Shopify vs WooCommerce
We build on both and we migrate between them in both directions. This is the comparison we actually give clients on a scoping call, including where WooCommerce wins.
Choose Shopify if the store is your primary revenue channel and you would rather spend your time selling than maintaining. Choose WooCommerce if you already run a content-heavy WordPress site, need total structural control, or have developer capacity in-house.
Side by side
| Shopify | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting & maintenance | Fully managed. Shopify handles uptime, PCI compliance, security patching and scaling. | Yours. You choose the host, and you own updates, backups, security patches and downtime. |
| True cost | Predictable monthly plan plus apps. Higher floor, far fewer surprises. | Cheap to start, unpredictable later — hosting, plugins, a developer on call, and the cost of an unpatched vulnerability. |
| Checkout | Shopify's checkout is the most tested in ecommerce. Not customisable below Plus, which is a real constraint. | Fully customisable, and fully your responsibility to make convert and stay secure. |
| Speed | Fast by default on a well-built theme. Slows down through app bloat rather than architecture. | Can be very fast or very slow. Depends entirely on hosting, plugin discipline and how the theme was built. |
| SEO control | Strong out of the box. Limited URL structure control — /products/ and /collections/ are fixed. | Total control over URLs, schema and rendering. WordPress remains the stronger content platform. |
| Scale | Handles traffic spikes without you thinking about it. Plus takes it further with B2B and multi-store. | Scales with engineering effort and infrastructure spend. There is no ceiling, but you pay for the climb. |
| Apps & extensions | Large, curated app store. Quality is generally high, subscription costs accumulate. | Enormous plugin ecosystem, wildly variable quality. Conflicts between plugins are a common failure mode. |
| Who maintains it | Shopify, mostly. You maintain your theme and apps. | You, entirely. This is the single biggest hidden cost and the one most often underestimated. |
Which one is actually right for you
Pick Shopify if…
- The store is your main revenue channel and downtime is expensive
- You do not have a developer on retainer and do not want to need one
- You are running paid acquisition and need checkout conversion to be a solved problem
- You expect traffic spikes — drops, launches, a TV or press feature
- You want to sell across markets and currencies without building it yourself
Pick WooCommerce if…
- You already have a substantial WordPress site with real content authority
- You need URL structures or templating Shopify simply does not allow
- Your catalogue or pricing logic is unusual enough that Shopify's model fights you
- You have in-house developer capacity and would rather own the stack
- Your margins are thin enough that per-transaction fees genuinely matter
If your situation is in the right-hand column, we will tell you so on the call. We would rather lose the project than move you onto the wrong platform.
Moving from WooCommerce to Shopify
This is the most common migration we run. The technical part — products, customers, order history — is routine. The part that decides whether it goes well is SEO: WooCommerce and Shopify use different URL structures, so every product and category URL changes. Without a complete URL map and 301 plan written before any data moves, a migration can cost months of rankings.
How our migrations workQuestions we get asked
Is WooCommerce actually cheaper than Shopify?
At the start, almost always. Over three years, usually not. WooCommerce has no licence fee, but you pay for hosting that can handle ecommerce traffic, a security and backup regime, premium plugins with their own renewals, and developer time whenever something breaks or a plugin update conflicts. Shopify's cost is higher and far more predictable. The honest framing is that WooCommerce trades money for your time and risk — which is a good trade if you have the capacity and a bad one if you do not.
Will migrating to Shopify hurt our SEO?
It will if it is done carelessly, and this is where most botched migrations go wrong. The URL structures differ, so every product and collection URL changes. We build a complete URL map and 301 redirect plan before any data moves, preserve title tags and meta descriptions, rebuild internal linking, and monitor Search Console closely for the first several weeks. Done properly, rankings dip briefly and recover. Done without a redirect plan, they do not.
Can we keep our WordPress blog and move only the store?
Yes, and for content-heavy brands it is often the right answer. You can run the storefront on Shopify and keep WordPress on a subdirectory or subdomain for content. A subdirectory is generally better for SEO but is harder to configure; a subdomain is simpler and slightly weaker. We will tell you which is worth it for your specific traffic profile rather than defaulting to one.
We're on WooCommerce and it's slow. Is Shopify automatically faster?
Not automatically, no. Shopify removes the hosting variable, which is often the cause on WooCommerce, but a Shopify store loaded with twenty apps and a page-builder theme can be just as slow. Speed comes from build discipline on either platform. If your WooCommerce store is slow, it is worth diagnosing why before assuming a migration fixes it — sometimes the answer is better hosting and plugin cleanup, and we will say so.
Not sure which fits your business?
Send us your store URL or your brief. We will come back with a written view — including which platform we would actually put you on and why.