Ask five agencies whether your online store should run on Shopify or WooCommerce and you will get five confident answers, each one matching the platform that agency happens to build on. We build both, so this is written to be useful rather than to steer you somewhere.
It is also written because a lot of what is published on this question is out of date. Several widely cited 2026 comparisons still quote Shopify's Basic plan at $39 a month. Shopify's own pricing page says $25. Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 17 September 2026, and we have said which page each one came from so you can check it yourself.
The short answer
Choose Shopify if nobody on your team wants to be responsible for keeping software patched, if you want one predictable bill, and if you are content to sell through Shopify's own checkout. It is the lower-risk choice for a first store, and the one that needs the least from you after launch.
Choose WooCommerce if you already run your business on WordPress, if the shop is one part of a content-heavy site, if you need a payment provider, shipping rule or product structure Shopify will not do, or if you already have - or are willing to pay for - someone technical.
Both run serious stores. Neither decision is permanent, though moving is real work, which is covered at the end.
What each one actually costs in 2026
Shopify is a subscription
From shopify.com/pricing, checked 17 September 2026:
- Basic - $25 a month, or $19 a month billed annually
- Grow - $65 a month, or $49 a month billed annually
- Advanced - $399 a month, or $299 a month billed annually
- Plus - from $2,300 a month
Hosting, SSL, checkout, security patching and PCI compliance are all inside that fee. Card processing is billed separately, and the rate improves as you move up the plans.
The variable most people underestimate is apps. One subscription app for reviews, another for subscriptions, another for advanced shipping rules, and a $25 plan quietly becomes a $150 bill. Before you commit, list the things your store must do that are not in the box, and price those apps - not the plan.
WooCommerce is a set of decisions
WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin for WordPress. There is no platform subscription at all. What you pay for instead, using the figures WooCommerce publishes on its own pricing page:
- Hosting - $25 to $350 a month for most stores, by WooCommerce's own estimate. A store is not a brochure site; the cheapest shared hosting will not carry it through a busy week.
- Extensions - $29 to $299 a year each, for subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping and similar.
- A theme, either a one-off licence or a subscription.
- Maintenance - updates, backups, security and the occasional plugin conflict. Either your hours or somebody's invoice. Our guide to what website maintenance actually costs sets out what that runs to.
Notice what happened there. WooCommerce did not remove the cost of running a store. It moved it out of one predictable subscription line and into several choices that are now yours to make and yours to get wrong.
The fee most comparisons leave out
This is the single number that changes the maths most often, and it is missing from almost every article on the subject.
Shopify charges an additional transaction fee when you take payment through a third-party gateway instead of Shopify Payments. Shopify publishes it as 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced and 0.2 percent on Plus. That is on top of whatever your chosen processor charges you.
Run the arithmetic on a real store. Turn over $20,000 a month on the Basic plan through an outside gateway and the surcharge is $400 a month - sixteen times the $25 plan fee, and $4,800 a year. Use Shopify Payments instead and it is zero.
WooCommerce has no equivalent surcharge, because there is no platform between you and your processor. WooPayments, WooCommerce's own option, charges 2.90 percent plus 30 cents for domestic US card payments, which is the same headline rate Stripe publishes for US online card payments.
So the question is not "which platform is cheaper". It is: do you need a specific payment processor, and if so, what does that choice cost on each platform? For most businesses the answer is that Shopify Payments is fine and the surcharge never applies. For businesses tied to a particular processor - by an existing merchant agreement, an industry requirement, or a rate they negotiated - it can be the whole decision.
The real question is who maintains the store
Strip away the feature lists and the difference between these two platforms is a single trade.
On Shopify you give up some control and Shopify takes responsibility for the software. When a security patch is needed, it is applied and you never hear about it. When something breaks, there is one company to call.
On WooCommerce you keep full control and you take that responsibility back. WordPress core, the theme and every plugin need updating; updates occasionally conflict; backups need to exist and need to have been tested. None of this is difficult, but it is nobody's job by default, and "nobody's job" is how stores end up running an unpatched checkout for eight months.
Be honest about which of those two sentences describes your business. A capable in-house person, or a retainer with a developer you trust, makes WooCommerce genuinely cheaper and more flexible. Neither of those, and a self-hosted store becomes a liability dressed up as a saving.
Five questions that actually decide it
- Who will apply updates six months after launch? If you cannot name that person, lean Shopify.
- Are you tied to a specific payment processor? If yes, price Shopify's third-party surcharge against your monthly turnover before anything else.
- Is the shop the whole site, or part of one? A store bolted onto a large content site, a membership area or a booking system is usually happier in WordPress, where all of it lives together.
- Does anything you sell have an unusual shape? Bundles, made-to-order options, complex variants, per-item shipping rules and subscription billing are where platforms differ. Write down your three most awkward products and test those, not the simple ones.
- How much does an hour of your own time cost? The WooCommerce saving is real only if the hours it takes are worth less than the plan fee it avoids.
Three things that should not decide it
"One of them is better for SEO." Neither is, in any way that will change your rankings. Both produce crawlable pages, both let you control titles, meta descriptions, headings and URLs, and both can be built fast or slow. What separates stores in search results is product and category content, page speed, internal linking and site authority - none of which is a property of the platform. If that is new ground, start with what SEO is and how it works.
"You do not own a Shopify store." You own your products, your content, your customer list and your domain on either platform; what differs is that Shopify licenses you software while WooCommerce gives you the code. That is a real distinction, but it is not the same as ownership, and hosting a WooCommerce store is its own form of dependency. The ownership questions that genuinely matter are about your contract and your accounts, and we cover them in who owns your website after launch.
"Whichever one is more popular." Both have millions of live stores. Popularity tells you that help is available for either, and nothing about which suits your products.
If you want to move from one to the other
It is done in both directions and it is not exotic, but treat it as a site move rather than a rebuild. Products, customers and orders export and import reasonably well. Reviews, subscriptions and anything living inside an app or extension usually do not travel, so check those before you commit to a date.
The part that damages businesses is search visibility. The two platforms use different URL structures, so every product, category and content page gets a new address, and every old address needs a permanent redirect to its closest new one. Build that map before launch night, not after the traffic drops. Our guide to redesigning a website without losing your Google rankings covers the inventory and redirect process step by step, and it applies to a replatform exactly as it does to a redesign.
What we would tell you on a call
For a first store with a straightforward catalogue and nobody technical in the business, we usually build on Shopify, because the cheapest store is the one that does not need rescuing. For a business already running WordPress, selling something with an awkward shape, or with a developer on hand, we usually build on WooCommerce, because the flexibility gets used and the maintenance has an owner.
We build both, and we will tell you which one fits before you have spent anything. You can see what an ecommerce build involves on our ecommerce web design page, what the whole project tends to cost in our guide to ecommerce website costs, and where our own figures sit on the pricing page. If you are still deciding whether you need a custom build at all, custom website vs Wix or Squarespace is the better place to start.
Frequently asked questions
Is WooCommerce really free?
The plugin is genuinely free and open source - there is no licence fee and no platform subscription. What is not free is everything it needs to run: hosting, which WooCommerce itself quotes at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, any paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, a theme, and the work of keeping WordPress, the theme and every plugin patched. WooCommerce does not remove the cost of running a store, it moves it from one predictable subscription line into several decisions you now own.
Which one is cheaper overall?
For a small store where the owner handles updates, WooCommerce is usually cheaper on paper because there is no plan fee. For a store where somebody has to be paid to keep the site patched and backed up, Shopify is often cheaper once that retainer is counted. The honest answer is that the plan fee is rarely the number that decides it - payment processing, apps and extensions, and maintenance all move the total far more than the difference between $25 a month and $0 a month.
Can I use my own payment provider on Shopify?
Yes, but it costs extra. Shopify charges an additional transaction fee when you take payment through a third-party gateway rather than Shopify Payments: 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced and 0.2 percent on Plus. That is charged on the order value on top of whatever your gateway charges. On a store turning over $20,000 a month on the Basic plan, 2 percent is $400 a month - sixteen times the plan fee. If you are tied to a particular processor, price this before you choose a platform.
Is one of them better for SEO?
Not in any way that will decide your rankings. Both platforms produce crawlable HTML, both let you control titles, meta descriptions, headings and URLs, and both can be made fast or slow depending on how they are built. What actually separates stores in search results is product and category content, site speed, internal linking and the authority of the site - none of which is a property of the platform you picked.
Can I move from one to the other later?
Yes, and businesses do it in both directions. Products, customers and orders can be exported and imported, though reviews, subscriptions and anything held inside an app or extension usually cannot come with them. The part that goes wrong is search visibility: the two platforms use different URL structures, so every old product and category address needs a permanent redirect to its new one. Treat a replatform as a site move rather than a rebuild, and plan the redirect map before launch day.
In summary
Shopify sells you predictability; WooCommerce sells you control. The plan fee is the least interesting difference between them. Price the payment processing against your actual turnover, decide honestly who is going to maintain the thing, and the answer usually becomes obvious. If it does not, tell us what you sell and we will give you a straight recommendation - including the one where you do not need us yet.
