Shopify vs WooCommerce: which should your business pick?
Ask five agencies this question and you'll get five confident answers, most of which conveniently match whatever that agency happens to build. So let's start with the honest version: both platforms are excellent, both power millions of successful stores, and the right one depends on your business, not on fashion. We build both, which means we don't need to sell you either.
The short version
| Shopify | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A hosted platform: they run everything | A free plugin that turns WordPress into a store |
| Best for | Getting selling fast with minimal upkeep | Control, content-heavy sites, unusual requirements |
| Running costs | Monthly subscription plus transaction fees | Hosting and maintenance, no platform fee |
| Maintenance | Almost none, Shopify handles it | Yours to own: updates, security, backups |
| Flexibility | Excellent within its rails | Practically unlimited, it's your code |
| Content & blogging | Workable but basic | The best in the business, it's WordPress |
What Shopify gets right
Shopify's pitch is that you should be running your store, not your software, and it delivers on that. The platform is hosted, so there are no updates to apply, no servers to worry about, and no 2am security patches. The checkout is world class and constantly tuned, which matters because checkout is where stores leak money. The app ecosystem covers almost any feature you can name, and the monthly cost is predictable.
The trade-offs: you pay for that comfort monthly and per transaction, you're building within Shopify's rails, and if your business needs something genuinely unusual, deposits and part-payments, complex trade pricing, odd shipping logic, you can end up fighting the platform or paying for a stack of apps. Blogging and content are serviceable rather than strong.
What WooCommerce gets right
WooCommerce is WordPress with a shop, and that single fact drives everything good about it. You own the whole stack: no platform fees, no rails, and if you can describe a feature, it can be built. For businesses where content does the selling, guides, tutorials, recipes, portfolios, nothing touches WordPress as a publishing platform, and your shop lives right inside it. If your site is already WordPress, adding a store keeps everything in one place.
The trade-offs: freedom means responsibility. WooCommerce needs hosting, updates, security patches and tested backups, and an unmaintained store is a liability with a card form on it. Quality varies enormously with who builds it. This is exactly why our care plans exist: a WooCommerce store on a proper care plan is as dependable as anything hosted.
Five questions that decide it
- How unusual is what you sell? Standard products with standard pricing: either platform. Trade accounts, configurators, deposits, rentals: WooCommerce, or a serious conversation first.
- Does content do your selling? If your marketing lives on guides, articles and SEO, WordPress's publishing strength is a real commercial advantage.
- Who looks after it? No time or appetite for maintenance, and no care plan? Shopify. With a care plan, this question stops mattering.
- Are you already on WordPress? Keeping one site, one login and one design system is worth a lot.
- How do you want costs to behave? Shopify is a predictable subscription that rises with add-ons. WooCommerce front-loads the build and keeps running costs lower, especially at volume.
What it costs either way
The build cost is driven by your catalogue, features and design, not by the platform badge: most of the store builds we take on land between £4,000 and £20,000 on either platform, and we've written a full breakdown in how much does a website cost in the UK. Where the platforms genuinely differ is the shape of the running costs, subscription versus stewardship, which is really question five above.
Our honest defaults
A straightforward catalogue, a small team, and a wish to never think about servers: we'll usually point you at Shopify. A content-led business, unusual selling rules, or an existing WordPress site you like: WooCommerce, on a care plan. And if a conversation surfaces something that changes the answer, we'll tell you, because we genuinely don't mind which one we build. The store that fits your business is the one that makes us look good in two years.
Weighing this up for your own store? Tell us what you sell and we'll give you a straight recommendation, usually within a working day, no strings on it.