Choosing the appropriate eCommerce builder for your specific needs and circumstances is crucial if you’re new to an eCommerce business. If you’re a seasoned online store owner and this isn’t your first rodeo, that’s also true.
You’ve decided on a product, studied your competition, and developed a strong brand that will attract consumers. After that, you’ll need to get started creating your online store.
There are two routes:
- You may utilize a self-hosted platform.
- Or You can also use a cloud-hosted platform like Webflow or Shopify to create your online store.
You work directly with a developer to create your eCommerce site using a self-hosted eCommerce platform. This necessitates installation, hosting, and continuing development expenditures, although it gives you greater control over your website and complete visibility into your data.
Another firm runs the infrastructure behind your website, taking on responsibility for hosting and continuing development costs if you use a cloud-hosted platform. Choosing a cloud-hosted eCommerce solution lowers your start-up expenses significantly, allowing you to get access to a scalable, stable, and mature eCommerce system quickly.
In 2022, the most popular eCommerce platform among new internet businesses will be a cloud-hosted eCommerce system, with Webflow and Shopify as the leading market competitors.
In this post, we’ll help you determine which one is best for your company by sharing the most important details and insights from our experiences on both platforms.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is one of the most popular and well-known eCommerce store development platforms. Daniel Weinand, Tobias Lutke, and Scott Lake launched Shopify in 2004, intending to create a web store without coding or designing.
With the assistance of niche-specific templates and plugins, Shopify makes it simple to start an eCommerce company. It also has a built-in app shop that lets you link advanced product or marketing features to your website.
Compared toUnlike Magento, Shopify’s Point of Sale (POS) system allows your clients to discover your items on your website and in physical and pop-up shops.
Shopify lacks built-in drag-and-drop capabilities, but it allows you to utilize its programs to introduce modifications. You may also make some modifications at the code level unless you’re a developer or hire one.
What is Webflow?
Webflow is a website builder created to make the visual toolbox user-customizable. In 2012, Sergei Magdalin, Vlad Magdalin, and Bryant Chou launched Webflow as a company.
Webflow contains a massive library of templates and integration tools for free. Webflow is also a tremendous budget-friendly website builder software. Furthermore, if you’re a single specialty business, Webflow is the best.
Although the firm also caters to more experienced professional web designers that may assist with more complex customizations and 3D animations. So, even if you’re a novice with no prior experience in HTML/CSS, you can modify their templates as long as you don’t need to get too technical.
Furthermore, Unlike Shopify, while still making money, you may use Webflow as your blogging or non-commercial site.
Webflow vs. Shopify: Which Platform Is Better For Your Business?
While there are several eCommerce platforms to select from, such as WooCommerce and Magento, Webflow eCommerce and Shopify are the most popular. They’re both simple to use and have a lot of features, so they’re great for online store owners of all sizes.
Webflow is a visual website builder that lets you create your online store without writing code. It’s excellent for organizations looking for complete control over their website’s appearance and functionality and need a solution that can adapt as they expand.
On the other hand, Shopify is a turnkey eCommerce solution that’s straightforward to set up and use. It’s designed for any size company that wants to start selling online effortlessly.
Let’s look at their characteristics, pricing, and which enterprises they’re best suited for.
Webflow vs. Shopify: Key Similarities and Differences
First, look at the basic similarities and differences between Webflow eCommerce and Shopify.
Similarities
- Webflow and Shopify are eCommerce platforms that don’t require technical knowledge.
- Both platforms provide a variety of free and premium templates. These are great for streamlining the web design process; no code is required.
- Both are well-known blogging platforms.
- Webflow and Shopify have many educational resources, including blogs, video lessons, and manuals. There’s plenty there to help you develop your abilities.
- Shopify and Webflow have built-in marketing tools, including basic email funnels and coupon code creation.
- Both Shopify and Webflow’s basic plans are comparable in price.
- You can also use Shopify’s and Webflow’s rules to control shipping costs, including discounted or free delivery.
Differences
- Shopify was not originally designed with eCommerce; instead, it was built for generic website design. Shopify, on the other hand, has always been an eCommerce platform.
- Shopify provides more advanced features and a broader third-party app selection than Webflow. You can monitor the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, for example, while Webflow does not.
- Your customers can establish accounts on your Shopify site if they have one. Webflow does not allow this.
- You may connect Shopify with your POS (point-of-sale) system. Webflow does not currently offer this capability.
- After you sign up for a Shopify account, you may test out its basic suite of features for free with Websites By Design’s Free plan. However, before you start, your website must be live.
- Shopify offers a more significant number of payment options than Webflow, which is something to keep in mind.
- Webflow places greater creative control in the hands of web designers than Shopify.
- Webflow doesn’t offer anything comparable to Shopify’s mobile app, allowing you to manage your store while moving. In contrast, Webflow does not provide a mobile app.
Now that we’ve covered the essentials let’s look at Webflow and Shopify in more detail.
Both are equipped with a wide range of features when it comes to web design and eCommerce. They, however, have a slightly different emphasis from one another. So, let’s take a look at the essential functions Webflow and Shopify offers.
Website Editors and Customization Features
Let’s first compare Webflow and Shopify in terms of visual design, pre-made templates, design choices, and other web development services.
Webflow
The site editor and customization capabilities of Webflow are divided into three categories, each with its own set of sections.:
- Structure
- Style
- Launch
Let’s see them one by one.
Structure
Webflow is a drag-and-drop HTML editor that makes it simple to add specific, unstyled HTML components to your website. You can also utilize pre-built sophisticated features like sliders, tabs, background videos, and much more.
Never fear if you don’t want to build your internet site from the ground up; you don’t have to. Webflow provides over 100 free and premium templates for businesses, portfolios, and blogs. You may completely modify any aspect of your online store, from the headings to the colors and images to whatever else you want. Webflow’s visual editor lets you do exactly that. Paid-for templates start at $19 and range across many professions. Alternatively, third-party themes can be obtained from sites like ThemeForest.
You can use Webflow’s visual website editor to turn your design into well-structured HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript without writing a single line of code. You may also utilize Webflow’s Interactions features while designing animations, with no coding required.
The content from your CMS is also accessible, so you may utilize all of your text snippets, images, blog entries, goods, and more as you build up your site. Drag them in whenever it’s convenient for you.
From there, it’s up to you whether you go live with your website or entrust it to your development team to fine-tune. It’s simple to put together a Navigator for your site’s components. Every editor on your staff gets an overall view of your progress here.
Style
Once you’ve defined your website’s structure, you may personalize each web component.
Below are some of Webflow’s most notable features in this arena:
- With complete control over your components and boxes, you may create a genuinely responsive design to a pixel-perfect standard. This is fantastic for ensuring that every online consumer has an outstanding experience, regardless of their device.
- You can adjust typography to a level of detail rarely seen in web builders. This capability is generally reserved for more complicated design platforms like Photoshop and InDesign. You may modify the tracking, spacing, line height, text indents, font weight, columns, and many other factors.
- You may make and modify global color swatches. These allow you to easily experiment with different color combinations and keep your visual branding consistent by updating each instance of that color on every web page.
Launch
Use Webflow’s fast and scalable hosting technology stack to get your website up and running. You won’t need to set up a domain, cPanel, or FTP — Webflow takes care of it for you.
It’s time to go live on the internet once you’ve completed your web design. At this point, you may count on:
- SSL and ISO 27018 compliance
- A cutting-edge hosting architecture that can handle enormous traffic volumes
- Webflow’s simple editor makes it easy to make quick changes and resubmit them.
- Consistency across all modern browsers
You may also export your website and save its HTML, CSS, and JavaScript source code, photos, and other assets as a ZIP file. You or your developers can then add any additional code.
If you’ve tried to update your website’s content, you know how time-consuming it can be. Webflow makes it simple to modify and create your material because it allows you to make changes on your site without using a backend CMS.
Shopify
Shopify’s primary goal is to support you in creating a lovely online shop. When compared to Webflow, though, it doesn’t give you as much control or customization over your website design.
The majority of Shopify’s web designs are based on themes. You can use one of their nine free templates, go to the Shopify Theme Store to purchase a premium one or design your own Shopify theme using third-party authors. Alternatively, if you’d instead build your site from the ground up without utilizing a template, you have that
Once you’ve chosen a topic, you can modify the information and settings to your heart’s content. Each theme features its editable components. If your article doesn’t allow you to make the adjustments you desire, feel free to tamper with the code in HTML and CSS.
Most Shopify themes, however, enable you to modify the color, font, photos, logos, and design sections individually. A theme-setting editor is also available. You may preview your store as you change it here (without having to write any code).
Are you ready to go live? Shopify provides robust security and SSL compliance when opening your store. Additionally, hosting is handled, so you can be confident that your site will not suffer from outages.
Winner: Webflow
If you’re a visual thinker with a creative flair, Webflow’s visual editor is superior — it’s far more sophisticated than Shopify’s.
Webflow allows you to use professional Adobe-style design tools from the comfort of your browser. Webflow also gives all the freedom you require to bring your imagination to life, whether you have prior web design expertise or are working with a web development team.
This is a handy instrument for professional designers with big website and store ideas.
When it comes to templates, however, if you want a more comprehensive range of options, go with Shopify. Their themes are contemporary, professional, smooth, and ready to go almost from the start. Shopify provides everything you need if you don’t want to spend much time on design.
The best option for you depends on the features you require.
eCommerce Features
Listen up if you want to start an online business rather than a regular website. In this section, we’ll look at Webflow and Shopify’s characteristics for eCommerce.
Webflow
We’ve already covered how Webflow’s eCommerce capabilities came relatively recently, in 2018. Aside from that, it doesn’t do badly on many fronts.
You may list both physical and digital items, as well as services, on Webflow. Individual products or categories of goods can be uploaded. You may also add any information you wish to product pages quickly, create unique product variants, and tailor the checkout flow to match your product types.
You can add your personal touch by customizing your delivery options with Webflow. For example, you may deliver actual objects to consumers’ homes, send digital items via email, and so on.
You may streamline your checkout procedure for a better user experience for items that don’t need to be delivered. For example, customers don’t have to provide their shipping addresses when acquiring non-shippable goods. Take them from the payment page to a download link on an order confirmation page or via email instead.
Webflow offers a decent range of payment gateways when it comes to payments. You can take credit and debit cards, as well as PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Not to mention that you may accept payments from over 200 countries. Refunds may also be processed through these payment systems.
By tracking items with Webflow, you can keep track of your sales, maintain client accounts, and monitor their order history from the dashboard. Webflow also includes fundamental inventory management capabilities. You can enable inventory monitoring, establish out-of-stock alerts, change inventory quantities, and track product variants, among other things.
Shopify
Shopify is well-known throughout the web for its excellent feature set, which has earned it a reputation as one of the most feature-rich eCommerce store on the market — and for a good reason! It would take an entire article to detail each of Shopify’s main eCommerce capabilities, which are listed below.
Both physical and digital products may be sold on Shopify. Digital goods can also include services, downloads, and gift cards. Shopify works with several dropshipping applications like Oberlo to make it easy to add dropshipping items to your inventory.
You may also utilize Shopify’s powerful automation capabilities to manage to ship. As with any eCommerce software, you can efficiently set up product categories and subcategories to make your product catalog more user-friendly. Shopify also includes features such as adding product details, uploading pictures, and including variant options like size and color.
Then you can publish it to one or more sales channels, such as Facebook, Google, or Instagram, once you’re satisfied with your product page.
Shopify makes it simple to accept just about any Shopify payment method, including PayPal and credit cards. You may charge in various currencies (which Webflow does not allow you to do). Not to mention that Shopify user’s checkout experience is readily globalized, with translation functionality for more than 50 languages.
Shopify gives you the tools to manage your store from beginning to end. Customer profiles, for example, may be used to examine customer purchasing patterns, contact information, and order histories. Customers can also create accounts on your website for quicker repeat purchasing. Furthermore, Shopify payments make it simple to handle refunds and transaction fees.
You might also use Shopify’s smartphone app to manage your business while on the go. Isn’t it convenient to fulfill orders, communicate with customers, and keep track of your inventory?
Inventory Management
Shopify store makes it a breeze to manage your inventory from the dashboard. You may keep track of and modify inventory levels, hide out-of-stock items, be alerted when stocks are running low, and move goods between shops with ease. A CSV file can also export or import your entire inventory.
Furthermore, Shopify includes ABC inventory analysis, which groups your most popular items into three categories to assist you in deciding where to focus your business. Naturally, these characteristics help Shopify inventory management outpace Webflow.
Shopify also works with a POS for physical stores. You can get Shopify’s POS software and connect it to your POS hardware. This allows you to manage and track your inventory from both a physical and digital perspective, thanks to the integration of Shopify with a POS.
Winner: Shopify
On the other hand, Shopify is the king of the hill regarding eCommerce functionality. Webflow is a fair competitor, but it falls short when compared to Shopify’s plethora of eCommerce capabilities.
Second, Shopify provides more payment options and makes it simpler to connect with physical locations. While the two companies offer comparable baseline services, Shopify goes further in several areas. Its inventory management, for example, is far superior.
Shipping and Taxes
The more complicated aspects of an eCommerce business are shipping and sales tax. They are, nevertheless, critical to the success of any online store. Fortunately, Webflow and Shopify make this process easier, but which is better?
Webflow
Webflow makes tax preparation simpler by calculating sales tax and value-added tax automatically. This is restricted to users in the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Australia. Manual tax regulations are not yet accessible. Webflow is working on adding them, so keep an eye out for them!
In this section, you can choose the shipping method and, if necessary, enter your own shipping rules. The service offers you the option of creating manual shipping restrictions. These allow you to decide whether or not free delivery is available based on weight or price range. Shippo also will enable you to print shipping labels.
Shopify
The Shopify tax and shipping features are more advanced. As I stated previously, all client payment options are automatically calculated. This takes care of all significant country and state taxes where you’re from. You may also establish manual tax rules for any region and make them responsible for compliance.
Shopify’s shipping calculations are also done for you. When it comes to shipping, Shopify automatically calculates your costs as well. For a fee, you may purchase label printing and offer free delivery after a specific price point.
Winner: Shopify
The battle between Shopify and Webflow heats up once again. It has a broader range of automation tools and is more global regarding tax capabilities. Also, offering free delivery at your request at an affordable price is fantastic!
Marketing Features
There’s no denying that the point of business is to make money. Whether you’re a small company or a large corporation, it can be not easy to know where and how to start marketing your products. The best approach is to compare Shopify’s and Webflow’s marketing features side-by-side.
Webflow
Webflow has some great tools for marketing your online store. For example, you may use Webflow’s visual editor to create unique landing pages with complete creative flexibility. You can also develop seasonal campaigns, product releases, “coming soon” advertisements, and so on using Webflow’s visual designer. You may create your website from the ground up or use one of Webflow’s templates as your in-built marketing tools to get started.
Slideshow Builder is a drag-and-drop editor that uses the Slider Revolution plugin to create HTML5, CSS3, and JS animations. The CMS works similarly to a blogging platform, mimics it rather than simply providing essential blog functions.
You may enable your marketing campaigns to accept discounts, set ‘sale’ prices for your sales, and even offer free shipping. This is fantastic for enticing consumers to buy — after all, who doesn’t like a deal?
You may start collecting names by connecting your opt-in forms to your email platform. Webflow’s native email marketing capabilities, on the other hand, are limited. It is easy to communicate with providers like Mailchimp for more sophisticated functionality, allowing you to send automatic order confirmations, updates, abandoned cart emails, and more.
You may connect your items to your Facebook and Instagram accounts to show them in advertisements that link back to your website, according To this post from the creator of a successful eCommerce store that sells via Shopify.
It’s also simple to make your Webflow store search engine optimization friendly with bespoke embeds and the capacity to alter meta tags and descriptions. You may also set up a sitemap, submit it to Google, and change your page URLs.
Shopify
Shopify is the vehicle through which all of Webflow’s marketing capabilities are accessible. That is to say, you can create landing pages, provide discounts and coupons, and connect items with social media marketing. You may also sell stuff directly on Facebook.
Shopify also has more sophisticated email marketing tools. Shopify has a lot of customizable email templates to pick from, and you can monitor your campaigns and use a custom email domain for consistent branding. In addition, Shopify makes it simple to send abandoned cart emails and product recommendations. Shopify offers unlimited email sending for free, with a limit of up to 2,500 emails each month. After that, Shopify charges $1 per 1,000 additional emails sent.
If you want to automate more of your marketing activities, Shopify works with several marketing automation tools, including Kit. Shopify’s reporting tools also help you analyze performance across all channels. You’re better equipped to see what’s working and what isn’t with your marketing campaigns if you have this data on hand.
You may also show items in 3D mode or video for better selling. If you’re interested in this, make sure the theme supports 3D displays and videos.
Marketing Features – Winner: Shopify
Shopify offers more advanced marketing tools than Webflow, even if the platforms have much in common. Shopify goes one step further with these features instead of merely duplicating them.
Shopify excels in email marketing and reporting, especially where Shopify Plus is concerned — Shopify nails it. It also works with several third-party plugins that provide a wide range of marketing capabilities.
Pricing
When looking for an eCommerce platform, the price should always be one of your criteria. Shopify and Webflow have varying pricing methods. As a result, you want to ensure you’re receiving the greatest bang for your buck.
Webflow has three pricing levels, each costing more than the previous. The Standard plan costs $29 per month, followed by the Advanced at $212 per month. A 2% transaction fee is included in the Standard package. If you don’t want to pay a transaction fee, go for the Plus or Advanced options.
The Basic plan includes the Content Management System (CMS), email, product fields, shopping portal, and shopping cart. It supports up to $50,000 in yearly transactions and a maximum of 500 products.
The Plus plan of the Standard package offers you extra options. You can send unbranded emails with it, which is impossible with the Basic plan. It has up to 10 staff accounts and does not charge a transaction fee, costing $79 per month.
The Advanced plan, which is Webflow’s top tier, includes all of the features we’ve described above and the capacity to list 3,000 items and total sales volumes.
More options are available with Webflow than with Shopify. The Basic plan costs $29 per month, and the Advanced costs $299 per month. You might spend $2000 per month on Shopify Plus if you’re an established firm wanting to re-platform. There’s also a 2.0 percent transaction cost, just as there is with Webflow.
The free version of Storenvy is limited to 1,000 products. You can host an infinite number of goods with the Basic plan on Shopify. For example, you may print shipping labels, provide discount codes, and manually create orders. This is way more advanced than Webflow’s Basic package, which only allows for 500 items.
Following that is the Shopify plan, which costs $79 per month. This provides you with all of the basic plan’s features, gift cards, additional incentives, and greater shipping discounts.
The Professional plan is the most expensive at $1,199/month, and Shopify Plus is for businesses with a track record. The Advanced Shopify service costs $299/month. It also lets you incorporate third-party shipping rates into your calculations and utilize powerful eCommerce automation.
Shopify has another version: Shopify lite, which is free. It includes a “Buy It Now” button and is compatible with numerous plugins. Shopify Lite costs $9 per month and is an excellent choice for people who already have a website or blog.
Conclusion
One of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world is undoubtedly Shopify. It’s feature-rich and expressly created to cater to online merchants’ demands.
Don’t worry if Shopify doesn’t already have a plugin that offers the functionality you need; there’s probably one available in the Shopify app store. It’s also highly scalable, so even if your business expands and your requirements change, you can always count on Shopify to maintain it.
Anyone who requires a lot of control over their site’s visual design may prefer Webflow. It has an intuitive and sophisticated visual editor that Shopify can’t match in terms of customizability.
Webflow is an excellent choice for small and medium-sized businesses because it’s cost-effective, easy to use, and has a lot of customization options. Ecommerce is still in its early stages for Webflow, and it doesn’t have quite as much to offer in terms of features. However, if internet selling isn’t your primary objective,
In the long run, Webflow is a platform to keep an eye on. It has many features in the works and is scheduled for release, such as POS integration. However, Shopify currently has the advantage.
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