Shopify vs WooCommerce

by Gralio Feb 27, 2025

Shopify and WooCommerce are both popular e-commerce platforms catering to diverse business needs. Shopify excels in its ease of use and comprehensive features, making it suitable for businesses seeking a streamlined and scalable solution. WooCommerce, based on WordPress, offers greater customization and control but requires more technical expertise.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 6934 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 day, 15 hours, 1 minute of reading.

Shopify

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WooCommerce

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About

Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that provides businesses of all sizes with the tools to create and manage online stores. From website design and product listings to payment processing and shipping, Shopify offers a comprehensive suite of features. It also provides additional tools for marketing, inventory management, and customer relationship management. Shopify is known for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and extensive app store, making it suitable for both beginners and experienced online retailers.

WooCommerce is a free and popular platform for building online stores, specifically designed to work with WordPress websites. It's a popular choice, powering a large portion of all online shops. WooCommerce is known for being highly customizable and adaptable, offering a wide range of extensions and themes to tailor the functionality and design of your store. While it's free to use, additional extensions and themes may come with costs. WooCommerce is suitable for both small businesses starting out and larger companies needing more advanced features.

Summary

Main difference

Shopify offers a comprehensive, user-friendly platform with various built-in features and extensive app integrations, ideal for businesses seeking a streamlined setup and scalability. WooCommerce, leveraging WordPress, provides greater flexibility and customization options, making it suitable for businesses comfortable with website development or willing to invest in specialized expertise.

Relative strengths of Shopify (compared to WooCommerce)

Ease of Use and Setup: Shopify is generally considered easier to set up and use, especially for beginners, with its intuitive interface and guided setup process.
Extensive App Ecosystem: Shopify offers a vast app store with integrations for various functionalities, extending its capabilities and allowing for customization.
Built-in Features: Shopify offers numerous built-in features for online sales, marketing, shipping, and more, simplifying store management.

Relative weaknesses of Shopify (compared to WooCommerce)

Cost: Shopify's monthly fees and transaction fees can be higher compared to WooCommerce, especially when factoring in app costs.
Customization Limitations: While Shopify offers themes and apps, its customization options are generally less flexible than WooCommerce's open-source nature.
Dependence on Shopify Ecosystem: Businesses using Shopify are tied to its platform and ecosystem, which can limit flexibility in the long run.

Who should use Shopify VS. WooCommerce

Shopify is a user-friendly e-commerce platform empowering businesses of all sizes to create and manage online stores. Users praise the intuitive interface and app store but note concerns about cost and limited customization. Shopify offers tools for online sales, marketing, and more, making it suitable for both startups and established brands.

WooCommerce is a free, customizable ecommerce platform for WordPress, ideal for small to medium businesses. Users praise its ease of use and extensive plugin options but note potential costs for premium features and performance impact on websites. A strong choice for those already familiar with the WordPress ecosystem.

Ideal for businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.
Strong fit for diverse sectors, including retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods.

Best for small to medium businesses (1-100 employees) using WordPress.
Particularly well-suited for Ecommerce and Retail businesses.

Shopify and WooCommerce features

Supported

Partially supported

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Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

Online Sales

Supported

Shopify supports online sales via websites, social media, and marketplaces.

Supported

WooCommerce allows merchants to sell products online, manage inventory, process orders, and track sales.
International Sales

Supported

Shopify supports international sales with currency conversion, translations, and shipping logistics.

Partially supported

WooCommerce supports international sales via plugins for currency conversion, translation, and shipping.
Smart Shipping Management

Supported

Shopify offers smart shipping management with cost optimization and process simplification.

Supported

WooCommerce offers various tools and integrations for managing shipping, including cost optimization and process simplification.
Fully Customizable Online Store

Supported

Shopify offers extensive design and functionality customization through themes, apps, and a templating language.

Supported

WooCommerce allows extensive design and functionality customization through themes, plugins, and a built-in customizer.
Website builder

Supported

Shopify allows the creation of a product catalog website with its native features and integrated apps. It provides features for catalog creation, assignment to companies/customers, custom B2B pricing, and app integrations for enhanced catalog management, online/PDF catalog generation, automated updates, and more.

Supported

WooCommerce allows creating websites with product catalogs.
One-click checkout

Supported

Shopify supports one-click checkout through its Shop Pay feature.

Partially supported

WooCommerce supports one-click checkout via plugins.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

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Customer Service

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Ease of Use

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Reliability and Performance

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Ease of Implementation

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Scalability

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Shopify and WooCommerce Pricing

No data

See full Pricing page

No data

We couldn't find a pricing page for WooCommerce.

Shopify and WooCommerce review insights

Users love

User-friendly interface praised for its ease of use.
Wide variety of themes and templates available.
Extensive app store for added functionality.
Shopify Payments integrated for seamless transactions.

Easy to setup and use, especially if you are already familiar with WordPress
Free and open source
Wide range of plugins and extensions
Integrates seamlessly with WordPress
Large community support

Users dislike

High monthly fees are a common complaint.
Limited customization options, especially without coding knowledge.
App reliance for key features leads to additional costs.
Customer support can be slow and unresponsive.

Some of the "good to have" plugins officially are at high price.
Can be confusing for beginners to have to use WooCommerce together with WordPress
Can slow down a website because WooCommerce is itself a plugin
Limited customization options with the free version
Mobile app is a bit laggy

Shopify and WooCommerce Ratings

G2

4.4/5

(2547)
Capterra

4.5/5

(2373)
Glassdoor

3.3/5

(3293)

G2

4.4/5

(1167)
Capterra

4.6/5

(896)
Glassdoor

4.1/5

(406)

Company health

Employee growth

18% increase in the last year

No change in the last year

Web traffic

10% increase in the last quarter

2% increase in the last quarter

Financing

September 2013 - $122M

November 2020 - $986M

How easily can each platform be customized without coding knowledge?

Shopify's customization without coding is limited, relying heavily on themes and apps, which can become costly. WooCommerce, while requiring some WordPress familiarity, offers greater customization flexibility through its open-source nature and extensive plugin options, though some advanced features also come at a cost.

Which product offers better integration with existing WordPress websites?

WooCommerce offers better integration with existing WordPress websites because it is specifically designed as a WordPress plugin. Shopify, while it can be linked to WordPress, requires more complex integration processes and does not offer the same level of seamless functionality within the WordPress environment.

What are the advantages of Shopify?

Shopify offers a user-friendly interface, extensive app store, integrated payment processing (Shopify Payments), and scalability suitable for businesses of all sizes. It provides a comprehensive suite of features for online store creation and management, covering website design, product listings, shipping, marketing, inventory, and customer relationship management. This all-in-one approach simplifies online selling for users with varying technical skills.

What are the disadvantages of Shopify?

Shopify's disadvantages include high monthly fees, limited customization options without coding knowledge, reliance on apps for key features which adds to the cost, and potentially slow or unresponsive customer support.

Alternatives to Shopify and WooCommerce

Ecwid

Ecwid is an e-commerce platform designed for small to medium-sized businesses. It allows you to easily add an online store to your existing website or social media pages. You can manage sales, inventory, payments, shipping, and marketing from a single platform. Ecwid offers a free plan with paid options available for expanded features and sales volume. They are known for their ease of use, strong customer support, and integrations with popular platforms.

PrestaShop

PrestaShop is an e-commerce platform that lets you create and manage your own online store. It's highly customizable, with thousands of themes and add-ons to make your store unique. PrestaShop is designed to scale with your business, whether you're just starting out or processing millions in sales. It's used by over 300,000 businesses worldwide, from small startups to large companies. PrestaShop also boasts a large community of users and experts for support.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a popular e-commerce platform designed for businesses of all sizes, though its advanced features are particularly attractive to larger businesses. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools to build and manage your online store, including features for both B2C and B2B selling. BigCommerce stands out for its flexibility and open approach, allowing extensive customization and integration with other business systems. The platform promises reliability, scalability, and robust security to support business growth.

ShopWired

ShopWired is a UK-based e-commerce platform that helps businesses build and manage online stores. It offers tools to create storefronts, sell across multiple channels (web, mobile, social media, marketplaces), and manage operations like inventory, orders, and customer data. ShopWired emphasizes reliability and scalability, using Amazon's hosting platform (AWS). It also provides various integrations with third-party apps for marketing, accounting, shipping, and more. Primarily serving the UK, US, and Europe, ShopWired powers thousands of stores.

Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source is a free and adaptable platform for building online stores. It gives businesses complete control over their website design, functionality, and data. While technically skilled to set up, it's a popular choice for companies who want a customized online store without being locked into a rigid software solution.

Sellfy

Sellfy is an all-in-one e-commerce platform designed for creators to sell digital and physical products, subscriptions, and print-on-demand merchandise. It includes marketing features like email campaigns and affiliate programs. Sellfy handles the technical side of running an online store, allowing you to focus on your audience. It offers various pricing plans starting at $29 per month with no transaction fees.

Page co-authored by

Michal Kaczor

CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

Tymon Terlikiewicz

CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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