Shopify vs WooCommerce: which should a small business choose?

What’s the difference between Shopify and WooCommerce?

Shopify is a hosted platform: you pay Shopify a monthly plan, and your store runs on Shopify’s servers. WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin that turns a WordPress website into a shop: you install it with a host you choose, and pay that host. Here they are side by side, from each platform’s own pages.

Shopify says it is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, the card industry’s security standard, and that stores on it are compliant by default. On WooCommerce, WordPress.org says most sites now apply WordPress’s minor and security updates by themselves; WooCommerce, the other plugins and the theme are updated separately.

Which costs more to run, Shopify or WooCommerce?

It depends on your host, the apps or extensions you add, and how much you sell, because both take card fees. On Shopify you pay a plan, and hosting comes with it. On WooCommerce there’s no plan, but you pay a host. Shopify prices its plans in each country’s currency, and both platforms’ payment services charge by country:

For example, Shopify Basic paid yearly costs US$19 × 12 = US$228 a year in the US, hosting included. Hosting a WooCommerce shop at the bottom of WooCommerce’s own range, $25 a month, costs $300 a year. Apps on one and extensions on the other then add to either.

Every cost, with themes, apps and domains, is in how much an ecommerce website costs, and Shopify’s fees for each country are in our Shopify cost guides for the US, the UK and Canada.

Who should choose Shopify?

• You want to sell without looking after a website: hosting, the SSL certificate and card security come with the plan.
• You want one company for the platform, the hosting and, through Shopify Payments, the card payments.
• You sell in person too: Shopify’s plans include taking payments with a phone or a card reader.
• You’d rather add features with apps than with code: Shopify’s App Store has more than 13,000, many of them free.
• Your products fit within 3 options and 2,048 variants each.

Who should choose WooCommerce?

• You already have a WordPress website, and want the shop in the same place.
• You want no platform fee and no share of your sales: WooCommerce charges neither, and adds no fee whichever payment provider you use.
• You want to choose your own host, and be free to change it.
• You want full control of the code: WooCommerce is open source.
• You, or someone you pay, will keep WordPress, WooCommerce and the plugins up to date.

If both lists sound like you, choose the one you’d rather look after in two years’ time.

Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for SEO?

Neither ranks a store by itself. Google says it ranks pages with its own systems and doesn’t accept payment to rank them higher. What differs is how much is decided for you.

Shopify makes the sitemap for you, at /sitemap.xml, and updates it when you add a product or page. Its themes include structured data, the code that tells search engines about prices and stock, and the shape of its addresses is fixed: /products/, /collections/ and /pages/. On WooCommerce, the same things depend on WordPress, your theme and the plugins you choose.

Can I move from WooCommerce to Shopify later?

Yes. Shopify’s Help Center has a migration guide for WooCommerce, and Shopify makes a Store Migration app. The web addresses change, because Shopify’s are fixed, so every old address needs a redirect to keep what you’ve built up on Google: see will I lose my Google rankings when I move to Shopify?

We do this as a fixed-price job: see moving from WooCommerce to Shopify.

What does it cost to have either one built?

The prices are the same in the US, the UK and Canada, and payment is in two stages: half to start, half at launch. On a Shopify store, the Shopify plan and any apps are paid by you to Shopify; on a WooCommerce shop, hosting is set up in your name and paid by you to the host. See what a Shopify store and a WooCommerce shop include, and what they don’t.

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