Guide Planning
Shopify, WooCommerce or custom: choosing an ecommerce platform
By Studio Swing
Choose Shopify when your products behave like ordinary products (a price, some options, a stock count, a delivery rule) and you want the platform's company to run the software. Choose WooCommerce when you already run a WordPress site, or want to own and host the software, and you can pay someone to keep it updated. Choose a custom-coded shop when how you sell does not fit a standard basket and checkout, and you accept the higher build cost and the upkeep that comes with owning the code. The three differ less in features than in who carries the work, and in what each one makes hard to leave. A disclosure first: we design and build Shopify stores and custom-coded shops, so weigh our view with that in mind. We give both honest "when it fits" answers here, and we describe WooCommerce from the sources listed at the end, not from experience with it.
On this page
Three shops, three different answers
This guide is only about the shop platform. For the wider question of whether you need a studio or a website builder at all, see custom website, Shopify or a website builder.
The shops below are invented.
A bakery that sells forty products nationwide. Cakes and biscuits, in a few sizes, shipped in boxes, with a delivery day that matters. The shop needs product pages, a basket, a checkout and order emails. Nothing unusual. Here Shopify is the usual fit: it was built for exactly this, and nobody at the bakery wants to maintain servers.
A bookshop with a WordPress site and two thousand articles. The articles are the business: reviews, reading lists and interviews, and the shop is one part of it. Putting the shop inside the existing WordPress site keeps one content system, one set of addresses and one login. WooCommerce is a natural candidate, and moving the articles to another platform would be the larger job.
A maker of made-to-measure blinds. A buyer enters window sizes, picks a fabric and a mechanism, and gets a price from a formula, plus a fitting appointment. There is no ordinary product. A standard basket can be forced to do this with options and add-ons, and sometimes it should be. When the formula and the booking are the business, a custom-coded shop is worth pricing.
What each one is
Shopify is hosted. You pay a subscription, and Shopify runs the software, the servers and the checkout. Shopify states that it is "certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant" and that "this compliance extends by default to all stores powered by Shopify." You edit the design in a theme editor, and a developer can edit the theme code, written mostly in Shopify's templating language, Liquid. Shopify's help center warns to edit theme code "only if you know HTML and CSS, and have a basic understanding of Liquid."
WooCommerce is described by its makers as "the open-source ecommerce platform for WordPress." The core plugin is free. You install it on a WordPress site that you host yourself, or on a host that sells WordPress hosting. The documentation lists the requirements for the server: at the time we read it, WordPress 6.9 or greater, PHP 8.3 or greater, MySQL 8.0 or greater or MariaDB 10.6 or greater, HTTPS and a memory limit of 256 MB or greater. Those numbers change, so ask your host. WooCommerce offers more than 100 payment gateways and hundreds of free and paid extensions from its marketplace.
A custom-coded shop is written for your business. You choose the pieces: how products are stored, how the basket works, which payment provider takes the card, how orders reach your team. Nothing is rented except hosting and the services you connect. It is also exactly what was specified, so any feature not built is not there.
Who carries which job
| Row | Shopify | WooCommerce | Custom-coded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs the software | Shopify | You, or your host or agency | You, or your developer |
| Updates and security | The platform, except apps and theme code you added | You: WordPress, plugins and theme | You: dependencies and hosting |
| Where orders and customers live | In your Shopify admin | In your WordPress database, on your host | Wherever the build puts them |
| Card handling | Shopify's checkout and its payment compliance | The payment gateway you choose, which must be compliant | The payment provider you choose |
| What you can change | Theme and apps freely, checkout within limits | Almost anything, through code and extensions | Anything, at the cost of building it |
| Leaving | Export products to CSV, rebuild the theme | Take the content and data with you, rebuild the design | The code is yours if the agreement says so |
Three rows deserve more detail.
Security and updates
WooCommerce's own documentation says: "because WooCommerce is built on WordPress, a given WooCommerce site is overall exactly as secure as the WordPress installation itself." It stresses keeping WordPress and every plugin up to date, and warns that "it only takes one sneaky or badly designed plugin or code snippet to put your entire site and all your site's data at risk." If you integrate a payment gateway, it "has to be" PCI compliant. None of this is a flaw. It is the cost of control: someone has to do the work, every month. Our guide to what website maintenance includes lists the tasks.
On Shopify, the platform does most of that work. You still own the choice of apps and the theme code, and those can slow or break a store.
What you can change
Shopify lets you change a great deal, and it also draws lines. Apps that customize the information, shipping and payment pages of the checkout are available only on Shopify Plus, its top plan. Apps that customize the thank you and order status pages are available from the Basic plan, and there is a limit of three apps per highlighted area. A shop that needs a different checkout flow should check these limits first. A WooCommerce or custom checkout has no such platform limit, though it carries its own testing and security work.
Payments and fees
On Shopify, using Shopify Payments means no third-party transaction fees, while using another provider adds them, on top of that provider's own charges. Shopify Payments is not available in every country. WooCommerce's core plugin is free, but the payment provider charges its own rates, and extensions and hosting have their own costs. Whatever you choose, compare the total over a year, not the headline. Our guide to what a Shopify store costs lists the lines for that platform, and what affects the cost of a website covers the build.
What am I locked into?
Each platform keeps you in a different way.
Shopify. Your theme is written for Shopify and would need rebuilding elsewhere. Shopify's export of products to a CSV file does not include the images themselves, only their addresses, so keep your original photographs. Your features may depend on apps, each with its own subscription. Your address structure follows Shopify's patterns, which matters in a move and is covered in moving to Shopify without losing SEO. Prices and plan features are set by Shopify and can change.
WooCommerce. You are tied to WordPress and to the plugins your shop depends on. A plugin that stops being maintained, or a new WordPress release that breaks it, becomes your problem. The software and your data are yours, and the WooCommerce plugin page on WordPress.org says you can "export all your content and take your site to any platform you choose". The effort of exporting and rebuilding is the practical limit.
Custom-coded. You are tied to whoever understands the code. That is a real risk if the person who built it leaves, and it is reduced by documentation, a clean handover and ownership of the code. When we build a site, the client owns the finished site, its content and its code at handover.
Lock-in is not a reason to avoid a platform. It is a cost to know about on day one.
Questions to answer before choosing
1. Do my products fit a standard basket, or does the price depend on a formula, a quote or a customer?
2. Who will update the software every month? If the answer is "nobody", choose a hosted platform.
3. Do I already run a WordPress site that matters, and should the shop live inside it?
4. Which payment providers can I use where I sell, and what do they charge?
5. How many products do I have, and how often do they change?
6. Will I sell to businesses, with their own prices or terms?
7. Which of my needs would be handled by an app or plugin, and what would they cost each month?
8. If I wanted to leave in three years, what would I be able to take?
Write the answers down as part of your ecommerce requirements, before anyone builds anything.
Will the platform decide how you rank in search?
No platform decides it for you. Each can produce fast, well-structured pages, and each can produce slow, messy ones. The differences are in how much each does for you automatically and how much you control. Shopify generates canonical tags and a sitemap automatically. On WooCommerce or a custom shop, whoever builds it must handle them. Our ecommerce SEO checklist covers what to check on any of them.
What changing platform will not fix
Moving platforms does not repair weak products, thin product pages, high shipping costs or a confusing checkout. A new platform does not repair a problem that sits in the content or the offer. Before you move, find out where shoppers leave, using the steps in checkout and abandoned carts.
A checklist you can use without us
Checklist
Work through this list to make sure you have the important things covered before you choose a platform. You do not need us to use it, just an honest look at how you sell, who will run the software, and what you might need in the future.
- I can describe how my products are priced, and whether a standard basket handles it.
- I know who will update the software each month, and what that costs.
- I have checked the platform's limits on the checkout, if my checkout needs to differ.
- I know which payment providers are available where I sell.
- I have listed the apps or plugins I would need, with monthly costs.
- I know what I could export if I left, and what I would rebuild.
- My agreement says who owns the theme, code, content and accounts.
- I have compared the total cost over a year, not the starting price.
Where to go next
If you want help weighing the options for your shop, see our Shopify service, which also says when Shopify is the wrong fit, and our ecommerce websites page for custom-coded shops. Next, what to decide before you build a shop turns the questions above into a plan.
When you want to talk about your own shop, you can discuss your project. More guides are in the Learn library.
Sources
Shopify, PCI DSS compliance (certification statement): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Editing theme code (Liquid and the warning): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Checkout and customer accounts apps (limits by plan): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Pricing overview (Shopify Payments and third-party transaction fees): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Exporting products to CSV (images are not included): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Overview of SEO (canonical tags and sitemap generated automatically): https:/
WooCommerce, Server requirements (read 1 October 2026): https:/
WooCommerce, Security (WordPress security, updates, plugins, payment gateways): https:/
WooCommerce on WordPress.org (description, data ownership, payment gateways, extensions): https:/
WooCommerce developer documentation (what WooCommerce is): https:/