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Drupal vs WordPress for eCommerce – Which Is Best For Your eCommerce Store?
Drupal and WordPress are both commonly used to build eCommerce sites, but which is the right platform for your website?
WordPress powers over 42% percent of all CMS-based websites on the internet. Despite the fact that WordPress has a larger market share than Drupal, the marketplace for add-ons, plugins, and eCommerce integrations for Drupal is much larger than it is for WordPress, giving Drupal a far greater advantage in eCommerce based websites.
However, because of its greater name recognition among consumers, WordPress is a more well-known brand in the market. WordPress is also much more user friendly, easier to learn, especially for beginners than Drupal.
While there are pros and cons for both Drupal and WordPress when it comes to building an online store, the decision really comes down to how much you’re willing to invest in custom development.
The process of choosing a CMS (content management system) can be daunting if we’re being completely honest here. But, when it comes to open source eCommerce, it can be even more daunting.
So which CMS, WordPress and Drupal should you use for your online store?
Well, if you’re looking for a comparison of the two, then read on!
In this post, we’ll go over their differences and similarities as well as how they stack up against each other when it comes down to business. We’ll also take a look at some pros and cons of using them both.
WordPress is an open-source CMS which makes it free to use and has a large community of developers who build and release plugins for the platform.
This can be extremely advantageous as you will not need to create your own custom eCommerce solution from scratch: many of the features offered by other platforms such as Drupal Commerce are replicated in WordPress plugins.
In some cases, this can also place restrictions on your eCommerce.
For example, if you use a specific custom module for a Drupal Commerce installation that is not available as a plugin for Drupal, then you will need to develop it yourself or purchase a Drupal Commerce commercial licence from Drupal.org.
WordPress is designed to be more user friendly and has a better reputation than Drupal for this purpose.
Drupal, like WordPress, is an open-source CMS written in PHP and Javascript which makes it free to use. However, if you require additional custom modules or Drupal Commerce, you will need to purchase Drupal Commerce.
Drupal has a strong focus on business and enterprise.
Drupal is used by many large websites such as whitehouse.gov and dukeenergy.com due to its flexibility and advanced features which allow Drupal to scale well as your website grows over time.
Drupal is often more demanding to install and configure than Drupal or WordPress.
Drupal also has a steeper learning curve due to the Drupal community being focused on developers rather than designers or project managers who are less familiar with Drupal configuration files.
WordPress is very popular, has a large installation base and an established community of plugin developers which makes it better supported in some cases.
WordPress also offers an eCommerce plugin called WooCommerce, which can be compared to Drupal Commerce in its own right.
Drupal can be used as an eCommerce platform without the Drupal Commerce module. However, this will require Drupal developers who are familiar with Drupal configuration files and Drupal development best practices.
Is Drupal good for eCommerce?
Drupal is extremely good for eCommerce, Drupal Commerce has integrated features which enable Drupal users to sell media such as music or videos easily.
Drupal can be used without Drupal Commerce, however, this does not offer the same level of features and flexibility offered by Drupal Commerce.
Drupal Commerce modules enable you to sell any type of services and goods.
Drupal is also capable of creating Drupal Commerce online stores and Drupal shops.
So it depends what your needs are whether Drupal or Drupal is the right solution for you.
Drupal Commerce vs WooCommerce for eCommerce.
Drupal is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for the web, like WordPress.
The platform helps you build and manage your digital experiences with ease. Drupal powers more than 1% of all websites on the internet.
WooCommerce is an open source eCommerce platform built for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress.
WooCommerce is built with PHP, HTML and CSS to provide eCommerce functionalities for small businesses.
Many have asked us the question, “What are the differences between Drupal Commerce vs WooCommerce? Are they Competitors? Which one should I use?”
Drupal Commerce vs WooCommerce, head to head.
Both Drupal Commerce and WooCommerce help you sell your products and services online.
At their core they accomplish the same thing, but each offers a different experience for merchants and developers.
Drupal Commerce is an enterprise level eCommerce solution that is flexible enough to meet high volume requirements or smaller projects with fewer features.
Drupal Commerce has been in active development since 2011 and has a strong ecosystem of developers and companies using the platform.
WooCommerce is a free open source plugin for WordPress that allows users to easily add eCommerce functionalities to existing websites.
WooCommerce has been around since 2010 and powers millions of active online stores on the internet. The plugin can be used with any web hosting, design or template.
What are some differences between Drupal Commerce vs WooCommerce?
Drupal Commerce has a very robust developer community on Github with thousands of watchers on the Drupal Commerce repository.
WooCommerce is a widely used eCommerce plugin and one of the most popular eCommerce tools on the web. WooCommerce is also backed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.
Drupal Commerce is built using entities that represent your products. Each product is made of bundles that represent different variations of the same product you are selling.
A good example would be t-shirts, each t-shirt can have many colors to choose from but they all fall under the same t-shirt entity with their own specific attributes.
WooCommerce allows you to create simple products which are essentially individual products that you sell. Each simple product has its own set of attributes which are represented as shortcodes.
Drupal Commerce is built to handle large amounts of products and inventory without much trouble, especially when building B2B Commerce websites.
WooCommerce requires a little more planning depending on the size of your website and expected load time for your visitors.
Drupal Commerce allows you to build larger complex carts with multiple shipping and payment options for your customers. The cart experience is built into the website and not added via a plugin like WooCommerce
WooCommerce has a large variety of payment gateways and shipping options to choose from including ones that integrate right into the checkout process like PayPal.
Drupal Commerce comes with built in promotions and discounts which can be applied to specific products or sitewide.
WooCommerce allows you to manage coupons and promotional codes for your online store using their own coupon system. You can create multiple coupons with different discount values.
What are the benefits of using Drupal Commerce?
– Supports many basic shopping cart features out of the box.
– Allows you to build more complex carts with shipping, payment and coupons.
– Built in promotions and product variation management.
– Large development community backing the project on Github.
What are the benefits of using WooCommerce?
– Free open source plugin for WordPress.
– Ready to use straight away without having to do any additional development work.
– Allows you to build simple product websites with less planning required.
– More customizable than Drupal Commerce out of the box.
– Large community on WordPress.org for support if needed.
Drupal vs WordPress for eCommerce, conclusions.
Drupal and WordPress are popular content management systems (CMS) that can be used to power an eCommerce site.
With the rise of online shopping, it’s becoming more and more important for eCommerce websites to be as user friendly as possible.
These days you can find everything from jewelry to clothes (and even groceries!) on your computer screen with just a few clicks.
Given that we spend so much time browsing through products online, we want the interface to be easy and enjoyable and not frustrating or confusing.
WordPress is often considered better than Drupal because there are many plugins available which will make building an eCommerce site easier and faster than ever before! It also has a very intuitive back-end interface which makes managing all aspects of your website simple.
Drupal is a great choice, however, for large companies with complex needs.
Though, for most eCommerce sites, WordPress is the better option. Why? The biggest reason has to do with ease of use and maintenance.
WordPress may not be as robust or scalable as Drupal.
But WordPress is much easier to learn how to work on your own site compared to Drupal which requires knowledge in PHP scripting languages like MySQL databases and HTML coding skills.
Therefore, WordPress is not only the go-to for many people looking to start a website, but also an eCommerce store.
Bottom line WordPress is much better for small to medium-sized eCommerce businesses. While Drupal Commerce is best for large eCommerce businesses that need specific customizations.
But, if you want the most popular, open source and an easy-to-use eCommerce platform that will require less time spent maintaining it, then overall, WordPress is best.
