Shopify vs WooCommerce for Small Businesses (2026 Costs Compared)

You have products, a launch date and two names that keep coming up. Shopify rents you a complete online store for a monthly fee. WooCommerce is free software that turns a WordPress site into a store, which you host and look after yourself. Both run a lot of stores: WordPress.org lists WooCommerce alone at more than 7 million active installations.

Which is cheaper and easier depends on things the sales pages don’t stress: payment fees, renewal prices, who does the updates and how much control you want. This Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison uses official pricing pages as of October 2026, shows a worked cost example, and ends with a plain recommendation for who should pick which.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: which is better for a small business?

Short answer: Pick Shopify if you want to start selling quickly, keep technical upkeep close to zero and can live within Shopify’s rules and monthly fees. Pick WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, want full control of the code, URLs and hosting, and have someone to maintain it.

Neither is better across the board. Shopify trades flexibility for convenience: hosting, security, checkout and updates are handled for you. WooCommerce trades convenience for control: you can change almost anything, but every plugin, theme and server setting is yours to keep working.

How much does Shopify cost?

Short answer: As of October 2026, Shopify’s main plans are Basic at $29 a month, Grow at $79 and Advanced at $299 when billed yearly, or $39, $105 and $399 billed monthly. Card processing and any paid apps come on top.

The details on Shopify’s pricing page that change the real cost:

• Card rates with Shopify Payments: online, 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow and 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced.
• Third-party payment fee: if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, on top of that provider’s own fees.
• Staff accounts: Basic doesn’t include additional staff accounts; Grow includes up to 5 and Advanced up to 15.
• Plus: starts at $2,300 a month, with lower card rates and unlimited staff accounts.
• Getting started: a 3-day free trial, then $1 a month for 3 months on most plans, and no setup fees.

The costs that aren’t on that page are themes and apps. The Shopify Theme Store lists 24 free themes and more than 1,200 paid ones. Paid apps for things like reviews, subscriptions, bundles or advanced shipping add their own charges, usually recurring, so list the ones you need and add them up before you commit.

How much does WooCommerce cost?

Short answer: The WooCommerce plugin is free. You pay for hosting, a domain, any premium extensions or theme, payment processing, and the time or help needed to keep it updated.

WordPress.org describes WooCommerce’s core as free, with paid extensions and support optional. The bills that replace a Shopify subscription:

1. Hosting. WordPress.com’s Commerce plan, which includes WooCommerce tools, is $45 a month billed yearly or $70 month to month. On a general web host, read the renewal price: SiteGround’s GrowBig plan, for example, is $4.99 a month for the first prepaid year and $29.99 a month after that.
2. Payments. WooPayments has no setup or monthly fee. For U.S. merchants it charges 2.9% + $0.30 per card payment, plus 1.5% for international cards, 1% for currency conversion and $15 per dispute, refunded if you win.
3. Extensions. Many features cost extra and renew yearly. WooCommerce Subscriptions, for example, is $279 a year with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
4. Maintenance. WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and each plugin all update. The WooCommerce plugin itself was last updated on October 9, 2026 (version 11.2.1), and each update is something to apply and test.

Your host matters more with WooCommerce because the store’s speed and security depend on it. WooCommerce publishes server recommendations, including HTTPS, current PHP and database versions and at least 256 MB of memory, and warns that older, end-of-life versions may expose the site to security risks.

Shopify vs WooCommerce cost: a worked example

Here’s the yearly platform cost before apps, extensions and payment fees, using the prices above and ignoring Shopify’s $1-a-month starter offer:

On platform fees alone, the plans sit closer together than the “free versus paid” framing suggests. The bigger numbers are payment fees and the paid add-ons you choose.

Example: Picture a candle maker selling $10,000 a month online in 200 orders of $50, all on U.S. cards. On Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments, card fees are $290 plus $60 in per-order fees, or $350 a month. WooPayments’ domestic rate is the same, so the fees are also $350. If that Shopify store used a different payment provider instead, Shopify’s 2% fee would add $200 a month, or $2,400 a year, before the provider’s own charges.

Two lessons from that example. First, on Shopify, use Shopify Payments unless you have a strong reason not to, because the third-party fee is the costliest line most small stores can avoid. Second, on WooCommerce, the hidden cost is maintenance: if a developer spends a few hours a month on updates and fixes, that time can outweigh the hosting difference.

Which is easier to run day to day?

Short answer: Shopify. Hosting, security patches, checkout and platform updates are Shopify’s job, so your time goes on products and orders. With WooCommerce, someone has to update WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and the plugins, check the store still works, and keep backups.

Day-to-day work is similar on both: adding products, processing orders, issuing refunds and running discounts all happen in a dashboard. The difference shows up when something breaks. On Shopify, a checkout outage is Shopify’s problem to fix. On WooCommerce, a plugin conflict after an update is yours, which is why a staging copy of the site and a tested backup matter.

Watch out: Don’t let updates pile up on a WooCommerce store. A site that hasn’t been updated in months is harder to update safely, and old PHP versions are a security risk WooCommerce itself warns about. Put a monthly update window in the calendar and test the checkout after every round.

Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for SEO?

Short answer: Both can rank well, and neither will rank you on its own; product content, site structure, speed and links matter more than the platform. The real difference is control: WooCommerce lets you shape URLs and every technical detail, while Shopify handles the basics automatically but fixes some of the structure.

What Shopify does for you: every store generates a sitemap.xml that updates as you add products and pages, and you can customize robots.txt through a robots.txt.liquid template. The limit is URLs: product and collection addresses use fixed paths, and Shopify’s help center says you can’t redirect URLs that use the fixed /products and /collections paths.

What WooCommerce gives you: control over the product and category base in WordPress under Settings > Permalinks, as WooCommerce’s permalink docs describe, along with WordPress’s choice of SEO plugins. The same docs warn that changing the structure breaks existing product links unless you set up redirects.

On speed, Shopify’s image CDN picks the best format each browser supports, as long as the theme uses its image filters. A WooCommerce store’s speed depends on the host, the theme and how many plugins load on each page. Either can be fast; our write-up on how we got our site to 100 in Lighthouse shows which fixes carry over to both.

Who owns your store on each platform?

Short answer: With WooCommerce, you hold the code, the database and the hosting account, and you can move to another host whenever you like. With Shopify, you can export products and customers as CSV files, but the platform, its pricing and its rules are Shopify’s.

That’s the trade in one line. If Shopify changes a price or a policy, your options are to accept it or migrate. If your WooCommerce host disappoints you, you copy the site to another host. In exchange, Shopify spares you everything that comes with owning the software, including security.

Can you switch from WooCommerce to Shopify, or back?

Short answer: Yes. Products and customers move by CSV file or a migration app, and past orders by app or API. The hard part is keeping your search traffic, because the URLs change and need redirects.

Shopify’s migration guide recommends importing products first, then customers, then historical orders, so the orders link up properly. It also warns that staff who get new-order notifications receive an email for every imported order, so switch those off first. Old page addresses won’t match Shopify’s structure, and Shopify suggests setting up redirects, which you can import from a CSV file, before you move the domain.

Going the other way, from Shopify to WooCommerce, works on the same principles: export, import, redirect and test. Either way, plan a few days where both stores exist and a checklist that ends with a real test order.

How to choose: our rules of thumb

This is how we’d decide for a small business:

Choose Shopify if:

• You want to start selling within days and don’t want to manage hosting or updates.
• No one on your team is comfortable with WordPress, or you’d rather not pay someone monthly to maintain it.
• You’ll use Shopify Payments, so the third-party fee doesn’t apply.

Choose WooCommerce if:

• Your business already runs on a WordPress site with content that ranks.
• You need custom product logic, unusual pricing or deep changes to checkout.
• You want to own the code and hosting, and you have a developer or host to keep it updated.

Consider neither if you sell a handful of products or take deposits for services. A website builder’s simpler store or payment links on your existing site may be enough; our guide to what a small business website costs compares those routes.

Our take: For most small businesses starting from zero, Shopify Basic or Grow with Shopify Payments is the safer first store. WooCommerce is the better long-term fit when you already live in WordPress or need control Shopify won’t give you.

What to do this week

1. Write down your monthly sales estimate, average order value and the features you can’t do without, such as subscriptions, bundles or local pickup.
2. Price both platforms for year two, not just year one: plan, hosting at its renewal price, apps or extensions, and payment fees.
3. Decide who will maintain the store, and get it in writing if it’s not you.
4. Check that your checkout passes our website accessibility checklist, since checkout is where barriers cost sales.
5. If you’re moving platforms, export your URLs now and plan the redirects before anything else.

We build Shopify and WooCommerce stores and quote each one per project; our ecommerce solutions page explains what’s included.