Shopify or WooCommerce? Fees, Commission and Which One Suits You

The difference in short

Shopify is a service that hosts your shop on its own servers and is used on a monthly subscription. WooCommerce is a free plugin installed on WordPress; the shop lives on hosting you rent.

Fees

On Shopify you pay a subscription every month; paid themes and apps often cost extra too. WooCommerce itself is free; you pay for hosting, the domain and any paid plugins you use.

Which one is cheaper in the long run depends on the extra apps and plugins you need; list the features you need before deciding.

Per-sale commission and payments in Turkey

Shopify's own payment system (Shopify Payments) is not available in Turkey, so Turkish shops work with an outside payment provider, and in that case Shopify charges an extra transaction fee on each sale (at the time of writing). WooCommerce uses plugins from providers such as iyzico and PayTR; the platform takes no extra commission, only the payment provider's fee applies.

Design and customisation

Shopify's theme system is tidy and quick to start with; requests beyond the theme need development within Shopify's own structure. With WooCommerce you have full control over themes and plugins, and different flows such as a quote request instead of a cart can be built. For Avrosis we built a quote request flow instead of a cart on WooCommerce.

Portability and data

With WooCommerce the shop and all its data live on your own hosting, and you can move them to another server whenever you like. If you leave Shopify, products and customers can be exported, but the theme and some apps do not come with you. We moved Avrosis' 41-product Shopify store to WooCommerce with its collections and 27 blog posts, redirecting the old addresses to the new pages.

Upkeep and security

On Shopify, the server, updates and security are Shopify's responsibility. With WooCommerce, keeping WordPress and plugins updated, backups and security are your job or that of whoever maintains the shop.

Which one suits you?

If you never want to deal with a server and want to start quickly, Shopify. If you do not want a monthly platform fee and care about owning your data and flexible customisation, WooCommerce. For shops selling in Turkey with a local payment provider, WooCommerce often works out cheaper.

Setup

We build on both; an online shop starts from $300 with us and usually goes live in 2-3 weeks.