The Stakes Are High
For UK businesses launching or migrating an online store, the Shopify vs WooCommerce decision shapes your running costs, your team's daily workflow, and your ability to scale. Both platforms power thousands of successful UK stores. The right one depends on your current size, your technical resources, and where you plan to be in three years.
Shopify and WooCommerce stores are both core services at Renav, so here is how we see the trade-offs.
Shopify: Managed Simplicity at a Cost
Shopify is a fully hosted, all-in-one platform: you pay a monthly subscription and Shopify handles hosting, security, PCI compliance and software updates. For merchants who want to focus on selling rather than servers, that is a major advantage.
Shopify's UK plans are Basic at £25 a month (£19 a month billed yearly), Grow at £65 (£49 billed yearly) and Advanced at £344 (£259 billed yearly), with Shopify Plus starting at £1,800 a month.
Payments are where costs need a closer look. With Shopify Payments, online UK card sales cost from 2% + 25p per transaction on Basic, falling to 1.5% + 25p on Advanced. If you use a third-party payment provider instead, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of that provider's charges: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced.
Shopify's app store covers subscriptions, loyalty programmes, reporting, marketplace and social selling, and B2B wholesale. For straightforward product catalogues, the built-in features — inventory, discount codes, gift cards and shipping rates — are ready to use out of the box.
Shopify's weakness: the customisation ceiling. Complex business logic — tiered B2B pricing, bespoke checkout flows, non-standard fulfilment rules — often needs Shopify Plus or custom app development. You do not own the infrastructure, and moving away later is real work.
WooCommerce: Unlimited Flexibility, Operational Overhead
WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin for WordPress. The software costs nothing, but a production store needs hosting, a payment gateway, any paid extensions you choose, and ongoing maintenance. WooCommerce adds no platform fee to your sales, though your payment provider still charges its own card processing fees.
As a reference point, our own WordPress hosting starts at £15–£25 a month for smaller sites and our e-commerce maintenance plan is £99 a month; busier stores need more capable hosting.
For UK VAT, WooCommerce's built-in tax settings handle standard and reduced rates, and extensions cover more complex cross-border rules. Making Tax Digital is handled through your accounting software — for example, by syncing orders to a package such as Xero or QuickBooks.
WooCommerce's core strength is extensibility. Custom product types, bespoke checkout flows, wholesale portals with account-specific pricing, and deep accounting or ERP integrations are all achievable, and because you own the codebase there is no hard feature ceiling.
WooCommerce's weakness: operational burden. Security updates, plugin conflicts, performance tuning and hosting all need ongoing attention. A neglected WooCommerce store becomes a liability, so budget for maintenance from day one.
Total Cost of Ownership: What to Add Up
Headline plan prices rarely decide the real cost. When comparing the two, add up a full year of:
- Shopify: the plan subscription, any paid apps, card processing fees (which grow with your sales), and Shopify's transaction fee if you use a third-party payment provider.
- WooCommerce: hosting, any paid extensions, your payment provider's card fees, and the developer time or maintenance plan needed to keep the store secure and fast.
As a rule of thumb, Shopify's costs rise with your plan and your sales volume, while WooCommerce's rise with hosting needs and developer time. Model both against your own order volume before deciding.
Migration: When and How
We handle migrations between the two. Merchants move to Shopify when running WooCommerce is costing more time than it is worth; they move to WooCommerce when they hit Shopify's customisation ceiling or want full control of their stack. Either way, a safe migration needs a careful product and customer data export, redirect mapping from old URLs to new ones to protect search rankings, payment gateway setup, and thorough testing before switching over.
For example, we moved The Perfume Shop onto Shopify with a custom luxury design and faster pages, which led to 25% more mobile conversions.
The Renav Recommendation
Choose Shopify if you want fast time to market, have a small team without a dedicated developer, sell a straightforward catalogue, and are comfortable with a subscription model. Choose WooCommerce if you need complex product types, B2B pricing, deep accounting or ERP integrations, or want to own your stack and avoid Shopify's platform fees. Both are excellent platforms in the right context.
If you are deciding between them for a new build or planning a migration, we are happy to recommend a platform based on your catalogue, team and growth plans — get in touch.
Shopify prices and fees are taken from Shopify's UK pricing page, checked in September 2026. Plans and rates change, so confirm current figures before you decide.