Hi Craig,
I am new to learning Magento, I want to build an online e-commerce store, but kind of uncertain wether I should pursue with WooCommerce or with Magento. Can you please help me on deciding. Thank you you are awesome.
Hi @abeersher and welcome.
Great question and one I should probably cover in more depth when I get the time.
It’s my opinion that Magento is targeted at Medium to Large businesses due to their deep pockets and expertise. Having said that, there are plenty of Small business that still use it.
Resources
Magento is a powerful eCommerce Platform that allows you to customise everything if you have the resources such as: Expertise, Time and Money.
Maintenance
Magento isn’t a setup and forget solution. You will need to make the time to update the platform and any 3rd party modules you install. Shopify Basic is like looking at a Goldfish and Magento is like looking after a newborn child. At least, that’s how it feels at first.
Troubleshooting
In order to support Open Source flexibility, all of the safety-nets that someone like Shopify provide no longer exist. But the more flexibility software has the more complex it is to learn and setup.
Everyone will have a unique store with their unique problems. You will run into problems as you learn the platform, so you must be prepared to spend your time/money to work things out for yourself. You won’t be able to “Google” the answers to all of your questions.
Fit for purpose
As I mentioned earlier, Magento scales well for large businesses. But I don’t really see many benefits for something small like a popup store. Solutions like Shopify and BigCommerce are great for those types of stores because there is no maintenance involved… However, they do have a lot of limitations if you want to do something special.
Magento is built from the ground up to be an eCommerce platform. WooCommerce adds eCommerce functionality by bolting it onto a blogging platform. I tried WooCommerce and got really frustrated that solutions didn’t exist that I was used to seeing in Magento.
Pricing
I’ve seen a lot of people turn to Magento because it’s “free”. This is the wrong reason to consider Magento because when you add your Magento Specialist Costs (e.g. Hosting/Development/Modules) then you can easily pay a lot of money.
Conclusion
Only you can answer the question as to what is right for you. Many points in my answer will probably put you off the platform but I’m only being honest. Long term Magento users chose this platform because of the flexibility it provides outweighs all of the other issues.
I’d be happy to answer any other specific questions on this topic.
It would be good to get the opinion of others here, not just my own.
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Hi abeersher,
Craig gave you a great advise.
You see we are a micro busines and we use Magento.
E-commerce is more my passion than seriouse source of income. I love learning, digging in code and seeing how the busines growing.
Remember if you are not willing to learn or don’t have time for it the platform can cost you A LOT of money 
and frustration 
. In addition, remember that marketing will cost you more than the stroe itself. You can have the most beautiful store with a niche product but if you are not visable you don’t sell. Consider how much you can do at home and what you need to outsource. What marketing channels you going to use.
Budget it wisely and HAPPY E-commerce! 
Pawel
I’ve never used WooCommerce, but just can’t really see why one would want to use it when considering Magento as well. Magento is a powerhouse IMO. If you’re worried about CMS being well integrated there are extensions to do that. If you’re main goal is to sell stuff then I’d go with a platform that is solely built to sell stuff, Magento.