Choosing the right ecommerce platform can feel like a high-stakes decision. Get it right, and you’ve built the foundation for years of growth. Get it wrong, and you’re facing costly re-platforming headaches down the line.
If you’ve been researching WooCommerce vs Shopify, you’ve probably noticed the internet is full of conflicting advice. Some articles favour Shopify’s simplicity. Others champion WooCommerce’s flexibility. The truth, as always, sits somewhere in the middle.
At The Digital Maze, we have built ecommerce stores on both platforms and seen first-hand what works for different types of businesses. As a WooCommerce Pro Partner, we lean towards WooCommerce for most of our clients. We recommend it because it aligns with what ambitious, growth-focused brands typically need: control, flexibility and long-term cost efficiency.
This guide walks you through everything you need to know to make an informed decision in 2026, taking you through:
Both WooCommerce and Shopify are market leaders, but they serve different needs. We've summarised a few of the key points below.
If you’re a founder or marketing leader who needs a fast answer, here’s the condensed version before we dive into the details.
| Factor | WooCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Core Cost | Free plugin + hosting (£25–£100/month) | Subscription plans (£25–£280/month) |
| Control & Ownership | Full code access, you own everything | Closed platform, Shopify owns infrastructure |
| SEO Capabilities | Excellent (WordPress ecosystem, Yoast SEO) | Good basics, limited advanced control |
| Customisation | Unlimited (open-source) | Template-based with app constraints |
| Speed to Launch | 1–2 days with setup | 1–2 hours guided onboarding |
| Scalability | Scales with hosting investment | Built-in infrastructure scaling |
| Transaction Fees | Gateway fees only (~2.9% + 30p) | Extra 0.5–2% if not using Shopify Payments |
| Support | Hosting + plugin vendors + agency | 24/7 Shopify team support |
Our verdict: For many brands, WooCommerce generally delivers more value and flexibility long term, particularly when SEO, content strategy and tailored integrations matter to your growth.
Before comparing features, it helps to understand how each platform works under the hood. This context shapes everything from daily operations to long-term scalability.
WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress. You install it on a WordPress site hosted with your chosen hosting provider, giving you full access to the codebase including PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
This matters because:
WooCommerce is particularly strong for brands already using WordPress for blogging or content hubs. Rather than managing two separate systems, you layer ecommerce onto an existing CMS. This is ideal for content-heavy strategies where editorial content and product pages need to work seamlessly together.
Shopify is a fully hosted platform where Shopify handles hosting, updates, security certificates, and infrastructure. Your Shopify store runs on Shopify’s servers, with Shopify themes and Shopify apps installed via their proprietary ecosystem.
The benefits are clear:
However, Shopify’s model also imposes platform rules. You’ll face restrictions around checkout customisation, server-level access and reliance on Shopify’s development roadmap. For brands needing deep customisation, this can become frustrating. But if you're just starting out and you're not overly tech-savvy, this can be ideal.
Headline prices only tell part of the story. To properly compare Woocommerce vs Shopify pricing in 2026, you need to consider 2–3 year total costs including hosting, apps/extensions, payment fees, and development.
The core WooCommerce plugin is completely free. Your actual WooCommerce costs come from:
| Cost Category | Typical UK Range |
|---|---|
| Web hosting (quality provider) | £25–£100/month |
| Domain registration | \~£10–£20/year |
| Premium themes | \~£40–£120 one-off or annual |
| Paid plugins (as needed) | £0–£500+/year depending on requirements |
Common paid WooCommerce extensions include advanced shipping rules, subscriptions, memberships and multi-currency support. This means you only pay for what you actually need, giving you granular budget control.
Conversely, Shopify uses a subscription model with escalating tiers:
| Plan | Approximate Monthly Cost (2026) |
|---|---|
| Basic Shopify Plan | £25–£30/month |
| Shopify (mid-tier) | £65–£70/month |
| Advanced Shopify Plan | £250–£280/month |
| Shopify Plus (enterprise) | £1,500+/month |
On top of subscriptions, Shopify charges transaction fees of 0.5–2% when merchants don’t use Shopify's own payment portal. Even the transaction Shopify plan at basic level adds these fees.
Furthermore, essential Shopify apps for subscriptions, advanced search, bundles and SEO can quickly add £50–£200+ per month.
For established, higher-volume or multi-store brands, WooCommerce often works out more cost-efficient over time, especially when managed by an agency like us that can rationalise plugins and optimise hosting. Unlike Shopify, there’s no escalating subscription trap as you grow.
Let’s be honest: Shopify usually “feels easier” to non-technical teams, at least initially. But WooCommerce can be made just as user-friendly once configured correctly.
Shopify really excels at guided onboarding. New Shopify users benefit from:
This reduces reliance on technical staff in the early stages. For a solo founder launching their first online business, Shopify makes sense as a starting point.
WooCommerce setup involves WordPress installation, WooCommerce configuration and theme selection. It requires more hands-on work upfront, which is where a WooCommerce Pro Partner really comes in handy.
But once your website is configured...
With a well-designed WooCommerce build from an agency like The Digital Maze, non-technical marketing teams can comfortably manage everything they need. We often hear clients say the WordPress dashboard feels more natural once they’re past the initial setup.
The verdict: Shopify is smoother for a solo founder launching quickly. WooCommerce is ideal when you have (or partner with) technical and marketing support and want fewer long-term platform constraints.
Design freedom directly impacts brand perception and conversion rates. Here’s how both Shopify and WooCommerce compare on creative flexibility.
WooCommerce gives you access to thousands of WooCommerce themes, including both free themes and premium themes. More importantly, you can build fully bespoke themes from scratch, which is something our exceptional custom Web Design team excel in.
At The Digital Maze, we often design custom WooCommerce experiences for sectors like Home & Garden or Lifestyle where visual storytelling, lookbooks and editorial content are key to conversion. These brands need design freedom that generic template-based systems simply can’t provide.
Shopify offers a curated theme store with 200+ Shopify themes featuring reliable, responsive designs. The visual editor makes basic customisation accessible.
However, deeper changes can hit limitations:
For complex UX, unusual product structures, configurators or multi-regional content strategies, WooCommerce’s open architecture gives designers and developers substantially more room to create unique experiences.
Integrations WooCommerce and Shopify both offer extensive ecosystems, but their approaches differ significantly (and so do the costs).
The WooCommerce marketplace offers around 1,000 ecommerce-specific plugins, plus access to tens of thousands of general WordPress websites plugins for SEO, content, automation and performance.
Common integrations The Digital Maze implements include:
Because WooCommerce is open-source, you can install plugins directly from the WordPress repository or build entirely custom integrations for unusual requirements. This is particularly valuable for UK businesses needing tight connections with legacy ERP systems or specialist fulfilment partners.
The Shopify app store contains 8,000+ apps covering marketing, loyalty, subscriptions, B2B functionality and more. Apps are typically easy to install with one-click setup.
The catch is that these apps can quickly add to monthly costs. It’s not unusual for merchants to spend £100–£300/month on apps alone, on top of their Shopify plan subscription.
Shopify’s closed ecosystem also means custom integrations can be harder or more expensive to build. Shopify partners can extend functionality, but you’re ultimately working within Shopify’s constraints.
For most ambitious brands, organic search and content marketing are major growth levers. SEO capabilities matter as much as checkout UX, and sometimes even more.
WordPress’s content-first architecture gives WooCommerce a significant edge for SEO optimisation:
WooCommerce also allows advanced strategies like headless builds, complex content silos and custom schema implementations. And for brands publishing regular buying guides, inspiration pieces and educational content, WooCommerce’s WordPress foundation is genuinely transformative for search engines visibility.
Shopify, meanwhile, offers solid built-in SEO basics:
For more advanced needs, Shopify analytics and SEO apps like SEO Manager or SEOAnt can help. However, some elements remain less customisable than WordPress, including URL patterns, blog flexibility and advanced technical SEO configurations.
Shopify delivers consistent baseline speed across its infrastructure without user intervention. You don’t need to worry about server configuration or caching setup.
WooCommerce performance depends on hosting environment quality, caching implementation and build quality. However, well-optimised WooCommerce sites match or exceed Shopify speeds, and Core Web Vitals (a Google ranking factor) respond well to expert optimisation.
At The Digital Maze, performance optimisation is built into every WooCommerce project. We configure caching, CDNs and image optimisation as standard - plus lots more.
Payment options, transaction fees and international capabilities directly impact your margins. Here’s the practical comparison.
WooCommerce supports virtually any payment gateway:
Multi-currency and multi-gateway flexibility is especially useful for UK and EU retailers selling into Europe, North America, and beyond. You can configure different gateways for different regions without platform restrictions.
Shopify payments is the default gateway with competitive per-transaction fees. However, Shopify offers additional platform fees of 0.5–2% when merchants choose alternative payment gateways. For a business processing £100,000/month through a non-Shopify gateway, that’s an extra £500–£2,000 in monthly fees on top of standard gateway charges.
Shopify supports multiple currencies and markets but with more rigid structures. Some advanced international features are locked behind the advanced Shopify or Shopify Plus tiers.
Complex shipping logic can make or break profitability for ecommerce merchants. Both platforms handle shipping differently.
WooCommerce provides:
For brands with complex post-Brexit UK/EU shipping rules around large items, pallets and VAT, WooCommerce’s extension ecosystem and open codebase make bespoke setups considerably easier.
Shopify offers:
Shopify’s shipping setup is excellent for straightforward operations. However, complex rules often require third-party apps or accept limitations.
As your ecommerce business grows, infrastructure, security and support become critical considerations.
Shopify automatically scales infrastructure as traffic grows. Seasonal spikes, flash sales and viral moments are handled without user intervention. Shopify Plus serves very high-volume merchants with additional features.
WooCommerce scales via more powerful hosting, caching, CDNs and code optimisation. Under expert support and hosting, WooCommerce comfortably handles large UK and international stores with thousands of SKUs and significant traffic spikes.
Both WooCommerce and Shopify can power enterprise-level operations. The difference can be simply who manages the scaling process.
Shopify provides built-in Shopify PCI compliance and SSL, handling all security patching automatically. For merchants who don’t want to think about security, this is valuable peace of mind.
WooCommerce requires managed security via your hosting provider and security plugins like Wordfence. ssl certificate configuration, firewalls, backups and malware scanning need attention. However, WooCommerce’s model offers more control over your security, which can be valuable for sectors with specific regulatory requirements.
Shopify offers 24/7 platform support from the Shopify team for core issues. Response is generally quick for standard problems.
WooCommerce support is distributed between your hosting provider, plugin vendors and agencies. This can feel fragmented but working with an agency like The Digital Maze means you have a dedicated technical partner handling everything from updates to troubleshooting. And as a Pro Partner, we have a dedicated support team at WooCommerce who know everything there is to know about their platform.
The Digital Maze is a Derby-based, full-service digital agency and WooCommerce Pro Partner. We also have extensive Shopify experience and are always happy to provide an honest assessment about which one typically delivers better outcomes for ambitious brands.
Ready to explore which platform fits your business? Book a discovery call to talk through your situation. Our recommendation will be based on your needs and your needs only.
This summary captures our core conclusions for quick reference:
Neil is an experienced SEO Team Lead with 10 years in digital marketing. Before joining the agency, he was SEO Manager at Sports Direct, and has worked across a wide range of industries, from ecommerce to lead generation. He currently leads a team of four skilled SEO professionals, driving strategy and performance across a diverse client portfolio.
Based in Belper, Neil is a dedicated Derby County fan and a keen cricket enthusiast, having previously worked at Derbyshire County Cricket Club. Outside of work, you’ll often find him in the gym or catching up on the latest match.
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