Woo Express is the latest addition to the WooCommerce family. The platform is a hosted e-commerce solution ideal for businesses of all sizes.
Likewise, WooCommerce is a popular WordPress e-commerce plugin that lets businesses build an online presence and sell their products and services.
This guide will analyze the critical attributes of Woo Express vs. WooCommerce.
What Do You Mean By Woo Express?
Woo Express is a brainchild of WooCommerce. Woo Express is a full-fledged WooCommerce package that primarily uses the WooCommerce framework when offering users all the desired features and functionalities.
Users can benefit from various functionalities such as hosting, SSL, security, and more while using Woo Express. Unfortunately, WooCommerce enthusiasts cannot enjoy this luxury.
To use other hosting providers, you must install WordPress and WooCommerce separately.
What Do You Mean By WooCommerce?
WooCommerce can transform any WordPress site into a results-driven e-commerce store. Automattic acquired the leading e-commerce plugin in 2015.
WooCommerce is a popular Shopify alternative, having a market share of 23.43% after Squarespace. WooCommerce has been officially rebranded to Woo.com.
Woo Express Pricing
Woo Express offers two pricing plans:
– Essential Plan
- $1 for three months.
- After three months, it will be $39/month. If you pay annually, a discount is available, bringing down your cost to $25/month.
– Performance Plan
- $1 for the first three months.
- After three months, it will be $70/month. If you pay annually, a discount is available, bringing down your cost to $45/month.
If you aren’t sure about using Woo Express, you can go for their 14-day free trial.
WooCommerce Pricing
WooCommerce is a free and open-source WordPress plugin. Therefore, users do not have to worry about monthly and yearly charges. However, they will incur expenses when registering for domain hosting, additional features, and add-ons.
Ease of Use – Woo Express
Woo Express is a user-centric platform. It means you can easily set up your digital store according to your needs without issues. Like WooCommerce, users can use a setup wizard that helps them instantly launch their e-commerce stores.
You do not have to purchase domain hosting separately, as it comes pre-installed with the package. Similarly, you do not need specific coding experience or web development skills to launch your online store.
Ease of Use – WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a top-notch plugin that converts your WordPress into a full-fledged online e-commerce store. Once you install the plugin, you can use its setup wizard to update your product information, themes, payment gateways, store information, etc.
In addition, you can automatically create other helpful pages such as cart, account, and checkout pages.
Woo Express Features
Woo Express can easily delight customers through enticing features, including:
- An automated site backup option is available.
- Users can market their products on Google and Social Media.
- Users can customize their cart and checkout experience.
- Store design improvement without coding is possible.
- Impress customers through live-rate shipping, flat-rate, and free shipping options.
- Interact with customers via automated messages on birthdays and other events. Merchants can use these messages to inform customers about cart abandonment.
- Manage your online store while traveling with the Woo Mobile app anywhere.
WooCommerce Features
As a prominent e-commerce platform, WooCommerce also offers a multitude of impressive features, including:
- Users can easily manage products and inventory management.
- Users can simplify their order management processes with customizable shipping options.
- A dedicated customer account area helps users track orders and manage customers’ shipping and billing addresses.
- Users can customize their cart and checkout experience like Woo Express.
Woo Express Payment Gateways
Payment gateways help e-commerce store owners complete transactions online successfully. Therefore, they must integrate them into their online stores to increase sales smartly.
When comparing Woo Express with WooCommerce, we should not undermine the significance of payment gateways at any cost.
Woo Express, as a comprehensive hosted e-commerce solution, supports an array of payment gateways, including Google Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.
WooCommerce Payment Gateways
WooCommerce supports a comprehensive list of global payment gateways. These payment gateways include PayPal, Square, Stripe, Credit Cards, WooPayments, Amazon Pay, and more.
Both WooCommerce and Woo Express are compatible with various payment gateways, allowing customers to boost sales drastically.
Woo Express Themes
Woo Express comes with attractive, ready-to-use design layouts, also called themes. These design layouts allow you to customize your websites with a few clicks.
Besides, you can use another intriguing feature, WordPress Block Editor. This feature lets you design and improve website pages to the next level.
WooCommerce Themes
As you know, 2000+ themes are compatible with WooCommerce. This way, e-commerce store owners can easily delight existing and prospective customers by using their preferred themes appropriately.
Besides, they can use various applicable codes to add multiple functionalities to their cart, checkout, and account pages.
Woo Express Help and Support
Strong customer support is paramount when improving customer relationships. Luckily, Woo Express for e-commerce and WooCommerce have results-driven support systems.
Woo Express caters to the queries of WooCommerce users and Woo Express users without any discrimination. Interestingly, you can get the solutions related to your questions in the form of
- Live chat
- Email support
- Documentation
WooCommerce Help and Support
WooCommerce resolves customer queries in different ways, including:
- Support tickets
- Documentation
- Forums and WooCommerce experts
Woo Express vs. WooCommerce – A Quick Breakdown
| Key Attributes | Woo Express | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | You can choose from two paid plans. A 14-day free trial is also available. | Free |
| Ease of Use | User-friendly, but flexibility needs to be improved | Complex but more flexible customization-wise |
| Features | Offers a great mix of features | Comes with limited features but is understandable as it is a free plugin |
| Customization | Highly customizable | Highly customizable |
| Themes | A wide range of block-based themes are available | A smaller selection of block-based themes designed explicitly for Woo Express |
| Block Editor | Built-in block editor for easy store creation and customization | Does not have a built-in block editor |
| Payment Processing | Supports Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, and other payment gateways | Supports several payment gateways |
| Store Security | Offers some basic security features, security plugins needed to use additional features | Online stores should focus on improving their security |
| Support | Official support is available | Users can benefit from community support |
Woo Express Searches Gaining Momentum
According to Google Trends, Woo Express has become a prominent search term in countries like the US and UK in a few months since its inception.
People want to discover more insights and information regarding the hosted e-commerce solution. It means the popularity of this search term will increase over time in other countries worldwide.
WooCommerce Searches Worldwide
Like Woo Express, WooCommerce is a notable search term. Furthermore, 3.5 million merchants of WooCommerce is a testament to the fact that billions of people know about the leading platform worldwide.
Users Views Regarding Woo Express and WooCommerce
- Woo Express has received mixed responses from users after its inception. As per one user, WooCommerce should not have promoted Woo Express, a hosted e-commerce solution, on its homepage. They should have done better with their marketing strategies.
I think it’s a shame that Woo’s new homepage promotes the hosted Woo Express as the default. It’s their right to do that as they literally own WooCommerce, but I feel this could lead to decreased market share, as you have to read carefully to see if there’s an open-source version.
— Katie Keith (@KatieKeithBarn2) October 31, 2023
- Airwallex, a fintech organization based in Australia, has partnered with WooCommerce to decrease the FX conversion fees of Woo’s 3.5 million merchants for cross-border payments.
Airwallex has partnered with @WooCommerce, a leading open-source ecommerce platform!🤝
— Airwallex (@airwallex) December 13, 2023
With the Airwallex payment extension, Woo’s 3.5 million merchants can lower their FX conversion fees for cross-border payments.🌍
More info 👉 https://t.co/zcOmsM3Nkn#ecommerce #payments
A user on X does not like the Woo Express pricing plans.
The pricing structure of Woo Express is very confusing. There are so many numbers and pricing everywhere that it's hard to understand anything.
— Ali Demirci | eCom UX/CRO (@ecommerceux) January 9, 2024
Please check out the redesign and improvements mentioned in the next tweet 👇 pic.twitter.com/OfaXdA00Km
- Recently, Tumney Payments Limited has officially launched its WooCommerce and WordPress payment plugin in Zambia to offer robust payment solutions to e-commerce businesses.
Tumeny Payments Limited officially launched its WooCommerce and WordPress payment plugin! The plugin is now accessible in Zambia, providing businesses with seamless and efficient payment solutions for WooCommerce and WordPress websites. This advancement enables businesses to… pic.twitter.com/iPJ0rGw5F4
— Techtrends Zambia (@techtrends_zm) January 15, 2024
- 38% of e-commerce websites can integrate the Boson protocol using their dedicated WooCommerce marketplace app worldwide.
🚀Breaking News 🚀
— Promzy_Elisha💜 (@SplendolinT) January 17, 2024
Introducing the #WooCommerce x $Boson launch partner program🔥
Want to be one of the first to experience the marketplace app?👇
Sign up for early briefing and access: https://t.co/TQCfEx2NlC
Don't miss out on being part of something incredible ✨
LFG🚀 https://t.co/e3rLG4FtCx pic.twitter.com/X5RoMmTdIm
WPExperts Provides WooCommerce and Woo Express Development Services
If you want to utilize results-driven WooCommerce Development Services and Woo Express Development Services under one roof, we have got you covered. Our team of experienced WordPress developers caters to the demands of small, medium-sized, and large-sized companies worldwide.
Wrapping Up
After analyzing the key differences between Woo Express vs. WooCommerce, we see that both platforms have upsides and downsides.
Woo Express should be your go-to option if you want to use a hosted solution that is easy to use and provides various features like result-oriented support, secure and fast hosting from WordPress.com, attractive and engaging themes, site backups, and more.
On the contrary, if you prefer flexibility, control and ownership, and overall efficiency in terms of cost and performance, WooCommerce is a great choice.
