What Is Woo Express? Woo Express vs. WooCommerce

The field of open source e-commerce has always been an exciting field, with WooCommerce and Shopify being the main players. Currently, WooCommerce holds a leading position among the top 1 million e-commerce websites with a 23% share. With a rich but somewhat dispersed extension, plugin, and theme ecosystem, WooCommerce has been consistently providing users with almost any e-commerce functionality they may need - except for hosting.

WooCommerce has launched an integrated hosting solution for e-commerce enterprises. Last year, following GoDaddy and Bluehost's announcement of their WooCommerce hosted products, WooCommerce announced its hosted Woo Express. Woo Express was actually commissioned in early March, and will it become the perfect substitute for Shopify?

What Is Woo Express

Woo Express is a more streamlined and simple way to get started using WooCommerce and some solutions that we believe are very important or truly valuable to many retailers. We strive to make registering, starting, and maintaining your website as simple as possible. It is almost like the WordPress.com version of open-source WordPress, providing you with hosting services and also includes a lot of additional features. It has more opinions on the solution you should use and provides you with additional step-by-step instructions.

The operation of the Woo store is identical to all other Woo facilities. As merchants' businesses develop and grow, you will be able to collaborate with them and make design changes, add any other extensions, and collaborate with them.

It includes many specially selected WooCommerce tools and plugins that can help you quickly start a website, sell more different types of products, and expand your business. You can use native GitHub integration, execute WP CLI commands, view server logs, directly access databases, and set workflows in each managed WordPress.com environment through SSH and SFTP.

Difference Between Woo Express and WooCommerce

To understand the differences between Woo Express and WooCommerce, you first need to understand what the core of Woo Express is, its functions, and its use in the e-commerce industry. Therefore, let's take a closer look at some important principles that Woo Express has become a unique proposition.

Woo Express Package

With the launch of Woo Express Automation, we hope to become a one-stop shop for online retailers using WooCommerce. Woo Express effectively provides everything you need to quickly and easily create an online store with all the features you need. All user needs are met, including hosting, front-end solutions, and everything in between.

Hosting

So far, if you want to use WooCommerce to conduct business, you must handle hosting on your own through third-party suppliers. This means that if you want to use WooCommerce, you need a hosted website.

Woo Express leverages the architecture of WordPress.com (remember, WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two completely different things), and it is a platform that includes hosting. Therefore, if you want to use Woo Express, you don't have to worry about third-party hosting service providers as it integrates with network hosting.

The main concept behind Woo Express is to provide merchants with a turnkey solution that comes with processed hosting services, just like a website built on WordPress.com.

However, although WordPress.com is the first partner for a newly launched product, it does not seem to be the only partner. The hosting ecosystems of WordPress and WooCommerce are very rich, and many providers are definitely willing to join. However, currently WordPress.com hosting is the only available option. The most interesting issues for potential users may be pricing, affordability, and comparison of Woo Express with other hosting solutions.

Block Editor

Block editing is widely regarded as a more advanced and advanced website creation method that enables users to establish online stores faster and easier, as all necessary parts can be stacked, mixed, and matched to fit the brand and purpose.

Although WooCommerce has some shortcomings in this area, Woo Express is equipped with a powerful block based editor and default themes. This means that users familiar with WordPress.com can easily migrate to Woo Express, as it provides the same level of ease of use.

Woo Express intends to provide all features and functions in the form of blocks, such as shopping carts and checkout blocks, based on various WooCommerce blocks that are already available for various purposes. The requirement to add extensions and plugins will be reduced, as many of them will be included in the box.

In terms of themes, in addition to default theme settings, Automatic also provides many other block based themes specifically for Woo Express. However, consumers will not be limited to using these themes, as they will be able to install any available WooCommerce themes, not just those created for hosting programs.

WooCommerce is still striving to "block" various aspects of store templates, and Woo Express is ready to use block themes as the default standard when customers register. “One of our goals in Woo Express is to provide new merchants with the best WordPress can offer - the website editor and modules we have built for WooCommerce mean that you can create a beautiful website to express your brand without the need for coding knowledge” said Warren Holmes, WooCommerce's first operating officer.

Conclusion

It is difficult to predict how WooCommerce's new hosted service, Woo Express, will execute and how it will compare with competitive hosted and unmanaged e-commerce solutions, as it was only released in March 2023.

If you haven't launched your first online store yet, please give it a try. You will receive hosting services, and without a doubt, you will be able to use WooCommerce's powerful tools for setting up and operating online stores.