Shopify or WooCommerce: which is right for you

The short answer

Choose Shopify if you want a store that is hosted, secured and updated for you, with a predictable monthly bill and little technical upkeep. Choose WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, publish a lot of content, need unusual product or pricing rules, or want full ownership of your code and data. Shopify trades flexibility for convenience. WooCommerce trades convenience for control.

On cost, as of 2026 Shopify’s Basic plan is $39 a month ($29 billed yearly), Grow is $105 ($79 yearly) and Advanced is $399 ($299 yearly), plus card processing. WooCommerce itself is a free WordPress plugin, but you pay for hosting, extensions, maintenance and payment processing. For many small stores the totals end up closer than the sticker prices suggest. The deciding factors are usually who will look after the store and how custom it needs to be.

Shopify vs WooCommerce at a glance

What each one really costs

Shopify, as of 2026:

• Plan fee: Basic $39, Grow $105, Advanced $399 a month on monthly billing, or $29, $79 and $299 billed yearly. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month.
• Shopify Payments online card rates: 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic, 2.7% + 30 cents on Grow, 2.5% + 30 cents on Advanced.
• If you use a different payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced.
• Paid apps for features such as subscriptions, reviews, product options or advanced shipping. These add up and are the cost most owners underestimate.

WooCommerce, as of 2026:

• The plugin is free.
• Hosting: varies widely. A store needs better hosting than a brochure site, because checkout, carts and accounts cannot be fully cached.
• Extensions: many are paid yearly. For example, WooCommerce Subscriptions is $279 a year.
• WooPayments card rates for US cards: 2.9% + 30 cents, with an extra 1.5% for cards issued outside the US. No monthly fee.
• Maintenance: updates to WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and every extension, plus testing that checkout still works after each one.

Security and maintenance

This is the biggest practical difference for a small business. Shopify states that it is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant and that this covers all stores on the platform by default, including the cart and hosting. You still need strong passwords and two-step login for staff, but the platform itself is maintained for you.

With WooCommerce, security is shared between your host, your payment provider and whoever maintains the site. Using a hosted payment option such as WooPayments keeps card numbers off your server, which helps. But an outdated plugin is one of the most common ways WordPress sites are compromised, so updates and backups are not optional. Budget for a maintenance plan or a person who will do this every month.

Whichever you choose, turn on two-step login for every staff account, give each person their own login rather than a shared one, and remove access the day someone leaves.

SEO and content

Both platforms can rank well. The differences are in flexibility:

• WooCommerce runs on WordPress, which is excellent for articles, guides, landing pages and custom page layouts. You control URL structure fully.
• Shopify has a capable blog and handles basics like sitemaps and canonical tags automatically. Its URL paths are fixed, such as /products/ and /collections/, which is fine for most stores but limits some custom structures.
• Speed depends far more on theme, apps and images than on the platform. Too many apps or plugins slow down either one.

On either platform, the work that moves rankings is the same: unique product and category descriptions instead of manufacturer copy, clear headings, fast pages, and helpful guides that answer what buyers ask before they purchase.

How to compare total cost for your store

Sticker prices mislead. Build a simple one-year estimate for each platform with the same list of items:

1. Platform or hosting fee for 12 months. For Shopify, the plan; for WooCommerce, hosting suited to a store.
2. Payment processing on your expected sales. Multiply your yearly online sales by the card rate, then add the per-order fee for your expected number of orders.
3. Apps or extensions for every feature you need on day one: reviews, subscriptions, product options, shipping rules, tax, wholesale pricing.
4. Theme and design, including any custom development.
5. Maintenance and support: updates, backups, fixes and someone to call when checkout breaks.
6. Your team’s time spent managing the store each week.

Run the numbers at your current sales and at double. Percentage fees grow with revenue, while hosting and maintenance costs stay closer to flat. Above a certain sales volume, the plan tier with lower card rates can pay for itself, so check where your break-even sits before choosing a plan.

Weighing a switch or a new store?

Book a free 30-minute call. We look at your current store or plans with you and tell you which platform we would choose and what we would do first. No obligation. Pick a time.

Which one fits your business

Choose Shopify if:

• You do not have, and do not want, someone maintaining servers and plugins.
• You sell standard physical products with common options like size and color.
• You want to sell in person too, with Shopify POS.
• You expect to grow quickly and want the platform to handle traffic spikes.

Choose WooCommerce if:

• Your business already runs on WordPress and content is central to how you sell.
• You need custom pricing, quoting, B2B rules, bookings or product builders that would need several paid Shopify apps.
• You want full ownership of code and data, and the freedom to choose your own hosting.
• You have a developer, or a support partner, to handle updates and testing.

Integrations with the rest of your business

For a growing company, the store is rarely on its own. It has to talk to accounting, inventory, shipping, a CRM and email marketing. Both platforms connect to common tools such as QuickBooks, Klaviyo and Mailchimp through apps or extensions. Shopify’s app store is larger and more polished; WooCommerce allows deeper custom work because you control the code. If your store needs to sync with an ERP or a custom system, plan that early. Our systems integration team connects stores to accounting, CRM and ERP systems so orders and inventory stay in sync.

Moving from one platform to the other

Switching is common in both directions. To keep your search rankings and customers:

1. List every URL on the old store: products, collections or categories, pages and blog posts.
2. Map each old URL to its new address and set up 301 redirects. Shopify supports bulk redirect imports from a spreadsheet.
3. Move customers and order history where possible, and check that passwords and accounts behave as expected.
4. Recreate key emails and automations, such as abandoned cart and order follow-up.
5. Test checkout, taxes and shipping with real orders before launch.
6. Watch Google Search Console for errors in the weeks after launch.

How JLB USA builds online stores

JLB USA has built websites for growing businesses for more than 15 years, with 500+ clients and 1,000+ projects. We build on Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Ecwid and OpenCart, so we recommend the platform that fits rather than the only one we know. You can edit your own store, and you keep it if you ever leave. When we move a store, we set up redirects from old pages so rankings carry over. See our web design services, and our hosting and support for WooCommerce stores, which includes constant automated monitoring and malware cleanup.

Related services

• Web design
• Hosting and support
• Systems integration
• Email marketing