Hey Julie, that is a very specific requirement that I could imagine none of these platforms offer out of the box. I would, therefore, advise you to research if there are any specific addons that can provide it before committing to a service.

I am looking to build a site for a new business that will enable a service (with product) to be booked/delivered within a window of time. For a terrible example that hopefully gives context, my business might replace light globes. In this situation, the customer pays for the light globe that they choose, combined with the service of replacing the globe. That part is easy, but I need the capability to preset service times based on location so that I can do the service efficiently and not have to offer a three hour window – I want it much tighter, between 3.30-4pm on Tuesday.

I also want to offer the ability to subscribe or get the service weekly/daily/monthly.

So I need product and service. I like the sound of Wix, do you think it has the capability?

I hope this makes sense!

Hey Adam, thanks for the kind words! Personally, I am partial to WordPress as it will probably be cheapest in the long run and offers the most customization options. Plus, you don’t really need coding skills to use it to build an online shop. It is more complex than other solutions though and you need to pay attention to security.

If that is not for you and you already like Squarespace, why not stick with it? Alternatively, I think Wix will offer the most comparable experience.

Hope this helps!

Adam

Hey Gail, I can understand that you don’t want to use a platform that has competition built in. Going with something like Shopify or, for example, building your own online shop with WooCommerce is product agnostic. You can use them to pretty much sell anything. The difference is that you will have a standalone shop that is not embedded into an environment of similar stores. It will just be about your own products, so it doesn’t matter what others are doing. However, at the same time, you are also responsible for creating traffic to your site, which is something that is built in on a platform like Etsy. So, each approach as its pros and cons. Hope this helps!

Hey Margie,

The easiest way is probably to set up a WordPress/WooCommerce online store or use Shopify.

Hey Robi, I would guess that costs are probably higher on Shopify than on WooCommerce. Therefore, my advice would be to invest in fixing your existing site and its SEO issues instead of moving it to a different platform where you would likely have the same issues.

I like Woocommerce because it based on wordpress so I can create anything I want, but with many paid plugin, server cost, I ended up pay $100/month, and I need to hire IT guy multiple times.

I had a problem with Woocommerce in the past few years, after search engine update their system. On Bing, my product page detected as “low quality article/blog post” not a product page, and they reject to index it. Same with Google. Online store product page can’t compete with blog post because the amount of words are much different.

And each product page on online store only has 100-300 words. And the worst is the image file name and image alt considered “spam” by search engine nowadays. For example, we sell blue jeans, and we put that word on each images, keyword use percentage per page become really big (around 80%), because limited words on product description. And it doesn’t make sense if we sell blue jeans and at our product page we write the history of blue jeans to get 500-1000 words.

My question is, will I get same problem with Shopify? It’s tedious to change the platform and need to fix hundreds of broken links in google webmaster.

Thank you.

Hey Chris. Whichever you choose from top 3 should be sufficient for your needs.

My go-to platforms are Shopify (ecom/shop) and WordPress (blog + everything else).

Hey Kevin, if you are on a budget, I would look into WooCommerce. It has few overhead costs, is flexible, and doesn’t need a lot of additional plugins and such for a simple shop.

Also I can’t really afford with that low quantity to pay 30$/month so I was wondering which one will suit my case the best (knowing that I live in Canada)

Thank you!