Shopify vs WooCommerce: Which Is Better for a Small Online Store?

In the Shopify vs WooCommerce decision, most first-time sellers should choose Shopify. It costs about the same once you add up hosting, extensions and payment fees, and it leaves you far less to maintain. WooCommerce is the better choice if you already run a WordPress site, need something Shopify can't do, or sell from a country where Shopify Payments isn't available.

The rest of this guide shows the arithmetic behind that answer, because "WooCommerce is free" is true of the software and misleading about the bill.

The real difference between the two

Shopify is a hosted service. You pay a monthly subscription, and Shopify runs the servers, security and checkout. You can't touch most of what happens underneath, and you rarely need to.

WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress website into a store. You rent your own hosting, install the software, and look after it. Nothing stops you from changing how anything works, and nothing stops you from breaking it either.

So the choice is really about who does the maintenance. With Shopify, you pay them. With WooCommerce, you do it yourself or pay a developer when something goes wrong.

What each one costs as of November 2026

Shopify pricing

These are US prices as of November 2026, based on Shopify's pricing page and its October 2026 guide to card fees:

Two warnings. First, Shopify says pricing can differ depending on where your business is based, and the same page can show a lower figure, such as $25 for Basic, depending on your location. Use the number you see when you sign in with your own store address. Second, paying yearly costs less, but check the current yearly price on that page rather than trusting any blog post, including this one.

Shopify was also offering a 3-day free trial followed by $1 a month for your first three months on most plans, which makes it cheap to test.

WooCommerce pricing

The plugin costs nothing, and WooCommerce takes no share of your revenue. These are the costs WooCommerce itself lists as of November 2026:

• Hosting: $25 to $350 a month for most stores
• Extensions: $29 to $299 a year each
• Payments: WooPayments charges US stores 2.9% + 30¢ on domestic cards, with no monthly fee

You can spend less than WooCommerce's hosting range suggests. For example, Hostinger's WooCommerce hosting was listed at $3.49 a month on a 48-month prepaid term ($167.52 up front), renewing at $16.99 a month. Always budget on the renewal price, because that's what you pay if the store lasts.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: the monthly bill, worked out

Payment fees are usually the largest platform cost, and they're the same on Shopify Basic and on WooPayments. That means the comparison comes down to fixed monthly costs. Here's a store with $5,000 in monthly sales from 100 orders. The hosting and extension figures are examples.

The card fee line is 2.9% of $5,000, which is $145, plus 100 orders at 30¢, which is $30.

The careful WooCommerce setup saves $22 a month, or $264 a year. That's the prize for running your own store on budget hosting with no paid extensions. If you spend even a few hours a year fixing a plugin conflict or restoring a backup, you've probably given that saving back. The typical setup costs $11 a month more than Shopify, and $25 in extensions is only $300 a year, which is a couple of mid-priced extensions.

Paid Shopify apps can tilt this the other way, since many charge monthly, so count those too. Add up the specific apps or extensions you'd need before you decide.

When Shopify's 2% fee changes the answer

The picture changes if you can't use Shopify Payments. Shopify says it's only available in certain countries, and without it you pay the third-party fee on top of whatever your payment provider charges.

On the same $5,000 in sales, Shopify Basic's 2% fee adds $100 a month. That's $1,200 a year, which pays for a lot of hosting and a developer's time. If you're in this position, check two things before committing: whether Shopify Payments works in your country, and which local payment providers WooCommerce can connect to.

Upgrading isn't worth it yet

New sellers often assume they should move to Grow for the lower card rate. Do the sum first. Grow costs $66 a month more than Basic and saves 0.2 percentage points on card sales, so you need $33,000 a month in online card sales before it pays for itself on rates alone ($66 ÷ 0.002). Below that, upgrade only if you need a feature on the higher plan.

Where Shopify is the better choice

Pick Shopify if any of these describe you:

• You'd rather work on products and marketing. This is most people. Your first year should go on finding products to sell, not on server settings.
• You don't have someone technical to call. When a Shopify store has a problem, you contact Shopify. When a WooCommerce store has a problem, you may need to work out whether the host, a plugin or the theme caused it before anyone will help.
• You expect sudden traffic. A sale or a viral post is Shopify's problem to handle. On a cheap hosting plan, it can slow or crash your site at the moment you most need it.
• You want a dependable checkout. Shopify's checkout works out of the box, and it's the page where an error costs you real money.

Where WooCommerce is the better choice

Pick WooCommerce if any of these apply:

• You already have a WordPress site with traffic. If your blog already ranks and brings visitors, adding a store to it is simpler than moving everything or splitting your audience across two sites.
• Your store is unusual. Complex product builders, custom pricing rules, memberships or a checkout that behaves differently are often easier when you control the code.
• You sell where Shopify Payments isn't offered. That 2% adds up quickly, as the example above shows.
• You or a partner already know WordPress. The maintenance is a small job for someone who does it regularly, and the savings then become real.
• Owning the whole setup matters to you. You can move your site to another host at any time, and no platform can change your plan's terms on the software you run.

What beginners underestimate

On WooCommerce: maintenance

WordPress, WooCommerce, your theme and each plugin all receive updates, and an update to one can break another. Before you choose it, plan for backups, a staging copy for testing updates, and a regular time to do them. Test checkout after every significant update, because a broken checkout doesn't send you an alert. You just stop receiving orders.

On Shopify: creeping app costs

Shopify's simplicity makes it easy to add a $10 app here and a $20 app there. Five small subscriptions can add more than the plan itself. Review your installed apps every few months and remove anything you can't connect to more sales or less work.

On both: SEO isn't decided by the platform

Either platform can rank well in Google. What matters is the quality of your product pages, your site speed, and whether you publish things people search for. Don't choose a platform for SEO reasons alone. Our ecommerce SEO guide covers what actually moves rankings, and strong product descriptions will do more for you than any platform feature.

How to decide in 15 minutes

Answer these in order and stop at the first yes:

1. Is Shopify Payments unavailable in your country? Choose WooCommerce, after confirming you have a good local payment provider.
2. Do you already have a WordPress site with real traffic? Choose WooCommerce.
3. Do you need something specific that Shopify can't do without expensive workarounds? Choose WooCommerce, and budget for a developer.
4. None of the above? Choose Shopify Basic.

If you land on Shopify, use the trial to build one product page and place a test order. If you land on WooCommerce, install it on a cheap test site first and see how the setup feels.

Moving later is possible, so don't treat this as permanent. Products and customers can be exported from both platforms, although reviews, redirects and design need extra work. It's a nuisance, but it isn't a disaster, and it's a problem you'd only have because the store worked.

Your next step

Write down the monthly sales you realistically expect in your first year, then fill in the table above with the actual apps or extensions you'd need. Add your platform cost to your full startup budget, and check that the fees still leave room in your profit margin. If you're still at the planning stage, go back to our guide on how to start an online store and pick the platform when you reach that step.