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Cloudways Review: Overview and How it works

Online business is one of the popular sales methods that bring high profits compared to traditional stores. When you develop a website, you will need a web hosting package solution to provide additional website space, bandwidth, RAM amount, CPU cores, and more. However, instead of buying a simple hosting package, you can buy a cloud hosting like Cloudways. While it is not too expensive, you are provided with many more features that are superior to the previous option. So, what does Cloudways feature to rise above the other names in the market? And is it really suitable for your website? That’s what you will get answered in this

Cloudways review.

Explore now!

What is Cloudways?

Before explaining this cloud hosting service provider, we would like to explain the concept of cloud hosting compared to a regular website hosting package and virtual private server package (VPS). Firstly, with a simple website hosting package, it gives you a variety of features for website development. However, when your online store gets bigger, the fixed resources will limit it to meet the increasing needs of customers. Besides, even if you buy an upgrade, the site will temporarily “take a break” for a while. It may not take long, but it will slightly affect the website’s traffic and your business’s revenue. Secondly, it can be said that VPS and cloud plans have many considerably similar features. One of the differences between them is that the cloud package is more flexible in allocating resources across multiple devices. Thus, you can connect and manage the website more accessible.

About Cloudways

Headquarters: Mosta, Malta

Established: 2011

Services: Managed cloud-based hosting, application deployment, and infrastructure management

Cloudways is such a cloud hosting plan provider, but it stands out with a focus on simplifying the customer experience. Therefore, if you build a website with Cloudways, you will just need to focus on selling without having to worry about running applications. Additionally, you can deploy Cloudways solutions on many different platforms and be provided with many other services. Some of its services that you may find useful include email, DNS, and load testing, providing high-quality services, etc.

Cloudways key features

Custom control panel

From the custom control panel or Cloudways portal, you can access many categories that Cloudways offers to manage your server. These include Servers, Applications, Teams, and Projects. If you already have a website, everything will be easy. However, if you do not have a domain, do not worry too much. You will register a temporary URL provided by Cloudways in the Application Management section. Moreover, you will set up and install many attributes related to the applications on your website on the Application page. Also, in the Application Management section, you also need to pay attention to two important pages, SSL Certificate and Restore. Here, everything is accessible to manage and download with just one click. In terms of Servers, it is where you install and manage the services that are running, thereby benefiting your website to load pages quickly and operate smoothly. For example, managing CPU is essential because if you use this service continuously, your website performance will be limited. Besides, you can also turn off or pause some services that the site does not use. As such, it will not be slow or lag when the page load is large. Finally, the Team Management section is a tool for you to divide the task to other people. You can set up everything related to group members, those who help sell or do other things on your website, such as giving them full or partial access to the server.

Staging and cloning

With Cloudways, you can expect a managed hosting that offers both staging and cloning features.

You must be wondering:

“What is staging? What is cloning?”

Let us give you an example.

Let’s say you are installing some categories for your website. Everything looks fine until you press the Confirm button and you discover a silly mistake. However, it is permanently located in your store, and you have no way to change it. With the Staging attribute, you can change that before things get out of control. It allows you to test the settings you want before pushing them onto your website. As a result, you will have the opportunity to review more carefully before making the decision. When it comes to Cloning, it somehow has the same functions as the Staging but works differently. This characteristic makes it possible to create multiple clone websites in parallel with the transfer of your website to new servers. Or, you can use this feature when you want to showcase your website to clients.

Advanced caching

Cloudways is a well-known brand in the cloud hosting server industry. But when it comes to getting server infrastructure from many cloud providers like DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Google Cloud, etc., it is much more trusted. They are known to offer premium SSD-based VPS, and dedicated servers and people are willing to pay more, as well. Besides, Cloudways also enhances and optimizes the server through a number of methods. First, they leverage some storage mechanisms such as a caching plugin called Breeze that supports their content delivery network or use Cloudflare CDN, Varnish, and Redis, etc. Second, they host your website on servers in many different countries. Therefore, your site’s loading speed will be faster, and the data on it will be more secure. With this series of

Cloudways storage

mechanisms, you won’t have to worry when you want to have advanced caching for your online store.

Vertical scaling

This is an important feature for you to expand your server resources. It is quite useful when you want to upgrade your server for the website to develop bigger. Plus, every step to perform it is very smooth. Whether you are a new website developer or a master, you will do it effortlessly. Besides this, is there even something more to add? When you need to get your website back as before, it also allows you to downgrade it. Conveniently, right?

Customer support

If you’re just starting to use hosting solutions as a way to upgrade your website, you’ll be extremely grateful to Cloudways’s customer service. You can call them 24/7 when you need immediate assistance. And if you are not in a hurry, you can email, ask on blogs or on Cloudways community forums. You can rest assured that they will respond in a surprisingly quick way!

Pros

Easy to use

Install WordPress quickly

Unlimited website and domain settings

Already optimized

Integrating hosting transfer tool

Free SSL

Easy to upgrade resources

Cons

Limited server control

This is one of the drawbacks that you might feel uncomfortable using Cloudways compared to other hosting providers. Instead of giving cPanel and Plesk dashboards, Cloudways does not allow you to entirely access root and manage all activities on server related to storage. Although you are provided with a dedicated console, managing applications on the server may be difficult for some people who start getting familiar with cloud hosting. In particular, if you are trying to switch to Cloudways from another hosting platform, it will take you a while to get used to the Cloudways control panel.

Too many options can confuse users

While many vendors focus on supporting a number of users, also known as user segments, Cloudways extends packages to a wide range of customers. It can meet diverse needs and many people are willing to choose their products. In return, for those who want help for their options, it may be limited. Not to mention, too many choices will make some people confused. It is especially detrimental to Cloudways as many vendors offer a lot of help to their customer niche as a competitive strategy. Many people finding it difficult to choose, as a result, will switch to other hosting companies.

Is it the best choice for your website?

It can be said that Cloudways is very friendly with beginners. While they are powered by a range of the world’s leading cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, DigitalOcean, Kyup, Linode, and Vultr, the platform is easy to use. You can control your website simply and conveniently with many advanced features. If you do not fully trust this hosting supplier, you can use a 3-day free trial to consider. This process does not require any credit card details. After three days, if you are not satisfied with what Cloudways offers, you can press the cancel purchase button, and you will not lose anything. However, we can guarantee that you will enjoy this exciting cloud hosting product and do not want to miss it. Besides, if you are familiar with WordPress and can solve errors of this CMS, we recommend that you should not ignore this solution.

Our last words

Overall, Cloudways is a great option of cloud hosting service, which is easy to use, enhance, offers unlimited website and free SSL, and many other features that every website developer demands. However, even if you have a basic knowledge of hosting, you may still have difficulty moving your website to Cloudways. At this point, using shopping cart migration solutions will make things a lot simpler. And Next-Cart is a name you can trust. If you need further guides on other choices, don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website. Please like and share the Cloudways review with others if you find it useful for you. Thank you!

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Is WordPress better than Joomla?

If you want to create a unique blog or news site, the simplest and quickest way is to use a CMS platform like WordPress. It is the top choice for many large and small websites because of its ease of use, convenience, and extensive customizations. However, in the CMS market, WordPress is not the only platform that helps you build your website optimally. Therefore, in this article, we will bring you two of the oldest and best options on the market. From there, you can compare

Joomla vs. WordPress: Which is the better CMS platform?

About Joomla

As an open-source content management system and launched since 2005, Joomla is suitable for those who want to publish their content on the website. It is also written in PHP and includes many advanced features and services thanks to a MySQL database connection. After only 3 years of operation, Joomla created a boom in the CMS industry at that time. They have twice won the most important award as the world’s best open-source software with millions of members on many major websites. The businesses involved in Joomla spread across many countries around the world, including both personal and business websites, and even large, highly complex websites. Why is Joomla so popular? It’s simply because it is easy to use, cost-effective, and it offers many outstanding features and everything we could ask for in a CMS platform.

Features

Page caching to speed up rendering

Indexing

RSS feeds

Print pages, newsletters, blogs, forums, polls, schedules

Search within the site

Multi-language support

About WordPress

WordPress is so famous that anyone who cares about website development hears this name. Anyway, we will still introduce WordPress briefly in case you don’t know much about it. Similar to Joomla, WordPress is also open-source software, and therefore, it is completely free for all users. It is also written in PHP with the MySQL database management system, developed by the Automattic company. WordPress is considered as the most popular open-source CMS on the planet when there are many websites using it. Among them, there are a variety of major websites in the world, such as CNN, BBC, Metropoles, Sony Music, MTV News, and Quartz, etc.

Features

Full User System

RSS feeds, APIs, and preset plugins

Drag-and-drop functionality

SEO support

Plenty of widgets

Countless free themes

169 different languages

Which factors create a great CMS platform?

Although you will have a comparison of the outstanding features of Joomla vs. WordPress in this article, we still want to give you ways to choose a great CMS platform. It is the first step to becoming a website developer, and hopefully, it will help you in the future when you need a change in CMS for your site.

Ease of use

As you learn about CMS platforms on the market, you will notice that many vendors have very user-friendly products. In other words, even if you are not a website or CMS expert, you can perform operations on the platform easily. However, you should note one thing when considering them. While some platforms are easy to use, they have limitations in functionality. It is like a compromise they make when offering you an easy-to-install and operate option. So, let’s choose a CMS that is capable of meeting your business goals, including content updating and maintaining and offering superior applications.

Themes and designs

A good CMS platform will provide you with a plentiful selection of themes and designs. You can even customize your website display based on the template available in a number of options. This way, you can make a personal impression of your business and decide what will show up on your website. Furthermore, the themes and designs provided by the CMS for the website also need to be able to support mobile devices. This will help increase not only traffic but also sales productivity because customers can access your website anytime, anywhere with just a phone and the internet.

Plugins and extensions

A great platform will provide enough features to meet your online business needs. However, some have other alternatives – use third-party plugins and integrations. You should consider it because when using third-party applications, everything will be much more complicated. Although they will save your time and effort, you will have to pay an extra fee for them. Besides, the developers of such applications will not continue to support you in the future. And security is also an issue when you cannot control it.

Content management and potential

Even if you do not intentionally write articles or make blogs on the website with CMS platforms, content management features will be helpful for you someday. CMS with effective content management will help your website grow its rankings on search engines like Google. As a result, you will have more potential customers and increase sales.

Multilingual sites

The multilingual feature for the website will be a great help to those who want to expand their audience. If you are one of them, you should not ignore this useful feature because not all platforms provide it.

Security

Online business is also risky, and it’s even more serious than traditional stores. Your website may be compromised or taken down by hackers. If they’re sophisticated, you can’t even restore your data. That is why you need to find a CMS platform with high security. It will help keep all the information on the website about articles, users, links, etc. protected. In addition, CMS, with excellent security, will manage your website to ensure that there is no data breach. As a result, it will be safe from cybersecurity units.

Support

Typically, some CMS platforms will not give you direct access to support options, but instead, there is software that will help you automatically update and secure. All you need to do is to download the software and install it on the server. However, for those who are not familiar with technical issues, support will be a necessary feature for them. Not only do they provide periodic technical support, but platforms are also available 24/7 to help you enhance the security and advanced features for the website.

CMS comparison: Joomla vs. WordPress

Popularity

In the CMS market, of course, WordPress does not let anyone take over the top position. It is shown by the figures about CMS platform market share in the market. Specifically, according to a report by Web Technology Surveys at the end of 2019, WordPress has a 61.7% market share

. It is followed by Joomla with over 4.8% market share. With the huge difference between the first and second positions in the CMS market, WordPress is still the most widely used unit today. Thus, in terms of popularity, WordPress won.

Ease of use

In terms of ease of use, WordPress is still slightly better than Joomla, although Joomla is among the top CMS platforms for beginners. Both are user-friendly, with an automatic installer for easy software installation in just a few hours. Evenly, WordPress is pre-installed on the server, so you will not need to know too much about computers and websites. However, while WordPress is easy for you to design content based on a simple, structured layout, you must create categories for each type of content you need on the website using the Joomla platform. The Joomla control panel also has more options. Although it is useful for some people with specific website types, it still goes against the advantage of the ease of use. You will have to spend more time analyzing and installing when using Joomla compared to using the drag-and-drop functionality of WordPress. Also, WordPress has some new additions, the WordPress Customizer and the Gutenberg editor, which make the content you create much more unique and interesting.

Themes and designs

Themes or extensions will make your website look more special while plugins and extensions add more features. WordPress has over 5,000 free themes, not to mention thousands of premium themes they developed for their users. On the other hand, you cannot find any available template on the official Joomla website. Instead, you can search on Google search engine, which will show you lots of free and paid premium templates. However, compared to WordPress with a large community of users, Joomla templates are more limited.

Plugins and extensions

A website running on a normal CMS platform will not be able to utilize the benefits of the platform without plugins (according to WordPress) or extensions (according to Joomla). They provide specific useful features that you can choose based on your needs. WordPress has a large developer community, offering lots of free and paid plugins that are especially useful. As for free plugins only, this provider has more than 54,000 units. Although Joomla has much fewer extensions, just over 8,000 units, their variety is not inferior to WordPress plugins. You can find them at the official sites of these two leading CMS providers. Thus, regarding the breadth of features of the platforms, we evaluate WordPress and Joomla equally.

Content management

WordPress is easy to use and suitable for all types of websites, from simple blogs to more complex sites. Therefore, if you are looking for a platform that supports managing content, WordPress will be the solution for you. In contrast, Joomla makes many bloggers inexperienced in website development feel confused. Although it has some handy documentary available, its learning curve will be steeper for you rather than using the WordPress platform. With WordPress, you can create a post with available content in just ten minutes, a lot faster than Joomla. Therefore, in the content management war, we especially appreciate WordPress.

Multilingual sites

While WordPress does not allow you to set up multilingual sites or you have to pay additional fees for registration and licenses, Joomla does the exact opposite. Everything will be free, fast from the time of installation, and very easy to use. Thus, in terms of multilingual sites, Joomla has impressed users more.

Security

When it comes to security, both Joomla and WordPress are notably safe for your website. In particular, these two options have a similar way to keep websites protected. That is, they offer users to install security plugins and extensions. There will be hundreds of options for you. Moreover, developers will often find ways to fix bugs as well as security issues. Therefore, you also need to pay attention to regularly update the platforms to keep the system protected from hackers.

Support

If you compare the help of platform communities, it can be said that both WordPress and Joomla will make you satisfied with active and knowledgeable communities. Whatever your problem, just raise questions in the forums, and people will support and share a lot of information for you. Also, you can sign up for maintenance services if you do not have much time searching and learning. However, when comparing the support from experts, WordPress still meets more needs than its competitor.

Which one will be best for your website?

After the analysis, it can be seen that WordPress is still superior to Joomla, partly explaining the popularity of this platform in the world. However, if you appreciate the importance of a multilingual site, Joomla is still one of the top CMS platforms for you.

Conclusion

There are various types of CMS that offer many different functions and tools. They are also written in many different languages. Therefore, the answer to

Joomla vs. WordPress: Which is the better CMS platform

is based on the purpose of your business. If you are still confused with other options, don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website. Please like and share the article with others if you find it useful. Thank you.

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Migrate products, customers, orders and other data from Magento to WooCommerce WordPress in the easiest way.

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Oscommerce To Woocommerce

Migrate products, customers, orders and other data from OsCommerce to WooCommerce WordPress in the easiest way.

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Migrate products, customers, orders and other data from Shopify to WooCommerce WordPress in the easiest way.

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Migrate products, customers, orders and other data from Magento to Shopify in the easiest way.

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Magento To Shopify

Migrate products, customers, orders and other data from Magento to Shopify in the easiest way.

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What makes Shopify prevalent

Shopify has made a name for itself as one of the most reliable platforms for eCommerce startups. Just by a few clicks can you easily create an online store without having to hire a web developer. Go on reading the following article to make out what makes Shopify prevalent.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a web application that enables users to create online stores. There is a variety of templates available for customization. Depending on your specific branding requirements, you can freely design the interface of your store, whether it sells digital or physical goods. Users don’t have to be an expert in design or technical skills to create a store. There is also no need for the support of web developer or design agencies. If you are already familiar with CSS and HTML, Shopify is an ideal choice for its greater control over template designs. As a hosted solution, Shopify does away with installing software or buying web hosting. Only by using custom code or extra apps can you customize your store to your liking. Besides, Shopify is a SaaS tool, or software as a service. In other words, it allows users to manage their stores by accessing the Internet or a web browser rather than paying fees to use it.

What makes Shopify prevalent?

Basic features Shopify is devoted to producing a harmony of its customization capability and ease-of-use. It is popular among customers mostly because of its simplicity. Unlike most merchants who provide advanced features to serve impulsive needs, there are only basic options on the Shopify. This means you have to download or buy add-on applications to use advanced functionalities.

Here is an overview of the Shopify’s website

Checkout

Multilingual Checkout: It allows your checkout to be on display in over 50 different languages.

Guest Checkout: Customers can choose to create personal accounts that facilitate future transactions and promotional email receiving from the provider. As a result, the decision to purchase a product or not is totally up to them.

Automatic Shipping Rates: The shipping rates calculated based on carriers from DHL, UPS, USPS or Canada Post Shopify Shipping are now available for all plans in Canada and the US. Especially in the Advanced Plan, you can even display additional third-party calculated rates at checkout. Discounts on shipping rates vary depending on your Shopify subscription. From your admin panel, it is possible to purchase and print shipping labels.

Flexible Shipping Rates: There are various options of shipping cost ranging from free shipping, a weight-based rate, a flat rate to a tiered rate and a location-based rate.

Abandoned Cart Recovery: Email sending to your customers will be automatically activated once they leave items in carts without purchasing. This is highly likely to encourage them to complete their purchase.

Automatic Tax Calculator: On the Shopify platform, tax rates are calculated on the basis of your location and those of your customers.

Checkout On Your Domain: Rather than redirecting your customers to a secure Shopify URL for checkout, you can now securely host checkout on your own domain.

Store Management

Multilingual Admin: The Shopify’s control panel supports multiple language translations (currently six).

Mobile Store Management: The Shopify App is constantly updated with the latest functionalities, such as printing shipping labels from your phone.

Customer Segmentation: Based on customer accounts, you can know more about them before classifying them into different groups of location, demographics, and shopping habits.

Manual Orders: The Shopify acts as a virtual terminal in creating and editing customer orders on their behalf. On your Orders page, you can send email invoices as well as update the payment status.

Fulfillment Center Options: Such fulfillment services like Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) and Rakuten Super Logistics are currently doing business with the Shopify.

Dropshipping Apps: The platform enables dropshipping through a contractor like Ordoro, Inventory Source, and HubLogix, to name but a few.

Product Management

List Unlimited Products: Users are able to track all their products with images thanks to the Shopify’s inventory management and product category organization features.

Product Variations: Features like the size, color, and material of your products can appear with their images.

Bulk Import/Export: This facilitates edition to your catalog and migration from your previous platform.

Marketing & SEO

SEO Best Practices: Shopify makes use of the SEO best practices, including writing title, meta tags, and product tags. Also, a sitemap.xml is automatically created for your store once being set up.

Discounts: Introducing discount codes and coupons is feasible. If you want to create gift cards, let’s go for higher plans.

Social Media Integration: You can sync your shop with multiple social networks, including Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and so on.

Multiple Sales Channels: Link your store with numerous popular online marketplaces, along with Shopify’s own POS system.

Email Templates: Shopify offers its own email template. However, if you desire more complex email functionality, don’t be disappointed since the platform also integrates with MailChimp.

Blog: In case you want to enhance the image of your brand, go to the what you see is what you get, or WYSIWYG editor to create a blog.

Analytics: Shopify’s built-in analytics serves to present reports on products, export, and traffic. Otherwise, integration with Google Analytics is also feasible.

Image Library: You can pull free stock photos directly from Burst, which is Shopify’s curated library, into your theme editor.

Web Hosting

Unlimited Bandwidth: Shopify never charges users for bandwidth overage fees.

Automatic Upgrades: After registration, your site is entitled to automatically updating with Shopify’s newest feature.

99.98% Uptime: Be confident that even during high traffic seasons, your store will stay online. This is one of the highly-appreciated features constituting what makes Shopify prevalent.

Diverse web designs Everyone should be amazed at the web design of Shopify. It offers up to 67 themes, each of which has from 2 to 4 style variations. Therefore, you can expect to see the brand advertise a sum of more than 100 themes. The themes, about 10 ones, designed by Shopify are totally free of charge while the rest is provided by its third-party developers at around between $140 and $180. From my experience, such themes are exquisite, professional, and easy enough to cater for every taste. Besides, they are compatible with nearly all devices. With regard to their appearance, they are eye-catching and slick in nature, thereby attracting customers to stay on your site for a longer time.   In the theme store, it is possible to use diverse filters to search through all the paid and free themes. For instance, you can sort the list by layout style, industry, home page type, and so on. As a result, you will find choosing a suitable theme much easier in a short time. Shopify’s template store is regularly updated so you can exploit contemporary design features like video backgrounds and parallax scrolling. In case you don’t feel satisfied with all the themes available, you can create something of your own. Go to the theme code to build a distinctive one. User-friendly interface

You can expect to experience a nice and modern interface from Shopify. It is straightforward to set up and manage its “sales channels”, which are:

An online store: here is your main Shopify website.

Messenger: it is possible to sell directly to your customers, interact with them, and provide shipping notifications by entering Messenger conversations.

Facebook: it is a tab on your Facebook page that enables users to browse and buy your products.

Amazon: you can manage your Shopify products and Amazon listings here.

eBay: it helps you post your products on eBay via your Shopify store.

Unique point-of-sale What makes Shopify prevalent is its point-of-sale feature. Such hardware facilitates both online and store sale provided that you have an Android or iOS device. There is a variety of hardware help you such as tills, receipt printers, or barcode readers. What you can do with Shopify’s point-of-sale tools is numerous, for example, selling in a pop-up show, at an event, a market stall or a retail outlet while automatically updating your inventory and stock count. However, it is advisable that you register for a “Shopify plan” or higher to enjoy the greatest benefits from the point of sale. This is since the Lite and Basic option doesn’t allow for shift registration though selling in person with a card reader is possible. Superb handling of product categories The Shopify enables users to either use “automated collections” or manually add products to a collection. While the former automatically sort out products into correct collections based on tags or product titles, the latter proves extremely time-saving for shop owners with large product ranges. Unlike the old days when you have to spend hours or even days on entering and manipulating data, now you just need to ensure your products are tagged consistently and the automation will do its job excellently. Abandoned cart recovery This feature serves to help you sell your products to those willing to change their mind at the last moment after going through a long transaction process. The abandoned cart recovery used to be confined to more expensive Shopify plans, which are valued at least $79. However, the latest version of Shopify offers it on all plans. In other words, you can expect to experience the abandoned cart recovery with the $29 “Basic” plan. In comparison with Bigcommerce and Squarespace, this is relatively low in prices. With the abandoned cart recovery, you can view and manually send emails to people 1 hour, 6 hours, or 24 hours after abandoning their carts. It’s up to you. In addition, you can also set Shopify to automatically send emails to those visitors with a link to their abandoned carts.

Buying a Shopify store

In addition to setting up a store, you can buy a Shopify store as well. Named the “Exchange Marketplace”, it lists existing Shopify stores for sale. Buying a store is preferable to building one in the sense that you don’t risk making a bad investment or be bothered by setting up a store on your own. You can rest assured that Shopify has vetted all stores before allowing them to be posted on the Exchange Marketplace. Before both the buyer and seller feel satisfied with the buying process, the payment will be under control of an independent third party.   Convenient payment methods

There are two acceptable payment methods by credit card on Shopify. Firstly, those from the countries that support Shopify can use its built-in payment system, which is Shopify Payments, to pay directly. In this case, there is no need to worry about transaction fees. Instead, pay attention to the “credit card rate”. While in the US, the rate is something between 2.4% and 2.9% per one credit card transaction, other territories enjoy a lower one. For example, the figure in the UK is from 1.5% to 2.2%. Depending on your chosen type of plan, the exact rate may vary. Typically, the most expensive monthly subscriptions offer the lowest transaction fees. Secondly, you can resort to a third party “payment gateway”. There are over 100 parties to support your payment. Compared to Shopify’s rivalries including Bigcommerce, Squarespace, and Volusion, this number is really outstanding. As a result, make sure to find a payment gateway suitable for your location if you plan to sell goods beyond the territory of the following countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.   Before conducting transactions, you first need to register a “merchant account” with a payment gateway provider. Different providers require a different percentage of a transaction or monthly fee, even in some cases, both. At the same time, you will have to incur a transaction fee between 0.5% and 2% requested by the platform. Once again, more expensive monthly plans mean lower fees. Therefore, it’s the Shopify plan and kind of payment gateway you choose that decide which option, Shopify Payments or a payment gateway, turns out cheaper. Around-the-clock customer service Technical support and customer service are available through every channel. You can contact the operator by email, phone, and live chat. There are separate phone numbers for specific regions including North America, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. However, in case you can’t reach the hotline, there are several ways you yourself can find necessary information. Check the following list:

Help center: It provides access to the primary knowledge base and documentation along with email, phone, and live chat options.

Youtube: Go to the Shopify Help Center channel with hundreds of video tutorials available to help you through difficulties of setting up an online store.

Academy: This website offers training courses with lively videos and full transcripts that are totally free of charge.

Encyclopedia: You can search for eCommerce concepts and terms here.

Podcast: The Shopify Masters Podcast introduces interviews with successful store owners. You can learn from their experience.

Blog: The Shopify pays great attention to maintaining an informative blog.

Forums: There are community forums where people share their experience and post reviews about common platforms for online store setup.

Changelog: You can receive updated features for your store.

Experts: You can hire developers, marketers, and designers from the Shopify expert staff for detailed instructions.

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WooCommerce: One of The Best eCommerce Platforms

Until some few years ago, it took a lot of efforts to build an online business.   People needed to know how to install and use difficult software, and figure out what’s next to do. That’s no longer the situation with the introduction of WooCommerce in 2011. Just 4 years after its launch, the tool has powered more than 400,000 sites, which makes up for about 18 percent of all online commerce business. In the article today, let’s go into exploring why

WooCommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms

today, and how you can begin your online business with it.

WooCommerce – defined

WooCommerce is an open source platform that is compatible with WordPress powered websites. To make it easier to understand, we can simply define WooCommerce as a WordPress plugin to turn a page into an online shop. The strengths of this tool are its comprehensive, DIY nature that let just anyone be in charge of their online business. Once you’ve installed the plugin, you can access it from the Dashboard. It can provide straightforward methods for managing and updating. The default theme of the app – Storefront – is professional, yet simple looking. From it, you can freely customize the online store appearance and layout. As of the time of writing, there are more than 2,000 Woocommerce stores online. WooCommerce users mainly operate sites in the themes of shopping, health, entertainment, technology, education, and social media. The download rate of this tool lingers over 43 million times and is steadily increasing.

WooCommerce – the big brother of eCommerce platforms

In the last few years, the Internet has witnessed the immense growth of WordPress – one of the most prominent Content Management Solution in the world. On a daily basis, there is a big number of websites spring up. Even among big companies, WordPress has steadily won its place. In fact, one in every four websites in the world is powered by WP. If WordPress is the King of Content Management System (CMS), then

WooCommerce is the King of commercial platforms

. Act as a plugin for WordPress that help you turns your WordPress page into an online store in practically a few minutes, the platform gives out an unnerving number of options and solutions.

Why Woocommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms?

1. It is versatile Because WooCommerce is so simple to use, everyone with a little knowledge of WordPress should be able to operate it. 2. It is the based off WordPress It can be considered the default eCommerce solution for WordPress: As of right now, the platform is powering more than 30 percent of the total number of online stores worldwide. If you google the phrase “eCommerce platforms”, there should be about 8 million results popping up. The sheer number of online business options should make anyone feel difficult to narrow down and choose the right one. If we count the most

popular eCommerce solutions

, the names are Shopify, Facebook Shops and Woo-commerce. For one, Shopify has in its hand over 700,000 business shops and allow you to sell products both on websites and on Facebook. Another option, even more direct, is Facebook Shops. It allows businesses existing as a Facebook page to set up their direct online stores to sell to potential Facebook customers – which is one of the most promising consumer bases. However, these two are not based on WordPress. Given the number of websites powered by WordPress and their potential to be converted into an online store, Woo-commerce clearly holds the winning ticket here. At 0.6 percent of the total market share, WooCommerce is threefold bigger than Shopify. The majority of the businesses that use WooCommerce reside in the UK and the US. As many eCommerce solutions as there are, there is no perfect one. It is important that the solution you choose can bring about a positive return on investment, with an affordable cost of ownership. On the other hand, scalability and ease in setup and use are also two factors that you should keep in mind.   You can find all of these qualities in one platform: Woo-Commerce. 3. Global Support One of the most celebrated features about WooCommerce is that their support team and resources are always readily available. Should any question arise when you are setting up and updating your store, you can freely access the online support services, including:

Online help desk

Idea board

Blog Tutorials

Documentation

Video

Forum

Developer blog

Why is WooCommerce so successful?

It is undeniable that a big part of WooCommerce success owes to the platform that lies at the base beneath it: WordPress. It’s easy to build a WordPress website, and it’s even easier to install the WooCommerce plugin and turn the site into a store. All you need to do is customize and install extensions to customize the store to your needs, no need for developing skills. However, WordPress is not the only ‘parent’ that contributes to the success of WooCommerce. The WooThemes brand, which is one of the biggest companies that build commercial themes and plugins for WordPress, is the other contributor that makes WooCommerce what it is today. WooThemes is is a “big brother” in the entire WordPress space. As WordPress continues to develop, so will WooThemes and WooCommerce.

Extensions for WooCommerce

WooCommerce stores give the user unlimited customization. Once you’ve created and launched the store, there are always other options to increase the customer’s shopping experience and to improve sales.

The extensions (or plugins) of WooCommerce can be free or for a fee. They help to extend the core features and functions of the store. There are more than 400 extensions available at the moment, which are in many different categories. You can find them on the main website of WooCommerce. The main functions of these extensions are:

Shipping and logistics management

Store management

Email marketing options

Subscription management

Highlight features of WooCommerce

Inventory Management: You can manage both physical and digital goods (like music tracks or SAAS) by yourself, or assign different managers to handle daily inventory if your shop has many managers.

Marketing Campaigns: WooCommerce offers you choices to run many marketing campaigns at once, such as discounting, exclusive limiting, coupons or free shipping eligibility.

Reports: The WooCommerce allows you to keep tracks of sales, stock, reviews and other indicators of store performance.

Payments: WooCommerce based stores can accept payment from Paypal or other common methods.

Shipping option: If your product requires shipping, then WooCommerce can offer several shipping configuration options. It can help you with flat-rate shipping or free shipping.

Tax: This is an advanced feature of WooCommerce. The platform is built with local tax and customizable tax settings.

Who should use WooCommerce? The major base of WooCommerce users are people who are setting up for their own stores. Many developers and designers can also utilize this tool to build business sites for clients. The WooCommerce can be as simple or complex as you need it to be, depending on the desired final store outcome. However, no matter which skill level you are on, you still need some experience with WordPress to be able to use WooCommerce.

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Migrate products, customers, orders and other data from Shopify to WooCommerce WordPress in the easiest way.

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Magento vs Shopify: Which One Is Better?

An eCommerce site plays an important role in setting up a business for online entrepreneurs. With many platforms available on the market today, it’s difficult to decide which one is right for you. This article is going to explore the similarities and differences between the two most popular ones  Magento vs Shopify.

Magento

Founded in 2008, Magento has made a name for itself under Adobe. As an open-source platform, it offers plenty of options for customers to customize their sites. Those seeking maximum flexibility and scalability may find it extremely helpful. Advantages

Several built-in features are integrated.

There is a large Magento community to readily answer your questions. With a huge database of user-generated content, you will find a detailed explanation to all you wonder.

Ready-made extensions are available on the Magento connect.

The platform is totally flexible. You can freely design your store with the help of some code. Therefore, your store will stand out from the crowd and make a great impression on customers.

It is free of charge to use, except for your own hosting.

Rich in product types: Magento has 6 different types of products (Simple Product, Configurable Product, Grouped Product, Bundled Product, Virtual Product, Downloadable Product).

Disadvantages

Themes are complex to figure out. If you’re a non-technical person, running into difficulties is unavoidable. It takes some time to familiarize with the interface of Magento.

Hosting and app costs can be expensive. Although some apps of Magento are free, others ask for yearly and installation fee.

Updating software on a regular basis is necessary.

Shopify

Founded in 2004,Shopify has provided a streamlined approach to building online stores. With high-quality hosting that is equipped with a CDN, site backups, and unlimited bandwidth, it does away with the need to look for a hosting provider. Its interface is designed to be user-friendly, helping beginners through registration and adding products to their sites. Advantages

There are a variety of mobile-ready storefront themes. Your store will automatically optimize itself to be compatible with diverse screen sizes and devices

A large App Store is available to easily add new functionalities to your site

SSL and hosting are included

Customer support is around the clock through cellphones, live chat, and emails. There is a forum to share business tips and website building experience

Disadvantages

Not all themes are free. However, investment in Shopify’s premium themes can pay off in the long run.

A transaction fee is included per sale. The more inclusive the plan you sign up for, the less fee you have to pay.

The CMS capabilities are weak, causing difficulties for sites with high traffic.

Product types are not abundant: Shopify only has 2 product types (Simple Product, Configurable Product).

Product limitation: Shopify only allows adding at a limit of 3 options and 100 variants per product.

Which platform is better?

Themes and templates

Between  Magento vs Shopify, the former provides a wider choice of templates.

In Shopify, there’re 62 templates with only 10 free of charge. All of them are modern-looking and mobile-optimized, providing a great user experience whichever device they are accessing from. Even the free option comes in 2 or 3 variations for each template so that customers can create one of their own. For paid templates, there’re powerful customization tools in color palette, fonts, banner images, and sizes. When it comes to Magento, it offers a more limited collection of templates. Only one out of 14 is free while others don’t share the same level of customizability and design. They are generally dated with mundane designs. However, the open-source feature of Magento enables you to design a template from scratch.

Pricing

Magento is cheaper than Shopify in the sense that it is free for use. However, its users have to buy a website hosting plan for at least $4. Shopify introduces 5 pricing options ranging from $9 to $2000 per month. In terms of transaction fees, Shopify, like other eCommerce store building platforms, charges users a sum of money up to 2% per transaction. Those registering for the most expensive plan can benefit from the lowest percentage of 0.5%. However, Shopify Payments saves you that cost but is limited to a few countries. In the meantime, using Magento, customers must turn to an external payment processor so the transaction fee greatly varies.

Extensions

Shopify launches an App Store that is home to about 2300 apps. They serve to extend the platform’s functionality, catering to diverse user requirements. Its layout is similar to that of smartphone app stores so that average people can use easily. Magento introduces a Marketplace with 3300 extensions. In case your platform needs to catch up with the rapid expansion of your business, such extensions prove helpful in ensuring complex business processes are well handled.

Ease of use

With a user-friendly interface, users of Shopify can set up a basic store within a day. It may take little time to set the layout, add product, and images. However, Magento requires technical knowledge to get things to work. Even programmers have to spend some time to learn about its interface first before actually using. Users are supposed to adjust website parameters to get the best out of the products.

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If you’re running the store on Magento 1, you may consider upgrading to its next version. But would it be worth it? Check out the answer in this comparison here.

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Migrate products, customers, orders and other data from Shopify to WooCommerce WordPress in the easiest way.