Webshop development
A webshop that can handle your prices, your customers and your stock — not a fashion retailer’s.
Read more →Shopify or WooCommerce: which webshop fits you?
Shopify is a subscription you rent a shop in. WooCommerce is software you run yourself. Nearly every difference comes back to that.
The short version
If you sell a manageable number of products to consumers, at standard prices with normal shipping, Shopify is probably the better choice. It works immediately, payments are handled, and you have no technical worries. You pay monthly for that, plus transaction fees if you do not use their own payment solution.
WooCommerce becomes interesting the moment you want something Shopify will not allow, or your volume makes the transaction fees hurt. It runs on your own hosting, you own everything, and you can do anything with it. The price is that maintenance, security and updates are now your problem.
Choose Shopify if
- You sell to consumers at the same prices for everybody.
- You want to start quickly and not maintain a technical partner.
- Reliability during peaks matters more than monthly cost.
- Your range is manageable and your logistics standard.
Choose WooCommerce if
- You already have a WordPress site that ranks and want the shop on it.
- Your turnover makes transaction fees run into thousands a year.
- You want full control over data, hosting and the customer experience.
- You have unusual shipping or pricing rules a platform cannot handle.
What gets overlooked here
The comparison changes completely once you sell business to business. Per-customer pricing, ordering on account, credit limits, order lists and an ERP link are not features but the core of trade selling. Shopify can do it on its dearer plans with apps, WooCommerce with plugins, and in both cases you are stacking parts that were not made for each other.
At that point the real question is not Shopify or WooCommerce but platform or custom. What that trade-off looks like for a wholesaler is on the page about webshops for B2B wholesalers.
Once you have decided
Marketplace or own shop
A marketplace gives you customers you would never have reached, and then keeps them. That is the whole trade-off in one sentence.
Read more →WordPress vs custom
WordPress runs roughly four in ten websites. That is neither coincidence nor recommendation — it depends entirely on what the site has to do.
Read more →Off-the-shelf or custom
There is almost always a package that handles eighty per cent of your process. The question is what the last twenty per cent costs you.
Read more →Frequently asked questions
What does Shopify really cost per month?
The subscription is the smallest part. Budget for apps you turn out to need and transaction fees if you use another payment provider. At serious turnover the total is a multiple of the entry price.
Is WooCommerce free?
The software is, the rest is not. Hosting, security, backups, premium plugins and maintenance are your costs. It can certainly be cheaper than Shopify, but it is not free.
Can I switch later?
Products and customers export, so yes. What does not simply come with you are your URLs and your reviews, and that is where the real work of a migration sits.
Not sure which way to go?
Send a short brief with what you have now and what needs to be better. You get an honest answer, including if that answer is that you do not need us for it.