Hi, i wanna know which of those ecommerce carts would you choose, and why? Personally, i found woocommerce+Wordpress to be the ideal solution, its so user friendly than OC. Plugins on both platforms are good, but i think even woo themes in Themeforest are sold more popular than OC themes.
And i remain skeptical of the scalability factor of both, like if we have about 50k-1k+ products, which is the better solution?
Whats your judgement?
Magento for that many products.
I used WooCommerce for a site with 300k items. The WP plugin WP All Import was extremely helpful in populating the site initially as well as afterward. It’s a scalable node web server. The traffic is light some days and heavier others.
TIPS:
Forget shared hosting (I’d never think of using it for a site this size but some still would) as it’ll be very slow and you’ll not be able to tweak things as much as you may want / need to. So, you should use a managed, VPS or dedicated host from the start.
Don’t go crazy on the plugins. Use only what you need. Don’t just deactivate, remove.
These two things here are often what can give WP a bad name / reputation. It’s too slow, use X software instead. LOL.
WPWiseOwl saidI used WooCommerce for a site with 300k items. The WP plugin WP All Import was extremely helpful in populating the site initially as well as afterward. It’s a scalable node web server. The traffic is light some days and heavier others.
TIPS:
Forget shared hosting (I’d never think of using it for a site this size but some still would) as it’ll be very slow and you’ll not be able to tweak things as much as you may want / need to. So, you should use a managed, VPS or dedicated host from the start.
Don’t go crazy on the plugins. Use only what you need. Don’t just deactivate, remove.
These two things here are often what can give WP a bad name / reputation. It’s too slow, use X software instead. LOL.
thats great to hear! I hope the site loading time and speed is good. Just to know, how many plugins roughly are you using in that?
Only around a dozen or so. Either commercial, free or made by in house. I forgot to mention that it’s a responsive site. Even loading speed on mobiles is relatively good. Averaging 2.5 seconds on a Android Samsung GS II / iPhone 4. Faster on newer devices. However, which theme you use can affect that, I’ve gone with the Bootstrap framework for theme in use.
Ajax (near infinite scroll) - “Load More Products” - not to be confused with actual Infinite Scroll as there are too many issues with that. Lazy Loading of images and scaling image size from low res mobile to retina size helps too. This way, searches, pagination and navigation are pretty quick as long as long as the hardware can handle the traffic load. Keep your queries relatively light and you won’t have to worry too much.
Answering the original question (which ecommerce platform is growing?), the answer is Magento. In the last year it’s taken grown 6% from 20% to 26% of eCommerce sites in the Alexa top million.
WordPress eCommerce isn’t even significant enough to have its own slice.
aristotlian saidWPWiseOwl saidI used WooCommerce for a site with 300k items. The WP plugin WP All Import was extremely helpful in populating the site initially as well as afterward. It’s a scalable node web server. The traffic is light some days and heavier others.
TIPS:
Forget shared hosting (I’d never think of using it for a site this size but some still would) as it’ll be very slow and you’ll not be able to tweak things as much as you may want / need to. So, you should use a managed, VPS or dedicated host from the start.
Don’t go crazy on the plugins. Use only what you need. Don’t just deactivate, remove.
These two things here are often what can give WP a bad name / reputation. It’s too slow, use X software instead. LOL.
thats great to hear! I hope the site loading time and speed is good. Just to know, how many plugins roughly are you using in that?
really 300k share the link? I don’t even bother to comment how unrealistic that sounds on something that use 1 table for all products.
jk000jk saidaristotlian saidWPWiseOwl saidI used WooCommerce for a site with 300k items. The WP plugin WP All Import was extremely helpful in populating the site initially as well as afterward. It’s a scalable node web server. The traffic is light some days and heavier others.
TIPS:
Forget shared hosting (I’d never think of using it for a site this size but some still would) as it’ll be very slow and you’ll not be able to tweak things as much as you may want / need to. So, you should use a managed, VPS or dedicated host from the start.
Don’t go crazy on the plugins. Use only what you need. Don’t just deactivate, remove.
These two things here are often what can give WP a bad name / reputation. It’s too slow, use X software instead. LOL.
thats great to hear! I hope the site loading time and speed is good. Just to know, how many plugins roughly are you using in that?
really 300k share the link? I don’t even bother to comment how unrealistic that sounds on something that use 1 table for all products.
And why is that? wordpress database structure is smarter than people give it credit for. The php code is definitely bloated and needs too much memory if you ask me, but you can host almost anything on wordpress.
I am pretty sure it wouldnt be a problem having a database with 300.000 products, given the fact that I run a support forum that has much more than 100k posts. (and if I am not mistaken the wordpress.org forum with its 1 million+ of threads also runs on wordpress)
All of that in the same database table, powered by wordpress custom post types, which are usually also used to create products 
Managing those products is probably a whole different story. I am not familiar enough with magento, open cart, etc but I am pretty sure there are better ways of bulk editing in those systems than in wordpress
So although you could easily host a performant shop with wordpress that features thousands of products (especially with a caching plugin) I am pretty sure managing it would be torture
I’m in the same boat, need to make a shop for upto 200 products with option to grow. I’m on the fence over woocommerce and opencart. Been a fan of oscommerce for years, but I want to try something new.
I will wait for a clearer verdict on this because I also am choosing between the 2.
Hi,
I think Kriesi has clear all the concerns. I have also built a shop with over 3,000 products.
Thanks
-S
I’ve used all 3 and magento has the most features but is resource intensive and simply a bitch to learn for most people. Their product import/export is a pain and if you have clothing products, it’s more of a pain. anything with multiple colors or sizes means configurable products which is a pain. try teaching your clients how to use magmi, they’ll look at you cross-eyed.
I agree with Kresi, wp eCommerce is fine for limited items but if you want to scale, go with opencart. it has almost all the features of magento and is much easier to learn.
Both shopping carts have their pros and cons. In order to make a right decision you should compare two platforms according to your special needs.
Main benefits of WooCommerce are robust tax settings and options, secure customer account section, possibility to sell physical and digital products. However, platform has lack of currencies, languages, shipping methods, inability to add product variants. Nonetheless, lately on e-Commerce market appeared WooCommerce 2. New shopping cart version is aimed to improve store management facilities, developing process and customer shopping experience. You can find more detailed information about these improvements here goo.gl/u2tqWf
From the other hand, we have OpenCart, which is independent shopping cart. It is lightweight, it means your site will be fast. All you have to do to set up a store is to:Shopping cart is really free. Multi store functionality will help you to manage several different stores from one admin panel.
Now you have to think which kind of online store do you need. If it is middle store with blog or forum, choose WooCommerce. If you have no programming skills and want large store, choose OpenCart.
As a developer and designer working for an agency I can give you my two cents.
Mind you this was two years ago. Perhaps it’s better now.
2 ) I then moved past Wordpress straight into Magento. I’ve learnt to build the sites from scratch and currently manage around a dozen of them. It’s a very solid platform. There are almost too many things you can do with it. Problem is, doing the simplest thing takes time (even just clicking down to the 11th folder to change a style sheet or javascript file). It’s resource heavy on shared hosting because it really is built for “proper” stores. So move it to a VPS at least. It’ll run on shared hosting, you’ll just be waiting a while every time you click on anything.
I’ve also created a quoting system with Magento which works quite well for clients minus a few glitches here and there it does the job.
Overall I like Magento some days, I don’t like it others. If I had to build a store with 100k products, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it. I just know if won’t fall over if there isn’t a very good reason. Particularly as it is an ECommerce platform first and foremost. Not a blogging platform or a CMS.
crockfordcarlisle saidAs a developer and designer working for an agency I can give you my two cents.
- I wouldn’t use the WP eCommerce plugin again if my house was on fire with all my guitars inside and I could save them by installing it. Mainly because there is next to no support available and when I have contacted the supplier I didn’t receive a reply. I also bought several other plugins from related developers and could not get them to work. I just could never rely on it and therefore didn’t have any faith in it. I honestly am surprised it “works” for some people.
Mind you this was two years ago. Perhaps it’s better now.
2 ) I then moved past Wordpress straight into Magento. I’ve learnt to build the sites from scratch and currently manage around a dozen of them. It’s a very solid platform. There are almost too many things you can do with it. Problem is, doing the simplest thing takes time (even just clicking down to the 11th folder to change a style sheet or javascript file). It’s resource heavy on shared hosting because it really is built for “proper” stores. So move it to a VPS at least. It’ll run on shared hosting, you’ll just be waiting a while every time you click on anything.
I’ve also created a quoting system with Magento which works quite well for clients minus a few glitches here and there it does the job.
Overall I like Magento some days, I don’t like it others. If I had to build a store with 100k products, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it. I just know if won’t fall over if there isn’t a very good reason. Particularly as it is an ECommerce platform first and foremost. Not a blogging platform or a CMS.
- WooCommerce in my opinion has come a long way in the last couple of years. I use it everyday and find it dead easy to make changes, add things in and edit the structure through it’s child theme folder inside my theme (which is a godsend). If you’ve got a store with anything less than 10,000 products I’d say it’s a goer.
I think you may have just answered my question also.
I have a client asking me to create an e-commerce solution for his existing WP site, to cater for a very small range of products (25 - 35 products).
With those kind of numbers it sounds like WooCommerce is more than accommodating, however was on the fence whether to integrate WooCommerce or build his online store through opencart.
GravityDept saidmaybe you should take a look of 2014 chart. woocommerce is growing out of that "Others"Answering the original question (which ecommerce platform is growing?), the answer is Magento. In the last year it’s taken grown 6% from 20% to 26% of eCommerce sites in the Alexa top million.
WordPress eCommerce isn’t even significant enough to have its own slice.
I’ve made a Google Sheet for all three (OpenCart, Prestashop and WooCommerce). In the sheet are various features and extensions (plus the price of the extensions), which we would most probably use as a retailer.
In order to build this Google Sheet, I had spent 2 weeks installing both OpenCart and Prestashop and its various extensions, other than uploading products and seeing how different they are from WooCommerce. All 3 has their own strengths and weaknesses, which I’ve outlined in the Google Sheet as well.
Please take a look and give me your thoughts on it 
@ imraansarwar —Growth is not a constant measure. WooCommerce is certainly growing in the top 0.1M to 1M sites, but Magento is crushing it in the 0 to 1K and 1k to 10k benchmarks. Not discounting WooCommerce for getting on the map in a big way, but it’s actually harder to displace enterprise products so that’s a big testament to Magento.
Also consider growth relative to revenue. I doubt there are many (if any) WooCommerce stores earning $1M revenue. It’s for kicking the tires not growing a business into the SMB space. That’s specifically what Magento was designed for.
WooCommerce and to a large extent Shopify are perfect for micro-businesses, but it’s really not fair to compare them by number of stores to enterprise platforms. There are simply fewer enterprise customers (but much higher value). Totally different market.
@ Leokoo — Tom is a friend. Have care how you speak. He does that research in his free time for the community. The signals he had available to test against in past years weren’t perfect, but it was a start. Spree for example has few signatures in its markup so it’s quite hard to detect. Many who use it re-implement the frontend in something totally different like Angular.
If you keep looking around the web you’ll see many reports that show varying slices of the Alexa index by platform. Some may be more accurate than others, but good luck proving it without doing the work yourself.
GravityDept said@ imraansarwar —Growth is not a constant measure. WooCommerce is certainly growing in the top 0.1M to 1M sites, but Magento is crushing it in the 0 to 1K and 1k to 10k benchmarks. Not discounting WooCommerce for getting on the map in a big way, but it’s actually harder to displace enterprise products so that’s a big testament to Magento.
Also consider growth relative to revenue. I doubt there are many (if any) WooCommerce stores earning $1M revenue. It’s for kicking the tires not growing a business into the SMB space. That’s specifically what Magento was designed for.
WooCommerce and to a large extent Shopify are perfect for micro-businesses, but it’s really not fair to compare them by number of stores to enterprise platforms. There are simply fewer enterprise customers (but much higher value). Totally different market.
@ Leokoo — Tom is a friend. Have care how you speak. He does that research in his free time for the community. The signals he had available to test against in past years weren’t perfect, but it was a start. Spree for example has few signatures in its markup so it’s quite hard to detect. Many who use it re-implement the frontend in something totally different like Angular.
If you keep looking around the web you’ll see many reports that show varying slices of the Alexa index by platform. Some may be more accurate than others, but good luck proving it without doing the work yourself.
Thanks, even though he’s your friend, the misrepresentation that WooCommerce does so much worse than Magento isn’t correct. WooCommerce has seen crazy amounts of growth the last 2 years, though last year’s issue with the sudden change of license still irks many of us.
And no, am not keen to do indexing work myself, but when people quote Tom without referencing to Builtwith, that isn’t correct.
GravityDept said@ imraansarwar —Growth is not a constant measure. WooCommerce is certainly growing in the top 0.1M to 1M sites, but Magento is crushing it in the 0 to 1K and 1k to 10k benchmarks. Not discounting WooCommerce for getting on the map in a big way, but it’s actually harder to displace enterprise products so that’s a big testament to Magento.
Also consider growth relative to revenue. I doubt there are many (if any) WooCommerce stores earning $1M revenue. It’s for kicking the tires not growing a business into the SMB space. That’s specifically what Magento was designed for.
WooCommerce and to a large extent Shopify are perfect for micro-businesses, but it’s really not fair to compare them by number of stores to enterprise platforms. There are simply fewer enterprise customers (but much higher value). Totally different market.
I believe you need to install and try WooCommerce yourself. It has improved and changed to be much more robust compared to when it first came out. Even top ecommerce experts like Andrew Bleakley said so.
$1M revenue? Are you sure? SMB for ecommerce is considered below $5M, and Magento can’t really breach the market above it. As for WooCommerce and Shopify, they’re rapidly going after the enterprise customer, while still catering for the small bootstrap startup businesses.
Try starting with Magento and some extensions with thousands of products, and you’ll need more than just a sub $100/mo VPS. Try upgrading or adding in features like selling courses or tickets, and the price would be so much more than implementing with WooCommerce.
Can you mass import or mass edit products in WooCommerce? There are extensions for that. So yes, why can’t WooCommerce do whatever Magento does and do it better?
Plus, majority of Magento extensions are now priced for quarterly renewals. How are small shops or those bootstrapping their business, able to afford running a Magento shop, when WooCommerce does it better and cheaper?
One thing that swayed me to WooCommerce instead of Magento is the fact of real-time incremental backups with unlimited images by Vaultpress. Try finding the same for Magento, and you’ll pay tons more of money
p/s: Let’s not get into upgrading Magento. It might break your site. Read the tons of complains on Magento’s forums
