4 October 2021

WooCommerce VS OpenCart: Which Is Better?

Searching for an e-commerce platform for your business? In this WooCommerce vs OpenCart debate, we break it down for you to help you choose the best platform.

John Ahya

Reading time: 5 minutes

Selling online is one of the most widespread and flourishing business ideas at present thanks to the booming e-commerce industry. But, we do not know that there is a long process that follows in the ultimate setup and working of a successful online store.

However, if you can go through all the processes, stay determined, and use the right tools and software, your online store will prove to be optimally fruitful.

One of the essential steps for starting your online store is choosing a suitable e-commerce platform.

We can name the two most popular e-commerce platforms, WooCommerce and OpenCart. We often ask ourselves: Which one should we choose? Which is better and why?

So, to help you understand the comparison between the two e-commerce platforms, we’ve created this article just for you. Let’s dive right in!

What are WooCommerce and OpenCart?

WooCommerce is an e-commerce platform based on WordPress plugins. It is easy to use, free to download, and popular for its customization aspects.

OpenCart is an open-source e-commerce platform that is quite ideal for users who don’t have advanced technical and coding skills.

While both platforms are extremely similar on the surface, we’ll take a deeper look at several factors that help determine which is the better one for e-commerce. Some of the factors we will discuss include:

Ease of use: Whether the platform is user-friendly
Option of customization: How much freedom you’re given to design an online store that suits your brand
Safety and security: Whether the platform offers SSL encryption or two-factor authentication
Support: Whether the platform offers customer support to make onboarding and using the platform a breeze
Options for SEO: Whether the platform is SEO-friendly and lets you customize other aspects of SEO
Performance: How this platform will work when you start your e-commerce business
Pricing: The upfront costs and value of the platform

Ease of use

The more user-friendly the e-commerce platform is, the better it is for you to set up your online store. After all, you wouldn’t want to spend hours just getting onboarded.

Time is money.

WooCommerce is undoubtedly an easy-to-use platform because it’s a plugin for WordPress. It has the easiest steps for installation, and the process of setting up the platform is equally simple. The dashboard has all the settings you can readily access to change any information you put when installing your store.

As one of the WooCommerce alternatives, OpenCart is a more complex platform. That’s because OpenCart is not a plugin-based platform but a standalone e-commerce platform. This means that you have to install it manually or with the help of a script. Although you get several options for customization at OpenCart, beginners might find it quite difficult to figure out and handle.

💡Which is better: WooCommerce

Option of customization

When you are able to customize your online store, it allows you to create your store in the most precise manner and according to your branding.

WooCommerce offers numerous professionally designed free themes. Many premium themes are available, but you can readily opt for the free ones that are equally attractive and offer you the opportunity to customize them. We can say that WooCommerce offers one of the widest collections of themes among the other e-commerce platforms.

You get the opportunity to customize your store at OpenCart as well. But, the options here for permission are quite limited. OpenCart pales in comparison to WooCommerce in terms of customization and the number of themes. Of course, choosing the premium themes will fetch you more options to customize your store and platform.

💡Which is better: WooCommerce

Safety and security

When selling online, it’s important that you ensure that your site is safe to use to earn the trust of your customers. Other than including trust badges on your website, it’s important to ensure you’ve implemented other security measures like encryption.

When you use WooCommerce, you require security for both WooCommerce as well as WordPress CMS. That’s because WooCommerce is based on WordPress CMS. Using standard payment gateways and SSL encryption can help you secure WooCommerce as well as WordPress CMS. A better method for security is two-factor authentication and reliable web hosting.

With the help of SSL encryption, OpenCart is also quite a secure platform. SSL encryption added with compliant payment gateways offers you the perfect secured platform at OpenCart.

So, both the e-commerce platforms, OpenCart and WooCommerce, are as safe and secure as e-commerce platforms.

💡Which is better: Tie

Support

WooCommerce and OpenCart are both open-source platforms. Therefore, the opportunity for support is quite limited for both platforms. The feature of live chat support is absent on both platforms.

If you want to solve any platform issue, you can reach out through their email or through support tickets, which will take quite some time. So, comparing the two platforms, both stand at the same level.

💡Which is better: Tie

Options for SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most crucial components that help online websites achieve popularity and gain visibility.

WooCommerce is a perfectly SEO-friendly platform. Users can readily customize the meta tiles, alt tags, meta titles, and URLs in WooCommerce. This platform also allows users to use SEO plugins, such as Rank Math, Yoast, and many more to rank higher in search engines.

On the other hand, OpenCart is not an SEO-friendly e-commerce platform. It only offers basic features such as customizing URLs for the products, other pages, and manufacturers. The users require tweak codes for working with advanced options when they are working on OpenCart.

So, from an SEO point of view, you can definitely use WooCommerce as an OpenCart alternative.

💡Which is better: WooCommerce

Performance

At the general level of comparison, the performance quality of both the e-commerce platforms, OpenCart and WooCommerce, are equal components. However, since WooCommerce uses WordPress optimization plugins, the performance of WooCommerce is a little better than OpenCart.

The WordPress optimization plugin helps in optimizing databases, streamlining, and caching pages. Additionally, the caching and database optimizing chances of WooCommerce are pretty much better than that of OpenCart.

Lastly, the options for improving the performance of your online store are more enhanced in WooCommerce than in OpenCart.

💡Which is better: WooCommerce

Pricing

Both WooCommerce and OpenCart are free platforms. WooCommerce is free to download, and at the same time, OpenCart is an open-source platform that also makes it a free platform.

However, do note that WooCommerce is free of upfront costs — But, you’ll need significant costs to get your store set up completely at WooCommerce. For OpenCart, there are also a few expenditures necessary for setting up your store.

💡Which is better: Tie

So, which is better for your business?

We can conclude that both e-commerce platforms have distinct important features that can help develop your online store. Each of them can be equally efficient and ideal for being used to set up a successful online store. The proper use of the platform can effortlessly help the users achieve an online store with thriving success.

But in this WooCommerce vs OpenCart debate, we find that WooCommerce is the better e-commerce platform compared to OpenCart. It’s an easier and simpler platform, offers better customization options, and also enables better use of SEO.

Whichever platform you decide to choose, make sure you do thorough research (like reading this article 😉) and take advantage of free trials so you know exactly how the platform will work for your business needs!