Shopify vs WooCommerce for Small Business: Which to Pick

Every comparison of these two starts with a feature table, and features are almost never why a small business regrets its choice. Maintenance is.

So the honest version: for most small businesses, take Shopify. You pay monthly and it keeps working without you. Take WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, you want the code and data fully under your control, and there is a real person who will apply the updates. That last clause carries the whole decision.

Both platforms sell products fine. This is not a quality argument.

The one question that settles it

Who is responsible for keeping the store working, and do they exist?

On Shopify the answer is Shopify. Hosting, security patches, uptime, the PCI side of checkout, all of it is theirs, and the monthly fee is what you pay for not thinking about it.

On WooCommerce the answer is you, or someone you pay. WordPress core updates, plugin updates, the test after each update to check nothing broke, backups, server config, security. None of that is hard. All of it is a standing commitment.

If you cannot name the person who does that job, you have already answered the question.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: the comparison that matters

	Shopify	WooCommerce
Licence	Roughly $39 to $105 a month on core plans	Free plugin, on top of WordPress
Hosting	Included	Yours: from a few dollars a month shared, $25 to $100+ managed
Who patches and secures it	Shopify	You or your developer
Payment processing	~2.9% + 30 cents per order, varies by plan and country	Similar rates on typical gateways, gateway of your choice
Extra capability	Apps, mostly monthly subscriptions	Extensions, often annual licences
Control over code and data	Constrained. It is their platform	Total. It is your server
Setup effort	Low. Themes and defaults get you live	Higher. More decisions before you sell anything
Best case	You want to sell, not to administer software	You already run WordPress and have technical hands
Worst case	Monthly fees for machinery you never use	An unpatched store nobody owns

The rows to read twice are hosting, patching, and control. Everything else is close enough that it will not decide anything.

Two caveats on the numbers. Shopify publishes and changes its plan pricing, and processing rates differ by country and plan, so verify before you budget. WooCommerce itself stays free, and the WooCommerce docs list which capabilities need a paid extension, which is worth ten minutes before you assume something is included.

The cost comparison, honestly

Here is where most articles lose the plot, because they compare a subscription against a free download and declare a winner.

Shopify, small store, per month. Plan $39 to $105. Apps $30 to $100 and climbing, because every store starts with three apps and ends with nine. Email tools $0 to $50. Processing at roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents. Realistic all-in before marketing: $150 to $500 a month.

WooCommerce, same store, per month. Plugin $0. Hosting from a few dollars on shared, which you will regret, to $25 to $100 or more on managed WooCommerce hosting, which is where a real store belongs. Paid extensions for subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping or tax, mostly annual licences. Processing at similar rates. Then maintenance: either a retainer, or your evenings.

The gap narrows fast the moment you price time at anything above zero. WooCommerce genuinely wins on running cost when that time is yours and you do not mind spending it. It stops winning the first month you pay someone to fix something you broke while updating a plugin at midnight.

Build cost is roughly the same on both, and it tracks the job rather than the platform: $500 to $2,000 for a clean store on a paid theme, $2,000 to $4,000 for one built to convert, $2,000 to $10,000 for a migration or an app-heavy build. The full Shopify website cost breakdown has the bands and what is missing from most quotes.

Pick WooCommerce if

• You already run a WordPress site and want one system, one login, one place to publish
• Content is a real acquisition channel for you and WordPress is where it lives
• You want full control of the database, the code and where it is hosted
• You need something unusual that a plugin does and a Shopify app does not
• There is a named person who owns updates, backups and security, and it is not “we will sort it out”

Pick Shopify if

• Nobody on the team wants to administer software, ever
• You want inventory, variants, shipping rules and tax to work without configuring five extensions
• You want to sell on Instagram, TikTok or a marketplace from one inventory
• Someone non-technical will add products and change prices without calling anyone
• You would rather pay a fixed monthly fee than carry a maintenance risk you cannot price

The third option nobody mentions

You do not have to choose one system for everything. Content on WordPress, store on Shopify, linked together. You pay both running costs, and in exchange you get the best publishing system sitting next to the checkout that requires least of you.

That is a sensible answer for a business whose blog actually brings in customers. It is an unnecessary answer for a business with six products and no blog.

And a fourth option, which applies more often than people expect: no store at all. If you have under five products, nothing to keep count of, and no variants, a normal website with payment links does the job for a fraction of the monthly. Do I need Shopify or just a website settles that with one question, and it is worth asking before you compare platforms you may not need.

What switching later costs

Not much, in the sense that it is a solved job. $2,000 to $10,000 for a migration depending on product count, variants, and how messy the old data is.

The expensive part is not the products. It is the URL redirects, mapping every live page on the old store to its new home, so your rankings survive the move. That is the line cheap migrations skip, and you do not notice for about a fortnight.

So if you are torn: pick the one that fits how you work now. Neither choice is a trapdoor.

Who builds it

We build Shopify e-commerce storefronts from $1,500, fixed price, quoted after we have seen your catalog and app list. You own the theme code and the account. Themaleta.com is one of ours and it is live right now, so open it on a phone and try to buy something rather than taking our word for it. Nugget Nation and BigSmall are Shopify too.

We are one senior studio, not an agency with a bench, so a large multi-workstream build is not our lane. And if you land on WooCommerce, hire a WordPress shop, not us. It is not what we build.

If you want the full comparison of who to hire, we ranked the best Shopify experts for small business with the criteria to discount us, and how to hire a Shopify expert has the brief, the four questions, and the two contract terms that keep the store yours.

Or tell us what you are building and we will tell you which platform we would pick for it, including when the answer is neither.