Optimizely Configured Commerce vs. WooCommerce

I think that there are a lot of companies (us included) that are looking for a solution to fit into their current needs, versus looking for a solution that is going to solve all of their problems. For us, Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud fits into the former in that situation where we have specific ERP needs, specific data needs, usability and user management needs, etc. and Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud just happens to fit in there the most.

Incentivized

WooCommerce is best suited to customers whose website is built on the WordPress platform, and whose development team has a good understanding of plug-in implementation. If your website is not built on WordPress, but on Laravel or React (or any other non WordPress technology), then WooCommerce is not for you. WooCommerce is also great for customers who just need a simple online shopping experience. If your needs involve more complex or immersive features such as timed discounts, pick up locations, delivery reminders, or post shopping feedback surveys, know that you will need to purchase additional add-ons to make to get these features using WooCommerce set up on WordPress.

Incentivized

• Edit Pages - A visual editor with custom widgets allows a quick way to edit the website
• Manage users - in the back end editing and managing users is very easy
• Data - the whole system allows us to track users and collect data fairly easily

Incentivized

• Free base package means I can use it when I need to and not pay for it when I'm not using it
• I can customize the e-commerce options and integrate the calendar booking
• Payment processing is quick and easy and I can choose my provider

Incentivized

• It deployed with a major bug in Guest checkout. It is now fixed, but we lost a lot of business because of it.
• The pricing API is not working.
• Support for multi-warehouse product availability would be helpful. If we have the product in stock in any warehouse, we should be able to book the order.

Incentivized

• Does not provide everything out of the box, for certain features you will have to install additional plugins.
• Their own addon plugins are costly.
• The Order table uses wp posts meta table, For those who have good amount of orders coming in, the table will keep getting larger by time that it might hog the server.

Incentivized

Despite very rare glitches, more connected to an excessive number of plugins, that affect the speed of the site, we are extremely satisfied with the platform, the ability to import and export products, even though we just export them, as we have our proprietary system for updating inventories. We love the ease of upgrading, enhancing, innovating, and the freedom we have to do whatever we want, which is a plus, when you consider Shopify can take down your whole store as they please, if they think you aren't abiding to their TOS or their ever changing set of rules.

Incentivized

Quite flexible and easy to use for daily marketing user tasks, like updating page listings, promotions, and copy. More in-depth tasks like managing product attributes, rearranging product taxonomy placement, and CMS editing are not user-friendly and require a careful and detailed process to follow.

Incentivized

WooCommerce is highly customizable, feature rich, matured, ever evolving, and regularly updated plugin for WordPress. Since it is already extremely popular, you can find online tutorials to help you get started. Even if you face a problem, you can quickly get a solution from a helpful online community. You can use most of the popular payment gateways with WooCommerce. Besides that you have a full control over your website/shop.

Incentivized

It's a mixed bag. The team has been very nice, but there has been an underlying feeling of condescension because we have complained or "caused trouble" over the inadequacy of the CMS component. Also, support for modifications or UI changes has been terribly slow. Understandably, COVID has made life hard for everyone, but there is an expectation that we complete our work immediately, but their team will "put it in queue" when we have a request or find a bug. Further, we certainly feel that we were sold a list of capabilities that we have not seen come to fruition. Finally, the change of ownership 3 times (Insite -> Epi -> Opti) over our implementation period has been both confusing and disruptive.

Incentivized

not muh support

We selected Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud (when it was Insite Commerce) as they were specifically focused on manufacturing clients and the storefront and data management were very robust. The business model and cost were more in our price range as well, so an overall better value for the solution. The ability for the product data to be updated once on the catalog side as well as on the CMS website side was the benefit we saw with a small team of resources to support the product. However, there are definite drawbacks to having not gone with a more turnkey website CMS.

Incentivized

WooCommerce is cheaper and more customizable, making it easy to create a great-looking product and a polished purchasing and checkout experience. Our BigCommerce site required significant custom coding to get the desired functionality. That said, BigCommerce has been a very stable and reliable experience, whereas our WooCommerce site has had some security and reliability issues.

Incentivized

• Higher AOV - online customers are buying more than they did before
• amount of pressure it's taken off branch employees who no longer have to give prices or inventory info for every customer request
• But we are spending a LOT of money on custom development to get exactly what we need / want

Incentivized

• Being so easy to implement, I can design client websites and get their e-commerce store up and running easily.
• Because I turn over control of site management to my client after design is finished, WooCommerce is easy for them to learn and manage themselves.
• The customization options have allowed me to find solutions for most every business need.

Incentivized