Where Shopify wins
If your catalogue is straightforward and your team is small, Shopify removes an entire category of work: hosting, PCI scope, checkout maintenance and platform updates are somebody else's job.
- Fast to launch with a small internal team
- Checkout is hosted, fast and battle-tested
- Strong app ecosystem for shipping, subscriptions and POS
- No server maintenance or update windows
Where WooCommerce wins
WooCommerce wins the moment your business logic stops looking like a normal store. Customer-group pricing, quote-to-order flows, B2B tax rules, deep ERP syncs and content-heavy SEO strategies are all easier when you own the code.
- Full control of data, pricing rules and checkout logic
- No per-transaction platform fee
- Content and SEO live in the same system as the store
- Direct database access for reporting and integrations
The real cost comparison
Shopify's monthly cost is predictable and its transaction fees scale with revenue. WooCommerce shifts the cost to hosting plus maintenance, which is cheaper at volume but only if somebody is genuinely responsible for updates and backups.
A neglected WooCommerce store is the most expensive option of all — it usually ends in a rebuild after a security incident or a broken update.
Migration traps
Whichever direction you move, the risk is not the products — it is the URLs, the customer accounts and the order history.
- Map every old product and category URL to a 301 redirect
- Decide up front whether historical orders move or stay archived
- Customers cannot migrate passwords; plan a reset campaign
- Re-test tax, shipping and discount edge cases with real orders
How we decide with clients
We ask one question first: describe the weirdest order your business has to handle. If Shopify can do it with a stock app, build on Shopify. If the answer needs three apps and a spreadsheet, build on WooCommerce.