Shopify vs WooCommerce in 2026: Costs, Fees and Which to Choose

Quick answer: Choose Shopify if you want to sell quickly without running a server: you pay a monthly plan that includes hosting, security and checkout, and you pay extra transaction fees if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments. Choose WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, have a developer to maintain it, or sell at volume in a country where Shopify Payments is not available, because WooCommerce itself is free and adds no transaction fee. Both can rank well in Google; the store's structure and content decide that, not the platform.

Shopify and WooCommerce run millions of online stores between them, and they solve the same problem in opposite ways. Shopify is a hosted service you rent. WooCommerce is free software you install on a WordPress site you host and maintain yourself. That one difference decides most of what follows: what you pay, who fixes things when they break, and how much you can change.

We build Shopify stores at Loop2Tech, so read our view with that in mind. We also tell clients when WooCommerce fits them better, and this guide sets out when that is.

Shopify vs WooCommerce at a glance

What Shopify costs in 2026

On 3 November 2026, Shopify's pricing page for Pakistan listed these plans in US dollars. Prices vary by country, so check the page for yours.

• Basic: US$25 a month, or US$22 a month billed yearly.
• Grow: US$65 a month, or US$58 a month billed yearly.
• Advanced: US$399 a month, or US$359 a month billed yearly.
• Plus: from US$2,300 a month.

New stores get a 3-day free trial, then pay US$1 a month for three months. There is no setup fee. Hosting, an SSL certificate and unlimited bandwidth are included.

Two costs come on top. The first is apps: most stores add a few for reviews, upsells or shipping, and many charge monthly. The second is the third-party transaction fee. If you take card payments through any provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify charges a percentage of each order. Shopify's Pakistan pricing page listed it on 30 October 2026 as 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Manual methods such as cash on delivery carry no such fee.

What WooCommerce costs in 2026

WooCommerce is free to download and use. What you pay for is everything around it:

• Hosting: a store needs reliable hosting. Cheap shared plans exist, but a store with real traffic usually needs a better plan or managed WordPress hosting, and that is often the largest ongoing cost.
• Domain and SSL: a domain is a yearly cost; many hosts include an SSL certificate.
• Theme and extensions: free themes work, but most stores buy a premium theme and paid extensions for subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping or product filters. Many are sold as yearly licences.
• Payments: WooCommerce adds no transaction fee of its own. Its own gateway, WooPayments, has no setup or monthly fee and charged 2.90% + US$0.30 per card payment in the US on 3 November 2026, according to WooCommerce's fee documentation. WooPayments is available in 38 countries; Pakistan is not one of them, so Pakistani stores use a local gateway's plugin instead.
• Maintenance: WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme, every plugin and the server's PHP version all need updating, testing and backing up. You do it yourself or pay a developer to. Our monthly website maintenance checklist shows what that involves.

So WooCommerce is cheaper to start and can be cheaper to run, but only if you count your own time, or a developer's, at zero. For a small store without a developer, Shopify's plan often works out cheaper once maintenance is priced in.

Payments: the deciding factor in Pakistan

Shopify Payments is not available to merchants based in Pakistan. Every card or wallet payment on a Pakistani Shopify store goes through a third-party gateway, so it pays the gateway's rate plus Shopify's third-party transaction fee. On Basic, PKR 1,000,000 of monthly card sales means PKR 20,000 a month to Shopify before the gateway takes its cut. Our guide to Shopify payment gateways in Pakistan compares the providers and their fees.

WooCommerce has no equivalent fee. On high card volume, that difference can outweigh everything else in this comparison. Two things narrow it:

• Most first orders in Pakistan are still cash on delivery, which carries no third-party fee on Shopify either. Both platforms support cash on delivery.
• Moving from Basic to Grow halves the fee, and the plan difference pays for itself once card sales are high enough. Our Shopify cost guide for Pakistan works through the numbers.

In countries where Shopify Payments is available, the comparison changes: Shopify charges no extra transaction fee when you use it, and its card rates are listed on the pricing page for your country.

Shopify vs WooCommerce for SEO

Neither platform ranks a store by itself. What ranks is a clear structure, fast pages, useful category and product content, and links from other sites. Each platform makes some of that easier and some of it harder.

• Shopify handles the basics for you: a sitemap, canonical tags, editable titles and descriptions, and fast hosting. Its URLs are fixed, with every product under /products/ and every category under /collections/, and you cannot remove those prefixes. Apps are the main speed risk, because each one can add scripts to every page.
• WooCommerce gives you full control of URLs, templates and the server, and SEO plugins add titles, schema and sitemaps. That control cuts both ways: speed depends on your host and your plugins, and a careless plugin or theme can slow the whole site or create duplicate pages.

On both platforms, collection or category pages are where most store traffic is won. Our guides to collection page SEO and the Shopify SEO checklist cover what to do once you have picked one.

When WooCommerce is the better choice

• You already run a WordPress site with a lot of content, and you want to add a shop without moving everything.
• You have a developer, in-house or on retainer, who will keep the site updated and secure.
• You sell at high card volume in a country without Shopify Payments, and the transaction fee would cost more than the maintenance.
• You need custom logic at the checkout or in the product data that Shopify's rules do not allow.

When Shopify is the better choice

• You want to launch in weeks and spend your time on products and marketing, not on servers and updates.
• Your team is small and nobody wants to be responsible for security patches.
• You plan to sell on social media, marketplaces and in person as well as on your site, from one stock count.
• You want a checkout that is maintained and tested for you.

If you are deciding between a custom-built site and a platform more generally, our comparison of Laravel and WordPress for business websites covers the same trade-off for sites that are not stores.

Switching later

You are not locked in either way. Products, customers and orders can be moved from WooCommerce to Shopify and back. The risk in any move is search traffic: if old product and category addresses are not redirected to the new ones, rankings drop. Plan the redirect map before launch, not after. Our guide to website redesign cost explains what that work adds to a quote.

Where Loop2Tech fits

Loop2Tech builds Shopify stores from Karachi for brands in Pakistan, the Gulf, the UK and the US, and moves stores from WooCommerce to Shopify with their redirects in place. Our prices are fixed and published: a store setup on a premium theme is US$650, and a custom Online Store 2.0 store is US$1,800. See our Shopify prices and our Shopify development service, or tell us about your store and we will say honestly which platform suits it.

Frequently asked questions

Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?

WooCommerce is free software, so it is cheaper to start. Once you add hosting, a premium theme, paid extensions and someone to maintain the site, a small store often costs about the same or more than a Shopify plan. WooCommerce is usually cheaper at high card volume in countries without Shopify Payments, because it adds no transaction fee.

Does WooCommerce charge transaction fees?

WooCommerce charges no transaction fee of its own. Your payment provider charges its rate on each payment. WooPayments, WooCommerce's own gateway, charged 2.90% + US$0.30 per card payment in the US on 3 November 2026, with no monthly fee.

Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for SEO?

Neither is better for SEO on its own. Shopify handles sitemaps, canonical tags and hosting speed for you but fixes your URL structure. WooCommerce gives full control of URLs and templates but leaves speed and technical setup to you. Store structure, content and links decide rankings on both.

Can I use Shopify in Pakistan?

Yes. Pakistani merchants can run Shopify stores and accept payments through local third-party gateways and cash on delivery. Shopify Payments is not available in Pakistan, so Shopify charges a third-party transaction fee on gateway payments, listed at 2% on the Basic plan.

Can I move from WooCommerce to Shopify without losing rankings?

Yes, if every old product, category and page address is redirected to its new Shopify address with a 301 redirect at launch. Rankings fall when old addresses return errors, so the redirect map should be built and tested before the switch.