WordPress vs Shopify for Small Business Stores (2026)

This WordPress vs Shopify comparison is for a small store selling up to a few hundred products. You'll get each platform's fees as of September 2026, a three-year cost example built only from published prices, what each one leaves you responsible for, and a short set of questions that points you to one or the other.

Quick answer

Choose Shopify if you mainly sell products, want to launch fast and would rather not deal with hosting or updates. Choose WordPress with WooCommerce if content or bookings matter as much as the shop, or you need custom features and full control of your code and data. On published US prices, three-year costs for a small store land close together. The gap opens with payment fees where Shopify Payments isn't offered, and with who does the maintenance.

Who each platform suits

Shopify is a hosted platform. You pay a monthly plan, and Shopify runs the servers, checkout, security and updates. WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. You install it on hosting you rent, and you or your developer keep it updated.

That split, looked after for you or looked after by you, decides more than any feature list. This article covers WordPress on your own hosting, which is what most people mean by "WordPress + WooCommerce".

Pick Shopify if

Your site is mostly products, plus an about page, delivery information and a contact form.
You want to start selling within days and don't want a hosting account or an update schedule.
Shopify Payments is available in your country, so you avoid Shopify's extra fee for outside payment providers.
Nobody on your team knows WordPress, and you don't plan to pay someone who does.

Pick WordPress + WooCommerce if

Content brings your customers in: recipes, buying guides, a blog you actually publish.
You sell bookings next to products, like a yoga studio selling class passes and mats. WooCommerce's official Bookings extension costs $249 a year.
You need features no theme or app offers, and want a developer to be able to change anything, checkout included.
You want the files and database on hosting you control.
Most of your card sales happen where Shopify Payments isn't offered.

A candle shop with 60 products and no blog is a Shopify store. A baking blog with 300 recipes and a small shop for its cookbook belongs on WordPress. Most stores sit somewhere between, which is where these questions help.

Six questions, answered honestlyWhich platform fits you?

ShopifyWordPress + WooCommerceEither works

Do articles, guides or a blog bring in a big share of your customers?

YesWordPress + WooCommerceNoGo to 2

Do you sell bookings, appointments or classes next to products?

YesWordPress + WooCommerceBookings extension: $249 a yearNoGo to 3

Do you need custom features or checkout changes that themes and apps don't offer?

YesWordPress + WooCommerceCustom checkout steps on Shopify need Plus, from $2,300 a monthNoGo to 4

Is Shopify Payments available in your country?

YesGo to 6NoGo to 5

Will most customers pay cash on delivery or by bank transfer?

YesGo to 6Manual payments carry no Shopify third-party feeNoLean WordPress + WooCommerceShopify Basic adds a 2% fee on card sales through other providers

Will someone handle monthly updates, backups and testing?

YesEither fitsShopify for the least admin, WooCommerce for full controlNoShopify

US prices as of September 2026. Shopify Payments countries and fees vary by location.

Six yes/no questions that point a small store to Shopify or WordPress + WooCommerce.

WordPress vs Shopify side by side

US figures as of September 2026, from Shopify's pricing page and WooCommerce's pricing page. Both differ by country, and each row is explained below.

Criteria	Shopify	WordPress + WooCommerce
What you pay for	Software, hosting and checkout in one plan	Free software on hosting you choose
Platform cost	Basic: $39 a month, or $29 billed yearly	$0; hosting $25 to $350 a month for most stores, by WooCommerce's estimate
Online card rate (US)	2.9% + 30¢ on Basic with Shopify Payments	2.9% + 30¢ with WooPayments or Stripe
Extra fee for other payment providers	2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced	None from WooCommerce
Updates, security, card compliance	Shopify	You or your developer
Design control	Themes, visual editor, theme code; custom checkout steps need Shopify Plus	Full code access, checkout included
Product and category URLs	Fixed /products/ and /collections/ paths	You set the base in Settings > Permalinks
Blog and content	Built-in blog	WordPress's home ground
Arabic and right-to-left	Latest Horizon themes; check any other theme	Over 4,000 tagged themes; multilingual through plugins
Support	Live chat on every plan	Forums for the free plugin; helpdesk for paid extensions
Leaving later	CSV exports; passwords stay behind	You already hold the files and database

Swipe sideways to see the whole table.

What each platform costs

Shopify's plans, payment rates and apps

As of September 2026, Shopify's plans are Basic at $39 a month, Grow at $105 and Advanced at $399, or $29, $79 and $299 a month paid yearly. Plus starts at $2,300 a month. Those are US dollar prices. Depending on where you are, Shopify bills in euros, pounds, US dollars or Indian rupees and can apply local pricing, so open the pricing page from your own country.

Basic covers most small stores. Check one limit first: the plan comparison shows no staff accounts on Basic and 5 on Grow. If a second person needs their own login, budget for Grow.

Shopify Payments is Shopify's own card processor. With it, the US online rate is 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow and 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced. Use another provider and Shopify adds its own fee on top of that provider's charges: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced. It applies to third-party gateways even when Shopify Payments is on, though PayPal is excluded once Shopify Payments is active. Manual payments such as cash on delivery and bank transfer never carry it.

Shopify Payments is only offered in some countries. The UAE is on the list. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt and Morocco aren't. Shopify's billing help lists when the fee doesn't apply (Shopify Payments orders, manual payments, point-of-sale orders), and "Shopify Payments isn't offered in my country" isn't among them. For a perfume shop in Riyadh taking cards through a local gateway on Basic, that's 2% of card sales. Confirm with Shopify how it applies to you before you commit.

Apps are the third cost. They charge a subscription, a usage fee or a one-time price, set by each developer and added to your Shopify bill. Go through your app list every few months and uninstall what you've stopped using.

What you still pay for with WooCommerce

WooCommerce is free, with no platform fee, no revenue share and no penalty for using any payment gateway you like. The costs move elsewhere:

Hosting, which WooCommerce estimates at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, rising with traffic.
Extensions for anything the core plugin doesn't do, at $29 to $299 a year each on the same page.
A theme, free or paid.
A payment processor. WooPayments and Stripe both charge 2.9% + 30¢ on US cards, with extra percentages for international cards and currency conversion. PayPal Checkout is 3.49% plus a fixed fee ($0.49 in US dollars). Rates differ by country.
Someone's time for updates and backups.

Cash on delivery is built in, under WooCommerce > Settings > Payments, and you can limit it to certain shipping methods.

A three-year Shopify vs WooCommerce cost example

Here's the same made-up store on both platforms, priced only from the pages linked above.

US-based and selling online only, so US published rates apply.
$5,000 a month in card sales from 100 orders averaging $50: $180,000 and 3,600 orders over 36 months.
All cards domestic, no currency conversion.
Shopify Basic billed yearly at $29 a month, with Shopify Payments at 2.9% + 30¢. The current intro offer (3 days free, then $1 a month for 3 months) is left out.
WooCommerce on $25 a month hosting, the bottom of WooCommerce's own range, with WooPayments or Stripe at 2.9% + 30¢.
A free theme on both, no paid apps or extensions. Domain, design, build and your own time are left out.

Cost over 3 years	Shopify Basic	WordPress + WooCommerce
Platform plan	$1,044 ($29 × 36)	$0
Hosting	Included	$900 ($25 × 36)
Card processing (2.9% of $180,000, plus 30¢ × 3,600 orders)	$6,300	$6,300
Theme	$0	$0
Base total	$7,344	$7,200
Can't use Shopify Payments (2% fee; provider assumed to charge the same 2.9% + 30¢)	+$3,600, total $10,944	Doesn't apply
Each paid extension at $29 to $299 a year	App prices set by each developer	+$87 to $897
Paying Shopify monthly ($39) instead of yearly	+$360	Doesn't apply

Swipe sideways to see the whole table.

Total over 36 months, USDThree-year cost of the same small store

Plan or hostingCard processingShopify fee for outside payment providers

Shopify Basic + Shopify Payments$7,344

Plan $1,044 + card processing $6,300

Shopify Basic + another payment provider$10,944

Plan $1,044 + card processing $6,300 + 2% Shopify fee $3,600

WordPress + WooCommerce$7,200

Hosting $900 + plugin $0 + card processing $6,300

$0$4,000$8,000$12,000

Card processing is 86% of the Shopify Basic total and 87.5% of the WooCommerce total. The platform itself is the small part.

Assumptions: US store, online only, $5,000 a month in domestic card sales from 100 orders averaging $50, so $180,000 and 3,600 orders over three years. Card processing = 2.9% of $180,000 ($5,220) + $0.30 × 3,600 orders ($1,080) = $6,300, at the published 2.9% + 30¢ rate on all three. Shopify Basic billed yearly at $29 a month. Hosting at $25 a month, the low end of WooCommerce's own $25 to $350 estimate. Free theme on both, no paid apps or extensions. Excludes domain, design and build, maintenance time and Shopify's intro offer.

$5,000 a month in US card sales, 100 orders a month, 36 months. Prices as of September 2026.

In the base case the two are $144 apart over three years. That's $4 a month. Card processing is more than 85% of the bill on both sides, so choosing a platform to save $4 a month misses where the money goes.

On a small store, card fees cost several times more than the platform itself, on Shopify and WooCommerce alike.

The real differences sit under the base total. Shopify's 2% fee adds $3,600 if you can't use Shopify Payments, more than three years of the Basic plan. Paid add-ons pile up on both sides. And $25 a month is the floor of WooCommerce's hosting estimate, so that's the figure most likely to be too low for your store.

The table also leaves out labour. WooCommerce needs updates, backups and the occasional fix, done by you or paid for. Shopify needs much less, though someone still looks after the apps and the theme. For the build itself, see how much a small business website should cost.

Running the store day to day

Setting up and daily use

Shopify's admin is built around selling. Products, orders, customers, discounts and payment settings sit in one menu, and there's no hosting account or install to deal with first.

WordPress gives you more menus and more decisions. WooCommerce adds its settings to the WordPress dashboard, and each plugin brings its own screen. That flexibility is the reason to choose it. If you only want to sell products, it's more dashboard than you need.

Updates, security and card compliance

On Shopify, platform updates and server security are Shopify's job. Shopify is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant (PCI DSS is the card industry's security standard), and says that covers every store's cart and hosting by default.

On WooCommerce, PCI compliance is the store owner's responsibility. With WooPayments or Stripe your site doesn't handle raw card numbers directly, which shrinks that job without removing it. Updates are on you too. WooCommerce's own guide says to back up and test updates on a staging site (a private copy of your store), monthly for most stores and sooner for security fixes, and to check that any developer you hire keeps to that schedule.

If nobody will own that monthly job, choose Shopify. A WooCommerce store left without updates for a year puts your customers' data at risk. If you want WordPress without the upkeep landing on you, that's what website care plans are for.

Support

Shopify's plan comparison lists live chat support on every plan, enhanced on Advanced. WooCommerce's free plugin gets community help in the WordPress.org forums. Paid WooCommerce.com extensions come with helpdesk support by chat or email, but the support policy excludes third-party plugins and custom code. In practice, your developer or host is your WooCommerce support line.

Design, SEO and speed

Design control

Shopify gives you themes, a visual editor and access to theme code, written in Liquid, Shopify's template language. Two limits matter. If your code changes clash with a theme update, Shopify says they're removed in the updated copy. And adding custom elements to the checkout's information, shipping and payment steps is only available on Shopify Plus. Products are also limited to three options, such as size, colour and material. A fourth needs an app or custom fields.

With WooCommerce, everything is editable because it's your code on your server. On block themes, the checkout is a page you edit under Appearance > Editor > Pages. WooCommerce admits that extensions adding custom checkout fields usually need integration work for the newer checkout blocks. Freedom to change anything is also freedom to break it, so changes go on staging first.

SEO

The differences are in structure. On Shopify, products live under /products/ and categories under /collections/, which Shopify's help calls fixed Shopify paths. You choose the end of each address, not the folder. You can import redirects from a CSV file (up to 100,000 below Plus), and there's a built-in blog.

WooCommerce lets you set the product address in Settings > Permalinks: the default /product/, a shop base, the category, or a custom base. Decide before launch. WooCommerce warns that changing it later sends old links and search results to error pages unless you add redirects.

For a store that's mostly products, a folder name is no reason to pick a platform. For a site where guides and articles bring in customers, WordPress's posts, categories and SEO plugins are exactly why you'd pick it. The launch checks for Google are the same on both, covered in why your website isn't showing on Google.

Speed

Every Shopify plan includes hosting, so the servers are Shopify's problem. You control the rest: theme code, apps, images, videos and analytics. When pages feel slow, start with apps that add code to your storefront.

On WooCommerce, speed comes mostly from your hosting plan and plugins, which is why WooCommerce's hosting estimate climbs with traffic. Don't put a store on the cheapest plan you can find and then pay a developer to make it fast.

Selling in more than one language, including Arabic

Shopify lets you sell in up to 20 languages on Basic, Grow and Advanced, and 30 on Plus, each on a subfolder such as example.com/ar or a subdomain. The free Translate & Adapt app lets you add as many translations as you want by hand, with some automatic translation included. For Arabic, the layout has to flip right to left. Shopify says the latest versions of its Horizon themes support right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu, and that you should confirm support for any other theme. Shopify released 10 free Horizon themes in May 2025, so a bilingual store doesn't need a paid theme to start.

The WordPress.org theme directory has over 4,000 themes tagged for right-to-left support. A second language needs a plugin. WPML's Multilingual CMS plan, which covers WooCommerce, is €99 a year; the €39 Blog plan doesn't. Polylang is free for pages and posts and supports right-to-left scripts, but WooCommerce needs its paid Polylang for WooCommerce add-on.

Test Arabic before you pay

Before you buy a theme or plugin licence, switch a demo or test store to Arabic and check the product page, cart, checkout and order emails. Look closely at prices, phone numbers and product names that mix English and Arabic.

Owning your data and moving later

With WooCommerce you hold everything. The files and database sit on your hosting, and WooCommerce's own line is that your data belongs to you. WordPress is open source under the GPL licence, so you aren't tied to one company to keep using it.

Shopify lets you export products, customers and orders as CSV files. Customer passwords aren't exported, so customers set new ones. Product images come out as links rather than files, and those links have to stay reachable for an import to work, so keep the old store open until the move is done.

Going the other way, Shopify's WooCommerce migration guide says its migration app is in early access and moves products only. Customers and orders go across by CSV or a third-party app.

A careful move looks like this:

List every URL on the current store: products, categories, pages and blog posts. Your sitemap is a good start.
Export products. In WooCommerce, Export sits next to Add new product under Products > All Products, and this built-in CSV tool covers products and variations only.
Export customers and orders separately, and decide how much order history the new store needs.
Moving to Shopify, rework any product with more than three options before importing.
Match each old URL to its new address and set up permanent (301) redirects.
Place real test orders with every payment method, then refund them.
Tell customers they'll need a new password.
Switch the domain, submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console, and close the old store only after images and data have been checked.

Common mistakes

Choosing WooCommerce because it's free, then putting it on bargain hosting with nobody doing updates.
Opening a Shopify store in a country without Shopify Payments without costing the third-party fee.
Paying Shopify monthly when you know you'll stay a year. On Basic that's $39 against $29.
Adding an app or plugin for every small feature. Paid apps add to your Shopify bill, and every plugin is one more thing to update.
Buying a theme before testing Arabic on the cart and checkout.
Changing WooCommerce permalinks on a live store without redirects.
Switching platforms to fix a problem that's really about product photos or prices.
Closing the old store before checking that product images came across.

Getting your store built

BerdisDev builds online stores and business websites in English and Arabic. If you're still between the two platforms, tell us what you sell, roughly how many products you have, where you're based and how your customers like to pay. We'll recommend one and explain why as part of a free quote.

Frequently asked questions

Is WooCommerce really free?

The plugin is free, with no platform fee or revenue share. You still pay for hosting, which WooCommerce estimates at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, plus any paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, a theme if you buy one, and your payment processor's fees, such as 2.9% + 30¢ per US card payment with WooPayments. Updates and backups also take someone's time.

Which is cheaper, Shopify or WooCommerce?

For a small store they're close. In this article's example, $5,000 a month in US card sales over three years costs $7,344 on Shopify Basic billed yearly and $7,200 on WooCommerce with $25 a month hosting, because card fees come to $6,300 on both. Shopify costs more if you can't use Shopify Payments. WooCommerce costs more with bigger hosting, paid extensions or paid maintenance.

Is Shopify or WordPress better for SEO?

Both can rank. Shopify keeps product and category addresses under fixed /products/ and /collections/ paths and has a built-in blog. WordPress lets you set your own URL structure and suits sites that publish a lot of articles, guides or service pages. For a store that's mostly products, your product pages, descriptions and photos will matter more than the platform.

Does Shopify support Arabic and right-to-left stores?

Yes. Shopify says the latest versions of its Horizon themes support right-to-left languages, including Arabic, and you can sell in up to 20 languages on Basic, Grow and Advanced. With any other theme, confirm right-to-left support before you buy. Shopify Payments is available in the UAE but not in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt or Morocco, which affects your fees.

Can I move from WooCommerce to Shopify later, or the other way?

Yes, with planning. Products move by CSV file on both platforms. Customer passwords don't transfer, so customers set new ones. Shopify's migration app is in early access and handles products only, so customers and orders need CSV imports or a third-party app. Set up 301 redirects from every old URL to its new address, or old links and search results will lead to error pages.

Do I need a developer for WooCommerce?

Not to launch a simple store, but someone has to be responsible for it. WooCommerce recommends backing up and testing updates on a staging site, monthly for most stores, and it puts PCI compliance on the store owner. If you won't do that yourself, budget for a developer or a care plan, or choose Shopify, which handles platform updates and PCI compliance for you.

Sources (37)

WordPress vs Shopify for a small business store