Shopify or WooCommerce: the sum nobody does

Most comparisons of these two give you a table of features, tell you "it depends" and wish you luck.

Both platforms can run an excellent shop. We've built on both at Just Creative People, and neither is the right answer for everyone. What most comparisons skip is the real cost of each one, and that cost has as much to do with your team's time as it does with fees.

The short version

Shopify is a hosted service. You pay a monthly fee and Shopify looks after the hosting, security and updates. It suits most online shops, particularly if you'd rather not think about the technical side.

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. The core plugin is free, but you arrange and pay for hosting, and you're responsible for keeping everything updated. It suits businesses that want more flexibility, have unusual requirements or already rely heavily on WordPress.

What Shopify costs

These are Shopify's UK prices as we write this, in November 2026. They change, so do check.

Pay monthly rather than annually and it's more: £25, £65 and £344 respectively.

Here's what that means in practice. Say you sell £10,000 a month across 200 orders, using Shopify's own payments:

They come out level at £10,000 a month, so below that Basic is cheaper, and above it Grow wins on these two costs alone. But if you use a different payment provider, Shopify's extra fee applies on top of what that provider charges. On Basic, that's another £200 a month on the same sales. So it's worth a serious think before you decide against Shopify's own payments.

Then add your apps. Lots of useful features come as monthly add-ons, and they can mount up. Add up what you'd actually need before you decide.

What WooCommerce costs

The plugin may be free, but the shop isn't. Your costs will typically include:

• Hosting. Don't go for the cheapest. A slow shop loses sales.
• Payment provider fees. These vary by provider, so get a quote for your own sales volume.
• Extensions and themes. Some are free. Plenty of useful ones are paid, often yearly.
• Maintenance. Updates to WordPress, WooCommerce and every plugin, plus security and backups.

For a general website, Whito estimates hosting at £50 to £300 a year, plugin or theme licences at £50 to £300 and maintenance at £300 to £1,200. A busy shop can easily need more than a brochure site, so treat these as a floor. The upside is that you're not paying a platform percentage on top of your payment provider's charges.

The part nobody puts in the table: time

Run this sum for each platform.

Hours a month spent on the platform × what those hours cost you

Include fixing things after an update, handling orders by hand, connecting to other systems and waiting for support. A platform that costs £100 less a month but takes five extra hours of a manager's time isn't cheaper.

Then ask who will actually do these jobs. If the answer is "me, on Sunday night", that should weigh heavily in your decision.

Fulfilment: where things get real

Here's what can matter more than any monthly fee: how orders get from your shop to your customer's door. If somebody retypes orders into a courier system, that's a cost that grows with every sale.

Both platforms can connect to fulfilment partners. The question is how easily they connect to yours. Ask your fulfilment partner what they already support, before you choose a platform.

Two examples from our own work. For GloCom Global's Shopify store, selling officially licensed Manchester City fast-charging products, we set up third-party fulfilment APIs and automatic order imports from ManCity.com. Rebels with a Cause is a WooCommerce shop serving the UK and EU, which we delivered from UX and design through to fulfilment integrations and go-live. Different platforms, same aim: orders flowing without anyone having to touch them.

When the flexibility is worth paying for

WooCommerce earns its place when your shop does something unusual. Sweet Cheeks, the pick 'n' mix brand, needed customers to build their own mix, so we made a create-your-own mix builder as part of a complete WooCommerce build. Requirements like that, along with detailed content, specialist products or very particular ordering, are often where WooCommerce's freedom helps. It's not that Shopify can't handle custom work, as it can, with custom development or apps. It's a question of which route is the least painful for your particular requirement.

How we'd decide

Lean towards Shopify if: - you want to focus on selling, not maintenance - you don't have anyone technical on hand - your needs are fairly standard - you want to launch quickly

Lean towards WooCommerce if: - you need something unusual in the way customers buy - content is central to how you sell - you already have a healthy WordPress site, and someone to look after it - you want full control over your hosting and code

Do the sum before you decide

1. Estimate your monthly sales and order count for the next two years.
2. Work out the platform and payment fees for each.
3. List the apps or extensions you'd need, and add them up.
4. Add hosting, maintenance and support.
5. Estimate your team's time on each platform.
6. Ask your fulfilment partner what connects easily.

Moving platforms later can be done, but it's a real project, so spend an hour on this now. Whichever way it comes out, you'll be picking on the basis of your own numbers. That beats most comparison tables.