Shopify versus WooCommerce

Feature comparisons between these two are mostly noise. Both run substantial Australian stores, both handle variants and freight and discounts, and where one lacks something an app or a plugin fills the gap.

The real difference is who is responsible when something breaks. Shopify is hosted: the company runs the servers, patches the software, holds the card-data obligations around its own checkout and keeps the store online, and you rent that monthly. WooCommerce is a plugin for self-hosted WordPress: you or your supplier choose the server, apply the updates, hold the backups, watch the security and answer for the consequences.

That is a decision about which obligations your business carries, and it should be made deliberately rather than inherited from whoever quoted first.

Disclosure, before the opinions start

This site carries no affiliate links, no sponsored placements and no referral arrangement with either platform named on this page — the full position is at commercial relationships. Nobody bought a position in this comparison. There is no neutral scoring process behind it, and what follows is one practitioner’s opinion, exposed so you can reject it.

There is no neutral scoring process here. No weighted criteria, no score out of ten. A scorecard from anyone with a build business is arithmetic arranged to reach a conclusion already held. This is one practitioner’s opinion with the reasoning exposed, so you can reject it.

Measured demand for the question, not a measure of merit: 90 searches a month in Australia, keyword difficulty 2, measured 31 July 2026 in research/national-volume-au.json.

Who Shopify and WooCommerce are each genuinely for

Shopify suits a business that wants to sell rather than run software. If nobody on the team wants a relationship with a server, if uptime during a sale campaign is worth more than configurability, or if you want the platform’s obligations to be the platform’s problem, Shopify is doing something valuable and charging for it.

WooCommerce suits a business with an unusual requirement, or an existing WordPress site with real content behind it. Complicated pricing rules, trade and retail customers on one catalogue, products that are really bookings or services, deep integration with software you already run. It also suits anyone for whom data location and control of the stack are requirements rather than preferences — WordPress’s plugin ecosystem gives WooCommerce a depth of customisation Shopify’s theme editor does not attempt to match, at the cost of someone having to manage that customisation over time.

One question resolves most cases: name the person who will apply updates and check backups every month, and the budget line that pays them. If you cannot, Shopify is the correct answer regardless of anything else here.

Cost shape: subscription, plugins, transaction fees and shipping

Shopify is a subscription by tier, plus payment processing on every order, plus an additional transaction fee if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, its in-house one, plus apps. Apps grow quietly: subscriptions, loyalty, reviews, advanced shipping calculators, accounting sync. Each solves a real problem, each recurs monthly, and the combined total commonly exceeds the subscription itself.

WooCommerce is free as software and almost never free as a store. You pay for hosting good enough to run a database-driven shop under load, for plugins (WooCommerce’s word for what Shopify calls apps) that mostly renew annually, for backups, for a security service, and for the labour to maintain it. There is no per-order transaction fee beyond what the payment provider itself charges, and that cut applies either way.

The shape is a swap: Shopify turns maintenance and risk into a predictable monthly fee that scales with sales, WooCommerce turns it into lower platform cost and a lumpier responsibility.

Check current prices on each vendor’s own site rather than any figure on a page like this, and confirm whether your build quote is inclusive or exclusive of GST, because most Australian quotes do not say so. The full ongoing picture is on ecommerce website packages.

The maintenance and security obligation

This deserves its own section because it is the actual decision.

A self-hosted store is software running in public with a payment form on it. The platform, the commerce plugin, every extension and the language version underneath need patching, and the update that fixes a vulnerability is the one that occasionally breaks a checkout, which is why it needs a staging environment and someone to test it. Backups need to exist and to have been restored at least once, or they are a belief rather than a backup.

The security exposure is specific rather than theoretical. Attackers target checkout pages on self-hosted stores to skim card details as they are typed, and that works even when card data never touches your server, because the page collecting it is yours. A gateway that keeps card data off your infrastructure reduces your obligations without removing your responsibility for the page’s integrity. On Shopify that surface belongs to Shopify.

If a store is going to be neglected, put it on the hosted platform. That advice costs the author’s agency work and it is still the right advice.

Ownership and exit: leaving Shopify versus leaving WooCommerce

Shopify exports products, customers and orders as CSV, and you can download your theme. What does not leave is the checkout. The address structure is enforced, so every product and category address you have printed or linked carries Shopify’s pattern, and moving means a redirect map or breaking all of them. App data belongs to the apps, each with its own export or none.

WooCommerce’s exit is stronger for an unglamorous reason. You hold the database. Orders, customers, products, historical revenue and the relationships between them are yours in full, on infrastructure you chose, and moving host is a copy rather than a migration. Nobody can suspend your store.

Two qualifications keep that honest. Portability belongs to the platform, not automatically to your build: a store assembled from a page builder and a dozen extensions carries all of that with it, and rebuilding without them is a project. And no platform exports customer passwords, so a migration either way ends with a password reset email to your entire customer list.

Either way, register the .com.au yourself with an auDA-accredited Australian registrar in your own account, and ask your payment provider whether stored card tokens transfer if you move, because some will move them between their own accounts on request and some will not. That decides whether returning customers re-enter their cards. The domain rules are on Australian domain eligibility.

Australian GST configuration

Both handle GST once configured, and it is configuration rather than a default.

On Shopify, set the store region to Australia, decide whether prices include tax, and check the tax setting on each product rather than assuming, since a product marked as not taxable will quietly under-collect for as long as it sells. Tax overrides are where GST-free lines are handled.

On WooCommerce, two separate settings get conflated: whether prices are entered inclusive of tax, and whether they are displayed inclusive of tax. Set a standard rate row for Australia, and put GST-free products in a zero-rate tax class rather than switching tax off, so reports still show them.

On both, display prices inclusive of GST for consumer sales, because Australian law requires a consumer to see a single total price. Decide how GST applies to freight in your circumstances, and confirm order confirmations work as tax invoices carrying your business registration. Then have your accountant check a real test order before launch. GST is your obligation as the trader, whoever configured the store. The general shape of it is on GST on web design.

Shopify or WooCommerce: who should choose which

Choose Shopify if selling is the job and running software is not, if nobody owns maintenance, or if you want one accountable party when the checkout fails at nine on a Saturday morning.

Choose WooCommerce if you have a requirement the hosted platform cannot express, if the shop belongs inside a larger content site, if Australian data location matters, or if you have a maintenance arrangement that will still exist in two years.

What would change this answer

Turnover changes it. Per-order platform fees scale and a fixed maintenance retainer does not, so at sufficient volume the arithmetic moves towards self-hosting.

Losing your maintenance arrangement changes it immediately, in the other direction. A WooCommerce store with nobody patching it is a liability with a payment form on it.

And if you already trade successfully on one, this is not a reason to move.