Most WooCommerce vs Shopify pricing comparisons put Shopify’s monthly plan next to WooCommerce’s “free” and stop there. That comparison leaves out most of the bill. A store pays for hosting, payment processing, apps or extensions, a theme, and somebody’s time to keep it running, and the two platforms charge for those things in very different ways.
We build stores on both platforms, so this isn’t a case for either one. It’s a breakdown of where the money goes on each, so you can work out which one costs less for your store.
WooCommerce vs Shopify Pricing at a Glance
Shopify is a hosted platform with a monthly plan. Hosting, security and updates are included, and the plan you pick sets your fees. WooCommerce is free, open-source software that runs on WordPress. You pay for everything around it: hosting, paid extensions, and the time it takes to keep the site updated.
Prices as of October 2026, US pricing. Shopify sets regional prices in some countries, so check its pricing page for yours.
| What you pay for | Shopify | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | Monthly plan: $29–$299/month billed yearly, Plus from $2,300/month | Free |
| Hosting | Included in the plan | You pay a hosting provider |
| Transaction fee | 2% to 0.2% by plan if you don’t use Shopify Payments; none with Shopify Payments | None from WooCommerce |
| Card processing | Shopify Payments rate, or your provider’s rate | Your payment processor’s rate |
| Add-ons | Apps, usually billed monthly | Extensions, usually billed yearly |
| Theme | Free or paid theme from the Shopify Theme Store | Free or paid WordPress theme |
| Updates and security | Handled by Shopify | Your job, or your developer’s |
Shopify’s costs are more predictable. WooCommerce’s costs are more flexible. Which one comes out cheaper depends on your revenue, the payment provider you want to use, and how many add-ons the store needs.
Shopify Pricing: Plans and What They Include
Shopify has three main plans plus Plus for large businesses. Paying yearly costs roughly 25% less than paying month to month.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | Third-party payment fee | Staff accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $39 | $29 | 2% | Built for a solo owner |
| Grow | $105 | $79 | 1% | Up to 5 |
| Advanced | $399 | $299 | 0.6% | Up to 15 |
| Plus | — | From $2,300 | 0.2% | Unlimited |
Every plan includes hosting, an SSL certificate, the checkout, and Shopify’s own security and platform updates. You don’t choose a server, and nothing needs patching on your side.
The plan also sets two rates that matter more than the plan price once a store is busy:
- The third-party payment fee. If you take payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a fee on each order: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. With Shopify Payments, this fee doesn’t apply.
- The Shopify Payments card rate. On Basic, online cards cost 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. The rate drops on higher plans; Shopify’s pricing page lists the current rate for each one.
Our Shopify pricing plans breakdown goes through each plan’s features in more detail.
WooCommerce Pricing: What “Free” Leaves Out
WooCommerce costs nothing to download and charges no licence fee. It’s a plugin for WordPress, and you can run it on any host you like. “Free” refers to the software, though, not to the store.
To take orders, a WooCommerce store needs:
- Hosting. A store needs managed WordPress hosting, not cheap shared hosting. Shared plans slow down under real traffic and checkout load, and a slow checkout costs sales.
- A domain. It’s billed yearly by your registrar. (Shopify stores pay for a domain too.)
- A theme. A free theme, a paid one, or a custom build.
- Paid extensions for anything beyond the basics. Subscriptions, memberships, advanced shipping rules, multilingual stores and product configurators are usually paid extensions.
- Someone to keep it updated. WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and every plugin get regular updates, and each one needs applying and testing.
Hosting is where most WooCommerce cost comparisons get vague. If you’d rather not manage it, we host and manage WooCommerce stores on Pressable, the managed platform from Automattic, the company behind WooCommerce and WordPress. The hosting fee is Pressable’s own price, with no agency margin on top, and the store, database and domain stay in your name.
Transaction and Payment Fees
This is the biggest difference in how the two platforms charge, and it grows with your revenue.
On Shopify there are two possible layers:
- The card processing rate, charged by Shopify Payments or by your payment provider.
- Shopify’s third-party fee, charged on top only when you use a provider other than Shopify Payments.
If Shopify Payments works for your business, you only pay layer one. If you need a different provider, for example because of your country, your product category or an existing merchant account, you pay both.
On WooCommerce there’s one layer. WooCommerce takes nothing per order. You pay your payment processor’s rate, whether that’s Stripe, PayPal, WooPayments or another gateway, and you can use more than one. Our WooCommerce payment gateway comparison covers how the main gateways differ.
The practical upshot: on Shopify, the cheapest setup is usually Shopify Payments. On WooCommerce, you’re free to pick the processor with the best rate for your volume and customers. For a closer look at the Shopify side, see Shopify transaction fees and what they really cost.
If you’re not sure what your current setup is adding up to, Honest can give you a quick read on your ecommerce stack before you make any moves.
Apps vs Extensions: The Recurring Costs
Neither platform does everything out of the box, and add-ons are where monthly costs creep up.
Shopify apps come from the Shopify App Store. Many have a free tier, and paid apps are usually billed monthly through your Shopify invoice. Email marketing, reviews, loyalty, subscriptions and product options are common paid additions. Because they’re billed together, they’re easy to track, and also easy to keep paying for after you’ve stopped using them. An app stack review every few months keeps that in check.
WooCommerce extensions come from the WooCommerce Marketplace and third-party developers. Paid extensions are usually sold as a yearly licence that covers updates and support. WooCommerce Subscriptions, for example, is $279 a year at the time of writing. If you sell recurring products, our guide to WooCommerce subscription products shows how it’s set up.
Two differences matter when you compare them:
- Billing cycle. A monthly app and a yearly extension can look similar until you put both on a 12-month basis. Always compare yearly totals.
- Overlap. On both platforms, stores collect add-ons that duplicate each other or that the platform now does natively. Trimming them is often the fastest cost saving available.
Hosting, Maintenance and Who Does the Work
The biggest cost that doesn’t show up on a pricing page is time.
On Shopify, the platform handles hosting, uptime, security patches and checkout updates. Your team runs the store: products, orders, content and apps. You’ll pay for development when you want a custom theme or custom features, but not just to keep the store online.
On WooCommerce, someone has to own the technical side: applying updates, testing that plugins still work together, running backups, watching security, and keeping the hosting healthy. A technical owner can do it themselves. Otherwise it’s a maintenance plan with a developer or agency, or a managed host that covers part of it.
That responsibility buys control. You can change any part of the code, run the store on any host, and add custom logic with no platform limits. If that control is worth more to your business than the maintenance time costs, WooCommerce’s lower platform cost is real. If it isn’t, Shopify’s higher plan fee is buying you something useful.
Cost as a Store Grows
The fixed costs on both platforms stay fairly flat as you grow. The costs that scale with revenue are payment fees. Here’s a simple illustration of Shopify’s third-party fee alone, for a store that uses a payment provider other than Shopify Payments. These are worked examples, not figures from a real store.
| Monthly revenue | Basic (2%) | Grow (1%) | Advanced (0.6%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | $200 | $100 | $60 |
| $50,000 | $1,000 | $500 | $300 |
| $100,000 | $2,000 | $1,000 | $600 |
These amounts come on top of card processing, which you’d pay on any platform.
The same arithmetic shows when a higher plan pays for itself, if you’re using a third-party provider and paying yearly:
- Basic to Grow: Grow costs $50 a month more and cuts the fee by 1 percentage point. Above about $5,000 a month in revenue, Grow is cheaper overall.
- Grow to Advanced: Advanced costs $220 a month more and cuts the fee by 0.4 percentage points. The switch pays for itself at about $55,000 a month in revenue.
On WooCommerce, the same revenue adds no platform fee at all; only the processor’s rate applies. That’s the main reason WooCommerce’s cost advantage widens for stores that can’t or won’t use Shopify Payments. If Shopify Payments suits you, the gap is much smaller, because the third-party fee disappears.
Hidden Costs on Both Platforms
Some costs don’t appear on either platform’s pricing page:
- Theme and custom work. A free theme is fine for many stores. A custom design or custom features cost the same kind of developer time on either platform.
- Migration. Moving platforms later means moving products, customers, orders and content, plus a full redirect plan so search rankings survive. The bigger and more customised the store, the bigger the job. Our guides to migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce and migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify cover what’s involved.
- Switching cost of add-ons. Data stored inside an app or extension, such as reviews, subscriptions or loyalty points, doesn’t always export cleanly. Check before you commit to one.
- Your own time. Hours spent fixing plugin conflicts or wrestling with apps are a real cost, even when they never show up on an invoice.
Which Is Cheaper for Your Store?
There isn’t one answer, but the pattern is consistent:
- Shopify tends to cost less when: you’re starting out or running a small team, you can use Shopify Payments, you want hosting and security off your plate, and the store doesn’t need much custom logic. For a lean store, the plan fee is predictable and the time saved is real.
- WooCommerce tends to cost less when: you need a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, your revenue is high enough that per-order fees add up, you already run WordPress, or you need custom functionality that would otherwise mean several paid apps. It also suits a business that values owning and controlling its code and hosting.
- Either works when: revenue is modest, the add-on list is short, and Shopify Payments is available. In that case, choose on ease of use and how your team wants to work, not price.
Because we build on both, our recommendation isn’t tied to what we sell. If WooCommerce fits, our custom WooCommerce development covers the build, hosting and handover. If Shopify fits, a Shopify store build gets you launched on the right plan with only the apps you need.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
Often, but not always. WooCommerce has no plan fee and no platform transaction fee, but you pay for hosting, paid extensions and maintenance. Shopify’s plan includes hosting and updates, and if you use Shopify Payments there’s no extra transaction fee. Small stores using Shopify Payments often pay about the same on either platform. Larger stores, and stores that need a different payment provider, usually pay less on WooCommerce.
Does WooCommerce have transaction fees?
No. WooCommerce charges nothing per order; you only pay your payment processor’s rate. Shopify adds a third-party fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus when you don’t use Shopify Payments. With Shopify Payments, that fee doesn’t apply.
Is Shopify’s Basic plan enough for a real store?
For a new or small store, yes. Basic includes hosting, the checkout and the core store features. The limits show as you grow: it’s built for a solo owner, and if you use a third-party payment provider, its 2% fee is the highest of any plan. Once revenue passes a few thousand dollars a month on a third-party provider, Grow’s lower fee usually covers its higher price.
How much does it cost to migrate between WooCommerce and Shopify?
It depends on the size of the catalog, how much order and customer history you’re moving, and how much custom functionality has to be rebuilt. Plan for data migration, design work and a full set of 301 redirects to protect search traffic. Our Shopify to WooCommerce and WooCommerce to Shopify guides walk through each step.
What hosting does WooCommerce need?
Managed WordPress hosting with enough resources for checkout traffic, automatic backups and staging. Avoid entry-level shared hosting for any store taking real orders. If you’d rather not manage hosting yourself, we run WooCommerce stores on Pressable at Pressable’s own price.