WooCommerce vs. Shopify

WooCommerce lets you earn more while spending less. Build exactly the store you need with the latest features to drive sales — all for a fraction of the total cost of Shopify.

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Using Shopify
doesn’t add up

WooCommerce can dramatically decrease your total cost of ownership compared to Shopify. While making a monthly payment to Shopify seems simple and affordable, it can cost you in the long run.

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Never pay for features you don’t need

WooCommerce lets you pay for exactly the features you want instead of forcing you into upgrade after upgrade. Shopify talks a big game about “composable commerce”, but their best features are locked behind higher tiers with higher costs — and come with a bunch of tools you’ll never use. Woo puts you fully in control.

Never pay to customize your checkout

A seamless checkout experience is critical for your conversion. WooCommerce gives you the power to fully customize your checkout to drive more sales. Getting a customizable checkout experience on Shopify will cost you $2,300 per month, minimum.

Never pay to use your preferred payment gateways

WooCommerce lets you use any gateway to process payments (although we do think WooPayments is pretty great). Shopify penalizes you up to 2% per transaction for not using their gateway — that could cost you thousands of dollars in profit per year.

Never overpay for added features

WooCommerce extensions are often more cost effective than Shopify apps when you need to add functionality to your store. For example, adding back-in-stock notifications could cost as little as $59 per year on WooCommerce, vs. $200 – $800 on Shopify.

Never pay the price of not having support

Woo offers several options to get help with your store: free assistance for Woo-built products, premium support for complex issues, and business consulting for higher-volume merchants. In comparison, Shopify only offers dedicated support to Shopify Plus members earning $10 million a year or more. Even paying $30,000 a year could leave you stranded with no way to get help.

The reason we chose WooCommerce is that it worked nicely with WordPress and it gave us the most flexibility. We didn’t want to have another cookie-cutter Shopify store. Shopify would be more of a pain to customize.

Ava Mutchler, Gardyn

Don’t compromise on your long-term success

WooCommerce is built to give you the flexibility, scalability, and value to go wherever your business takes you. While Shopify makes it relatively easy to set up a basic store, you’ll pay for that simplicity as you grow.

Create exactly the store you need

WooCommerce is proudly open source. That means you can personalize every aspect of your storefront, integrate with any tools you need, add functionality using hundreds of pre-built extensions, or even edit your site’s source code to make something entirely new.

Shopify is closed source, meaning you have to fit your store to their platform. You’re limited to the features they offer and can’t tailor your site to meet the needs of your business.

Never move platforms again

As your business grows, you’ll inevitably need to add new features, bolt on new functionality, or ensure your site can handle higher traffic. WooCommerce is designed to scale with your business.

You can start small and grow to millions of sales per year without ever needing to upgrade to an arbitrarily priced plan.

Built on the world’s best CMS

WooCommerce is built on WordPress, the CMS that powers 43% of the internet. WordPress is so popular because it’s easy to learn and manage.

The intuitive controls make it simple to add and update content on your site, upload photos and videos, or publish blog posts — and it’s all designed with SEO in mind to help drive free traffic to your online store.

Make the move in minutes

It’s quick and simple to export your Shopify catalog and import your products, orders, customers, categories, reviews, and more into WooCommerce. Our dedicated WooCommerce experts can even give you pointers to make sure everything goes smoothly.

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I think you’re quite limited with services like Shopify. You have to pay a monthly recurring fee, and it’s just not as flexible as having your own website and your own host.

Shane Barry, Thomp2 Socks

See why WooCommerce could be the move

Looking to move your store from Shopify or shopping for an ecommerce platform? Talk to our ecommerce experts and find out why WooCommerce is the clear choice.