Shopify vs WooCommerce: what each one costs and who it suits

Shopify and WooCommerce solve the same problem in different ways. Shopify is a hosted service you rent. WooCommerce is free software that runs on WordPress, which you host and maintain yourself. Most of the practical differences follow from that one fact.

A comparison is useful because each option explains the other. The poet al-Mutanabbī (d. 354 AH / 965 CE) said it in half a line:¹

«وَبِضِدِّهَا تَتَبَيَّنُ الأَشْيَاءُ»

“And through their opposites, things become clear.”

أبو الطيّب المتنبّي، من ديوانه بشرح الواحديّ رحمه الله

This comparison uses prices from the vendors’ pages, read on 25 October 2026, and usage data from the HTTP Archive’s 2024 Web Almanac. Where we could not confirm something, we say so.

The short version

	Shopify	WooCommerce
What it is	Hosted store platform with monthly plans	Free, open-source plugin for WordPress
Software cost	Basic: $29 a month on annual billing, $39 monthly	“Free, with no monthly subscription”
Hosting	You pay the plan price	You arrange it; WooCommerce estimates $25–$350 a month for most stores
Extra features	Apps and themes	Extensions at $29–$299 a year each, per WooCommerce
Card payments	Basic: 2.9% + 30¢ online	WooPayments listed at about 2.5–2.9% + 30¢
Maintenance	Handled by the platform	Yours or your developer’s: updates, backups, security
Best suited to	Owners who want to sell, not maintain	Teams that want control or already run WordPress

Sources: Shopify pricing page; WooCommerce pricing page. Both use the “$” symbol; Shopify’s page is set to the USA.

Which costs more, Shopify or WooCommerce?

Shopify. Plans are Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Basic is $39 a month on monthly billing and $29 a month on annual billing. Grow is $105 or $79, and Advanced is $399 or $299; Plus starts at $2,300 a month.² Card rates fall as plans rise, from 2.9% + 30¢ online on Basic to 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced.² If you use a third-party payment provider instead, Shopify lists an additional transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced.²

WooCommerce. The software is free and takes no revenue share. The costs sit around it: hosting, which WooCommerce’s pricing page puts at “$25 – $350/month for most stores”, and optional extensions at “$29 – $299/year per extension”.³ Payment processing has no WooCommerce surcharge; the page lists about 2.50–2.90% + 30¢ per transaction for its own WooPayments.³

The honest comparison is therefore not “free versus paid”. It is a fixed plan price against a bill assembled from parts. A small store with few extensions can cost less on WooCommerce; a store that needs many paid extensions can cost more.

One plan price, or a bill built from parts

Shopify, Basic plan

Plan$29–$39 a monthAnnual or monthly billing

Card payments2.9% + 30¢Per online sale

WooCommerce, self-hosted

Software$0Free and open source

Hosting$25–$350 a monthWooCommerce’s estimate for most stores

Extensions$29–$299 a year eachOptional

Card paymentsabout 2.5–2.9% + 30¢With WooPayments

Who runs the store day to day

With Shopify, the platform handles hosting and software updates. With WooCommerce, you or a developer do. The software has stated minimums: version 10.8 and later needs PHP 8.3 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or newer, and WordPress 6.9 or newer.⁴ Those requirements are a reminder that someone has to keep the stack current.

That job is real, but it is also the source of WooCommerce’s flexibility. Because you control the code and the hosting, almost anything can be changed.

How many stores use each platform?

The 2024 Web Almanac, which analyses millions of home pages, found about 2.5 million sites on ecommerce platforms. WooCommerce was detected on 35.8% of them and Shopify on 19.6%.⁵ Between 2022 and 2024, WooCommerce slipped from about 37% to 36% while Shopify rose from 18% to 20%.⁵

2.5m

sites detected on an ecommerce platform

35.8%

of them on WooCommerce

19.6%

of them on Shopify

Two limits apply. The study detected platforms from home pages only, and headless stores can be missed. Also, popularity is not evidence of quality: it shows what many people chose, not what suited them.

Which one is faster?

Fast pages matter in a store because shoppers leave slow ones, but the available data is thin. The 2024 Almanac reports mobile data for ecommerce platforms and gives WooCommerce 34% of sites with a good Largest Contentful Paint.⁵ It does not report a comparable Shopify figure in the text we could read, so we cannot say which platform is faster. Speed depends heavily on the theme, apps or plugins, and images you add. Our guide to Core Web Vitals explains the measures and how to check your own store.

Which one should you choose?

Choose Shopify if:

• You want to launch quickly and spend your time on products and customers.
• You prefer one predictable monthly bill.
• You do not have, and do not want to hire, someone to maintain a WordPress site.

Choose WooCommerce if:

• You already run a WordPress site and want the store inside it.
• You need behaviour that apps cannot provide and have a developer to build it.
• You want to control hosting, and are prepared to maintain it.

If neither list describes you, start with a one-page brief of what you sell, how orders are fulfilled and what you need to integrate. The brief usually points to one option quickly.

What we could not verify

We did not build a test store on either platform, so this article makes no claim about ease of use, app quality or support. Shopify and WooCommerce both change pricing, and neither page states when its prices took effect. Currency on the WooCommerce page is not named.

Shopify and WooCommerce names and logos are trademarks of their owners. DerekSol is not affiliated with, or paid by, either company.

References

Footnotes

1. al-Wāḥidī (d. 468 AH). Sharḥ Dīwān al-Mutanabbī, p. 100 in Shamela’s automatic page numbering (this digital edition carries no printed page numbers). The second half of the line, quoted here, reads the same in al-Muhallabī, al-Maʾākhidh ʿalā shurrāḥ Dīwān Abī al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī, vol. 4, p. 27 (printed page number); the first half is recorded with variant readings. ↩

2. Shopify. Pricing. Read 25 October 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. WooCommerce. Pricing. Read 25 October 2026. ↩ ↩²

4. WooCommerce. Server requirements. Page last updated 25 May 2026; read 25 October 2026. ↩

5. HTTP Archive. Web Almanac 2024: Ecommerce. Published 11 November 2024. ↩ ↩² ↩³