WooCommerce vs Shopify: The Real Platform Differences (2026)

The line between the two platforms

WooCommerce is a plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store you host and maintain yourself. Shopify is a closed, hosted service you pay to rent. That structural split shapes every cost line below, from transaction fees to who patches security holes, and it matters more once a store is doing real revenue rather than testing an idea. If you still need to decide which platform fits your business model in the first place, Shopify or WordPress with AI covers that decision. This guide stays on the mechanics: fees, hosting, and the extension ecosystem.

Transaction fees: where the real gap sits

Shopify's Basic plan charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per online transaction through Shopify Payments. Use a third-party processor instead and Shopify adds an extra 2% platform fee on top of what that processor already charges, a surcharge that drops on the Grow and Advanced plans but stays in place unless you use Shopify Payments. WooCommerce takes no platform fee on any gateway. Its own WooPayments plugin charges 2.9% plus 30 cents, matching Shopify Basic's headline rate, but route payments through Stripe, PayPal, or a regional processor and WooCommerce takes nothing on top of the processor's rate. Run $50,000 a month through a non-Shopify-Payments gateway and that 2% surcharge alone costs about $1,000 a month, money a WooCommerce store on the same processor keeps.

Hosting: a rented platform vs a server you manage

Shopify runs as a closed hosted platform: Shopify handles the servers, PCI compliance, uptime, and security patches, all folded into the subscription price. WooCommerce is self-hosted, so you pick the host, and cost spans $5-a-month shared plans up to $50-plus-a-month managed WooCommerce hosting, with the full picture, hosting plus SSL, backups, and a CDN, landing anywhere from $200 to $20,000 a year based on traffic and uptime needs. Add a premium theme and a handful of paid plugins and a production-ready WooCommerce store often totals $1,800 to $15,000-plus a year. That range gives WooCommerce stores more control over infrastructure spend at the low end, and more responsibility for keeping the server patched and fast at every tier.

The plugin and app ecosystem

Shopify's App Store lists about 8,000 apps. Shopify reviews and approves each one before it goes live in a store. WooCommerce's official marketplace carries 800-plus vetted extensions, a fraction of Shopify's curated count, but WooCommerce inherits WordPress's full library of more than 70,000 plugins, most built for general WordPress sites and adapted for ecommerce rather than built for it first. Shopify apps install inside a locked platform and behave in predictable ways; WooCommerce plugins draw from a far larger but less consistent pool, so testing a new plugin before it touches a live store matters more than it does on Shopify.

Neither platform wins across the board. WooCommerce fits stores with technical staff on hand and a wish to avoid Shopify's payment surcharge. Shopify fits stores that would rather pay one predictable bill than manage a server. We build and migrate stores on both platforms through our Shopify development and WordPress development work, and can model the real cost for your specific catalog and order volume.