Shopify vs WooCommerce: Costs, Card Fees and Ownership Compared

Shopify and WooCommerce are the two platforms most UK small businesses end up choosing between for an online shop. Shopify is a hosted service you rent by the month. WooCommerce is free software that turns a WordPress website into a shop you own. This guide compares them on real UK costs, card fees, ease of use, upkeep, flexibility and ownership, with worked examples at two sales volumes, so you can see which one fits how you sell.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: the short answer

Choose Shopify if you want to run the shop yourself with as little technical upkeep as possible, and you are happy to pay a monthly fee and work within its system. Choose WooCommerce if you want to own the site outright, keep card fees as low as possible, sell alongside a content rich website, or need the shop to do something a standard template cannot. WooCommerce needs looking after, so it suits businesses with a developer or a care plan behind them.

What is the main difference between Shopify and WooCommerce?

Ownership. Shopify is a hosted platform: Shopify runs the software and the hosting, and you pay a monthly subscription to use them. WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress: you install it on your own hosting, so you own the site, the design and the data, and you choose who hosts it and who maintains it.

Both are big, established platforms. WooCommerce has more than seven million active installations, according to its WordPress.org listing. Shopify runs on 5.3% of all websites, according to W3Techs in October 2026. Neither is a risky choice.

How much does Shopify cost in the UK?

Shopify’s main UK plans, as listed on its pricing page on 19 October 2026:

On top of the plan, many shops pay for a theme (Shopify lists 24 free themes and well over a thousand paid ones) and a handful of apps, which are usually monthly subscriptions. Check at checkout whether VAT is added to the plan price.

How much does WooCommerce cost?

The WooCommerce plugin itself is free. What you pay for is everything around it:

• Hosting. A WordPress site needs a host. For a shop, pay for decent hosting rather than the cheapest, because speed and reliability affect sales. Our guide to website hosting costs sets out the typical range.
• A domain name. The same on any platform.
• Paid extensions, if you need them. Many features are free. Some official extensions are paid yearly: WooCommerce Subscriptions, for example, is £213 a year.
• Card processing. Paid to your payment provider, not to WooCommerce. See the next section.
• Build and upkeep. Someone has to set it up, and someone has to keep WordPress, WooCommerce and its plugins updated and backed up.

For what a professionally built shop costs on either platform, see our guide to ecommerce website costs.

Which has lower card fees?

WooCommerce, usually, because you choose the payment provider and no platform fee is added on top. Published UK rates on 19 October 2026:

Apple Pay and Google Pay run through these providers, so they are available on both platforms. The Canterbury watch dealer we moved off a hosted platform this year, onto a custom built shop it owns, takes orders through Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. You can read how that project went.

What does each cost at two sales volumes?

A worked example using standard UK cards, £50 orders, yearly billing, Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments, and WooCommerce with Stripe. WooCommerce hosting is left out because it varies, so add your hosting to that column.

The gap grows with your sales, because Shopify Basic’s card rate is higher than Stripe’s standard rate. Moving to Shopify Grow lowers the card rate but raises the plan fee, so at £10,000 a month it works out at about the same £269. On WooCommerce, the gap pays for hosting and upkeep. Apps on Shopify and paid extensions on WooCommerce can shift the numbers either way, so price up the specific features you need.

Which is easier to use?

Shopify, at the start. You sign up, pick a theme, add products and take payments without touching hosting, updates or security. Its admin is built around orders, and its mobile app lets you run the shop from your phone.

WooCommerce has a steeper start, because someone has to set up the hosting, the theme and the payments. Once built well, day to day running is just as manageable. On the shops we hand over, owners add products, change prices, mark items sold and dispatch orders with tracking, all from their phone.

Which needs more upkeep?

WooCommerce. WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and every plugin get regular updates, and on a shop those updates need doing promptly and testing, because a broken checkout costs money by the hour. Backups need to run and be checked. That is the real cost of ownership, and it is why most WooCommerce shops have a developer or a care plan. Our guides on WordPress maintenance packages and backing up a WordPress site explain what that involves.

Shopify handles updates and security for you. Its upkeep is different rather than absent: apps change, themes need updating, and access has to be managed. On one client’s Shopify store, we were locked out of the theme files for over a week because their account kept giving us the wrong staff role. We worked it out through Shopify’s live chat and told the client exactly which role to set. Small things like that are part of running any platform.

Which is more flexible?

WooCommerce. Because it is open source and runs on your own hosting, it can be changed to do almost anything: custom product options, unusual pricing, trade accounts, bookings, memberships, or a shop that sits inside a large content site. Shopify’s thousands of apps cover most needs, but you are always working within what Shopify allows, and each app adds a subscription.

Which is better for SEO?

Both can rank well. WooCommerce gives you full control over every page, web address and piece of code, and WordPress is strong for content, so it suits shops that will grow through guides and articles as well as product pages. Shopify covers the essentials but has some fixed web address patterns you cannot change. In practice, product descriptions, page titles, images and speed decide rankings far more than the platform does. Our guide to improving WordPress speed covers the main lever on WooCommerce.

Shopify vs WooCommerce at a glance

What we recommend

We build shops on WordPress, so weigh this accordingly. We recommend it because our clients own what they pay for, we take no fee on their sales beyond the standard Stripe and PayPal charges, and the shop can be shaped around how they actually sell. We also look after the updates, which removes WooCommerce’s main drawback.

If you want to run everything yourself with no developer involved, Shopify is a good platform and we will tell you so. If you are also weighing Squarespace, read our Squarespace vs Shopify comparison, and for the wider platform picture see Wix vs WordPress vs Squarespace. Whatever you pick, our online shop audit findings show the checkout mistakes to avoid.

How we put this together

Plan prices, card rates and extension prices come from Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe and PayPal’s own UK pages, checked on 19 October 2026. The worked examples are our own arithmetic from those figures. Usage figures are from WordPress.org and W3Techs. The Shopify access problem and the watch dealer project are our own work.

The short version

Shopify is simpler to start and has no upkeep, but you pay a monthly fee and higher card rates for that. WooCommerce costs less per sale and you own it, but it needs looking after. If you are not sure which fits, tell us what you sell and we will give you a straight answer.

Sources

• Shopify pricing (UK): plans, Shopify Payments rates and third party provider fees, checked 19 October 2026.
• WooCommerce on WordPress.org: free plugin, active installations.
• WooPayments fees: UK card rates.
• WooCommerce Subscriptions: example paid extension price.
• Stripe pricing (UK): UK, European and international card rates.
• PayPal UK business fees: standard domestic rate.
• W3Techs, usage of content management systems: Shopify’s share of websites, October 2026.