Shopify vs WooCommerce: which is right for your online store?

At a glance

• Cost: Shopify is a monthly subscription, from £19 a month on a yearly plan. WooCommerce is free to download, but you pay for hosting, a domain and any paid extensions.

• Hosting and security: Shopify hosts your store and provides free TLS (SSL) certificates. With WooCommerce you choose the host and look after the server set-up.

• Day-to-day editing: Shopify uses a theme editor built on sections and blocks. WooCommerce runs inside WordPress, so products sit alongside your pages and blog posts.

• Flexibility: WooCommerce is open source, so a developer can change any part of it. Shopify is customised through themes, apps and its APIs, and full checkout customisation is a Shopify Plus feature.

• Extensions: Shopify has the Shopify App Store. WooCommerce has its own marketplace plus WordPress's directory of over 76,000 free plugins.

• Payments: Shopify Payments has no third-party transaction fees. WooCommerce works with WooPayments or other gateways, with no platform transaction fee on top.

• Maintenance: Shopify updates the platform for you. On WooCommerce, someone needs to keep WordPress, plugins and themes up to date and backed up.

Cost

As of October 2026, Shopify's UK pricing page lists Basic at £25 a month (£19 a month paid yearly), Grow at £65 (£49 yearly), Advanced at £344 (£259 yearly) and Plus from £1,800 a month. The page doesn't say whether VAT is included, so check the total when you sign up. Online card rates through Shopify Payments run from 2% + 25p on Basic down to 1.5% + 25p on Advanced.

If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. For most UK stores that makes Shopify Payments the sensible default.

WooCommerce describes its core platform as "free, with no monthly subscription" on its pricing page. The running costs are elsewhere: WooCommerce estimates hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each (both quoted in US dollars). WooPayments charges per transaction with no setup fee or monthly fee for online payments.

The fair comparison is total cost over two or three years, including the hours someone spends on updates and fixes. Our guide to how much a website costs in the UK covers build budgets.

Ease of editing for your team

Shopify's theme editor lets you add, rearrange, hide and duplicate sections and blocks without touching code, with up to 25 sections on each template. Products, orders, payments and customers all live in one admin. Staff accounts depend on the plan: Basic has no additional staff accounts, Grow has 5 and Advanced has 15.

WooCommerce adds products and orders to the WordPress admin, so if your team already writes blog posts in WordPress there is little new to learn. It includes a CSV tool for importing, exporting and bulk-updating products. How easy it feels day to day depends on the theme and plugins chosen, which is why the build matters as much as the platform.

Design freedom

Both can carry a distinctive, brand-led design on the homepage, collection and product pages. WooCommerce has no ceiling: because it is open source, a developer can change templates, checkout and logic directly.

Shopify gives you a lot of control through themes, but some areas are more fixed. Its pricing page lists checkout customisation as "limited" on Basic, Grow and Advanced and "full" on Plus. For most stores that is fine, because a standard, trusted checkout is what customers expect.

SEO and performance

Either platform can rank well; structure, content and speed matter more than the logo on the admin screen. Shopify generates a sitemap.xml automatically, and WordPress has created a sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml by default since version 5.5.

The main difference is URL control. Shopify uses fixed paths such as /products/ and /collections/. WooCommerce defaults to /product/ and /product-category/ but lets you change those bases in Settings > Permalinks, though changing them on a live store breaks old links unless you add redirects.

On speed, Shopify handles hosting for you. With WooCommerce, performance depends on your host and how many plugins you run. WooCommerce's server requirements recommend PHP 8.3 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or newer (or MariaDB 10.6 or newer), HTTPS and at least 256 MB of memory. See Core Web Vitals for business owners for what to measure.

Ecommerce features

Shopify includes Shopify Markets on every plan, with storefront translation, local domains, duties and tax estimates, and local currency prices (local currencies and local payment methods need Shopify Payments). Plans below Plus include 10 inventory locations, and in-person selling is available through the POS Pro add-on at £69 a month per location.

WooCommerce covers the core of a shop, including simple and variable products, and you add the rest with extensions. It suits stores with unusual logic, such as custom pricing rules or deep links to your own systems, because nothing is off limits to a developer. The trade-off is that every extra feature is something to choose, pay for and maintain.

Plugins and integrations

Shopify's apps come from the Shopify App Store, and Shopify says most are built by third-party developers rather than by Shopify. WooCommerce has its own marketplace of "hundreds of free and paid extensions", and because it runs on WordPress you can also use the directory of over 76,000 free WordPress plugins.

A bigger ecosystem is a strength and a risk. On either platform, we keep the list of apps or plugins short, because each one adds cost, code and something else to update.

Ownership, hosting and security

With Shopify, hosting and security certificates are part of the subscription: TLS certificates are free for every domain you add, and you can't bring your own. You can export products to CSV at any time, though product images aren't included in the file.

WooCommerce says you "retain full ownership of your store's content and data forever", and the files sit on a server you choose. That control comes with responsibility. WordPress updates minor core releases automatically, but plugins and themes only update automatically in special cases, and WordPress recommends backing up before every update. A maintenance plan takes that work off your plate.

Moving from one to the other

Moving from WooCommerce to Shopify is well trodden. Shopify's Store Migration app has a WooCommerce guide and imports products first, then customers, then historical orders. Your URLs will change, for example from /product/ to /products/, so every old URL needs a 301 redirect to its new home.

Shopify lets you import redirects from a CSV, up to 100,000 per store. Redirects only work from URLs that no longer load a page, so they are added after the old content has gone. Going the other way, WooCommerce's CSV importer can bring products in, and the same URL mapping applies. Our redesign checklist explains how to protect traffic during a move.

Which should you choose?

• A new product brand with a small team: Shopify. You can launch without thinking about servers, and the admin is built around orders and stock.

• An established WordPress site whose content already brings in customers: WooCommerce. You add a shop without moving your pages, blog or URLs.

• Selling in several countries or in person: Shopify, for Markets and POS.

• Custom logic, bespoke integrations or data you want on your own server: WooCommerce, with a developer and a maintenance budget.

• Nobody in-house to handle updates: Shopify, or WooCommerce with a maintenance plan in place from day one.

How we can help

We build on both, so our advice isn't tied to one platform. For most new product brands we'd recommend Shopify; where a WordPress site is already doing the heavy lifting for search, we'd usually keep it and add WooCommerce through our WordPress web design service. Websites start from £7,500 with a fixed quote after discovery, Shopify and ecommerce builds typically take 4 to 12 weeks, and at handover the store is transferred to your own account. If you're still weighing platforms, read our ecommerce web design overview or start your mission and we'll talk it through.

Frequently asked questions

Is Shopify better than WooCommerce?

Neither is better for everyone. Shopify is easier to run because hosting, security and platform updates are handled for you, while WooCommerce gives you more control and suits businesses already on WordPress.

Is WooCommerce really free?

The WooCommerce plugin is free to download and use. You still pay for hosting, a domain, any paid extensions and payment processing fees, and you need time or budget for updates and backups.

Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for SEO?

Both can rank well, and both generate an XML sitemap automatically. WooCommerce gives you more control over URL structure, while Shopify uses fixed paths such as /products/ and /collections/.

Does Shopify charge transaction fees?

Not when you use Shopify Payments, where you pay card rates instead. If you use a third-party payment provider, Shopify charges 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced (as of October 2026).

Can I move from WooCommerce to Shopify without losing rankings?

Yes, if the move is planned. Shopify's migration app imports products, customers and orders, and every old URL should be mapped to its new address with a 301 redirect, which Shopify lets you import by CSV.

Which is cheaper to run, Shopify or WooCommerce?

WooCommerce can be cheaper on paper because the plugin is free, but hosting, extensions and maintenance add up. Compare the total over two or three years, including the time someone spends keeping the site updated.