Shopify vs WooCommerce in 2026

Shopify and WooCommerce both run serious, profitable stores, but they start from opposite ideas. Shopify is a hosted subscription service: you rent a platform that Shopify runs, secures and updates for you. WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin for WordPress: you own the software and the site, and with it the job of hosting, maintaining and protecting them.

Below we compare them on the points that matter most to brand owners and e-commerce managers. Prices and fees were checked against official pages in late 2026. They change often and vary by country, so confirm them before you commit.

The short answer

• Shopify suits teams that want to launch quickly, keep technical overheads low and expand into more channels and countries without managing servers.
• WooCommerce suits businesses that want full control of their code and data, already run a WordPress site, or need product, pricing or content set-ups that a hosted platform makes awkward.

The decision usually hinges on who will run the store and what it will cost to keep healthy over three to five years.

Total cost of ownership

Headline prices are misleading on their own. Shopify's cost is mostly a predictable mix of subscription and payment fees. WooCommerce's software costs nothing, but you pay for everything around it.

Shopify plans and published prices

Shopify's main plans are Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. There is also a low-cost Starter plan for selling through social media and links rather than a full online store. Paying annually lowers the monthly price on the core plans.

These are Shopify's published list prices at the time of writing. Taxes may be added, and very high-volume Plus merchants may be offered a variable fee instead. New stores usually get an introductory offer, recently a short trial followed by three months at £1 or $1 a month.

Shopify payment and transaction fees

With Shopify Payments you pay only the card processing rate, which falls as you move up the plans. With any other provider, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of that provider's charges, which is why growing merchants usually adopt Shopify Payments or upgrade. Shopify's help centre publishes rough annual sales levels at which a higher plan starts to pay for itself.

Selling in other currencies brings currency conversion fees, and optional features such as collecting duties at checkout carry their own per-transaction charges.

Shopify apps and themes

The subscription is rarely the whole bill. Most stores add apps for reviews, subscriptions, loyalty, search, email or marketplace syncing, and many charge monthly. Premium themes are usually a one-off cost. Review your apps every quarter, because forgotten subscriptions add up quietly.

WooCommerce: what you actually pay for

WooCommerce is free to download, with no monthly licence and no revenue share. The costs sit elsewhere:

• Hosting. WooCommerce's own pricing page suggests most stores spend somewhere between $25 and $350 a month, depending on traffic and performance. Budget shared hosting rarely copes with a busy shop.
• Domain and SSL certificate. Often bundled by hosts, but check.
• Theme. Free themes exist; premium themes and custom design cost more.
• Extensions. Paid extensions on the WooCommerce Marketplace are typically priced at around $29 to $299 a year each, and most stores need several, for example for subscriptions, advanced shipping or marketplace connections.
• Developer and maintenance time. Updates, testing, backups, security monitoring and fixes are ongoing work, whether done in-house or by an agency.

WooCommerce payment gateway fees

WooCommerce adds no fee for using a third-party gateway, so you can choose Stripe, PayPal, WooPayments or another provider on price and features. WooPayments has no monthly fee. UK accounts moved to a base rate of 1.5% + 25p in 2024, with extra charges for international cards and currency conversion. For the US, WooCommerce's own comparison puts WooPayments at roughly 2.5% to 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. Check the current schedule for your country before you model costs.

In practice: a small WooCommerce store can cost less to run than Shopify, but once you add capable hosting, paid extensions and maintenance time, the gap often narrows or reverses. Build a three-year cost model for both using your own expected order volumes.

Ease of use

Shopify is designed for non-technical teams. Hosting, checkout, security and core updates are handled for you, and the admin is the same from store to store, so onboarding staff and agencies is straightforward.

WooCommerce has a steeper learning curve. You manage WordPress, a theme, WooCommerce and plugins from different developers, each with its own settings and update cycle. Teams already comfortable with WordPress often find this natural; others usually need technical support close at hand.

Flexibility and customisation

This is WooCommerce's strongest ground. With full access to the code and database, almost anything is possible: custom product types, complex pricing rules, trade portals, membership sites or content-led commerce. The limits are mainly budget and development quality.

Shopify is flexible within a defined framework. Themes, apps, custom data fields and APIs cover most needs, and Shopify Plus adds deeper checkout customisation and other enterprise features. Parts of the URL structure and checkout stay fixed, so very unusual requirements may need workarounds or a headless build.

SEO and performance

Both platforms can rank well. Content quality, site structure and speed matter far more than the platform's name.

• Shopify generates an XML sitemap automatically and lets you edit page titles, meta descriptions and the robots.txt file. Its URL structure is partly fixed, with prefixes such as /products/ and /collections/, which rarely holds a store back. Hosting and a content delivery network are included, so speed depends mostly on your theme and how many apps add scripts to each page.
• WooCommerce gives you complete control of URLs, markup and technical SEO, usually through an SEO plugin. Speed depends heavily on your host, caching and plugin choices: a well-built site can be very fast, a neglected one painfully slow.

International selling

Shopify Markets and Managed Markets

Shopify Markets is built into the platform and lets you manage different countries or regions from one store. It covers local currencies (with Shopify Payments), translated content, separate domains or subfolders with hreflang tags added automatically, and duties and import taxes calculated at checkout for a fee. Shopify's free Translate & Adapt app can automatically translate a store into up to two languages, and more can be added manually.

For a more hands-off model, Shopify Managed Markets uses Global-e as the merchant of record. It handles tax registration and remittance, guaranteed duties and cross-border compliance. At the time of writing it is available to businesses based in the continental US and to certain UK and Canadian stores, and it charges a per-transaction fee (3.5% on Basic, Grow and Advanced, or 3.25% on Plus) plus currency conversion.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce can sell internationally, but you assemble the pieces yourself: a multi-currency tool (WooPayments includes one), a multilingual plugin such as WPML or Polylang, and tax and duties tools for each market. You gain choice at the cost of more set-up and maintenance.

Marketplace integrations

Most growing brands also sell on marketplaces, so check early how each platform connects.

• Shopify has its own Marketplace Connect app for Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Target Plus (Etsy is no longer available for new connections), plus official sales channels for Google, Meta and TikTok. In September 2026 Amazon also began rolling out tools in its US store that link Shopify, eBay, TikTok Shop and Walmart accounts to Seller Central.
• WooCommerce relies on extensions, many built by third-party developers, for Amazon, eBay, Etsy, OnBuy, TikTok, Google and Facebook. Quality varies, so test order, stock and price syncing thoroughly.

Brands selling across several marketplaces often use a dedicated multichannel tool on either platform rather than a connector per channel.

Security and maintenance

Shopify is certified as PCI DSS Level 1 compliant, and that compliance covers every store on the platform. Shopify maintains the core software and hosting. Your job is mainly to control staff access, review app permissions and protect accounts with two-step authentication.

With WooCommerce, PCI DSS compliance is ultimately the store owner's responsibility. A hosted or tokenised payment gateway reduces how much of it applies to you, but you still need secure hosting, SSL, prompt updates to WordPress, WooCommerce, themes and plugins, reliable backups and tight user permissions. Outdated plugins are a common way in for attackers, so schedule maintenance rather than waiting for something to break.

Migration considerations

Changing platforms is a project, not a button. Whichever direction you are moving:

1. List all your data: products and variants, customers, orders, reviews, blog posts, pages, discount codes and gift cards.
2. Check structural limits. Shopify products can have a maximum of three options, so WooCommerce products with four or more variation attributes need restructuring.
3. Plan for what will not transfer. Customer passwords do not carry over, and order history, reviews and coupons usually need a specialist app or manual work.
4. Map every URL and set up 301 redirects before launch, then test your highest-traffic pages straight after go-live.
5. Reconnect integrations such as marketplaces, email, accounting and analytics, and run test orders from end to end.
6. Choose your timing. Avoid peak trading periods and keep the old site available until everything has been checked.

For moves to Shopify, its free Store Migration app and help centre guide cover the WooCommerce process step by step.

Which should you choose?

Choose Shopify if

• You want to launch or relaunch quickly with a small team.
• You prefer predictable monthly costs and minimal technical maintenance.
• You plan to sell across several marketplaces, social channels or countries and want built-in tools for it.
• You expect strong growth and want a clear upgrade path to Plus.

Choose WooCommerce if

• Your site is content-led and already runs on WordPress.
• You need custom functionality, full data ownership or hosting choices that a hosted platform cannot offer.
• You have dependable development support, in-house or through an agency.
• You want to pick payment providers freely, without platform transaction fees.

Questions to settle before you decide

• Who will maintain the store, and what does their time cost?
• What will apps or extensions, hosting and payment fees total at your expected sales volume?
• Which marketplaces and countries are on your roadmap for the next two years?
• Do you need anything, such as complex trade pricing, that one platform handles clearly better?

How Ain One Group can help

We build, migrate and maintain stores on both platforms and connect them to the marketplaces you sell on. Explore our Shopify store build and WooCommerce store build services, or our platform migration service if you are moving between them. If you are still unsure which suits your business, contact us for an honest recommendation.