Shopify vs WooCommerce has a clear winner for most small stores: Shopify. One monthly plan covers hosting, security and updates, so your time goes into selling. Pick WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, have help to maintain it, or must own the code and data.
Both price tags look small. Shopify Basic is $29 a month on yearly billing, and the WooCommerce plugin costs nothing to download. Neither is what a small store pays once apps, hosting, payment fees and upkeep hours land on the bill.
On this page
- Shopify vs WooCommerce at a glance
- What Shopify vs WooCommerce costs a small store each month
- When Shopify fees add 2% to every order
- Who handles setup, WooCommerce hosting and updates
- WooCommerce vs Shopify for SEO
- Who owns your store data, and how hard is it to leave?
- What changes as the store grows
- Which one should you choose?
- How to test Shopify vs WooCommerce before you commit
Shopify vs WooCommerce at a glance
Shopify is a hosted service: you rent the software, servers and checkout for a monthly fee, and Shopify keeps it running. WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. You choose the host, install the software and keep it updated, or pay someone to.
WooCommerce promises full control "of your checkout, your data, your costs" and says it powers more than 4 million stores. Think of renting a unit in a managed shopping center versus building a shop on land you own. In the mall, the landlord fixes the roof. On your own land, the roof is yours.
| Factor | Shopify | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Software | Monthly plan, from $29 on yearly billing | Free, open-source plugin |
| Hosting and SSL | Included in every plan | Your own host, $25 to $350 a month for most stores |
| Extra platform fee | 2% on Basic if you use another payment provider, none with Shopify Payments | None, 0% revenue share |
| Setup | Sign up, pick a theme, add products | Host, WordPress, plugin, theme and payment extension |
| Updates and security | Handled by Shopify | Your job, or your developer's |
| Add-ons | Over 16,000 apps in the Shopify App Store | Extensions at $29 to $299 a year each |
| Data and exit | CSV exports, product images not included | Full database on hosting you control |
What Shopify vs WooCommerce costs a small store each month
A small Shopify store pays $29 to $79 a month for its plan, with hosting included. WooCommerce itself costs $0. Its pricing page puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores. Paid extensions add $29 to $299 a year each.
Shopify's US plan prices on yearly billing are $29 a month for Basic, $79 for Grow and $299 for Advanced. Plus starts at $2,300 a month. Paying month to month costs more: Basic is $39 and Grow is $105. Shopify sets prices by region, and UK stores see Basic at £19 a month, billed yearly.
Card processing barely moves the Shopify vs WooCommerce math. Shopify Payments charges 2.9% + 30 cents per standard online card sale on Basic, down to 2.5% + 30 cents on Advanced, and some card types cost more. WooPayments lists about 2.5% to 2.9% + 30 cents. The gap sits in the other lines of the bill.
Take a store with 30 products selling $5,000 a month. It needs three paid add-ons, for reviews, email sign-ups and shipping labels. The table assumes $15 a month per Shopify app and $99 a year per WooCommerce extension, and it leaves card fees out. The owner pays a freelancer $40 an hour for two hours of updates each month.
| Monthly cost | Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments | Shopify Basic with an outside provider | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan or software | $29 | $29 | $0 |
| Hosting and SSL | Included | Included | $25 |
| Three paid add-ons | $45 | $45 | $25 |
| Third-party fee (2% of $5,000) | $0 | $100 | None |
| Upkeep (two hours at $40) | $0 | $0 | $80 |
| Total per month | $74 | $174 | $130 |
On these numbers, Shopify with its own payments is the cheapest setup by $56 a month. The same store on an outside provider turns into the most expensive, because of one line many owners miss. If the owner does the WooCommerce updates, its total falls to $50, paid in Saturday mornings instead of dollars.
These are running costs only. For the one-time build, see what a small business website costs to design and build.
When Shopify fees add 2% to every order
When a customer pays through an outside payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a third-party transaction fee. It's 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. On $5,000 of monthly sales, the Basic fee is $100 a month, or $1,200 a year, before the provider's own card charges.
Orders through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay and Shop Pay Installments skip the fee, according to Shopify's help page on plan pricing and fees. So do manual methods such as cash on delivery and bank transfers. PayPal orders skip it too, but only when Shopify Payments is your main provider.
Shopify Payments isn't available in every country. Where it isn't, an outside provider is the only way to take cards on Shopify, and the 2% becomes part of the plan price. So check first whether Shopify Payments supports the country where your business is registered.
If you do pay Shopify transaction fees, run the upgrade math. Grow costs $50 a month more than Basic and cuts the fee from 2% to 1%. At $5,000 a month in sales, that 1% is worth exactly $50. Any store selling more comes out ahead on Grow.
WooCommerce has no such line. Its pricing page shows a $0 platform fee and 0% revenue share. The payment provider's charge is the only cost per order.
Who handles setup, WooCommerce hosting and updates
Shopify has nothing to install. You sign up, choose a theme, add products and connect payments, and the store runs on Shopify's servers from day one. WooCommerce needs a host, a WordPress install, the plugin, a theme and a payment extension. Each one needs updates after launch.
Before you buy WooCommerce hosting, check the plan against WooCommerce's server requirements. You need WordPress 6.9 and PHP 8.3 or newer, plus MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or newer. Add a 256 MB WordPress memory limit and HTTPS, and ask the host to confirm each item in writing.
The theme decides how product pages, filters and the cart look on a phone, on either platform. The checklist on what to look for in an ecommerce store template works for Shopify themes and WordPress themes alike.
Upkeep is the part people underestimate. WordPress, your theme, WooCommerce and each extension ship updates on their own schedules, and one update can break another. The safe routine is a backup, the update on a staging copy and a test order, and only then the same update on the live store. Budget an hour or two a month, more when something breaks.
WooCommerce vs Shopify for SEO
Both platforms can rank, and your product copy, page speed and links will move rankings more than the platform does. The difference is how much you set up yourself.
Shopify handles the technical basics. Its Help Center says every store gets an automatic sitemap.xml and robots.txt, canonical tags and SSL by default. Shopify themes also add product schema for rich results. You can still edit each page's title tag, meta description and URL.
WordPress has built XML sitemaps into the software since version 5.5, and SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO let you edit titles, descriptions and schema page by page. You also choose your own URL pattern under Settings, then Permalinks.
Speed is where WooCommerce needs care. Its load time depends on your host and every plugin you add, so check your product pages against Core Web Vitals after each new extension goes live.
Who owns your store data, and how hard is it to leave?
WooCommerce keeps your products, customers and orders in a database on hosting you control, so you can back up or move all of it whenever you like. That matters most when the data is the business, such as a subscription store or a shop with custom trade pricing.
Shopify stores the data on its own servers. You can export products and customers as CSV files, but product images aren't part of Shopify's product export. Customer exports come as UTF-8 CSV files capped at 15 MB, and any export of more than 50 customers arrives by email instead of downloading.
Leaving is a project on either platform. Your theme stays behind, because Shopify and WordPress build themes differently. Product URLs change too, so you need redirects to keep the rankings you've earned. Two habits make a future move far smaller: keep the original product photos in your own folder, and export your customer list once a month.
Replacing an older custom PHP store raises the same issues. A PHP to Shopify migration or a PHP to WordPress migration moves the catalog. The redirect map then decides whether your search traffic survives the switch.
What changes as the store grows
Growth changes which fee hurts. At $30,000 a month on Shopify Basic with a third-party provider, the 2% fee is $600 a month. Grow cuts that to $300 for $50 more in plan cost, and a switch to Shopify Payments removes it. On WooCommerce, the same growth mostly shows up as a bigger hosting plan.
Past that point, Shopify moves you up its plans: Advanced at $299 a month, then Plus from $2,300. WooCommerce has no plan ladder. A developer can change any line of its open-source code, but every change is code someone has to write and then maintain.
On its Shopify vs WooCommerce page, Shopify says WooCommerce operating costs run 41% higher on average. It cites a study it commissioned from an unnamed consulting firm. Read that as a vendor's figure. The direction still matches the cost table above: once you pay someone for upkeep, the free plugin stops being free.
Some stores outgrow themes on both platforms and move to a custom storefront on top of the same back end. That move adds a second codebase to look after. The guide on how headless commerce works covers what it asks of your team.
Which one should you choose?
Three facts settle it for most small stores: your country, your upkeep hours and your current website.
- Choose Shopify if Shopify Payments covers your country, nobody wants update duty, and you're starting without a WordPress site. For a first store without a developer, that makes Shopify the best ecommerce platform for small businesses.
- Cost out WooCommerce first if Shopify Payments isn't available to you. The 2% fee on Basic then belongs in the plan price.
- Lean toward WooCommerce if a WordPress blog already brings in traffic. Moving it to Shopify means new URLs and a long redirect list.
- Pick WooCommerce if someone will put in the monthly upkeep and you want to own the code.
If your answers split, such as a working Shopify Payments account but a WordPress blog that brings most of your visitors, price both with your own numbers.
How to test Shopify vs WooCommerce before you commit
Give both platforms one week before you pay for a year, using the same 10 products on each.
- Start Shopify's trial, which is 3 days free and then $1 a month for 3 months. Add the 10 products and open the payment settings to see whether Shopify Payments is offered in your country.
- Install WooCommerce on a staging site at the host you plan to use. Add the same products and the extensions you'd need.
- Place a test order on each store from your phone and note how many taps the checkout takes.
- Run one WooCommerce update cycle: backup, update, test order.
- Fill in the monthly cost table with your own sales, add-ons and upkeep hours.
After that week, the Shopify vs WooCommerce winner is the one whose problems you'd rather live with. If you want the store built or moved for you on either platform, talk to our ecommerce website design team.
Frequently asked questions
WooCommerce comes out cheaper when you do the upkeep yourself or can't use Shopify Payments. The plugin is free and takes 0% of sales, but hosting runs $25 to $350 a month and paid extensions $29 to $299 a year each. A store that pays a freelancer for updates and uses Shopify Payments can spend less on Shopify Basic.
Only when you use an outside payment provider. Shopify then adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, on top of the provider's own rate. Orders through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay or manual methods such as cash on delivery carry no extra fee.
Not to launch it, if you can install WordPress and follow WooCommerce's setup steps. You do need someone, you or a paid developer, to run updates, backups and plugin fixes each month. Count those hours in your cost comparison, because two hours at a freelancer's rate can cost more than the hosting itself.
Yes, but plan the move early. Shopify exports products and customers as CSV files, but product images stay out of the product file, your theme can't come with you, and changed URLs need redirects. Keeping your own copy of every product photo from day one makes the move much smaller.
Shopify is easier for a first store, because hosting, SSL and updates come with every plan and there's nothing to install. WooCommerce suits beginners who already use WordPress or have someone to call when a plugin update breaks the checkout.