Shopify vs WooCommerce: 2026 Comparison

Shopify vs WooCommerce comes down to control versus convenience. Shopify is the better choice for merchants who want hosting, security and updates handled for a fixed monthly fee starting at $29 a month billed yearly. WooCommerce is the better choice for merchants who want to own their code and data, customize everything and avoid platform transaction fees, as long as they are ready to manage hosting and extensions themselves.

This comparison has been rewritten for 2026. All Shopify prices come from Shopify’s own pricing page and all WooCommerce costs come from WooCommerce.com, as of October 2026, in US dollars. Prices and features can vary by country, so check both vendors’ pages for your region before you commit.

Shopify Vs WooCommerce At A Glance

Pricing

The two platforms charge in completely different ways. Shopify sells a subscription that bundles software and hosting. WooCommerce is free software, and you pay separately for everything around it.

Shopify Plans As Of October 2026

The old figure of $24 to $299 a month that circulated in earlier comparisons is out of date. As of October 2026, Shopify’s entry plan is $39 a month on monthly billing or $29 a month billed yearly, and the jump from Grow to Advanced is significant. Shopify offers a three-day free trial and an option to extend the trial for $1. Grow includes up to 5 staff accounts and Advanced up to 15, while Basic does not list additional staff accounts. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on monthly billing and is sold on term commitments.

WooCommerce Costs As Of October 2026

WooCommerce itself costs nothing to download or use, and there is no monthly subscription for the core platform. WooCommerce.com puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, scaling with traffic and performance needs, and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each. Two common examples: WooCommerce Subscriptions is $279 for a one-year plan, and B2B for WooCommerce is $149 a year.

A simple store on good shared or managed hosting with a premium theme and three or four paid extensions can run close to Shopify Basic in total. A store that needs subscriptions, bookings, B2B pricing and a high-performance host will often cost more than Shopify Grow in software and hosting, but it avoids Shopify’s third-party gateway fee and the stack of monthly app subscriptions.

Setup And Ease Of Use

Shopify is faster to launch. You sign up, pick a theme, add products and connect Shopify Payments, and hosting, SSL and software updates are handled for you. The admin is the same for every store, so staff training and outside help are easy to find.

WooCommerce takes more steps. You need a domain, a WordPress host, a WordPress install, the WooCommerce plugin, a theme and a payment gateway before the first sale. Managed WordPress hosts reduce that work, and WooCommerce’s setup wizard walks through store details, but you remain responsible for updates, backups and security. In return you get the WordPress editor and admin, which many teams already know from running their website.

Design And Themes

Shopify themes are built on Liquid and the Online Store 2.0 framework, which gives merchants drag-and-drop sections on most pages. The Shopify Theme Store includes free themes and paid themes, and every listed theme goes through Shopify’s review. You can edit theme code, but some areas, such as the core checkout, are controlled by Shopify and customized through settings and approved extensions rather than direct edits.

WooCommerce runs on any WordPress theme that supports it, including block themes that use the Site Editor. There is no limit on design: you can edit every template, build a fully custom theme or use a page builder. The trade-off is quality control. Theme quality varies widely, so it is worth choosing a well-maintained theme or working with a developer.

Payments And Transaction Fees

Payment costs usually outweigh software costs once a store has real sales volume. On Shopify, using Shopify Payments means you pay only the card rate for your plan, from 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic to 2.25% + 30¢ on Plus for online cards. If you use a different payment provider, Shopify adds its own fee on top of that provider’s charges: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus.

WooCommerce never takes a cut of sales. You pay only your payment processor. WooCommerce’s own gateway, WooPayments, has no setup or monthly fees, and WooCommerce.com lists card processing at roughly 2.5% to 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. You can also use Stripe, PayPal, Square or a regional gateway with no platform surcharge, which matters most for merchants who have negotiated their own processing rates or sell in markets where Shopify Payments is not available.

Apps And Extensions

The Shopify App Store covers almost every common need, from reviews and loyalty to subscriptions and ERP connectors. Apps install in a few clicks and are reviewed by Shopify, but most charge monthly, and the total can grow quickly as a store adds features.

WooCommerce draws on two catalogs: the WooCommerce Marketplace, where paid extensions are typically priced per year, and the WordPress.org plugin directory, where thousands of plugins are free. Because WooCommerce is open source, a developer can also build a custom plugin for logic no extension covers. That flexibility is WooCommerce’s biggest strength, but every extra plugin is code you need to keep updated and compatible.

SEO

Both platforms can rank well. Shopify handles the technical basics automatically, including sitemaps, canonical tags and editable titles and meta descriptions, and its hosting is fast by default. Its main limit is URL structure: products sit under /products/ and collections under /collections/, and those prefixes cannot be removed.

WooCommerce, through WordPress, gives full control over permalinks, schema, internal linking and content. Plugins such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math and All in One SEO add detailed controls. For brands that rely on blog content, guides and comparison pages to bring in traffic, WordPress remains the stronger content platform. The catch is that page speed depends on your host, theme and plugins, so a poorly built WooCommerce store can lose ground that Shopify would have held.

Scalability And Performance

Shopify scales without any work from the merchant. Hosting includes unlimited bandwidth, Shopify manages traffic spikes, and stores that outgrow Advanced can move to Plus for higher limits, more staff accounts and lower processing rates. You cannot tune the server, but you rarely need to.

WooCommerce scales as far as its hosting and engineering allow. High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS), now the default for new stores, moves orders into dedicated database tables for faster queries. Large WooCommerce stores combine HPOS with managed hosting, object caching, a CDN and, increasingly, a headless frontend that talks to WooCommerce through its APIs. Shopify’s equivalent headless route is its Hydrogen framework. The difference is that on WooCommerce, performance is your responsibility.

B2B And Wholesale

Shopify has narrowed this gap. According to Shopify’s help center, Shopify B2B is available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, with the features available depending on the plan. B2B on Shopify includes company profiles with multiple buyers and locations, payment terms, tax exemptions, volume pricing and customer-specific catalogs.

WooCommerce handles B2B through extensions such as B2B for WooCommerce at $149 a year, or through custom development for role-based pricing, quote requests, approval steps and ERP integration. That route is more work to set up, but there are no plan restrictions, and wholesale logic can be shaped to the exact way a business sells.

Support

Shopify provides support directly for the platform, its payments and its admin, and Plus merchants get additional account support. Problems with third-party apps or theme code, however, go to the app developer or theme author.

WooCommerce support is spread across several parties. WooCommerce.com supports its paid extensions and WooPayments, the community answers questions about the free core plugin in the WordPress.org forums, and your host handles server issues. Many WooCommerce merchants keep a developer or agency on retainer for this reason.

Migration

Moving between the platforms is common in both directions. Products, customers and orders can be exported and imported as CSV files on both platforms, and dedicated migration tools and agencies handle larger catalogs with variants, reviews and order history.

The hard parts are the same either way: 301 redirects for every changed URL (especially Shopify’s /products/ and /collections/ prefixes), customer passwords that cannot be carried over, and app or extension features that have no direct equivalent. Plan redirects first, test them before launch and keep the old store available read-only until search traffic settles.

Which Should You Choose

Choose Shopify if you want to launch quickly, do not have a developer, prefer a predictable monthly bill, and are happy to use Shopify Payments. It is also the simpler choice for brands that sell across online, social and in-person channels from one admin.

Choose WooCommerce if you already run a WordPress site, rely on content for traffic, need custom logic that apps cannot handle, want to use your own payment processor without a platform fee, or want full ownership of your code and data.

Consider Shopify Plus or an enterprise WooCommerce build if you process high order volumes. At that scale the decision often turns on payment rates and integration needs rather than monthly software price.

Run the numbers before you decide. Take a store doing $20,000 a month in online card sales. On Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments, card fees at 2.9% + 30¢ plus the $29 yearly-billed plan are the main costs. If the same store used an outside gateway on Basic, Shopify’s 2% fee would add about $400 a month before the gateway’s own charges. On WooCommerce, the same sales through WooPayments carry similar card fees, but the plan fee is replaced by hosting and any paid extensions. Swap in your own sales, apps and hosting quotes to see where the break-even point sits for your store.

Conclusion

In the Shopify vs WooCommerce decision for 2026, neither platform is better for everyone. Shopify trades flexibility for convenience, with plans from $29 a month billed yearly ($39 monthly) up to $2,300 a month for Plus, and a gateway fee if you skip Shopify Payments. WooCommerce trades convenience for control: the software is free, but hosting, extensions and maintenance are yours to manage and pay for.

Work out your expected monthly sales, the payment processor you want to use and the five or six features you cannot do without. Price those features on both platforms using the figures above, and the right choice for your store usually becomes clear.