Shopify vs WooCommerce: Which Should You Choose?

WooCommerce vs Shopify: which is better for your store?

Neither wins on every count. Shopify is better if you want a hosted store that runs with little upkeep. WooCommerce is better if you want full control and no platform transaction fee, and you can manage hosting yourself or pay someone to. Match the platform to your team and your sales volume, not to the headline price.

Most WooCommerce vs Shopify pages end by naming a winner, and that’s the wrong frame. Three questions change the answer: who will run the store day to day, how much you’ll sell through which payment provider, and how much of your growth will come from content. This table maps common situations to a sensible starting pick.

How much does Shopify take from a $100 sale?

It depends on your payment provider. If you use Shopify Payments, Shopify doesn’t add a third-party transaction fee, though Shopify Payments has its own processing rates that vary by country. With another provider, the fee depends on your plan: 2% on Basic on the India pricing page, so $2 on a $100 sale, plus that provider’s own processing fee.

Shopify’s help centre explains the mechanics. The fee is calculated on the order value after discounts, plus tax and shipping, multiplied by your plan’s rate. It sits on top of whatever your third-party provider charges, and it isn’t returned when you refund an order. It isn’t charged on Shop Pay, on manual methods such as cash on delivery, or on point-of-sale orders. You can read the details on Shopify’s third-party transaction fees page.

Here’s what the platform fee alone looks like on $10,000 of monthly sales that all go through a third-party gateway, using the rates shown on Shopify’s India pricing page on 12 October 2026. This is simple arithmetic on those rates, so confirm the rates for your country first.

Two things the top results tend to skip. First, tax and shipping count toward the base, so the real fee is a little higher than the figure above. Second, a higher plan lowers the rate but raises the monthly fee, so the cheapest plan on paper isn’t always the cheapest in practice. WooCommerce has no equivalent platform fee, which is why high-volume stores that can’t use Shopify Payments often price WooCommerce first. If you do stay on Shopify, our Shopify conversion rate optimization services focus on getting more orders out of the traffic you already pay for.

What is the disadvantage of Shopify?

The main disadvantages are ongoing cost and less control. You pay a monthly plan, you pay an extra transaction fee if you use a third-party payment provider, and you customize inside Shopify’s limits rather than owning the whole stack. For many stores those trade-offs are worth the convenience, but you should price them in before you commit.

In practice, watch for these:

• The plan fee climbs with the tier. Features such as extra staff accounts, live third-party shipping rates and region-specific tailoring sit on higher plans, according to Shopify’s pricing page.
• The third-party fee. If your market or business type can’t use Shopify Payments, this fee applies to most of your sales.
• Customization has a ceiling. The fully customizable checkout is listed under Plus, the most expensive plan.
• You don’t own the infrastructure. That’s the point for many merchants, but it means you work inside Shopify’s rules and its roadmap.

WooCommerce has its own downsides, and they’re mostly about responsibility: updates, backups, security and performance are yours. We cover the Shopify side of the SEO trade-off in our Shopify SEO guide.

Is Shopify still worth it in 2026?

For most small and mid-sized stores that want a hosted, low-maintenance setup, yes. Shopify includes hosting, a free SSL certificate and Level 1 PCI DSS compliance in its plans. It’s less attractive if most of your sales go through a third-party gateway at high volume, or if you want full code-level ownership of the stack.

Here’s what Shopify’s own pricing page lists, as read on 12 October 2026. There are no setup fees on any plan. Hosting is included, with unlimited bandwidth and a free SSL certificate for domains you add. The plans mention selling online, in person and in AI chats, plus a built-in assistant called Sidekick. Higher plans add staff accounts and lower third-party fees, and Plus adds a customizable checkout, B2B catalogs and priority phone support. The India page also showed a trial offer of 3 days free, then ₹20 a month for 3 months. Offers change, so check the current terms on Shopify’s site.

The honest test isn’t “is Shopify good?” It is. The test is whether the fees and limits fit your numbers. Take your last three months of sales, work out how much would go through Shopify Payments and how much through other providers, and apply the rates for your plan. If the total looks fine, Shopify is worth it. If it looks heavy, price a WooCommerce setup next to it. Our guide to the best Shopify apps helps you plan the extras before you commit.

Which is better, Shopify or WordPress?

They’re not direct rivals. WordPress is a content management system, and WooCommerce is the plugin that turns it into a store. Shopify is a hosted store platform. When you compare Shopify with WordPress for selling, you’re really comparing Shopify with WordPress plus WooCommerce, plus the hosting and upkeep you add yourself.

That matters because it changes who does the work. With WordPress and WooCommerce you pick a host, install the software and keep it current. WooCommerce describes itself as an open-source commerce platform for WordPress, and on its homepage it reports more than 4 million online stores built with it and 31% of the top 1 million ecommerce sites, citing Store Leads. These are the vendor’s own figures, read on 12 October 2026, so treat them as a rough guide to popularity rather than a neutral count. It also cites W3Techs for WordPress running 43% of the internet.

Popularity doesn’t decide this one. If your growth depends on articles, guides and landing pages, WordPress is a strong base. If your growth depends on paid traffic and a tight checkout, Shopify’s all-in-one setup removes a lot of moving parts. Either way, a store that nobody can find won’t sell, which is where ecommerce SEO services come in.

What do you need to run WooCommerce?

WooCommerce’s documentation for version 10.8 and later lists WordPress 6.9 or newer, PHP 8.3 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or newer (or MariaDB 10.6 or newer), HTTPS and a WordPress memory limit of at least 256 MB. A good host usually covers this, but keeping versions current is your job.

Those requirements come from WooCommerce’s server recommendations page, which also warns that older PHP and MySQL versions have reached end of life and can expose your site to security problems. Here’s what else you take on:

• Hosting. WooCommerce’s hosting page recommends WordPress.com, Pressable, WordPress VIP, Bluehost, Hostinger, Seravo and SiteGround. Each host sets its own prices, so check the current price on their sites.
• Payments. WooPayments is free to install with no setup or monthly fees, and WooCommerce says it’s available in 38 countries and 135+ currencies. Check the supported-country list for your market, and remember you can use other gateways too.
• Maintenance. Updates, backups and security checks don’t happen on their own. Budget time or a retainer for them.

If you’d rather hand that work to a team, our web development services cover WooCommerce and Shopify builds, and the wider website development cost guide helps you set a budget.

WooCommerce or Shopify: how to decide in 30 minutes

Use this short checklist if you’re stuck between WooCommerce or Shopify, or Shopify or WooCommerce. It forces the decision onto your own numbers instead of a feature list.

1. Estimate monthly sales for the next 12 months, and note how much will go through each payment provider.
2. Name the person who’ll maintain the store. If the honest answer is “nobody”, lean toward Shopify.
3. Check payment availability for your country on both vendors’ official pages before you fall for either price.
4. Decide how much content matters. If articles and guides are your main traffic source, price a WordPress setup.
5. Add up three years of cost for each: plan or hosting, fees, extensions or apps, and the time you or a developer spend.
6. Pick one and commit. Switching later means moving products, customers, orders and URLs, so it’s cheaper to choose carefully now.

Last verified: 12 October 2026. Prices, rates and plan features come from the vendors’ own pages and change often, so check the official sites before you decide.