Shopify vs WooCommerce for Small Business: 2026 Cost Guide

For most small businesses in 2026, Shopify is the better choice if you want a store running quickly with little technical work, while WooCommerce suits owners who want full control and lower software fees and can manage hosting and updates. Shopify costs more monthly but bundles hosting and security. WooCommerce is free software, but you pay for everything around it.

The right answer depends on three things: your budget, how much time you or your team can give to maintenance, and how you take payments. That last point matters more in India than in the UK or the USA, as explained below.

What is the difference between Shopify and WooCommerce?

Shopify is a hosted platform. You pay a monthly subscription and Shopify runs the servers, security patches, checkout and core updates. You build the store from its admin and extend it with themes and apps.

WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin for WordPress. You install it on your own hosting, so you own the code and the data, and you can change almost anything. The WordPress.org plugin directory lists it with more than 7 million active installations. The trade-off is that you are responsible for hosting, backups, security and keeping WordPress, WooCommerce and every plugin up to date.

How much does Shopify cost in 2026?

We checked Shopify’s official pricing pages for the USA and India on 13 October 2026. Prices below are per month. Yearly billing is cheaper than paying month to month.

Plan	USD, billed monthly	USD, billed yearly	INR, billed monthly	INR, billed yearly	Fee if you use a third-party gateway
Basic	$39	$29	₹1,994	₹1,499	2%
Grow	$105	$79	₹7,447	₹5,599	1%
Advanced	$399	$299	₹30,164	₹22,680	0.6%
Plus	From $2,300	Not listed	From ₹175,000	Not listed	0.2%

Source: Shopify pricing (USD) and Shopify pricing (India), checked 13 October 2026. Shopify changes prices from time to time, so confirm before you sign up.

At the time of writing, Shopify offers a 3-day free trial with no card required. After that, most plans cost $1 a month for the first 3 months on the US page, or ₹20 a month on the Indian page, before standard pricing applies.

On top of the plan, budget for a paid theme if the free ones do not suit you, and for apps. Many useful apps charge their own monthly fee, and these add up faster than most owners expect.

How much does WooCommerce really cost?

The WooCommerce plugin itself is free. What you pay for is hosting, a domain, a theme, paid extensions, security and payment processing. Costs vary widely with the size of the store and the quality of hosting you choose.

Hostinger’s WooCommerce pricing guide, updated in August 2026, gives these ranges for a small store:

• Hosting: about $3 to $25 a month on shared hosting
• Domain: $0 to $20 for the first year
• Theme: $2 to $50 a year
• Plugins and extensions: $2 to $200 a year
• Security: $0 to $100 a year
• Payment processing: 0% to 3% per transaction, depending on the gateway

Treat these as rough ranges from one hosting company, not fixed prices. Individual extensions can cost far more. For example, the official WooCommerce Subscriptions extension is listed at $279 for one year on WooCommerce.com, checked on 13 October 2026. A mid-sized store on a VPS or managed WooCommerce host will often pay much more for hosting than the shared-hosting range above.

The cost people forget is time. Someone has to apply updates, test that plugins still work together, and fix things when they break. If you pay a developer for this, it can outweigh the savings on subscription fees.

Which is easier to use?

Shopify is easier for most beginners. You sign up, pick a theme, add products and connect payments from one admin. There is no server to configure and no software to update, and Shopify provides support directly.

WooCommerce has a steeper start. You need hosting, a WordPress install, a theme and a set of plugins before you can sell. Once set up, the day-to-day product and order screens are straightforward, but problems such as a plugin conflict or a slow server are yours to solve.

Best for: Shopify suits owners who want to spend their time on products and marketing rather than on the website itself.

Shopify vs WooCommerce for SEO

Both platforms can rank well. Search results depend far more on your content, product pages, site speed and links than on the platform name.

Shopify handles several basics for you. According to Shopify’s help centre, every store generates a sitemap.xml file automatically, and you can edit page titles and meta descriptions for products, collections and pages. Its URL structure is fixed, with paths such as /products/ and /collections/, which some SEO teams find limiting.

WooCommerce, running on WordPress, gives you more control over URLs, site structure and technical settings, and WordPress is strong for blogging and content. You will usually add an SEO plugin to manage titles, schema and sitemaps. More control also means more ways to make mistakes, such as duplicate pages from filters or a slow theme.

In practice, a well-built store on either platform can do well in Google. If SEO is central to your plan, read our notes on search engine optimisation before you choose a theme or URL structure.

Taking payments in India: what changes

This is where the comparison differs most by country. Shopify Payments, Shopify’s own gateway, is not available in India. It is available in the UK, the USA and a list of other countries shown on Shopify’s supported countries page. Indian merchants must use a third-party gateway such as Razorpay, PayU or Cashfree.

When you use a third-party gateway on Shopify, Shopify charges its own transaction fee on top of the gateway’s fee. On the Basic plan that is 2% per order, falling to 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Razorpay’s pricing page lists a standard fee of 2% plus GST on domestic cards, netbanking and UPI, checked on 13 October 2026.

A simple example: on a ₹2,000 order on Shopify Basic using Razorpay at standard rates, you would pay about ₹40 to Shopify and about ₹40 plus GST to Razorpay. Over a year of steady sales, that extra Shopify fee is worth calculating before you choose a plan.

WooCommerce does not charge a transaction fee of its own. You pay only your gateway’s fee. WooPayments, WooCommerce’s built-in gateway, is also not available in India, so Indian stores use plugins from gateways such as Razorpay. For UK and US stores, both Shopify Payments and WooPayments are available, which removes most of the extra fee question on Shopify.

Side-by-side comparison

Factor	Shopify	WooCommerce
Software cost	From $29 or ₹1,499 a month on yearly billing	Free plugin
Hosting	Included	Paid separately, from a few dollars a month
Setup effort	Low	Medium to high
Maintenance and security	Handled by Shopify	Your responsibility
Customisation	Good, within Shopify’s limits	Almost unlimited
SEO control	Good basics, fixed URL paths	Full control, needs plugins
Platform transaction fee in India	2%, 1% or 0.6% with third-party gateways, by plan	None
Blogging and content	Basic blog built in	Strong, through WordPress
Support	Direct support from Shopify	Community, host and paid developers

Who should pick Shopify

• New D2C brands that want to launch in days rather than weeks
• Teams without an in-house developer who do not want to manage servers or updates
• Businesses in the UK or USA that can use Shopify Payments and avoid the extra transaction fee
• Brands that plan to sell across several channels, such as social media, marketplaces and a physical shop, from one admin

If you go this way, a clean theme setup and sensible app choices matter more than the plan you start on. Our Shopify development page explains how we approach store builds.

Who should pick WooCommerce

• Businesses that already run a WordPress site with steady content traffic
• Indian stores with high order volumes, where Shopify’s extra transaction fee on third-party gateways becomes significant
• Owners who need unusual product types, custom checkout logic or deep integrations
• Teams with a developer or agency on hand for updates, backups and security

A practical test: list your expected monthly orders, average order value and the apps or extensions you need, then price both options for 12 months. Include developer time for WooCommerce and transaction fees for Shopify. The cheaper option on paper is not always cheaper once those two lines are added.

If you want a second opinion on your numbers, Squarebase offers a free growth audit through our contact page.

Frequently asked questions