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Shopify or WooCommerce? How to choose for a UK small business

Both platforms run hundreds of thousands of successful shops. The right choice depends less on features than on who will run the shop day to day and how much you want to manage yourself.

By Mahyar Mosavi 3 minute read

Shopify and WooCommerce are the two platforms most UK small businesses end up choosing between. Both are capable, both are widely supported, and both can be the wrong choice in the wrong situation. Here is how we help clients decide.

The one-sentence difference

Shopify is a hosted service: you rent a complete, managed shop. WooCommerce is software that adds a shop to a WordPress website: you own it, host it and look after it.

Running effort

This is the factor that matters most and gets discussed least. With Shopify, security, hosting, updates and payment compliance are handled for you. With WooCommerce, someone has to keep WordPress, the theme and every plugin up to date, monitor the server and fix things when updates clash. If nobody in the business wants that job, budget for a maintenance plan or choose Shopify.

Costs

  • Shopify: a monthly plan, plus card fees through Shopify Payments, plus any paid apps. Apps are where costs creep up, so review them every year.
  • WooCommerce: the plugin is free, but you pay for hosting good enough to run a shop, premium extensions, and maintenance. Card fees depend on the payment provider you choose.

For a typical small shop the yearly totals end up closer than people expect. The difference is that Shopify costs are predictable, while WooCommerce costs depend on how well the site is looked after.

Flexibility

WooCommerce wins if you need something unusual: complex trade pricing, custom product builders, unusual subscription rules or deep integration with a bespoke system. Because you control the code, almost anything is possible. Shopify has become far more flexible with custom apps and checkout extensions, but some limits remain.

UK-specific points

  • Both handle UK VAT, including prices shown inclusive of VAT, which UK consumers expect.
  • Both integrate with Royal Mail, DPD, Evri and the main UK couriers, either directly or through apps.
  • Both connect to Xero and QuickBooks, which most UK small businesses use for accounts.
  • If you sell to the EU, check how each handles the IOSS scheme for low-value goods.

Search engines

Both can rank well. Shopify enforces a few URL patterns you cannot change, which rarely matters in practice. WooCommerce gives you full control but also full responsibility for speed, which has a real effect on rankings and sales.

Our rule of thumb

  • Choose Shopify if you want to focus on selling, not running a website, and your products and pricing are fairly standard.
  • Choose WooCommerce if you already have a WordPress site with valuable content, need unusual functionality, or have someone to look after it properly.
  • Consider a custom build only when the shop is central to a business model that neither platform supports well.

Moving between platforms later is entirely possible, but it is a project in its own right. If you are unsure, ask us: we build on both and have no reason to push you either way.

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