Motive of this post is to help people decide if they should use woocommerce or magento to create their e-commerce store. By the end of this post you will have a better idea of both platforms which will allow you to evaluate each system against your store’s requirements.
Woocommerce is an open source wordpress plugin. Launched just at the end of 2011, woocommerce has quickly emerged as a platform of choice for a lot of small businesses.
Magento Is an Open Source e-commerce shop management system. It was developed by Varien (now Magento Inc. Magento was built upon zend framework.
Similarities between Magento and Woocommerce
1.Both are Open Source Stores
2.Both use a ‘freemium’ business model. Core software is free but you have to pay more (buy a new extension or get it developed) to get additional features like your local bank gateway integrated.
3.Both stores allow you to have a blog
4.Both stores allow you to easily theoretically add infinite products.
5.Both use themes to design and personalize the look of your website.
I will be reviewing both systems with respect to following aspects:
1. Hosting
2. Ease of setup and configuration
3. Ease of use (for Vendor, customer & developers)
4. Development Costs
5. Unique Features
Hosting
Woocommercecan run on any basic shared hosting and has got the same hosting requirements as that of WordPress:
PHP 5.2.4 or greater
MySQL 5.0 or greater
The mod_rewrite Apache module
[ http://wordpress.org /about/requirements/]
Since Woocommerce runs on wordpress, hosting requirements are pretty standard. You will not need a very powerful server to run your store even when there are thousands of items in your store & heavy customer activity.
Magento, on the other hand is a relatively resource hungry system. A simple Magento installation can run on basically any modern shared hosting but once you populate the items & visitors start flooding you will need a lot of server resources. You can find a detailed list of magento’s system requirements on www.magentocommerce.com
Ease of Setup
Intalling Woocommerce (and wordpress) is quite easy and since wordpress comes with an installation wizard, you do not have to alter any files. Configuring Woocommerce is also a pretty straightforward process.
Like WordPress, Magento has got it’s own installer that allows a quick and hassle free install. If your server isn’t meeting any criteria, you shall be warned during the installation.
Ease of Use
One of the advantage of using Woocommerce is that it is a very user friendly system. Magento can be a pain for the vendors and developers (especially if you are new to Magento). As far as customer’s ease of use is concerned, it depends on you, both systems are flexible enough to allow you to take your store to any level.
Development Costs
Developing and maintaining a Woocommerce store is very light on your pockets. Magento is by far a more expensive system for Maintenance and Development. It will cost you more to hire a Magento professional than a Woocommerce/Wordpress professional.
Unique Features
Affiliate Products
This is an excellent feature if you’re into selling affiliate products. This can increase your affiliate income, since you can list the products as if it were your own.
Different Store Views
This feature can be used to operate different stores from the same backend. you can set the scope of a configuration setting, product, category, or attribute to apply to a specific store or view.
This feature will also allow you to localize your store.
Woocommerce Advantages
Woocommerce isideal for small businesses. It is economic and provides a fully functional store.
It is very easy to use for customers, vendors and not to forget developers.
Add-ons are also cheaper (often free) when you compare them to their Magento counterparts.
If you are a small business with limited budget, woocommerce is for you.
WordPress Plugins
I am counting wordpress plugins as a benefit as there is a plugin ready in wordpress repository that will allow you to add any functionality wordpress can have to your store in a few clicks. This includes awesome plugins like WordPress SEO by Yoast, W3 Total Cache, Akismet (spam filtering), Gravity forms (an ultimate form solution) and many more.
Enormous support Network
WordPress has a big community and if you know a bit of coding, you won’t need a developer to fix small bugs.
Magento Advantages
Designed to handle big stores
Magento’s biggest advantage is that it was specifically developed for eCommerce.
Three types of stores
Magento offers three types of stores for you to choose from:
Small, Medium and Large. You can choose one of these stores depending on your requirements
Conclusion
Magentois like a big semi-trailer truck, you need to be very experienced to drive it properly. Maintenance costs are higher and makes sense to be used only by large businesses or as a common store for collective group of businesses.
On the other handWoocommerceis like a small delivery van. Easy to drive, maintain and add additional features. It is well suited for both small and big businesses and you only have to spend a fraction of what you would have spent on maintenance of Magento – the semi-trailer truck.

http://xpean.com.au/ecommerce/woocommerce-vs-magento/

Nice thread...stil a fan of magento

If you are thinking to run your business online on Magento or Woo commerce then some points mentioned below may be helpful for you:
1. An Overview of Both: Magento is a multi-functional platform with its advanced features which is owned by EBay whereas Woo-commerce is a Wordpress plugin which can be installed at Wordpress CMS according to its needs.
2. Setup and Customizations: Magento takes the longer time to customize due to its numerous features and MVC architecture whereas Woo commerce installation and maintenance are easy.
3. Features: Both have similar features like discount code implementation and comparison for products using advanced technology to refine the searches.It depends on clients needs and what type of business requirements they have.
4.Ease of Use: Both are easy to use, and allow developers to make them more user-friendly as per client requirements .
5.Cost: In fact, both are easily downloadable free open source platforms but when you think to expand your business, expenses varies in Magento whereas woo commerce can be easily expanded at the same time at a lower expense.
6. Hosting: Woo commerce does not require much disk space, it has limited features which is light on server load, but Magento along its numerous features require much space and is heavy on the server load.
7.Search Engine Friendliness: There are several options are available to make them SEO friendly with the help of extension and plugins.

Now you can choose the e-commerce platform which can suit you the best in terms of your capital investment, number of products and growth of your business.