Shopify vs WooCommerce.

The software is free: WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress, which is licensed under GPLv2. Running a store is not free. You pay for hosting that meets WooCommerce’s requirements (PHP 8.3 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6, HTTPS, 256 MB of memory), a domain, any paid extensions, and the time to keep it all updated. Shopify bundles hosting into its monthly plan.

Shopify lists Basic at $29 a month billed yearly or $39 month to month, Grow at $89 or $105, Advanced at $359 or $399, and Plus from $2,300 a month. Shopify also offers a free 3-day trial, and says most plans then cost $1 a month for the first 3 months. Every plan includes unlimited web hosting and a free SSL certificate.

WooCommerce can cost less on paper, because there is no platform fee. The saving moves into hosting, extensions and your own time. A small catalog with simple shipping on modest hosting can undercut Shopify Basic. Once you add paid extensions for subscriptions, bookings or shipping rules, plus someone to apply updates, the gap usually closes. Price both with your real extension list.

They start level. WooPayments charges 2.90% + $0.30 for US online cards, plus 1.50% for international cards, 1.00% for currency conversion and $15 per dispute. Shopify Payments charges 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% on Grow, 2.5% on Advanced and 2.25% on Plus, with 1% extra for international cards. On higher Shopify plans the card rate drops below WooPayments.

Yes. Shopify lists third-party transaction fees of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. On $500,000 of yearly sales through an outside gateway on Basic, that is $10,000 a year (2% of $500,000). WooCommerce charges no platform fee on any gateway. If you plan to keep your processor, include this fee in every Shopify quote.

Shopify suits owners who want to sell this week and not think about servers. WooCommerce suits owners who already run a WordPress site, have someone technical on hand, and want full control of code and data. If nobody on your team will update plugins each month, pick Shopify. If your site is mostly articles with a few products, WooCommerce keeps everything in one place.

Build quality matters more than the platform. Shopify serves every store from its own hosting, so speed depends mostly on the theme and apps you add. WooCommerce speed depends on your host, caching, PHP version and how many plugins load on each page. A lean WooCommerce build on good hosting can be fast. A Shopify theme overloaded with app scripts can be slow.

Before version 8.2, WooCommerce stored orders in WordPress’s general posts and postmeta tables, which grow large and slow to search. High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) moves orders into dedicated tables such as wc_orders and wc_orders_meta, and it is on by default for new stores from 8.2 onward. Older stores may still need to switch, so check under WooCommerce, Settings, Advanced, Features.

It can, at a cost. A headless WooCommerce build puts a JavaScript front end, often Next.js, in front of the WordPress back end, so you run and secure two systems. Shopify’s headless route uses its Storefront API, and Shopify says Plus stores can deploy its React-based headless stack at no extra cost. For most small stores, a well-built standard theme on either platform is enough.

On Shopify, buyers enter card details in Shopify’s hosted checkout, so Shopify carries the platform side of card security. On WooCommerce with WooPayments or Stripe, card fields are usually hosted by the processor, which narrows your scope, but you still secure the WordPress server, admin logins, plugins and backups. A neglected plugin is the most common way a WooCommerce site gets hacked.

Updates break stores when versions drift apart. WordPress core, WooCommerce, your theme and each extension update on their own schedules, and WooCommerce lists PHP 8.3 or newer, tested up to 8.4. Test updates on a staging copy first, keep a backup from the same day, and remove plugins you no longer use. On Shopify, the platform updates itself and apps update separately.

They are not rivals. WooCommerce is a plugin that runs inside WordPress, so a WooCommerce store is a WordPress site with a shop added. WordPress.org says WordPress runs over 43% of all sites on the web. If you only publish content, WordPress alone is enough. If you want to sell, add WooCommerce, or keep WordPress for content and run checkout on Shopify.

On WooCommerce, the database sits on a server you control, so you can copy it whenever you like, and WordPress’s Tools, Export screen exports posts, pages, custom fields and users. On Shopify, your data lives on Shopify’s servers, and you can export products, customers and orders as CSV files or through the API. Either way, you own the data and can leave.

Yes, if the hosting is sized and tested for it. On WooCommerce, capacity depends on your server, caching and database, so run a load test weeks before peak. Shopify handles hosting for every store and reports 99.99% average uptime across Shopify during the biggest sales events of the year, plus checkout load-tested at 10K+ checkouts per minute on Plus. Those are Shopify’s own figures.

Shop Pay is Shopify’s saved-details checkout, so returning buyers skip retyping their address and card. WooPayments offers its own express checkout, WooPay, and supports Apple Pay and Google Pay. Both platforms support the big wallets. Shop Pay’s advantage is that shoppers may already have an account from buying at other Shopify stores, which WooPay cannot match on a new site.

Shopify, unless you want to build it yourself. Shopify includes B2B companies, catalogs and net payment terms on every plan, with up to 3 active catalogs, and Plus allows unlimited catalogs. WooCommerce needs wholesale extensions for customer-specific prices, minimum orders and net terms. That route works, but each extension is another piece to update and test.

Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants and three options per product, such as size, colour and material. WooCommerce builds variable products from attributes you define, with no fixed option count in the core plugin, though large variation counts slow the product page on modest hosting. If you sell made-to-order items with many options, check them against Shopify’s limits before you move.

Both work. WooPayments is available in 38 countries and accepts 135+ currencies, with local methods such as iDEAL and Bancontact. Shopify handles local currencies and domains through Shopify Markets, and Plus adds Managed Markets to simplify cross-border selling. If you sell to many countries with a small team, Shopify needs fewer add-ons.

There is no single winner, and it depends on what you count. WooCommerce says it powers more than 4 million stores. Shopify says millions of merchants sell on it. Store counts tell you little about fit. Pick Shopify if you want hosting and checkout handled for you. Pick WooCommerce if you want open-source code on WordPress that you control.

A Shopify store is your own website: it runs on your domain, with your design, products and customer list. The difference is who runs the servers. With Shopify, Shopify does. With WooCommerce, you or your host do. If owning the code itself matters, WooCommerce gives you that. If you only need to own your brand, domain and data, Shopify covers it.

For most growing consumer brands, yes. The case is strongest when you use Shopify Payments, which avoids the third-party fee, and when you have no in-house developer to manage WordPress updates. It is weaker if you depend on a processor Shopify charges a fee on, or your store is mainly a content site where WordPress already does the heavy lifting.

Move when plugin updates break checkout more than once a year, when hosting and maintenance bills keep rising, when the site slows during email campaigns, or when you want to add retail POS or wholesale without stacking more extensions. Stay if WooCommerce is stable, your developer is reliable, and your content site drives the sales. A short audit settles it.

WooCommerce is the better choice when your products fall into categories Shopify Payments will not process, when you must host data on your own servers, or when publishing articles, courses or member content matters more than the shop. It also suits teams with a WordPress developer on staff, since that person can change any line of code without waiting on a platform.

We export products, customers and orders from WooCommerce, map them to Shopify, and give every old URL a one-to-one 301 redirect in a single hop. A custom-theme store takes 3 to 5 weeks; stores with subscriptions, B2B or a large migration take 5 to 8 weeks. You see a working demo on your own data before you sign, and the price is fixed per phase.