Struggling to choose between WooCommerce and Shopify for your online store in Australia? Here’s a quick breakdown to help you decide:
- WooCommerce: Best for businesses wanting full control, customisation, and flexible costs. Ideal if you have technical skills or a team to manage hosting and updates.
- Shopify: Perfect for those who prefer simplicity, predictable monthly fees, and 24/7 support. Great for quick setup and hands-off management.
Quick Comparison:
| Feature | WooCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Requires technical skills | Beginner-friendly |
| Cost | Free plugin + hosting (AUD 10–40/month) | AUD 42–431/month |
| Customisation | Unlimited | Limited to templates |
| Support | Community forums | 24/7 professional support |
| Scalability | Dependent on hosting | Automatic scaling |
| Transaction Fees | Gateway fees only | Up to 2% unless using Shopify Payments |
Both platforms support Australian payment methods, GST compliance, and mobile-friendly designs. Choose WooCommerce if you value control and flexibility. Go with Shopify if you want ease and convenience.
Setup and Daily Use
Setting Up WooCommerce
To get WooCommerce up and running, you’ll need to:
- Pick a web hosting service and configure it
- Install WordPress
- Add the WooCommerce plugin
- Set up payment gateways, shipping zones, and tax rates
- Categorise and list products
- Add any required extensions
While the process is more involved, it gives you a high degree of control over your store’s setup and features.
Setting Up Shopify
Shopify simplifies the process by handling hosting, security, and updates for you. Getting started involves creating an account, choosing a theme, listing products, and setting up payment and shipping options.
"If our team members haven’t come from an ecommerce background, we can train them up in half a day or less. The accessibility offered allows everyone to take ownership of certain areas of the website".
Technical Skills Required
WooCommerce requires familiarity with WordPress and hosting. You’ll need to manage updates, server settings, plugin compatibility, security measures, and database backups.
Shopify, on the other hand, takes care of the technical aspects in the background. This lets you focus purely on running your business. It’s worth noting that Shopify’s checkout process outperforms WooCommerce by 17% in speed and efficiency metrics.
For ongoing support, Shopify offers 24/7 assistance via email, live chat, and phone. WooCommerce, however, mainly relies on community forums and documentation for troubleshooting. These differences in technical requirements pave the way for exploring design and functionality in the next section.
Shopify vs WooCommerce in 2025: A Comprehensive …
Design and Features
Now that we’ve covered setup, let’s dive into the visual and functional aspects of each platform.
WooCommerce Design Options
WooCommerce’s open-source nature means you have endless possibilities for customisation. It offers official themes as well as thousands of third-party options. You can tweak themes using custom code or plugins, and they can be adjusted to ensure mobile responsiveness. Considering that 70% of e-commerce transactions happen on mobile devices, this flexibility becomes very important.
Shopify Design Options
Shopify provides a curated theme marketplace with around 10 free themes and over 100 premium options. While the selection is smaller, these themes are professionally crafted specifically for e-commerce. Shopify prioritises mobile-first design. For instance, Naturalmat worked with designers to enhance its mobile experience by using illustrations to highlight key selling points, which led to better engagement rates.
Platform Design Comparison
Here’s a quick look at how the two platforms stack up in terms of design:
| Feature | WooCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Theme Options | Thousands available | Around 110 themes |
| Customisation Level | Unlimited | Template-based |
| Technical Skill Needed | High | Low to Medium |
| Mobile Optimisation | Requires manual setup | Built-in responsive design |
| Built-in Features | Limited | Extensive |
Both platforms need to meet modern design standards, such as using at least 16px fonts for readability, touch-friendly buttons, optimised image loading, and collapsible menus for smooth navigation.
In short, WooCommerce gives you more freedom to create a tailored design but often requires technical know-how. Shopify, on the other hand, offers a streamlined, ready-to-go approach with themes designed to perform well straight out of the box – perfect for businesses looking for quick and easy setup.
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Cost Breakdown
For Australian eCommerce businesses, understanding ongoing costs is crucial. Here’s a detailed look at the cost structure for each platform.
WooCommerce Pricing
The WooCommerce plugin itself is free, but running a functional store comes with these costs:
- Australian hosting: AUD 10–40 per month
- Domain registration: AUD 20 annually
- SSL Certificate: Free (via Let’s Encrypt) to AUD 100 yearly
- Extensions: AUD 0–300 annually
WooCommerce lets you choose payment gateways without adding extra transaction fees. By contrast, Shopify uses a subscription model with fixed monthly costs.
Shopify Pricing
Here are Shopify’s Australian pricing tiers:
- Basic Shopify: AUD 42/month
- Shopify: AUD 114/month
- Advanced Shopify: AUD 431/month
- Shopify Plus: Starting at USD 2,300/month (enterprise-level)
These plans include hosting, SSL certificates, and essential features. However, Shopify charges up to 2% in transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments. Additional apps and premium themes can increase your monthly expenses.
Cost Comparison Table
Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison:
| Cost Factor | WooCommerce | Shopify (Basic Plan) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly Base Cost | AUD 0 | AUD 42 |
| Hosting (Annual) | AUD 120–480 | Included |
| Domain (Annual) | AUD 20 | AUD 20 |
| SSL Certificate | AUD 0–100 | Included |
| Transaction Fees | Payment gateway fees only | Up to 2% + gateway fees |
| Premium Themes | AUD 0–300 (one-time) | AUD 0–350 (one-time) |
"While making a monthly payment to Shopify seems simple and affordable, it can cost you in the long run." – WooCommerce.com
"I think you’re quite limited with services like Shopify. You have to pay a monthly recurring fee, and it’s just not as flexible as having your own website and your own host."
Additional Costs and Scalability
Extra functionality can add up. For example, back-in-stock notifications cost around AUD 59 annually with WooCommerce, compared to AUD 200–800 per year with Shopify.
When it comes to scalability, the two platforms differ significantly. WooCommerce allows unlimited customisation without requiring costly upgrades. On the other hand, advanced Shopify features often require higher-tier plans. For instance, customising the checkout process is only available on Shopify’s Plus plan (USD 2,300/month), whereas WooCommerce offers this flexibility as part of its standard setup.
Growth and Speed
This section dives into how each platform handles scaling and performance under demanding conditions.
WooCommerce Growth Limits
WooCommerce can handle over 100,000 products without slowing down – if it’s configured properly. Success depends heavily on a solid technical setup and ongoing optimisation.
Take Australian retailers like Inter Shop and Soul Brother, for example. They manage massive product ranges – 158,000+ and 28,000–30,000 items respectively – with load times as fast as 3.0–6.1 seconds. This is achieved through smart optimisation strategies, including tools like Cloudflare and the W3 Total Cache Plugin.
On the other hand, Shopify simplifies scaling by managing infrastructure automatically, reducing the technical workload for store owners.
Shopify Growth Limits
Shopify’s hosted setup takes care of scaling for you. It’s ideal for businesses that prefer a hands-off approach, as it handles traffic surges and growing product catalogues without extra effort from the user. That said, adding too many apps can slow things down. For larger businesses, Shopify Plus offers advanced features, though it comes with higher costs – details on pricing are covered in another section.
These contrasting growth strategies lead us to compare their speed performance.
Platform Speed Comparison
Here’s how the two platforms stack up in terms of speed-related factors:
| Performance Factor | WooCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Server Control | Full control with your hosting | Fully managed by Shopify |
| Traffic Handling | Dependent on hosting quality | Automatic scaling |
| CDN Implementation | Requires manual setup | Built-in Shopify CDN |
| Performance Optimisation | Highly flexible | Limited by platform rules |
| Large Catalogue Management | Handles 100,000+ products | Scales well with setup |
"Contrary to a persistent myth, WordPress and WooCommerce scale very effectively to work equally well for large enterprises and small stores alike."
– WooCommerce Scaling FAQs Documentation
To get the best performance out of WooCommerce, follow these steps:
- Use reliable Australian hosting services
- Set up a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Regularly update WooCommerce core, themes, and plugins
- Optimise database queries and reduce page load times
Sean Design120 also suggests disabling unnecessary WooCommerce scripts on non-product pages, such as the homepage or blog, to improve load times for stores with 20,000–50,000 products.
Both platforms are capable of scaling effectively, but their methods reflect their core differences in design and management.
Conclusion
After comparing setup, design, cost, and scalability, here’s a quick recap of the key differences.
Main Points
WooCommerce and Shopify each bring distinct benefits for Australian businesses:
| Aspect | WooCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Control | Full ownership and customisation | Managed platform with some limitations |
| Technical Needs | Requires WordPress knowledge | Minimal technical expertise required |
| Cost | Free plugin plus hosting (AUD 10–40/month) | Fixed monthly fees (AUD 42–431) |
| Maintenance | Self-managed | Fully managed by the platform |
| Support | Community-based vs 24/7 professional help | 24/7 professional assistance |
| Performance | Depends on hosting provider | 99.99% uptime |
Choosing the Right Platform
WooCommerce may be the better choice if your business:
- Wants full control over hosting, security, and customisation.
- Has the technical know-how (or in-house expertise) to manage the setup.
- Prefers flexible costs without fixed monthly fees.
- Needs extensive local payment gateway options.
Shopify might be ideal if your business:
- Prioritises ease of use and automatic maintenance.
- Prefers predictable monthly expenses.
- Values 24/7 professional support.
- Needs to scale quickly without handling technical details.
All prices are in AUD and reflect the Australian market. Both platforms offer GST compliance and support local payment methods, so pick the one that aligns with your business goals and the evolving Australian market.
