20. Shopify vs. WooCommerce, Which Should You Choose? - podcast episode cover

20. Shopify vs. WooCommerce, Which Should You Choose?

Dec 07, 202325 minEp. 20
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Episode description

Summary

In this episode, Russell and Emerson discuss the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce as e-commerce platforms. They start by recapping Black Friday and the success of Shopify during the holiday season. They then dive into the pros and cons of both platforms, highlighting Shopify's ease of use, dedicated support, and seamless integrations, while noting WooCommerce's flexibility and lower costs. Ultimately, they recommend Shopify for e-commerce businesses due to its user-friendly interface and time-saving features. They also touch on the culture and mindset differences between Shopify and WordPress users.

Takeaways

  • Shopify is recommended for e-commerce businesses due to its ease of use, dedicated support, and seamless integrations.
  • WooCommerce is more flexible and customizable, making it a good choice for specific needs and SEO optimization.
  • Shopify handles technical aspects like web hosting, while WooCommerce requires finding your own hosting.
  • Shopify's plugin infrastructure is more centralized and rigorously approved, while WooCommerce offers more free plugins.
  • WordPress and WooCommerce are more suitable for informational websites or testing the market before launching a full e-commerce store.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Black Friday Recap

05:49 Shopify vs. WooCommerce

07:39 WordPress and WooCommerce Relationship

09:48 Pros of Shopify

13:36 Pros of WordPress and WooCommerce

19:05 Cons of Shopify

21:27 Cons of WordPress and WooCommerce

22:34 Conclusion

Transcript

Russell Steed (00:26.595)

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Ecommerce Unlocked podcast where we cut the fluff. We talk about actionable strategies and tactics that you can use to implement in your ecommerce business today. And let's see, today is we're at the very end of November. We just had Black Friday. Emerson, did you survive? How was it?

Emerson (00:42.87)

I spent too much money actually. So I physically survived, but I just finished wrapping all my presents I got from Black Friday, Cyber Monday, put them under the tree and realized my wife is winning probably like five to one versus my two year old. So I gotta get more two year old gifts. My wife is gonna have a comfy Christmas of a lot of comfy PJs and blankets. And my kid has like football pads and a Nerf gun. I'm like, I gotta get them a couple more toys. I think that's not gonna do it.

Russell Steed (00:44.675)

I'm out.

Russell Steed (01:00.192)

Oh.

Russell Steed (01:11.263)

Well, first off, hopefully she doesn't listen to the podcast and you just ruined all of her presence. Okay, cool. Second off, just Facebook Marketplace, dude. Actually, I found some gems on there where it's like, I'm getting this, my boys are into Paw Patrol and like it's ridiculously expensive, like toys and everything. And then we just went to Facebook Marketplace and there's this lady who had like hundreds of dollars worth of Paw Patrol stuff.

Emerson (01:14.734)

She doesn't.

Emerson (01:21.573)

out.

Emerson (01:30.499)

Oh yeah.

Russell Steed (01:38.039)

that she just put on there for like 75 bucks. And we got this like, she just put it all in this like black bag, this garbage sack just full of stuff. And like, by the time we like told her we're gonna come pick it up, we came and picked it up. She's like, oh, I found some more stuff and I just threw it in. Sweet. And we like two birthdays and a Christmas in that black bag. Like there was so much stuff and it was like 75 bucks. Oh yeah, it was great. And the kids still, I mean, they don't play with all of it anymore, but it was great. I recommend it. And when they're at that age, like they don't really know. My...

Emerson (01:41.102)

Oh, sick.

Emerson (01:50.537)

Oh my gosh.

Emerson (01:55.376)

Oh, that's amazing.

possible.

Russell Steed (02:06.259)

My oldest at the time was five and he was like, why aren't there any boxes? So he was like, kind of wondering like, is this used? But like he didn't care, right? And it was fine. I think once they started to get a little older, they're like, well, no, that's not gonna fly. But when he's two, he's like, he doesn't care. You give him a box and he's happy.

Emerson (02:11.456)

Hahaha

Emerson (02:16.732)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. It's, oh yeah. Oh yeah, no, that's the thing. It's all that guy wants. He's just into sports. So I'm like, dude, you already has every ball for every sport, so I'm not sure what else you need. So he's good.

Russell Steed (02:33.268)

You're tapped out. You're just gonna have to get like premium golf clubs for him, I guess.

Emerson (02:36.358)

that he would love it. He loves golfing. So it's gonna be nuts. It'll be a good, good holiday. But yeah, I mean, congrats to all the Shopify e-commerce sellers over the holidays, breaking records, it seems like on it as a Shopify increase of what 24% from last year over the weekend. This is like what 17,000 new Shopify stores experienced Black Friday this year. So that's

Russell Steed (02:53.803)

Yeah, huge.

Russell Steed (03:05.584)

Welcome to the game! Here it is!

Emerson (03:06.246)

So yeah, welcome to the chaos. So yeah, it was a great, great weekend for e-commerce. So it was fun.

Russell Steed (03:13.419)

Yeah, yeah, it was huge. It was really interesting, kind of like I was going through and looking at other people's analysis of Black Friday and how it went. And like, there's kind of been this feeling of like this looming doom within e-comm the past year. And I don't think it totally materialized this year. I think Black Friday still came and went. I heard on another podcast this morning, they said. Now it's kind of certain that like everything grows

Emerson (03:26.04)

Yeah.

Emerson (03:32.418)

Yeah.

Russell Steed (03:43.063)

The only things that are certain in life are that death, taxes, and Black Friday. Like Black Friday is going to hit. So, um, I dunno, I like, I will do like a, another breakdown, a little bit more in depth on Black Friday in another episode, but, uh, and kind of our learnings and the things that we experienced to maybe break down some of the, the good marketing and, uh, potentially operational things that we saw through Black Friday for Ecom, but.

Emerson (03:49.956)

That's true.

Russell Steed (04:08.279)

In the end, I think it was a success. Honestly, my brand wasn't as big as I hoped, but there are lots of external factors to that. So it just kind of came down to like, we still made sales. We still closed some deals, whatever you want to call it. And it was great. It was a good time.

Emerson (04:23.442)

When you say closing deals, are you like in your chat box just like you know, man buy two get one free, man You like hustling that deal super hardcore or like how do you? Want to hear you closing those deals on ecom just super hustle super gritty slimy in the checkout

Russell Steed (04:37.316)

Just, just, dude, like I'm in that chat and I'm just like, dude, check out, you know you want to. Like everybody's doing it. Ha ha ha.

Emerson (04:44.077)

Just do it. I gotta be on Navy Fields more often. I gotta check out that site way more, dude. That's a whole different vibe. Buy this little girl a dress. You can buy it.

Russell Steed (04:48.713)

Speaking of...

Russell Steed (04:52.283)

Dude, dude, we got like...

We're, it's just like a used car sales lot when you jump on our website. We're using all the tactics.

Emerson (04:59.974)

Oh yeah. Oh no dude. I don't know, rest your mind. When we did a used car sales lot, oh crap, that was a bad business.

Russell Steed (05:08.067)

That was a bad business. Funny, funny story. Emerson and I had a used car dealership back in the day and it's no longer around, I guess is the gist of that story. Oh man.

Emerson (05:19.184)

for a reason. That's a hard industry.

Russell Steed (05:23.811)

Yeah, it is. It is. And I'm glad I'm not in it anymore. So I mean, I dipped a toe you you're a little bit more in than I was. But we dipped toes and we bailed. You got a foot out of toe we bailed. But let's get back to you come. So today, we wanted to talk a little bit about Shopify versus WooCommerce. I think it's no surprise to anybody that we're kind of Shopify guys, we've done a lot of our experiences is on Shopify.

Emerson (05:26.99)

Yep.

Emerson (05:31.784)

I had a foot. Yeah.

Russell Steed (05:50.459)

And, you know, we were just talking about Shopify specifically as far as, you know, 17,000 new Shopify brands experiencing Black Friday. They grew 24% over last year when it comes to Black Friday. This year, I think they, the height, they processed, man, I should have pulled up the stats in front of me, but they did like 4.9 billion and their biggest volume per minute was like 7 million in a minute or something like that.

Emerson (06:09.878)

Good luck.

Emerson (06:16.519)

Yeah.

Russell Steed (06:20.371)

Like they were processing a ridiculous amount of money and it just makes me think like, man, they're making buckets, right? And they use Stripe and Stripe, takes a percentage of that. But just in the end, Shopify is making a lot of money and they dump a lot back into the platform, which is a great segue into what we're about to talk about. So coming into Shopify, I actually was a WooCommerce guy to start. I mean, 10 plus years ago when I started my first e-comm store,

Emerson (06:20.403)

It was disgusting.

Russell Steed (06:49.839)

I was on WooCommerce. I was the scrappy guy that was like, I'm not gonna pay anybody. I'm not even gonna pay 30 bucks a month for somebody to do this. So I'm going WooCommerce, it's free, like let's get it done. And it was janky, it wasn't great. We made some sales, it worked. We did a big Kickstarter campaign. So like we had other things, other marketing going on. So I would say overall it was a successful thing. And that's really where I started to really kind of dive into websites and Ecom in general was on WooCommerce.

Emerson (06:53.672)

Mm-hmm.

Russell Steed (07:17.931)

But since then I've worked for brands, I've owned brands, I've consulted brands that are all in Shopify and just spoiler alert, I'm partial to Shopify. So let's break it down. That's the answer, let's go. No, and I'll tell you why. And I've had experience with both. So I feel like I can actually speak confidently on this subject, but sounds like you got a question, hit me.

Emerson (07:28.818)

And that's the episode, that's it. Thanks for watching.

Emerson (07:39.982)

I got a question. Okay, I always get concerned on, well confused by it, cause you got WooCommerce and WordPress, and somehow they work together, but there is WooCommerce and app in WordPress. I've used WordPress too, and I still don't know the difference. So maybe highlight WordPress, WooCommerce, how that relationship works or what that is.

Russell Steed (07:46.103)

Mm-hmm.

Russell Steed (07:57.399)

Yeah, no, it's a great foundation to kind of start with. So I mean, just right out of the gate shop, if I was built for e-commerce, it is what it is, right? WordPress was originally created for blogs. This was like back a long prehistoric times, right? Just really long time ago, cavemen. Yeah, everybody just was writing journals on WordPress. No, so it was originally created as like this open source, which basically means that...

Emerson (08:12.846)

Free buying stuff on the internet, just where everyone just wrote their journals on.

Russell Steed (08:24.671)

You know, the code is kind of out there and they got a bunch of people contributing to this software, which made it really robust and widely adopted because it was open source. But, uh, the issue with that was that it's kind of fragmented, right? And so you had a lot of people kind of committing code or not even committing code, but just like trying to help the, um, the project, right. And it was originally created for blogs. It wasn't really supposed to be for e-comm then, you know,

Years later down the road, e-comm becomes more of a thing and WooCommerce comes around, which is essentially to your point, you were thinking about it, right, Emerson? WooCommerce is a plugin into WordPress. And so they, it is now super robust. It's got a huge support base, lots of people use it, lots of brands use it. If you have an issue, you can Google it and you're going to find tons of resources to fix something.

to build something or do something. And so in the end, like the support base is really good, but it wasn't necessarily originally built for e-commerce. So I would say WooCommerce it's also free and you kind of get what you pay for. So I'm, I'm spoiling the things that I wanted to talk about later, but, uh, Emerson, you just got me on a roll. Okay. So let's start with some Shopify pros. Let's start on pros of both sides. So pros for Shopify pros for WooCommerce. So the pros in my opinion, like this is not an exhaustive list, but the pros for me is that.

Emerson (09:33.973)

And it's...

Russell Steed (09:48.331)

Shopify handles a lot of the ugly stuff, like the web hosting, the technical aspects. You really don't need to know how a DNS server works in order to get started on Shopify. I mean, you might need to know a little bit, but you don't. If you just went and bought your domain name on Shopify, you got up and running, getting up and running on Shopify is a lot easier. When it comes to WooCommerce, it's still pretty easy, but you gotta find your own hosting site and you're kind of in charge of the cPanel.

the hosting and this and that. And it's a little bit more technical. And for beginners, it's not nearly as easy. So Shopify makes that super easy right out of the gate. Takes care of a lot of the annoying uptime and different things that you might have to deal with on the WooCommerce side. Another pro for Shopify, you can buy the domain directly through Shopify. It's kind of a win. I don't normally do that anyway, so not a huge thing for me, but I know that's a winner for some people.

It's really easy also to connect different channels like TikTok, Amazon. The, the, the plugin infrastructure of Shopify is incredible. Um, I will say it's also incredible for WordPress, but there are big differences between the two. One is Shopify. It's not cheap, right? You, a lot of your plugins you're going to pay for and. You get what you pay for, right? On WooCommerce, you can find a lot of free apps.

but you get what you pay for and they're free. And a lot of them don't work well together. It's not like a centralized company that is managing the approval of those apps. Shopify has got a rigorous approval process for all of their plugins or all of their apps. And on the WordPress side, I can create an app, or sorry, they call them apps and then plugins. So the plugins on the WooCommerce side, I can just create a plugin. And as long as I'm like pushing it and doing good SEO, people are gonna find it and they can install it. Like it's not necessarily as much of a,

a kind of a process to follow to make sure that everything works well together. So, it's a little bit more fragmented on the WooCommerce side. And so it's, you can get, I had one plugin that totally crashed my site because it didn't like my theme. And those things can happen on Shopify too, but it's a lot less likely. So, if you're a beginner and you don't know how to troubleshoot some of those things, I would definitely recommend Shopify for one of the, that being one of like the biggest reasons. Another pro for Shopify is that it's easy to

Russell Steed (12:12.795)

easy, quick and fast to set up. And then you've got dedicated Shopify support. And that's one thing that I've relied on as you get like into the higher tiers of Shopify, you get like more and more support and better support. And that's like, you definitely, it's worth paying for if you're doing a lot of revenue, right? And, or it's worth paying for Shopify because you get that support. On the WordPress side.

I've been underwhelmed on all the support that I've been given when it comes to WooCommerce, when it comes to WordPress in and of itself. Um, like sometimes it's okay. Like, uh, you can get support. It's just not, you're, you're not paying as much. So you can't, they can't justify giving you the level support, level of support that Shopify can give you because you're paying a lot more on Shopify. Um, so that's the, that's kind of in a nutshell, the pros to Shopify. I'm, I feel like I'm really pushing Shopify here. Um, am I sponsored? Yeah.

Emerson (12:40.714)

haha

Emerson (13:04.046)

Wow, you're pushing. Are you sponsored? I don't know. Wow.

Russell Steed (13:07.571)

Use my affiliate link. Yeah, for two months free, no, no. No, I'm not, I'm not, but I've experienced that. So let's go to the pros of WordPress. I've been kind of bagging a little bit on WordPress, but let's go over to WordPress, let's show some pros there. It's extremely flexible, very, very flexible. So if you've got something very specific that you want to do on your site, and Shopify just doesn't allow it, which is a potential, you probably wanna go with WordPress.

Emerson (13:11.202)

There we go.

Russell Steed (13:36.163)

And I've only talked to a few brands that that's the case. If you really have those issues and you like Shopify, you can go headless, so there's another option on Shopify. But they've got some limitations like, for example, Shopify doesn't allow more than 100 variants per product. So if you've got, for example, I sell cardigans in tons of different colors, like I don't know how many sizes we have. We have got like 20 sizes, kid sizes, women sizes. And then in the end, I have to have a different product for every color. But, and there are ways to do this on Shopify.

And we do it on Shopify, but WordPress is a little bit more flexible when it comes to that on WooCommerce. So the flexibility is really nice. When it comes to SEO, you can do a lot more customization, making sure that your SEO is optimized. Shopify kind of tries to do a lot for you. And in an effort to make it work for everybody, it works, but it's maybe not the best. It could be if you're really focused on your SEO game. So WordPress definitely is optimized for that and is very flexible.

Their plugins are really robust. There are lots of plugins out there. You're probably gonna pay less for the plugins that are on WooCommerce than you are for Shopify, but you also get what you pay for sometimes. So there's that. And then you can kind of control your costs a lot better when it comes to WooCommerce. With Shopify, some of your costs can just kind of get a little out of hand. Like let's say you're on Shopify Plus, so you're paying a base $2,000 a month, but then you have above a certain dollar amount, you have transaction fees.

On top of that, well, then you also have your payment processing fees. And then, you know, it can kind of really stack up and then apps usually are a little bit more, more expensive on the Shopify side. So in the end, your bill might be a little bit bigger, but it's almost like convenience fees, in my opinion. Like it's already vetted. It all really works. Like you don't have to worry about a lot of things you have to worry about on the WooCommerce side. And so yeah, it costs more, but here's the theme of the story. Like you get what you pay for. And if you're good.

Emerson (15:32.59)

haha

Russell Steed (15:33.671)

If you can code, if you understand how like, how hosting works and how to like fix your website, if it's down WordPress and WooCommerce is not a bad deal. Like you can do almost every, you can pretty much do everything you can do on Shopify with WooCommerce plus some, but it's just going to take a little bit more of a learning curve or more expertise that you don't need to have when it comes to Shopify.

Emerson (15:55.198)

I would say on that too, Russ helped my wife build her website for her hair extension company. At first we did it on WooCommerce and whenever something happened I was like, I had to call Russ. Like I'm not as tech as Russ is and we moved to Shopify later and now I can at least play around with that. Like it's way more user friendly. I'd say Shopify is for e-commerce. But with the way I've used WordPress myself in the past is if I'm thinking of launching a product or service or doing something like that, I would build it in like a landing, like a...

I don't know. I test the market with WooCommerce. First is what I would do. And just to see, hey, can I drive traffic to it? Can I, if people are interested in, can I get a signup sheet on WordPress and validate my process first? And then if I was like, hey, I have demand, I'm gonna make a Shopify store or actually sell it. I haven't used WooCommerce itself. I've used WordPress in that functionality of creating basically like landing pages and I don't say fake sites, but just like testing the market on it. And then I use it more though for the blogging kind of notation has been great for that.

on the e-commerce that I haven't fully trust. I don't sound fully trusted. I'm not savvy enough probably to do it like send up your hosting, set your domain, your dean. That's what you're talking about. Like all that stuff for me is above my pay grade. And it's like, hey, for 30 bucks a month is like the base level for Shopify. And I don't have to pay someone to fix something every single time that something happens for me is like, OK, cool. I at least can figure it out on Shopify. I feel there's a lot of good tutorials on Shopify.

It's all very user friendly on that more so that you said the open source community is more like, they're super more knowledgeable than I am on open source stuff and how to get in all do all that stuff. So Shopify I think wins in that sense, but for testing and getting into like, for me, the way I've used it, yeah, breaking barriers and get into something and testing something out WordPress is done awesome for that because it is free.

Russell Steed (17:40.019)

Yeah, yeah, it's free. Like you can't really beat it in a lot of scenarios. And I've seen a lot of brands start on WooCommerce and then they upgrade into Shopify. I've only ever talked to one brand that's gone, that's a significant size, you know, millions of dollars of revenue a month move from Shopify to WooCommerce. And it's because they had like a dev team, like in-house dev team of four people that all really preferred WooCommerce. And so

they made the switch. And that was the only time I've ever heard of like a significant brand switching. And I actually had a consulting call not too long ago. The guy was like, hey, yeah, we're on Shopify. He actually works for Automatic, which is the company that owns WooCommerce. And I was like, so do you feel like you're kind of cheating on your employer by having a Shopify store? Cause they just bought the store and he's like, yeah, like I'm thinking about moving it. I'm like, like I wouldn't.

Emerson (18:27.714)

Hahaha

Russell Steed (18:35.231)

like you're already on Shopify, like just don't, like if it's working, just don't, it's 30 bucks a month, like it's okay. And he's like, yeah, I probably won't move it, but yeah, I do feel like I'm cheating a little bit. And so it's really, in the end, like, it comes down to like, what's your expertise? And like Emerson, you know, I've set up stores for Emerson, I've set up, or you know, pages and stuff for Emerson and his wife, I've done quite a few stores myself, I've consulted with brands, I've built a lot of stuff on WooCommerce and on WordPress.

Emerson (18:35.47)

Hehehe

Russell Steed (19:05.587)

And yet I would still, there are certain situations where I'd say, yeah, WooCommerce makes sense, but they're so minimal. I would almost always recommend going to Shopify and it's for one reason. Like even if you have the technical ability to manage a WooCommerce store, it's still gonna take time. Like you have the ability, like I've got the ability, but I still opt for Shopify because I can now use that time that I would have been maybe fixing this or tweaking that to just try to sell more of my product, create more emails, create an SMS, like get more sales.

I don't have to worry about some of those other backend things that, that are maybe not revenue focused, but are important to do when it comes to a WordPress. And so just, it saves you time and time is money time. You can make more sales. And so use that like limited bandwidth that you already have. Get Shopify, get it up and running and, and sell through there. Granted, like, I know people will come out and say, yeah, they totally will disagree with this. A lot of people love WooCommerce and it's not a bad.

option. Like it really is good. And it's come a long, super long way in the past 10 years. I will say like when I first started using it, it was still okay. But now it's like, it's much better. It's pretty competitive with Shopify. It's just, it's not going to be my first pick for a lot of different reasons. I'm just going to wrap it up with some cons. So Shopify, we've already kind of hit a lot of these things. It's expensive. You have less control. And there are some dumb limitations when it comes to like a hundred variants per product or

Emerson (20:12.284)

Heh.

Russell Steed (20:32.523)

they're honestly, their visual builder is not great when it comes to their themes and whatnot. Like I honestly don't like it. And I've used some on WooCommerce and WordPress that I think are a million times better. Like so, so much more customizable, so much better, but it is what it is. And so I will say that's definitely a con for Shopify and their theme builders and that kind of, they're getting better. It was a lot worse three years ago. They're making some good.

good strides, but it's still not great when it comes, when it is compared to some of the functionalities that WordPress has. And then cons for WordPress is, you know, the plugin network isn't kind of like managed or standardized as much as Shopify's. And there's just, they're not making as much money when it comes to like support and that kind of things, or those products. And so you just don't get the support that you get with Shopify. And...

It can be a little overwhelming to be honest, like WooCommerce and all of the options and all the different plugins. You can have one plugin that does one thing and then another that does the exact same thing, but it does it in a different way that also has like four or five things that it does as well. And then it's just, you know, making sure emails are getting sent out. It's a little bit more complicated. And so there's lots of things that can be overwhelming when it comes to WooCommerce. And so I think that's definitely a con, a con for, a con for WordPress and WooCommerce. But.

In the end, use my affiliate code, sign up for two months free at shopify.com slash Russell. No, I'm just kidding. We're not, we're not sponsored in any way by Shopify. It's just based on our personal experiences. So in the end, do what, do, do what's right for your business. But, uh, there it is. Shopify, do Shopify if you're in e-comm. It makes sense. If you're a brand that's not doing e-comm, not shipping anything and, and not taking payments on your website, but it's more informational, a hundred percent WordPress. Go for it. Like.

Emerson (21:59.772)

Ross.

Emerson (22:14.297)

Bye bye.

Russell Steed (22:24.179)

Shopify does not make sense for that. But if you're an e-com DTC, get yourself a Shopify store. Anything to add Emerson? Any wisdom you wanna bring?

Emerson (22:34.434)

to go send it for BigCommerce now. Thank you. No, definitely pro Shopify on it. It makes it easy. Anyway, if you're into drop shipping, Shopify is a great solution for drop shipping if you're making your own product. Just integrations and ecosystem Shopify is building on is amazing. So yeah, I think it's a great, great if you're I would say

Russell Steed (22:37.419)

That's another one. We haven't even touched BigCommerce.

Emerson (23:00.134)

I've seen more people like on Etsy go from Etsy to WordPress than to Shopify. For some reason, I think that's a thing. I'm not sure what is cultivating that. Um, I think the thing that kind of that DIY or thing that I've just seen on a personal basis. Um, I just don't know why, but, uh,

Russell Steed (23:10.047)

Interesting. Yeah.

Russell Steed (23:16.911)

It's the mindset of like, there are different mindsets on Shopify. Like there's the, it's almost like WordPress is a little bit more like hustlers. Like, yeah, we're going to figure this out. We're going to do it on our own. We don't need anybody's help. And it's kind of the Etsy vibe too. I feel like, I just started this out of my garage and like, I don't need anybody to help me. Um, whereas Shopify is like, uh, I got some money. I've got an idea. I'm going to throw some money at this.

Emerson (23:26.662)

Yeah.

Emerson (23:36.396)

Yeah.

Russell Steed (23:43.595)

and see if it goes, you know, that kind of thing. And it's less like, and they, you know, people who don't necessarily know how to do everything or feel like they know how to do everything. That's actually been an issue that I've had in my businesses in the past, like, I'm gonna do it all. And that's how I learned how to do websites. And that's why I used WooCommerce because I didn't wanna pay 30 bucks a month for Shopify because I could do it for, you know, the $5 hosting fee or whatever and manage it myself. And it was a good experience, but I wouldn't do it again. And

Emerson (23:56.126)

Mm-hmm.

Russell Steed (24:10.603)

It's just, it's a different vibe. And so Emerson and I both have actually been in the software side as well. So selling software to e-commerce businesses. And in my experience, talking to other owners and other people who have had software selling to e-comm business owners, the culture is very different as well. Shopify, people are willing to pay like, oh yeah, it's a hundred bucks a month. Cool. Throw it on. Whereas when it comes to WordPress, it's like, it's a hundred bucks a month. Are you crazy? Like it's.

Emerson (24:38.113)

Mm-hmm.

Russell Steed (24:38.711)

people just don't spend money on plugins and that kind of thing, because there are so many really good plugins out there that are completely free. Because it's this whole environment, this whole ecosystem of open source. And so a lot of those things are just free. And you also have to be careful because a lot of these apps haven't been updated, or themes too, haven't been updated in three, four years, and they're gonna straight up break your site when you install it. So, sorry, back and forth, but in the end, those are kind of the different vibes I get from the...

Emerson (24:44.841)

Mm-hmm.

Russell Steed (25:07.799)

from the people that use both platforms. Not to say one's better than the other, but they're just a little different. So anyway, that is the pod. Hopefully it was helpful and kind of gave you a little bit of insight when it comes to WooCommerce versus Shopify, trying to decide which one's best for you. Do Shopify. And we will see you on the next one.

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