Magento

Free
No fee is required to download the Community Edition, but there is an Enterprise Edition, which gives you more features.

The Enterprise Edition needs a quote for you to implement it. Other than that, Magento is completely open source, meaning everything is given to you for free, including a community forum, several responsive themes and an handy app store.

Opt to sell however many products you want, and don't incur any transaction fees along the way. You need to setup your own hosting account and domain, and if you want a CDN, you need to find your own.

WooCommerce

Free
No payment is needed to download the WooCommerce plugin, as it's an open source product. No dedicated support is offered, but you gain access to forums, knowledge bases and blogs that make tools and discuss topics about the platform.

Most themes are mobile responsive, five payment gateways are pre-installed, and you can include additional gateways if needed.

Sell an unlimited amount of products, incur no transaction fees, and play around with tools for geo-location, taxes, currency, CRM and product variable.

Magento

Connect to an FTP client if needed, and access source code within seconds. The files may be a little confusing, but that's the case for both platforms, since they each require a little technical knowledge to get up and running.

The Magento Theme Marketplace offers about 120 themes. Some of these are free, but sometimes you must pay for them.

If you do opt to go with a premium theme, expect to pay between $50 and $150. Similar to WooCommerce, not all of the themes are vetted for quality.

WooCommerce

Around 52 themes are in the library, some of which are free, while others you must pay for. The minimum fee is around $39, but it goes up with the quality.

The theme collection is rather impressive, but you need to customize them yourself based solely on the tools given to you for each individual theme. Access to CSS/HTML code is easy to find, and anyone who knows how to use WordPress should be just fine with WooCommerce.

If you don't have any experience, a little training should do the trick. You can also connect to an FTP client.

Magento

Activate coupon codes, gift cards and wishlists. Each customer gets their own dashboard for managing their account, and you can offer upsells and cross sells, along with related products, discounts and saved shopping carts.

The order status module is handy, and the zoomable images make it easier for the customer. Along with re-orders, product reviews and responsive websites, Magento is more robust in this respect.

WooCommerce

What shows up on the frontend of your site completely depends on the theme you choose for WordPress.

However, most reputable theme companies give you tools for social media, email marketing, wishlists, rewards programs and more.

That said, several built-in features are included, such as mobile responsiveness, shipping calculations, product reviews and coupons. If you can't find something you need, simply install a plugin.

Magento

The backend is extremely robust, even though it can look intimidating for beginners. That said, the same goes for WooCommerce in terms of the need for technical knowledge.

The dashboard provides access to reports and analytics, along with the ability to manage payment processors. Sell virtual products through your store, and incorporate product tags and attributes.

WooCommerce

As stated before, people who know WordPress have no problem with this shopping cart plugin, since you basically just install it, activate it and see a tab on the left called WooCommerce.

Create products with ease, and move between tabs for Orders, Coupons, Reports, Settings and Add-ons.

Include tags and categories to all of your products, and move through the various settings for inventory, linked products, shipping, attributes and more.

Magento

SEO

Magento isn't much different from WordPress and WooCommerce, since it offers SEO friendly URLs, meta info, a sitemap and a Google Content API. Both solutions integrate well with Google Analytics.

Social Media

No social features are built-in, meaning you must grab an app to have a social media button or sharing module.

Newsletter

Magento wins with newsletters, because it has a newsletter subscription management feature built-in.

This ties into coupon codes as well, but you can still expect to open up a platform like MailChimp to actually design your emails.

Built-in promotion options

Strong promotional tools are offered, such as up-selling, flexible coupons, product bundling, related products, free shipping and promotional pricing. Other solutions are in the app store as well.

Support of other selling channels

The Google Shopping API is available, but most users simply go to the app store to locate options for selling on other channels like Amazon and eBay.

WooCommerce

SEO

The plugin runs on WordPress, which is known for its SEO prowess. Each page is optimized and ready to ping the search engines when you create something new on your site.

For example, you generally don't have to worry about title or header tags. If you would like more advanced features, you need to take the extra step of installing a plugin such as Yoast SEO.

Plugins like this are really easy to use, but if you'd like to customize your SEO then it requires manual inputs.

Social Media

The only way to get social media support is to install a plugin or extension. For example, if you'd like to sell on Facebook or implement social media sharing buttons, a plugin is needed.

Newsletter

Newsletters also need extensions for them to work with this plugin. Some of the plugins are rather helpful, since you can integrate with powerful email services like MailChimp and AWeber.

Built-in promotion options

In terms of marketing, this is the part where built-in tools are actually provided, such as a nice coupon system and discount codes to go along with it.

Product reviews work well, and you can see these reviews based on verified buyers. If you'd like modules for points, wishlists and rewards, you must install a plugin.

Support of other selling channels

Turn to the extension or plugin stores, since you won't find anything in the dashboard for selling on other channels.

Magento

View stats from the dashboard, and check out some of the comprehensive reports that outline everything from low stock reports to taxes.

Some of the other reports cover refunds, invoices, abandoned carts, product review reports, best viewed products and more.

WooCommerce

To start, several extensions and plugins provide functionality for things like cost of goods, EU VAT rules, Google Analytics and report emails.

However, a few reports come along with WooCommerce for viewing data on net and gross sales amounts. Check the dashboard for a quick view of your site health, and analyze information for sales and growth trends.

Magento

As with most open source platforms, you must go find your own hosting and domain name. The system is PCI Certified, and SSL security support is offered, but most of this security and support comes from the hosting company.

It's no different from WooCommerce in that your hosting, domain and security all relies on the host.

WooCommerce

Hosting is not offered when you download the plugin, so you need to find a credible and secure hosting platform to put your WordPress site on. You must also find and buy a domain name from a separate source.

The shopping cart plugin is audited quite frequently, but that doesn't mean it's PCI Compliant. To find hosting, a domain name, and to make your site secure, turn to a hosting company.

Magento

The Magento Extension Store has tons of apps, but you have to be careful about their quality. Some developers aren't great at making apps, but the same goes for people making plugins for WordPress.

Choose from solutions for email receipts, live chats and social media buttons (along with many more.) It only takes a few seconds to download an app and put it on your site.

WooCommerce

The WooCommerce extension store has plenty of options to choose from. Not to mention, the plugin store is fairly reasonable as well.

Each plugin and extension requires a download, and some of them are paid solutions. In addition, thousands of plugins are made for WordPress that integrate well with WooCommerce.

Magento

The community support forums are the best places to locate answers to your questions. Since the platform is open source, thousands of people chime in for questions, allowing you to search for a question you may be having trouble with before submitting one.

If you'd like to speak with a customer rep for both Magento and WooCommerce, you're pretty much out of luck.

WooCommerce

The My Account tab in the dashboard is the primary place to find support, but no 24/7 email, phone or live chat support is included. The primary places to locate help is through forums, blogs and the knowledge base.