Where WooCommerce charges and Shopify doesn’t
As an example, if you have an online shop in Australia you likely advertise using Google Adwords. The simplest and most effective way of advertising your products is through shopping ads which are created through uploading your products to Google Merchant Center. Google Merchant Center requires that products are added with specific data such as a title, description and price. The product data may be manually uploaded to Google Merchant Center or Google will fetch your data on a schedule if your eCommerce software creates a feed that meets Google Merchant Center criteria.
Comparing WooCommerce and Shopify pricing for a small online store
Of course the above is just one example of costs associated with WooCommerce where Shopify doesn’t charge additional fees. The most obvious additional cost associated with WooCommerce is hosting which can quickly become expensive once you need more than basic shared hosting. Let’s do a very quick calculation of a basic Australian small online store setup comparing WooCommerce and Shopify monthly pricing:
Item | WooCommerce | Shopify |
---|---|---|
Monthly Subscription | $0 | $29 |
Hosting (Siteground) | 9.991 | 0 |
2x Paid Apps/Plugins2 (2x $79 p.a.) | 13.17 | 0 |
CDN3 | 9.99 | 0 |
$33.15 p.m. | $29 p.m. |
All prices in U.S. $. and assume a small eCommerce website with minimal visitors.
1 Shopify provide hosting as part of all subscriptions. WooCommerce requires hosting; the cheapest Siteground plan price is shown here.
2 Apps/Plugins such as a Google Merchant Center feed and Stripe payment gateway.
3 Shopify provide CDN use with every subscription. For WooCommerce CDN use MaxCDN pricing is shown.
Shopify is cheaper than WooCommerce but should you choose it?
Choosing eCommerce software or a service shouldn’t however be just about cost. Both WooCommerce and Shopify are very good but they do differ in their functionality and pricing. In my experience, Shopify is usually less expensive than WooCommerce in the long run. They are both the best eCommerce software and services available to small and medium size online sellers.
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