Shopify or WooCommerce? A plain-English way to choose

Shopify and WooCommerce both run thousands of successful stores. Most comparisons line up features, which rarely settles it, because both can do most of what a growing brand needs.

A better question is how you want to run the business day to day. Start there.

The short version

• Choose Shopify if you want the shop to look after itself, you mainly sell physical products, and you'd rather pay a monthly fee than think about hosting.
• Choose WooCommerce if you already have a WordPress site, you want products, courses and content in one place, or you want full control over checkout and your data.

How each one works

Shopify is a hosted service. You pay for a monthly plan, and Shopify looks after hosting, security and checkout. You add features with apps from its app store.

WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress site into a shop. You choose your own hosting and add features with extensions. You own all of it, including the database.

Running costs

Shopify's costs are predictable: a monthly plan, plus any apps you add. Apps are where it creeps up, and a handful of paid apps can cost more than the plan itself. If you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify also adds its own transaction fee.

WooCommerce itself is free, but you pay for good hosting and for any paid extensions. It doesn't take a cut of your sales. You only pay your payment provider's fees.

Neither is cheap or expensive by default. It depends on what you add.

Day-to-day work

Shopify is easier to run without help. Updates happen in the background, and you can manage orders from your phone.

WooCommerce needs looking after. WordPress, the theme and the plugins all need regular updates, and each round of updates should be followed by a test order. It isn't hard, but someone has to own it.

Flexibility

WooCommerce wins on control. You can change almost anything about how the store and checkout work, and the shop can sit alongside courses, memberships and a blog on one site.

Shopify is more fixed, on purpose. That keeps stores stable, but deep changes to checkout are limited unless you're on its top plan.

Moving later

You can move from one to the other, but it's real work. Products and customers move easily. Order history, subscriptions and custom features take more care, and every old URL needs a redirect so you keep your search rankings.

So it pays to choose carefully now rather than plan to switch.

A quick test

Ask yourself three questions:

1. Do I want to think about hosting and updates? If not, lean towards Shopify.
2. Do I sell courses, memberships or lots of content alongside products? If so, lean towards WooCommerce.
3. Does checkout need to work in an unusual way? If so, lean towards WooCommerce.

Still torn? Pick the one your team will find easiest to run. A simple store that's well looked after beats a clever one nobody updates.