Is Shopify worth it? Shopify vs WooCommerce, honestly

Both of these will sell things perfectly well. The difference isn't really features — it's what happens on a Tuesday afternoon eighteen months from now, when something breaks and somebody has to deal with it. That's the question worth deciding on.

The honest summary

Shopify is a product you rent. WooCommerce is software you run. Neither is better; they fail in different directions, and the right answer depends almost entirely on who's looking after the store day to day.

So, is Shopify worth it?

For most small Australian retailers, yes, if two things are true: you sell standard products at set prices, and nobody in the business wants to look after software. Then the monthly fee buys you hosting, security, updates and a checkout that works, which on WooCommerce you pay for in other ways, mostly in someone's time.

Here's what it costs. On Shopify's Australian pricing page today, Basic is $56 a month ($42 a month if you pay yearly) and Grow is $149 ($114 yearly). Online card payments through Shopify Payments start at 1.7% + 30c on Basic. If you use a different payment provider, Shopify adds its own fee on top: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow. Paid apps and a theme come on top of that, and those add up faster than the plan fee does.

It's not worth it in three situations:

• You don't really sell online. If every job starts with a quote, you probably don't need a store at all. We recently took WooCommerce off Townsend Joinery's site for exactly that reason. Made-to-measure timber windows don't go in a cart, so a quote form does the job without the upkeep.
• Your products or pricing are unusual. Trade accounts, made-to-order options or odd freight rules mean paying for apps or custom work to make Shopify do what WooCommerce can do out of the box.
• Content is the main way people find you. If search traffic from articles and guides drives the sales, WooCommerce gives you a stronger content side on WordPress.

When it is worth it, it can be worth moving to. Aussie Car Hoists moved from WooCommerce to Shopify. It sells hoists with the prices on the page, and freight is quoted through the carrier rather than guessed. The rest of this post explains how to tell which side of the line you're on.

Prices as listed on shopify.com/au/pricing on 9 October 2026, in AUD. Shopify changes them from time to time.

Where Shopify wins

It stays up, and it isn't your problem

Hosting, security patching, PCI compliance, checkout — all handled. You cannot break a Shopify checkout with a bad update, because you don't control it. For a business without technical support on hand, this is worth a great deal.

Checkout quality

Shopify's checkout is genuinely excellent and heavily optimised. Matching it on WooCommerce takes real work.

Predictable running cost

A monthly fee plus transaction costs. Higher than self-hosting at small scale, but you know what it is.

Where WooCommerce wins

You own the whole thing

Data, templates, checkout logic, the lot. If you need the store to do something unusual — trade pricing, odd shipping rules, an integration with a system nobody's heard of — you can simply build it.

Content and commerce together

It's WordPress, so the store and a serious content operation live in one place. For businesses where search traffic drives the sales, that matters.

Cost at scale

No per-transaction platform fee. At volume the maths shifts, though hosting a busy WooCommerce store properly is not the cheap option people expect.

The real deciding questions

1. Who patches it? WooCommerce needs someone maintaining WordPress, plugins and PHP versions. If the answer is "nobody, really", pick Shopify.
2. How weird are your products? Simple catalogue, standard shipping — Shopify. Trade accounts, made-to-order, complex variants — Woo will fight you less.
3. How much does content matter? If organic search is the plan, Woo's content side is a genuine advantage.
4. What's the exit plan? Getting off Shopify is more work than getting off Woo. Not a reason to avoid it — just worth knowing before you're three years in.

What we'd actually say

For most small Australian retailers with a straightforward catalogue and no in-house technical help, Shopify removes an entire category of problem and we'd recommend it without hesitation. For a business with unusual trade requirements, heavy content ambitions, or an existing WordPress site doing real work, WooCommerce is the better foundation — provided somebody is genuinely committed to maintaining it.

What we'd avoid is choosing on price alone. The cheap option is the one that doesn't need rescuing in two years, and that's rarely the one with the smallest monthly fee.

If you've landed on Shopify and the next question is how the store actually gets built, we've written up our approach to themes — version control, automated checks, metafields, and moving a catalogue across from WooCommerce.

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