WordPress vs Shopify: Which Platform is Best for Your Business?

Choosing the right CMS (content management system) for your business is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make when building a new website. WordPress and Shopify are both excellent platforms, but they are designed for different business models.

This guide explains the strengths, limitations, and ideal use cases for each platform to help you make an informed decision on whether WordPress or Shopify is the right CMS for your business. 

This guide is written for B2B service providers, independent product brands and growing SMEs that are planning a new website for considering moving to a different platform. 

WordPress vs Shopify: At a Glance

What is WordPress?

WordPress is probably the best-known and most popular CMS. Accounting for over 43% of all websites on the internet, WordPress is free to use, scaleable, and extremely flexible. At VIP IT, we build fully bespoke WordPress websites for B2B service providers and luxury service brands.

Advantages of WordPress

WordPress has several key features that make it such a popular choice for many businesses.

Fully Customisable

Whilst you can build a WordPress website using a theme, at VIP IT we build fully bespoke WordPress websites using a world-class website platform. This allows our clients to benefit from bespoke page layouts, custom service pages, unique landing pages and engaging, consistent blog post layouts. You maintain complete control over your branding, as well as the feel and layout of the website.

WordPress makes it easier to create unique, conversion-focused experiences, from landing pages to client portals. For example, we built a bespoke client registration portal for Asset Advantage, a Basingstoke-based asset finance company. They wanted a secure, user-friendly portal where their finance brokers could register and access key documents. Thanks to the fully customisable nature of their WordPress website, which VIP IT built for them in 2023, Liam was able to construct exactly what they needed within their existing website.

SEO Capabilities

SEO is a key component of many SME marketing strategies. WordPress offers excellent SEO capabilities, from essentials such as header tags and meta titles, through to schema markup and authorship blocks. 

Whilst many of these SEO features are built-in, WordPress allows you to create custom elements to support your SEO and AEO efforts. For example, the WordPress website we built for Marketing With Sarena — an independent marketing consultancy specialising in helping accountancy firms — features a bespoke authorship block, which appears on each blog post. This block supports Sarena’s SEO and AEO as it identifies a credible source as the author of the blog post through the image, bio and social media links. This is part of Google EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness), a key component of modern SEO.

Supports Wider Marketing Strategies

Many of our WordPress web design clients also have their SEO and Google Ads campaigns managed by VIP IT. They continue to benefit from a fully flexible, scalable website that seamlessly supports their marketing campaigns.

Whilst your website is not your only marketing channel, it is an important one. It has a critical role in your SEO and PPC campaigns, and can also support your email and social media marketing. When it comes to SEO, WordPress is great for building content hubs around blog posts. For PPC campaigns, WordPress allows you to build bespoke, conversion-focused landing pages. It is also ideal for supporting your buyer journey through case studies, lead magnets, and contact forms.

Scales With Your Business

Unlike some website platforms, WordPress allows your website to easily scale and evolve with your business. Whether you want to add new services, showcase your team, create resource centres or build client portals, WordPress can adapt to the changing shape of your business.

Huge Plugin Ecosystem

Should you require a functionality that isn’t available natively in WordPress, there are thousands of plugins available. Plugins – when chosen and managed carefully – can help you customise your WordPress website to meet your specific functionality requirements.

Things To Consider Before Choosing WordPress

Whilst WordPress has a fantastic range of features and functionality, there are several things to consider before you choose WordPress as your CMS. 

Website Hosting

Firstly, you will need to arrange hosting for your WordPress website. This is relatively straightforward, but it is an additional cost and many businesses choose to have their hosting managed for them by a dedicated provider.

Website Updates

WordPress websites also require regular maintenance and updates to maintain security, speed, and functionality. This can often be neglected by business owners or marketing managers who are either too busy or who are unfamiliar with WordPress, and this can leave your website vulnerable to attack. That’s why we offer a range of WordPress maintenance plans to support our clients with routine security updates and maintenance.

Website Management

Most of our WordPress website clients are able to manage routine changes — such as text, images, and blog posts — themselves if they want to. We include a one-hour training call with each completed WordPress website build, so you can learn how to make simple changes to your site. 

However, more significant changes — including to layouts, advanced custom fields, and templates, for example — tend to require expert support. Our WordPress maintenance plans include support time, which clients can use to have us make changes to their websites as and when they require them. This can range from landing page edits or building additional pages, through to updating advanced custom fields and constructing new page templates.

Whilst a monthly WordPress website maintenance plan is an additional cost to consider, our clients value the peace of mind that comes with having expert support on-hand. When they choose to invest in a bespoke WordPress website built especially for their business, they often want a long-term partnership that will help them maintain, update and evolve their website and maximise their return on investment.

eCommerce Functionality

If you are a products-based or e-commerce business, WordPress offers this functionality in the form of WooCommerce. However, we have found Shopify to be the superior e-commerce platform with its native, products-first functionality. We cover this in more depth in the second half of this article.

WordPress is Best For…

WordPress is the CMS best-suited to professional service providers (both B2B and B2C) who want a website that will support their wider marketing strategy, scale with their business and evolve with their brand.

If you:

• Are looking to invest in a long-term marketing asset
• Are seeking a partnership that will help you maximise your return on investment
• Want a website that will help drive visibility, credibility and sales for your service-based business
• Plan to exclusively or primarily sell services rather than physical products

Then a bespoke WordPress website is likely to be the right choice for you. You can view the case studies for a few bespoke WordPress websites built by VIP IT below:

• Marketing with Sarena
• Biotheia
• Asset Advantage

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a CMS designed specifically for products businesses. Through Shopify, you can sell online and in-person, and handle your marketing, order fulfillment and payments all on one platform. Shopify is used by millions of businesses around the world, from small independent brands, right up to major international product brands.

Advantages of Shopify

Built Specifically For e-Commerce

If you have a products business and you want to sell online, then Shopify is built to do exactly that. Order fulfillment, payment processing, returns, and inventory management are all native, in-built Shopify features.

Easy To Manage

Whether it’s your email list, product catalogue or customer orders, Shopify makes your e-commerce business easy to manage. Everything you need is in one place, and you can manage it yourself if you want to.

Some of our clients still want to have a little extra support, and that’s why we also offer Shopify Care Plans. Whether they need an extra pair of hands for product updates, want expert help with theme or template changes, or seek a trusted partner to support their brand, our Shopify Care Plans offer flexible solutions.

Marketing Features Included

Shopify offers several marketing tools, including many free and built-in features. For example, Shopify Messaging is a free native tool where you can manage your email and SMS marketing campaigns. With Shopify, you can create and send your marketing emails, analyse campaign performance and segment your audience to send tailored marketing messages. Shopify even collects customer email addresses and manages marketing consent for you. 

Other Shopify marketing features include discounts, abandoned cart emails, Shopify Collabs (an influencer management system) and more.

Built To Scale

As your business grows, Shopify will adapt. Should you decide to begin exporting, become VAT registered, start selling in-person or want to sell wholesale, Shopify has the functionality to handle it. Whether through native features, plan upgrades or third-party apps, your Shopify website can evolve with your brand. 

Third-party apps include:

• SparkLayer – which adds B2B / wholesale functionality to your existing D2C store
• Pre-Order Globo – which allows you to set up pre-orders
• Seal Subscriptions – which allows you to set up subscriptions, which customers can manage through their own accounts

Things to Consider Before Choosing Shopify

Shopify is a fantastic CMS for product brands, but it does have some limitations. Here are a few things to consider before you dive into Shopify:

Theme Flexibility

Unlike our bespoke WordPress websites, Shopify websites are built using themes. Each theme sets the overall look and feel of a website, which you can then customise. However, the degree of customisation available varies by theme, and some themes are far more rigid than others. For example, we have found the Trade theme the be far less flexible than the Heritage theme. 

Apps

Like WordPress plugins, Shopify apps can vary in reliability and user-friendliness. Therefore, we advise clients to look into a few different options before installing an app. Furthermore, whilst some apps are free or have free plans, most are paid-for or require you to upgrade to a paid plan to access certain features. This can add to the overall cost of running your Shopify website. Having said that, the same is often true for WordPress apps.

Ongoing Costs

Whereas WordPress is free to use (excluding hosting, development and management costs, etc), Shopify works on paid plans. These plans include hosting, many native features and lots of great theme options, but you will be paying either monthly or yearly to keep your Shopify website live. Shopify plans vary considerably in cost, from around £25/month up to £2,000+/month for Shopify Plus. 

Transaction Fees: These would apply to virtually any payment processor, but it is worth factoring in Shopify’s transaction fees for their native payment processor, Shopify Payments. These fees can range from 1.5-2.0% on each transaction, depending on your chosen plan. However, Shopify Payments is easy to set up and trusted by customers, making it a straightforward solution for your business.

SEO Limitations

Whilst it depends on your chosen theme, some Shopify websites lack SEO capabilities. The degree to which this matters depends on your specific business and its marketing strategy, but it is worth looking into before committing to a theme.

Shopify is Best For…

Shopify is the best CMS if you are a product brand and you want an all-in-one solution for your website, marketing, inventory and order management. Its native features and the range of apps provide superior functionality and ease of use, and the themes generally offer a good level of customisation. Furthermore, should you wish to sell in-store, at markets, or B2B, Shopify can seamlessly adapt and evolve with your changing business.

If you:

• Are a products-only business
• Want a seamless all-in-one e-commerce solution
• Are keen to manage your store yourself
• Want a professional, on-brand, conversion-focused customer experience

Then Shopify is the CMS for you. We are currently taking bookings for Shopify website development projects, and in the meantime you can check out the website for Harradine’s Country, which is a Shopify store owned, built and managed by our resident Shopify expert Rhiannon Harradine.

WordPress vs Shopify: Our Recommendation

Whether we recommend WordPress or Shopify for your business depends primarily on whether you sell products or services.

We generally recommend WordPress if:

• Your business is primarily service-based
• Lead generation matters
• SEO is central to your marketing strategy
• You want fully bespoke functionality (not e-commerce)

We generally recommend Shopify if:

• You only sell physical products
• E-commerce functionality is crucial
• Easy management of inventory, orders, and customers is key

There are some cases in which we might recommend a different platform to what you might expect. 

Some exceptions include:

• A service provider who also sells one or two products: In this case, a WordPress website with either a Stripe link or WooCommerce would probably work best. You get all the benefits of a bespoke WordPress website, and you don’t have the expense or hassle of managing an additional website.
• Digital products: Whilst Shopify can handle digital products, you won’t require all the additional order fulfilment functionality that it offers. WordPress can likely provide the functionality you require, and you’ll have the benefit of a bespoke website.
• Physical shops that don’t sell online: If you have a physical shop or premises, and you have no intention of selling products online, a WordPress website may be the better option. However, it’s worth considering how Shopify could add an extra dimension to your physical store. Customers can order online for in-store pickup, and you can use Shopify for inventory management, email marketing, B2B / wholesale sales and more.
• A product-based business selling large, very high-ticket or fully bespoke items (especially B2B) would likely benefit from the lead-generation advantages and fully bespoke nature of a WordPress website.

Need Help Choosing Between WordPress and Shopify?

Choosing the right platform for your business is key to the long-term success of your business. Website platform choice affects every aspect of your business, from sales and marketing, to ongoing costs and growth potential.

At VIP IT, we build bespoke WordPress websites for service providers, and on-brand, conversion-focused Shopify websites for product brands. If your business lies somewhere in-between, and you’d like some help choosing between the two, book your complimentary consultation with Liam today, and he’ll be happy to help.

WordPress vs Shopify: FAQs