Shopify vs WordPress for Ecommerce (2026)

$29–$399: a month for standard Shopify plans; WordPress itself is free

If selling products online is the main job of your website, Shopify is usually the simpler choice, with standard plans running from $29 a month (Basic, billed yearly) to $399 a month (Advanced, billed monthly) as of 2026. If your site is mainly about content, services or lead generation, WordPress is usually the better fit: the software itself is free, and you pay mostly for hosting, which can start at a few dollars a month. WordPress can also sell products through the free WooCommerce plugin, but you take on more of the setup and upkeep yourself.

What is the difference between Shopify and WordPress?

Shopify is a hosted commerce platform. You pay a monthly subscription, and Shopify runs the servers, security, checkout and updates for you. You log in, add products, choose a theme and start selling.

WordPress, in the sense most businesses mean, is the open source software from WordPress.org. It is licensed under the GPL, which means anyone can download, use and modify it. You install it on hosting you choose, and you are responsible for keeping it running. WooCommerce is a free, open source plugin that turns a WordPress site into an online store.

Both are widely used. According to W3Techs, as of late October 2026 WordPress powers 39.6% of all websites and Shopify powers 5.3%. Among sites that use a known content management system, that is a 58.3% share for WordPress and 7.9% for Shopify. Neither choice is fringe. The question is which one matches your business.

How much does Shopify cost in 2026?

Shopify costs $29 a month on Basic, $79 on Grow and $299 on Advanced when billed yearly, or $39, $105 and $399 billed monthly. Online card rates run from 2.9% plus 30 cents down to 2.5% plus 30 cents. These are Shopify's official US list prices at the time of writing; a theme, apps and setup add to the full cost of a website.

Basic: $29 a month billed yearly, or $39 billed monthly. Online card rate of 2.9% + 30 cents with Shopify Payments.
Grow: $79 a month billed yearly, or $105 billed monthly. Online card rate of 2.7% + 30 cents, plus 5 additional staff accounts.
Advanced: $299 a month billed yearly, or $399 billed monthly. Online card rate of 2.5% + 30 cents, plus 15 additional staff accounts.
Plus: from $2,300 a month, aimed at high-volume and enterprise brands.

If you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Shopify Payments is only available in certain countries, so check this for your market, especially if you sell from the GCC.

Every plan includes hosting, a free SSL certificate, themes and 24/7 support. Budget separately for a paid theme if you want one, and for apps, many of which charge their own monthly fees.

How much does WordPress and WooCommerce cost?

The WordPress software and the WooCommerce plugin are both free to download. WooCommerce describes itself as having no monthly platform fees. What you pay for is everything around the software.

Hosting: required for every self-hosted WordPress site. As an example, Hostinger's WordPress plans were advertised from $2.49 to $7.99 a month on 48-month promotional terms at the time of writing, renewing at $10.99 to $25.99 a month. Promotional prices usually apply only to the first term.
Domain name: bought separately from a registrar or your host.
Payments: WooPayments, WooCommerce's own payment option, has no setup or monthly fees and charges per transaction. Rates vary by country and card type, so check the official fee schedule for yours.
Themes and plugins: thousands are free, but premium themes, extensions and support plans add up.
Your time or a developer's time: updates, backups and fixes are your responsibility.

WordPress can be very cheap for a simple content site. A full online store on WooCommerce can end up costing as much as Shopify once you add better hosting, paid extensions and someone to maintain it.

Shopify vs WordPress: side-by-side comparison

Here is how the two compare on the things small businesses ask about most.

Best for: Shopify suits product-led businesses that sell online. WordPress suits content, services, blogs and lead generation sites, and can sell through WooCommerce.
Cost model: Shopify is a predictable monthly subscription plus card fees. WordPress is free software plus hosting, add-ons and maintenance that vary widely.
Hosting and security: Shopify includes hosting, SSL and Level 1 PCI DSS compliance for all stores. With WordPress, your host and you share responsibility.
Ease of use: Shopify is quicker to learn for selling. WordPress has a steeper learning curve but more freedom.
Add-ons: the Shopify App Store lists over 16,000 apps. WordPress.org lists over 76,000 free plugins and over 15,000 free themes, and WooCommerce lists over 1,000 extensions.
Ownership and control: WordPress gives you full access to your code and data on any host. Shopify keeps you on its platform and its rules.
Maintenance: Shopify handles platform updates. On WordPress you update core, plugins and themes yourself or pay someone to.

Shopify vs WordPress cost for a small store: first-year example

For a small store, Shopify's platform fee is about $348 in the first year on the Basic plan billed yearly, while WordPress hosting can cost under $100 in the first year on a promotional plan. The real difference comes from apps, extensions, card fees and who does the maintenance, so compare full yearly costs, not headline prices.

Here is a simple worked example using the list prices above, for a store that sells $50,000 a year in 1,000 orders of $50 each. It leaves out the domain, theme and apps, which both platforms need in some form.

Shopify Basic, billed yearly: $29 x 12 = $348 for the platform, hosting, SSL and security included.
Shopify Payments card fees at 2.9% + 30 cents: about $1,450 + $300 = $1,750 on $50,000 of online sales.
WordPress hosting on the promotional terms above: about $30 to $96 for the first year, rising to about $132 to $312 a year at the renewal prices.
WooCommerce card fees: WooPayments charges per transaction with rates that vary by country and card type, so check the official schedule; card processing costs exist on every platform.
WordPress maintenance: updates, backups and fixes are yours to do or pay for, which is often the biggest cost a small store forgets.

In this example, card fees are larger than either platform's fee, and they apply on both platforms in some form. If your team can't maintain a WordPress site, the time or developer cost usually outweighs the hosting savings. If you already have someone technical, WooCommerce can come out cheaper.

Which is easier to use for a small business?

For most owners setting up a shop, Shopify is easier. Products, inventory, checkout, shipping settings and payments are all built in and designed to work together. You do not need to think about servers, caching or plugin conflicts.

WordPress is easy to write and publish in once it is set up, and its editor is good for blogs and service pages. The harder part is the setup: choosing a host, a theme, a page builder, a security plugin, a backup plugin and, for a shop, WooCommerce and its extensions. Each choice is reasonable on its own, but together they make more moving parts that someone has to manage.

Is Shopify or WordPress better for SEO?

Both can rank well, because search engines care far more about content, speed, structure and links than about the platform. Shopify handles the basics automatically, including a sitemap and a sensible robots.txt file. WordPress gives you more control over structure and large content libraries, which helps content-heavy sites. Neither replaces an SEO budget for content and links.

Shopify covers the basics out of the box. Every store automatically gets a sitemap.xml file, and every store has a default robots.txt file that Shopify describes as optimal for SEO. You can edit title tags and meta descriptions for products, collections, pages and blog posts. Deeper changes, such as editing robots.txt, need theme code and are not supported by Shopify's own support team.

WordPress gives you more control. You can change almost any part of the site's structure, use dedicated SEO plugins and build large content libraries with categories and internal links. That flexibility is why content-heavy businesses often prefer it. The trade-off is that a slow theme or too many plugins can hurt performance, so the result depends on how well the site is built and maintained.

Apps vs plugins: how do you add features?

On Shopify, you add features through apps from the Shopify App Store, such as reviews, subscriptions, upsells and email tools. Apps are reviewed and installed with a click, but many charge monthly, and several paid apps can quietly double your platform bill.

On WordPress, you add features through plugins. The range is enormous, and many good ones are free. Quality varies more, though, because anyone can publish a plugin. Choose plugins that are actively updated, widely used and well reviewed, and keep the number you install as low as possible.

How much maintenance and security work does each need?

Shopify needs very little maintenance from you: the platform is maintained for you and certified PCI DSS Level 1, so your jobs are strong passwords, two-step login and checking apps. On WordPress, maintenance is your job: core, plugin and theme updates, backups and a suitable host. This is the biggest practical difference between the two.

With Shopify, the platform is maintained for you. Shopify states that it is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant and that this extends by default to every store on the platform. Your jobs are mainly strong passwords, two-step login for staff and checking the apps you install.

With WordPress, maintenance is your job. The official WordPress hardening guide says to always keep WordPress up to date, keep plugins updated, delete plugins you do not use and back up your site and database regularly. It also notes that automatic updates have been available since version 3.7. WordPress.org currently recommends PHP 8.3 or newer and MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11 or newer, so your host matters too.

The risk mostly sits in add-ons rather than WordPress itself. Patchstack's State of WordPress Security in 2026 report found 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025. Of those, 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes, while WordPress core had only 6, all described as low priority. The same report found that 46% of vulnerabilities had no fix from the developer by the time they were made public. That is manageable, but only if someone is actually watching and updating the site.

Shopify or WordPress: which should you choose?

Choose Shopify if online sales are your main revenue and you want a maintained platform with checkout, inventory and payments built in. Choose WordPress if your site is mainly about content, services, bookings or lead generation. Use this list to make the call: if most of your answers fall on one side, that is your platform.

Choose Shopify if online sales are your main source of revenue and you want to start selling quickly.
Choose Shopify if you do not have anyone to handle updates, backups and security, and you prefer one predictable monthly bill.
Choose Shopify if you need reliable checkout, inventory, shipping and payments without stitching plugins together.
Choose Shopify if you plan to sell across channels such as social media and in person and want everything in one dashboard.
Choose WordPress if your site is mainly about content, services, bookings or lead generation rather than product sales.
Choose WordPress if blogging and SEO content are central to how you win customers.
Choose WordPress if you want full ownership of your code and data and the freedom to move hosts.
Choose WordPress with WooCommerce if you sell a small number of products alongside a content-led site and have someone to maintain it.
Consider both if you run a large content hub and a busy store: some businesses keep a WordPress site for content and use Shopify for the shop.

Where Sygze fits

Sygze Media builds and improves websites and Shopify stores for small and growing businesses in the US, UK, Canada and the GCC. Website and Shopify work is quoted per project after a free audit or a short call, so you get a price that matches what you actually need rather than a fixed bundle.

If you also want ongoing marketing, the Growth Engine package at $1,899 a month includes an SEO audit and on-page fixes, Google and Meta ads management, and content across three platforms. Ad spend is always paid directly to Meta or Google and is never part of the fee. See the packages page for the full details.

Frequently asked questions

Is WordPress really free?

The WordPress software is free and open source under the GPL. You still need to pay for hosting and a domain, and often for premium themes, plugins or maintenance. A simple site can be very cheap, while a store with many paid extensions can cost as much as Shopify.

Is Shopify cheaper than WooCommerce?

It depends on your setup. Shopify's Basic plan is $29 a month billed yearly, with hosting and security included. WooCommerce has no platform fee, but hosting, extensions and maintenance can add up, so compare total yearly costs rather than the headline price.

Can I move from WordPress to Shopify later?

Yes. Products, customers and content can be migrated, though it takes planning. Keep the same URLs where possible and set up redirects for any that change, so you do not lose search rankings.

Which is better for SEO, Shopify or WordPress?

Both can rank well. Shopify handles basics such as sitemaps and a default robots.txt automatically, while WordPress gives more control for content-heavy sites. Your content, speed and site structure matter more than the platform.

Is WordPress safe for an online store?

It can be, if it is well maintained. Most WordPress vulnerabilities are in plugins and themes, so keep everything updated, remove unused plugins, use good hosting and take regular backups. If nobody will do that work, Shopify is the safer default.

If you would like a second opinion on which platform suits your business, message Sygze on WhatsApp for a free 10-minute audit.

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