WooCommerce or Shopify: which to choose for your online store

01What each one is

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce platform that runs on WordPress. You need your own hosting and, according to its official website, you own your site, your code and your data. It has a marketplace of extensions to add features, and lets you connect its payments system or the provider you already use.

Shopify is a platform for creating and running a store that includes themes, an app store, its own payments system and sales channels (web, physical point of sale, social media). It runs the infrastructure itself and is paid for through plans with a monthly fee.

Put another way: with WooCommerce you build your store on a website you control; with Shopify you rent a store that is already set up.

02A comparison on what really matters

We give no prices because they change: always check each platform’s official pages before deciding.

03Where the cost of each one sits

The costs are not the same: they appear in different places.

• WooCommerce: hosting, domain, theme or design, paid extensions, maintenance time and the fees of the payment gateway you choose.
• Shopify: the plan fee, paid apps, a theme if you do not use a free one, and payment fees. Shopify’s own pricing page states that third-party transaction fees may apply when you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, and that the percentage depends on the plan.

A common mistake is to compare only the monthly fee. Add up the time too, the extensions or apps you will need, and who takes care of keeping the store up to date.

04Payments and invoicing in Spain

Shopify Payments is listed among the supported countries in Shopify’s official documentation, Spain included. Even so, before choosing, check which payment methods you want (card, Bizum, bank transfer, cash on delivery) and whether the platform or an extension supports them in your case.

In WooCommerce you can connect the WooCommerce payments system or other providers. On both platforms, taxes, invoices and terms of sale should be reviewed with your accountant: we do not give tax advice here.

05Design, SEO and speed

Neither guarantees rankings. Google recommends the same for any store: useful, original content, descriptive and non-duplicated titles, crawlable links and a good page experience with acceptable Core Web Vitals. That depends more on how the store is built and maintained than on the platform.

Work the product pages well, with your own descriptions, light images and clear price and delivery details. And measure performance with the Core Web Vitals guide: in stores, an excess of apps or plugins is often the cause of slowness.

06Which suits you, depending on your case

Shopify usually fits better when…

• You want to sell soon and would rather not deal with the technical side.
• Your catalogue and processes are relatively standard.
• You value the platform handling infrastructure and updates.
• You will also sell on social media or at a physical point of sale from the same platform.

WooCommerce usually fits better when…

• You already have, or want, a WordPress website with content, a blog or services, and the store is one part of it.
• You need deep customisation of processes, prices or forms.
• You want to control the code and data and be able to move them to another provider.
• You have someone to handle maintenance, or you hire it.

07Maintenance: the part that gets forgotten

A store is a system that takes money, so it cannot be left without updates. With WooCommerce, the official WordPress documentation recommends always running the latest version, removing plugins you do not use, installing only from trusted sources and taking backups while checking that they can be restored.

With Shopify, a good share of that load falls to the platform, but reviewing apps, orders, products and content is still yours. If you opt for WooCommerce and want to delegate this, there is the website maintenance service. And if you are torn between WordPress and other options, see WordPress or a custom website.