis on their CMS. It integrates more easily with other software platforms like Adobe products. It also gives you more access to technical resources like custom style sheets (CSS).
Its built-in editor is a little less intuitive than Shopify, however. If you’re looking for more of a drag-and-drop solution, Shopify will fit your needs slightly better.
Some of the features that Webflow is known for include:
- Visual editor, that still gives you access to CSS, HTML, and JavaScript
- Branded checkout page
- Customizable shopping cart
- Attractive product pages
- Customizable emails
- Zapier store extensions
- Social media campaign manager
- Email marketing tools
- Blog software
- Integrates with third-party analytics tools
Now let’s take a look at some of Shopify’s features, to help give you compare the two and decide which eCommerce platform is right for you.
Some popular Shopify features include:
- Over 70 professionally-designed themes available
- Ability to edit code
- Built-in payment gateway and support for more than 100 others
- Automated shipping and tax rate calculation
- Abandoned cart recovery
- A robust app store for extending your web store
- Dropshipping options
- Support for product reviews, discount codes, and gift cards
- Social media integration
- Direct selling with Facebook
Simply looking at these two lists, alone, should give you an idea of which way you’re leaning in the Shopify vs Webflow debate. Simply put, Webflow is the better option for business owners and online retailers who want more customizability. If you’re an experienced developer, programmer, or web designer that’s looking to have a website that truly stands out, Webflow’s going to be a slightly better fit.
Shopify, on the other hand, is for business owners who simply want to leap in and get started doing digital business without having to learn a programming language. Considering Shopify’s longevity and wide-spread users community, there’s a truly impressive array of options available for Shopify. While Webflow may be more customizable, there are so many excellent solutions available for Shopify, like professionally-designed templates, it’s nearly as good as being fully customizable in its own right.
Whichever way you go, both Shopify and Webflow are excellent. Either one will help you get up and running and making money on the internet in less than no time!
Your website is your calling card to the world. It’s how you’ll make your first impression on your customers a great majority of the time. If you’re looking to host a fully online business, if you’re weighing your options between Webflow vs Shopify, it may be your only impression.
