Choosing between Shopify and WooCommerce comes down mainly to how much management and freedom you want. Shopify is an e-commerce service with a subscription: Shopify manages the software and provides secure connections, and you work within what the platform allows. WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that you host yourself. It gives you more freedom over technology and web addresses, and more responsibility for hosting, updates and security.
What are the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce?
Shopify and WooCommerce side by side
| Shopify | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | E-commerce service with a subscription | Free plugin for WordPress |
| Hosting | Your shop runs on Shopify; TLS certificates for connected domains are free | You choose a host that meets the server requirements |
| Cost structure | Subscription, apps billed separately, transaction fees with an external payment provider | Hosting, domain, any paid extensions, maintenance |
| Maintenance | Shopify maintains the software | You or your builder keep WordPress, WooCommerce and plugins up to date |
| Flexibility | Within themes, apps and what the platform allows | Customisable through code, themes and plugins |
| Web addresses | Fixed paths such as /products/ and /collections/ | URL structure set by you |
| robots.txt | Default file, editable through robots.txt.liquid | Fully under your control |
| Ownership | Your data sits with Shopify; you use the platform under its terms | Software under the GPL licence on your own hosting |
What does each platform cost?
We give no figures here, because prices change and depend on your plan, country and payment methods. What does differ is how the costs arise.
According to the Shopify Help Center, with Shopify you pay a recurring subscription billed every 30 days, with a discount if you pay annually. The plans are called Basic, Grow and Advanced, plus Shopify Plus, for which you request the price from Shopify. If you use an external payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, you pay transaction fees to Shopify on top of that provider’s fees. Apps are billed separately.
WooCommerce calls the core plugin free. You do need WordPress and hosting that meets the server requirements, such as HTTPS and a current version of PHP and the database. The costs are in hosting, any paid extensions and the time spent on updates and security.
What a complete online shop costs, including design, content and migration, is covered in how much does a website cost?
How much control do you have over SEO?
On both platforms you can handle the basics yourself. The difference is how far you can go.
Shopify handles canonical tags, a sitemap.xml, a robots.txt and product schema in themes by default, among other things, according to the Shopify Help Center. You edit titles, descriptions, web addresses and alt text yourself. You can change the robots.txt with a robots.txt.liquid file, but Shopify calls that an unsupported customisation and warns that using it incorrectly can cost you all your traffic. The /products/ and /collections/ paths are fixed.
WooCommerce runs on WordPress, where you choose the structure of your web addresses yourself through the permalink settings. You have access to the code and the server, so you can change everything. The other side is that you have to set up and check more yourself, often with plugins.
More detail per platform: Shopify SEO and WooCommerce SEO.
What do you still have to do yourself on either platform?
Whichever platform you choose, part of the work does not move to the software. You write the product descriptions, specifications, size charts and category explanations yourself. A theme puts that information neatly into a template, but it does not come up with it. The same goes for the questions customers ask before they buy: you answer those on your own pages. What that involves is covered in product pages for Google and AI assistants.
Also check what themes, apps and plugins add to your pages. On Shopify, according to Shopify, the theme outputs product schema; a review app or SEO app can add a block of its own next to it. On WooCommerce, plugins for SEO, reviews or feeds often add their own markup. Two blocks with different data for the same product make it unclear which value applies. How to check this is explained in which structured data does an online shop need?
On both platforms, keep a list of the apps or plugins you use and what for. An extension nobody uses any more is still code on your pages and can add something you do not expect.
Who owns what?
According to WordPress.org, WordPress is licensed under GPLv2 or later. You install the software on hosting you choose, and you can move that hosting too. With Shopify you use a service: your shop and data are on its platform and you follow its terms. You cannot take the Shopify software to another host.
On both platforms, agree that the domain, admin accounts and payment accounts are in your own company’s name, not the builder’s.
Which platform suits whom?
Shopify often suits you if you:
- want to start quickly without arranging hosting and updates yourself;
- have a manageable range that fits the standard structure;
- would rather pay monthly for a managed platform than spend hours on maintenance;
- need little customisation in the checkout or URL structure.
WooCommerce often suits you if you:
- already have a WordPress website with a lot of content;
- need custom work in product logic, pricing or integrations;
- want full control over the server, the code and the web addresses;
- have someone, in-house or external, who keeps up with updates and security.
If you are unsure, start with your range, your processes and who will manage the shop after launch. The platform follows from those answers.
How do you switch to the other platform?
A switch is a website migration. When you move from WooCommerce to Shopify, your web addresses change, and according to the Shopify Help Center you can only create redirects from URLs that no longer exist. So you need a complete redirect map.
Switching from WooCommerce to Shopify
- InventoryList every URL in your current shop: products, categories, blog posts and pages with traffic.
- DataAccording to Shopify, products and customers move with the Store Migration app from CSV exports. Orders need a third-party app; passwords cannot be moved.
- Redirect mapLink every old URL to its new one. The paths become /products/ and /collections/.
- TestBefore launch, check that titles, copy, photos and structured data came across.
- LaunchSwitch on the redirects. Shopify only creates them from URLs that no longer exist.
- Follow-upTrack in Search Console which old URLs still return errors and fix them.
How to approach that is described in redesigning your website without losing search visibility.
How Outseen works with both platforms
For online shops, Outseen has a standard approach on Shopify and WooCommerce; we discuss other systems beforehand. For a new online shop or a platform switch, the SEO and GEO basics are part of the project and the migration is in the quote. More is on website development and on our SEO page.
What does this mean for your online shop?
Neither platform gives you better rankings in Google or more mentions in AI answers by itself. Your choice mainly decides how much you manage yourself and how much freedom you have. So answer these questions first and set the answers against the comparison above:
Answer these before you choose
- Who maintains the shop after launch, and how much time is there for it?
- Does your range fit a structure of products and collections?
- Do you need custom work in pricing, product logic or links to your stock or accounting system?
- Do you already have a WordPress site with a lot of content that has to stay?
- Which payment methods do you want to offer, and through which payment provider?
- Are the domain, admin accounts and payment accounts in your own company’s name?
If you already have a shop that is doing well, weigh up the switch itself too. A migration takes time and can cost traffic for a while if the redirects are not right.