WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which Fits Your Store, Costs and Control Compared

In the WooCommerce vs Shopify choice, the short answer is this. Shopify is a hosted service: you pay a monthly plan, and Shopify runs the servers, the checkout and the updates for you. WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress: the software costs nothing, but you pay for hosting and extensions, and you, or someone you hire, keep it updated and secure. Shopify suits sellers who want to be hands-off. WooCommerce suits sellers who want control, own their site outright, or sell through a lot of content.

On cost, the two end up closer than most comparisons suggest. In the US, both platforms' own payment services charge 2.9% + 30¢ on a standard online card sale, so the card fees, which are the biggest line, are the same. What differs is the fixed part: Shopify's plan and apps versus WooCommerce's hosting, extensions and upkeep time. The tables below show both at three store sizes. All prices are US prices, checked on November 10, 2026.

WooCommerce vs Shopify at a glance

	Shopify	WooCommerce
What it is	Hosted ecommerce platform (subscription)	Free, open-source plugin for WordPress
Software cost	Plan fee every month	Free, "with no monthly subscription" (WooCommerce)
Hosting	Included	You pay for it: "$25 – $350/month for most stores" (WooCommerce)
Card fees (own payment service, US)	2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, lower on higher plans	2.9% + 30¢ with WooPayments
Extra fee for another payment provider	0.2% to 2%, depending on plan	None from WooCommerce
Add-ons	Apps, usually monthly	Extensions, "$29 – $299/year per extension" (WooCommerce)
Updates and security	Shopify handles them	You handle them (or your host or developer)
Control over code and data	Limited to what Shopify allows	Full: you own the site and its database
Best for	Quick, low-maintenance stores	Content-led stores and custom needs

What Shopify costs

Shopify's price is a monthly plan plus a fee on every sale. When we checked Shopify's pricing page on November 10, 2026, it listed Basic at $27 a month ($19 paid yearly), Grow at $72 ($54 yearly) and Advanced at $399 ($299 yearly), with Plus from $2,300. Some 2026 guides, such as commerce-ui's, list higher US prices for Basic and Grow ($39 and $105 a month), and Shopify sets some prices by country. Your real price is the one in your admin, so we show both where it matters. The full breakdown is in our guide to Shopify fees in 2026.

Per sale, Shopify Payments charges US stores 2.9% + 30¢ online on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow and 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced, according to commerce-ui and First Pier. If you use a different payment provider, Shopify adds its own fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus (Shopify's pricing page). On top of that come any paid apps and themes.

What WooCommerce costs

WooCommerce itself is free. According to WooCommerce's pricing page, the costs are:

• Hosting: $25 to $350 a month for most stores, scaling with traffic and performance.
• Extensions: $29 to $299 a year each, for things like subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping or product add-ons.
• Payments: only your payment provider's processing fees.

With WooPayments, WooCommerce's own payment service, US stores pay 2.9% + 30¢ per domestic card sale, plus 1.5% for international cards and plus 1% when currency conversion is needed. There is no monthly fee for online payments. You can also use another provider, such as Stripe or PayPal, without any extra WooCommerce fee.

Then there's the line that never shows up on an invoice: upkeep. WordPress, WooCommerce, your theme and every extension get regular updates. Someone has to apply them, check that the checkout still works afterwards, and keep backups. That's your time, or a developer's or managed host's fee.

WooCommerce vs Shopify cost: three store sizes

Here is the monthly total for three stores, each with a $50 average order and paid by card online. Card rates are the ones above. The hosting, app and extension amounts are our own example assumptions for a typical small store, not quoted prices; swap in yours.

Monthly sales (orders)	$2,000 (40)	$10,000 (200)	$30,000 (600)
Shopify Basic
Card fees (2.9% + 30¢)	$70	$350	$1,050
Plan (monthly billing)	$27 to $39	$27 to $39	$27 to $39
Apps (assumed)	$20	$75	$150
Total	$117 to $129	$452 to $464	$1,227 to $1,239
WooCommerce + WooPayments
Card fees (2.9% + 30¢)	$70	$350	$1,050
Hosting (assumed, within Woo's range)	$25	$50	$100
Extensions (assumed: 0, 3, 6 at $100/year)	$0	$25	$50
Total before upkeep time	$95	$425	$1,200

At $30,000 a month, Shopify's Grow plan cuts the card rate to 2.7%, which brings card fees to $990. With the plan at $72 to $105 and the same apps, that's $1,212 to $1,245. So at this size Grow costs about the same as Basic, not less.

What the table shows:

1. Card fees are most of the bill on both platforms, and they're identical at 2.9% + 30¢ with each platform's own payment service.
2. WooCommerce looks $20 to $40 a month cheaper on paper. That gap is easily used up by a couple of hours of updates and fixes a month, or by a care plan from a developer.
3. Shopify gets expensive when apps pile up or when you use a third-party payment provider on Basic, which adds 2% of sales. WooCommerce gets expensive when the store needs better hosting, many paid extensions, or developer time to make extensions work together.

How much does Shopify take from a $20 sale?

On Basic with Shopify Payments, a $20 online card sale costs 2.9% ($0.58) + 30¢ = $0.88, so you keep $19.12. On Grow it's $0.84. If you use another payment provider on Basic, that provider charges its own fee and Shopify adds 2% ($0.40).

The same $20 sale on WooCommerce with WooPayments also costs $0.88, or $1.18 if the buyer pays with an international card. Small orders hurt on both platforms because of the fixed 30¢: on a $20 sale, fees take 4.4%.

Control, ownership and flexibility

This is where the two really differ.

• Ownership. A WooCommerce store is software you own, on hosting you choose. You can move it to another host, change any line of code, and keep the full database. On Shopify, you rent the platform: you can export products, customers and orders, but the store itself stays on Shopify, which sets the prices and rules.
• Customisation. WooCommerce can be changed in any direction, because it's open source and WordPress is open source. Shopify is customised through themes, apps and its own developer tools, within the limits Shopify allows, including at checkout on most plans.
• Content. WooCommerce runs inside WordPress, so a store built around articles, guides or recipes sits naturally next to a blog. Shopify has a blog too, but WordPress is a stronger publishing tool.
• Effort. Shopify takes the hosting, security updates and checkout off your hands. With WooCommerce, those are your job, or your host's or developer's.

Which is more popular?

It depends on what you count. In GravityKit's analysis of HTTP Archive data from May 2026, WooCommerce was detected on 6.64% of measurable websites and Shopify on 4.76%. Among the top 1 million most-visited sites, the order flips: Shopify 6.08%, WooCommerce 3.12%. In other words, WooCommerce runs more stores overall, while Shopify is more common among busier ones. That tells you both are mature, widely supported choices, not that one is better for you.

Who should pick Shopify, and who should pick WooCommerce

Pick Shopify if:

• you want to launch quickly and never think about hosting, updates or security;
• you're happy with a theme plus a few apps, and your selling is fairly standard;
• nobody on your team wants to look after a website.

Pick WooCommerce if:

• you already have a WordPress site, or content is a big part of how you sell;
• you want to own the code and data and be free to move hosts;
• you need features that apps don't handle well (trade pricing, unusual product options, bookings, custom quotes) and are ready to pay for setup;
• you, your host or a developer will keep it updated.

If you're still comparing options beyond these two, see Shopify alternatives: which platform fits your store. For build budgets, see how much an ecommerce website costs.

A third path: a WooCommerce store built and run for you

WooCommerce's weak spot is the work: setting it up well and keeping it updated. That's the part Buildly takes on. We build online stores on a monthly subscription, and WooCommerce on WordPress is one of the platforms we use; your written scope recommends the stack that fits, and you can ask for the one you prefer. The subscription covers the design, the initial build at no extra charge, hosting, maintenance and a set number of change requests.

• A website with a buy button for a few products fits Essential: $35/month launch price (regular $60), 2 change requests a year.
• A small online shop with cart and checkout fits Growth, with 1 change request a month.
• A store with customer accounts, stock and shipping fits Business, with 2 change requests a month.

Growth and Business are priced "from" a monthly figure on our pricing page. Each of these three plans has a $100 setup fee, and you own the source code and database after 12 months. Standard integrations, such as connecting a payment provider or shipping service, are $20 each, paid once. To be clear, your payment provider still charges its card fees on every sale, as it would on Shopify or any self-run WooCommerce store. What you don't carry is the upkeep. To get a written scope and price, send a free brief.

How to decide in 10 minutes

1. Estimate your monthly sales and order count, and work out card fees at 2.9% + 30¢.
2. List the features you need beyond a basic store, and price them as Shopify apps and as WooCommerce extensions.
3. Add Shopify's plan, or WooCommerce hosting from $25 a month.
4. Be honest about upkeep: who will update and fix a WooCommerce store, and what will that cost?
5. Decide how much ownership matters to you. If it matters a lot, WooCommerce (run by you or for you) wins. If it doesn't, Shopify is the simpler road.