Shopify vs. WooCommerce for Vape Shops

Many brick-and-mortar vape shop owners have found that selling vape gear online is a great way to add a second revenue stream and increase profitability. To sell vape gear online, though, you need a shopping cart platform – and choosing one isn’t easy if you have no prior web development experience. The two most popular online shopping cart solutions today are Shopify and WooCommerce. This article will provide a straightforward comparison of how those platforms compare for vape shops.

Shopify for Vape Shops

Shopify is a self-contained platform that provides hosting for your entire website and a shopping cart solution for selling products online. Shopify also hosts standard website content, so you can move your entire existing website over to the Shopify platform if you like. Shopify doesn’t process payments for vaping products, though, so you’ll have to use your own payment processor. Shopify integrates easily with third-party payment processors.

Shopify starts at $29 per month, and it’s a fully managed hosting solution. If you’re new to e-commerce and have difficulty getting your store set up, you can get help. The drawback, though, is that Shopify can be an expensive platform on which to tell vape gear. You’ll have to use a third-party payment processor when selling vaping gear on Shopify. When you do that, though, Shopify will charge you a 2 percent transaction fee on top of what you’re already paying your payment processor. Upgrading to an Advanced Shopify account for $299 per month lowers the transaction fee to 0.5 percent.

WooCommerce for Vape Shops

WooCommerce is a free plugin that transforms a WordPress website into a fully functional online store. Since WooCommerce is free – and WordPress is free – it’s an extremely inexpensive e-commerce platform to use. You only need to worry about your monthly hosting bill. Since you won’t be paying transaction fees to your web host, you’ll keep more of your profits instead of paying them out. Because WooCommerce runs on WordPress, it gives you a great deal of flexibility in terms of how you want your online vape shop to look. Shopify sites, in comparison, tend to look very similar to one another.

While WooCommerce is more affordable and flexible than Shopify, it’s not a managed hosting solution. Managed WooCommerce hosts do exist, but they cost significantly more than standard website hosting. In addition, you may need a developer’s help during the setup process if you’ve never launched an e-commerce site before.