WooCommerce vs Shopify: what will you pay?
WooCommerce is free to download, not free to run. Put in what your store costs today and see the real monthly total next to Shopify.
The costs WooCommerce owners forget
WooCommerce itself is free, so most owners compare "free" with Shopify's plan price and stop there. The real bill is spread across many places:
- Hosting. Cheap shared hosting slows down as a store grows. Good managed WooCommerce hosting usually costs $30 to $100+ a month.
- Premium plugins. Subscriptions, bookings, product add-ons and SEO plugins are often $50 to $300 a year each, and the licences renew every year.
- Updates and fixes. WordPress, WooCommerce and every plugin update separately. When one update breaks checkout, someone has to fix it, often at short notice.
- Your own time. Hours spent on updates, backups and plugin conflicts are hours not spent selling. The calculator counts them, because they're a real cost.
Shopify rolls hosting, security, updates and checkout into one monthly plan. You pay for apps instead of plugins, and you pay Shopify's card rates, which on Basic match Stripe's standard US rate. The migration cost guide covers the one-off cost of moving in detail.
Which Shopify plan do you need?
Most small and mid-sized stores start on Basic. Grow pays for itself through its lower card rate at around $25,000 a month in online sales (billed yearly), or sooner if you need more staff accounts. Try both in the calculator with your own numbers. Advanced suits high-volume stores that sell internationally.
Questions
Is Shopify more expensive than WooCommerce?
On the plan price alone, yes, because WooCommerce is free to download. Once you add hosting, premium plugins, maintenance and your own time, many stores pay about the same or less on Shopify. Run your own numbers above, since every store is different.
Does Shopify charge transaction fees?
Not if you use Shopify Payments: you only pay the card rate. If you keep another payment provider, Shopify adds a fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, on top of that provider's own fees.
How much does it cost to move from WooCommerce to Shopify?
A migration app costs $60 to $800 but leaves the redirects, theme and testing to you. A full migration with me starts at $1,495 for stores with up to about 1,000 products, or $3,495 with a redesign. Stores with subscriptions or custom features are quoted after a free audit.
Are these numbers exact?
No, they're estimates from the numbers you enter and Shopify's published US prices. The free audit lists every plugin, its Shopify replacement and its monthly cost, so you get the exact comparison for your store.
Get your exact numbers and a fixed price.
Send your store URL. Your estimate is added automatically. Within one business day you'll get every plugin mapped, the real monthly comparison, and a fixed migration price.