By Bogdan Rancea
Shopify vs BlueHost: Which is best for ecommerce store owners?
If you want the quick answer, based on my experience, Shopify is the much better option. It’s a more robust solution, specifically designed for omnichannel selling. It excels in delivering comprehensive website building tools, features to boost ecommerce rates, and exceptional security.
However, BlueHost is still a decent competitor, offering not just a versatile web hosting service, but also straightforward design tools, ecommerce capabilities (via WooCommerce), advanced security, and no transaction fees on any plan.
Here, I’ll give you all the insights you need to make the right choice.
Quick Verdict, Pros and Cons
In my tests, Shopify outperformed BlueHost in virtually every category. It delivers exceptional design tools, fantastic ecommerce capabilities, and even amazing hosting quality. However, BlueHost did have an edge in terms of simplicity, as Shopify can have a slightly higher learning curve.
Shopify Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Excellent themes and website design tools
- Innovative AI capabilities
- Powerful ecommerce features for omnichannel selling
- Thousands of integrations with third-party tools
- Fantastic inventory and order management
- Strong marketing capabilities
Cons:
- Slight learning curve
- More expensive than BlueHost
BlueHost Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Versatile and easy to use website builder
- Affordable pricing for beginners
- No transaction fees on any plan
- Excellent security features
- Great selection of plugins and integrations
- Decent range of design templates
Cons:
- No built-in AI features
- Limited ecommerce functionality
Shopify vs BlueHost: The Core Features
Overall, BlueHost and Shopify are two very different solutions for today’s business leaders. BlueHost is a versatile hosting platform that makes it easy to build an impressive online store with WordPress.
Shopify is a complete ecommerce platform and website builder. However, there are some overlapping features available from both vendors. Let’s look at them side-by-side.
Website Design: Themes and Editors
First, both BlueHost and Shopify give you the tools necessary to build an attractive website. However, Shopify’s vast range of free and premium themes are better for ecommerce in my opinion, they’re especially designed to help you showcase products and deliver a great shopping experience.
BlueHost’s WordPress website builder gives you more than 300 pre-installed templates to choose from, and they are designed to be both mobile responsive and SEO-friendly. However, I think they’re better suited for everyday business websites, rather than online selling.
When it comes to editing your site’s appearance, Shopify’s solution is more advanced, yet again, particularly now that the company offers a range of AI-powered tools, like Shopify Magic, to help you create content for your pages and product descriptions.
I do think Shopify’s editing solution has a slightly higher learning curve than BlueHost’s solution, which simplifies everything with drag-and-drop functionality. However, you have a little less control over making sure your store really stands out. Plus, with Shopify, you get a dedicated mobile app you can use to customize aspects of your store on the move.
BlueHost will allow you to edit components of your store from a mobile browser, but there’s no app, which significantly damages the user experience, in my opinion.
Ecommerce Capabilities and Business Management
As I mentioned above, Shopify is definitely the better platform for ecommerce. It supports omnichannel selling, allowing you to sell products through your own store, marketplaces, and social media. Plus, it comes with access to built-in point of sale software (Shopify POS).
You get more advanced inventory management capabilities with Shopify, access to robust shipping tools and even bonus fulfillment services, and a powerful integrated payment processor. Shopify even has one of the world’s best checkout solutions, although it’s difficult to customize the checkout.
Additionally, Shopify does technically allow users to sell anything, from physical products to digital downloads and subscriptions, although you may need extra apps to sell some items.
BlueHost doesn’t actually deliver ecommerce functionality directly. Instead, it integrates with WooCommerce, which allows you to access features for product listings, shopping carts, payment processing, and inventory management.
WooCommerce is an excellent tool for ecommerce to a certain extent, but I’ve found it can be extremely difficult to master for beginners. There’s a lot of configuration work to do if you want to set everything up to ensure your store runs smoothly.
I’ve also found the inventory and order management solutions aren’t as intuitive, which can cause problems as your business begins to scale.
Marketing Capabilities and Artificial Intelligence
Both BlueHost and Shopify support excellent marketing capabilities, but the better option for you will depend on what type of marketing you want to invest in. Since BlueHost supports users in building a store on WordPress, you get excellent blogging tools, and great SEO potential.
Shopify does have its own blogging capabilities, and built-in SEO features, but they’re not quite as good as those offered by WordPress, in my experience. Both platforms also offer email marketing campaign tools, although I’d recommend using third-party apps like MailChimp or Klaviyo for more robust features and templates.
They also both allow you to create promotions for sales campaigns, but Shopify’s ecommerce marketing capabilities are a little more advanced. You get more tools for ad campaign management and analytics, and can even integrate with Google Ads and social media tools.
From an AI perspective, Shopify is definitely the winner, thanks to the suite of solutions it introduced recently, including Shopify Magic, and Shopify Sidekick. Shopify Magic is great for creating content and helping you to build personalized shopping experiences for customers. Sidekick is fantastic at helping companies with business and inventory management.
BlueHost does give you help to build a website with AI, through the BlueHost WonderSuite, but you don’t get nearly as many AI capabilities. Of course, you can always use WordPress extensions and plugins to access extra AI functionality.
Ease of Use and Scalability
I’ve experimented with Shopify a lot in the past, and can definitely say the platform has become easier to use over the years, with a more streamlined editor and dashboard, and its new AI tools. However, there’s still a slight learning curve to get your head around, particularly if you want to take advantage of all the features Shopify has to offer.
BlueHost is slightly more intuitive. It was clearly designed for beginners who don’t want to have to fumble with code to create and run a great store. While you don’t get as much functionality from BlueHost, you’ll be able to set up a website a little faster. One caveat though, is that if you are using WooCommerce for ecommerce, this particular plugin can be difficult to master.
Notably, both platforms are fantastic if you’re looking for scalability, as they both support a huge number of plugins and integrations. BlueHost works with countless tools connected to the WordPress ecosystem. Since WordPress is one of the most popular CMS solutions out there, you’re definitely going to be spoiled for choice.
However, it’s worth noting that Shopify has thousands of apps in its app store too, giving you more than enough freedom to access tools for just about any purpose.
Customer Support, Performance, and Security
If you need any assistance when managing your online store, Shopify delivers a better level of customer support. You get 24/7 support through email, chat, and phone on every plan, and there are tons of online resources to help you, from tutorials and blogs, to webinars, and videos. There’s also a fantastic community forum.
BlueHost also offers 24/7 support through chat and phone if you just have general enquiries, but you’re limited to technical assistance between 7am and 12am EST. There are also fewer online resources, as far as I can tell.
In terms of performance, I actually expected BlueHost to offer better hosting capabilities, with it’s 99.9% uptime guarantee and worldwide data centers. However, Shopify’s proprietary cloud-based hosting seems to do a lot better at supporting high-traffic online stores.
You also get a few more security features with Shopify to ensure your business and customers are protected, from end-to-end encryption to PCI compliant payment processing and two-factor authentication. That doesn’t mean BlueHost’s security services are poor, however, they’re just designed less for online selling, and more for general protection.
Shopify vs BlueHost: Fees and Pricing
There’s no denying that BlueHost is cheaper than Shopify overall. You’re really just paying for a hosting service, and connecting free solutions like WordPress and WooCommerce to your technology stack. Prices range from $2.95 per month to $13.95 per month. However, you’ll need a $9.95 per month plan if you want to access WooCommerce as an automatically installed feature.
There are also no transaction fees to worry about with BlueHost, since you’ll be using WooCommerce for payment processing. Alternatively, Shopify is a little more expensive.
While you can start selling online with a Starter plan for $5 per month, this doesn’t give you Shopify’s website builder, and it comes with hefty transaction fees (5%). After a 3 day free trial, Shopify’s core plans start at $39 per month for the Basic plan, $105 for Shopify, and $399 for Shopify Advanced.
The more you pay, the more features you get, such as extra staff accounts and more advanced analytics. There’s also an enterprise plan (Shopify Plus) with custom pricing that starts at around $2,300 per month for much larger stores.
Notably, Shopify does also charge transaction fees for anyone using a third-party payment processor, which can eat into your profits slightly. Plus, there may be extra fees to pay for additional services, like Shopify Fulfillment, or extra apps on the marketplace.
BlueHost vs Shopify: The Verdict
For ecommerce companies, Shopify is definitely the better choice overall. It might be more expensive, but it features more advanced sales tools, incredible AI capabilities, stronger themes and a better range of inventory and business management features.
BlueHost is more affordable, and a good choice for building a basic website on WordPress, but it lacks the flexibility that Shopify offers. If you really want to boost your chances of successful selling online, I’d stick with Shopify.
