WordPress vs Shopify: Which Is Better for Your Business?

Picking WordPress vs Shopify mostly comes down to whether you want a store you rent or a website you own. Shopify is the faster, simpler way to sell products online, with hosting, security and checkout handled for you. WordPress, usually with WooCommerce for the store part, gives you more control and more ways to grow, but you or your developer look after it. This guide compares the real costs, what each one charges on a sale, SEO, ownership and the downsides, so you can pick the right one for your business.

We build and maintain both for small businesses, so we don’t have a horse in this race. We’ve also moved a client off Shopify when it stopped fitting. Every price below is from Shopify’s, WooCommerce’s or WordPress’s own pages, checked on October 26, 2026.

WordPress vs Shopify: which is better?

Shopify is better if you mainly sell products and want it simple. WordPress is better if content, services or a custom setup matter as much as the store.

Neither is a bad choice, and they are both enormous. According to W3Techs’ October 2026 survey, WordPress runs 39.6% of all websites, and Shopify runs 5.3%. Among online stores specifically, WooCommerce powers 47.4% of the e-commerce systems W3Techs can identify and Shopify 32.4%. So the question isn’t which one is legitimate. It’s which one fits how your business sells.

What’s the difference between WordPress and Shopify?

Shopify is a paid, hosted store platform you subscribe to. WordPress is free software you install on your own hosting, and WooCommerce adds the store.

With Shopify, you pay a monthly plan and everything comes in the box. Shopify’s pricing page says hosting, unlimited bandwidth and a free SSL certificate are included on every plan, and its checkout is certified PCI DSS Level 1, the top card-security standard, for every store. You never install updates or think about servers.

WordPress is open-source software released under the GPLv2 license, so it’s free to use and nobody can take it away. WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns it into a store, with “7+ million” active installations, according to its plugin page. What you don’t get is hosting: WordPress’s own download page describes self-hosting as being for anyone “comfortable getting their own hosting and domain.” One naming trap: WordPress.com is a separate, hosted service with its own paid plans. When people compare WordPress and Shopify, they usually mean self-hosted WordPress from WordPress.org.

Which is cheaper, WordPress or Shopify?

WordPress costs less to start, but not always less to run. Once you pay for hosting and upkeep, a small store often costs about the same on both.

Here’s what each one costs a small US store, using public prices from October 26, 2026:

Sources: Shopify pricing, Shopify Theme Store, WooPayments fees and the WooCommerce Marketplace. Shopify’s current offer is 3 days free, then $1 a month for 3 months on most plans, and it charges no setup fees.

Look closely at the last row. A Shopify store doesn’t need someone patching software every month. A WordPress store does, because plugins, themes, PHP and WordPress itself all get updates, and a store that misses those updates is a common way sites get hacked. If you’d do that yourself, WordPress is clearly cheaper. If you’d pay someone, the gap mostly closes, and the reason to choose WordPress becomes control rather than price. Our website cost guide breaks down what the build itself costs.

How much does Shopify take from a $20 sale?

On the Basic plan with Shopify Payments, Shopify takes 88 cents from a $20 online sale paid with a standard US card. You keep $19.12.

The math is Shopify’s Basic online rate, 2.9% of $20 ($0.58), plus the 30-cent fixed fee. A premium card such as a rewards card costs more (3.5% plus 30 cents, so $1.00), and an international card adds 1% on top. Your monthly plan fee comes on top of all of that.

The third-party fee is where Shopify gets expensive. If you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own 2% on Basic, so that same $20 sale costs an extra 40 cents before your provider takes its cut. WooCommerce charges no platform fee on sales, and WooPayments works out to the same 88 cents on a $20 domestic card sale, so on fees alone the two are even unless you can’t use Shopify Payments.

Which is easier to use, Shopify or WordPress?

Shopify is easier. You sign up, pick a theme and add products, and Shopify handles hosting, security and updates. WordPress has more settings and more upkeep.

Shopify’s admin is built around selling, and almost everything a product business needs (inventory, shipping labels, taxes, discounts, abandoned-cart emails) is in one place. The Shopify App Store lists more than 16,000 apps for the rest, and each one goes through Shopify’s review.

WordPress asks more of you. You choose a host, install WooCommerce, pick a theme, and add plugins from a directory of more than 76,000. That freedom is the point, but it also means more decisions, and plugins from different developers don’t always play nicely together. If you want a hosted version of WordPress, WordPress.com starts at $4 a month for the first year on its Personal plan, and its Commerce plan, built for stores, is $45 a month for the first year. Most businesses that choose WordPress have someone set it up and keep it maintained.

Is WordPress or Shopify better for SEO?

Both can rank well. WordPress gives you more control over URLs, content and technical SEO, while Shopify’s structure is fixed but clean.

Shopify gives every store the same URL pattern, like /products/your-product and /collections/your-collection. You can change the last part, and Shopify creates a redirect when you do. What you can’t do, per Shopify’s help center, is redirect URLs that use its fixed paths such as /products and /collections. For most product stores that’s fine.

WordPress lets you set your own URL structure, and SEO plugins give you fine control over titles, schema, sitemaps and redirects. The bigger advantage is content. If your customers find you through guides, comparisons and local searches, WordPress is the stronger publishing tool, and its publishing tools go well beyond Shopify’s built-in blog.

Do you own your store on Shopify or WordPress?

On WordPress you own the software, the files and the data. On Shopify you can export your data, but the store itself only runs on Shopify.

Shopify lets you export products, customers and orders to spreadsheets, though product images aren’t included in the export. The design is a different story. Shopify themes are written in Liquid, Shopify’s own template language, and a purchased theme is licensed to one store. If you ever leave, plan on a new design.

With WordPress, the whole site is files and a database you can copy to any host. Whichever you choose, keep the domain and the accounts in your own name, not your developer’s.

What are the disadvantages of Shopify?

Monthly fees that stack up, an extra fee if you skip Shopify Payments, paid apps, limited checkout changes below Plus, and a design that won’t move with you.

• Fees stack. The plan, the card processing and any third-party payment fee all come out of each sale. Shopify Payments avoids the extra fee, so it’s the sensible default unless your products need a different processor.
• Apps are where the budget goes. Reviews, subscriptions, bundles and upsells often come from apps with their own monthly charges, so a store’s real cost can be far above its plan price.
• The checkout is mostly fixed. Shopify’s pricing page lists checkout customization as limited on Basic, Grow and Advanced, and its help center says advanced checkout customization is only on Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,300 a month.
• Some products don’t fit. Shopify has its own rules about what can be sold through its checkout and Shop channel. When a business needs something the platform won’t allow, there’s no setting to change.

We’ve seen that one firsthand. A client selling research peptides came to us because their payment processor required a research-use and age checkbox that Shopify couldn’t guarantee shoppers would see. We moved them to WooCommerce in about a week, carried over their affiliates and wholesale accounts, and they stopped paying roughly $230 a month in Shopify apps. The full story is in our guide to selling peptides online, and if you are still planning a store, our guide on how to start a peptide business walks through the steps and includes a profit calculator. For advertising, our guide to peptide ads covers what Meta and Google will and won’t allow.

Which has better support, Shopify or WordPress?

Shopify, because it’s one company you can call. WordPress has no support desk, so help comes from your host, your developer or community forums.

Shopify’s pricing page lists 24/7 support on every plan: live chat on Basic and Grow, enhanced live chat on Advanced and priority support on Plus. If your store stops taking payments at 9 PM on a Saturday, there’s someone to talk to, even if they can only help with Shopify itself and not the apps you’ve added.

WordPress is free software, so nobody owes you support for it. There are free community forums on WordPress.org, plugin makers support their own plugins, and good hosts will help with server problems. For anything that crosses those lines (a plugin conflict that breaks checkout, say), you need a developer who knows your site. That’s the main reason businesses on WordPress keep someone on a maintenance plan instead of calling around when something breaks.

Is Shopify or WordPress more secure?

Shopify is more secure out of the box because Shopify runs the servers and the checkout. WordPress can be just as secure, but only if it’s kept updated.

On Shopify, card security is Shopify’s job, and its PCI Level 1 certification covers your store, its cart and its hosting. You can still lose your store to a stolen password, so turn on two-step login, but you can’t forget to patch a server you never touch.

With WordPress, security depends on upkeep. WordPress’s own hardening guide says to always keep up to date with the latest version, because “older versions of WordPress are not maintained with security updates.” The same goes for plugins, themes and the PHP version on your server. October 2026 showed why: the PHP2Shell vulnerability hit PHP itself, so every WordPress site needed its host to update PHP. When a store does get hacked, our breakdown of what hacked site cleanup costs shows why prevention is cheaper.

Can you use Shopify with WordPress?

Yes. Shopify’s Buy Button lets you sell Shopify products on a WordPress site, so you can keep WordPress for content and use Shopify’s checkout.

According to Shopify’s help center, you can “place Buy Buttons on your non-Shopify website or blog,” and the Buy Button sales channel “is included in all Shopify subscription plans.” Shopify even uses a WordPress blog as its example. This works well for a service business or a blog that sells a handful of products: the site stays on WordPress, and Shopify handles the cart, payments and order management behind the button.

The catch is that you pay for both: a Shopify plan for the store side, plus hosting and upkeep for WordPress. For a small catalog, WooCommerce on the same site is usually simpler. For a business that already runs Shopify and wants a stronger content site, the Buy Button is a clean way to have both.

When should you choose Shopify?

Choose Shopify if you sell physical products, want to launch fast, and would rather pay a monthly fee than manage hosting, security and updates.

Shopify is the right call for a product brand that lives and dies by its store: clothing, home goods, supplements within Shopify’s rules, anything where the catalog, checkout and shipping are the business. It’s also good for owners who don’t want a developer on call. We explain more in why Shopify is ideal for product companies, and if you’re worried about the platform itself, is Shopify legit covers its security and track record.

When should you choose WordPress?

Choose WordPress if your website does more than sell products, if you need a custom checkout or features, or if owning the whole site matters to you.

WordPress fits service businesses that sell a few products on the side, stores that rely heavily on content and SEO, businesses with unusual checkout or compliance requirements, and anyone who wants to choose their own host and payment processor. It’s also the better base if you expect the site to grow into something Shopify doesn’t do well, like memberships, bookings or a large content library. If you’re also weighing simpler builders, our WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace comparison covers those. The trade-off is upkeep, so budget for WordPress maintenance from day one.

Frequently asked questions

The short version

Shopify is the easier way to run an online store: hosting, security and checkout are handled, and you pay for that with monthly fees, apps and less control. WordPress with WooCommerce costs less to start, lets you own everything and do almost anything, and asks for regular upkeep in return. On card fees they’re even, at 88 cents on a $20 sale. Pick Shopify if the store is the business. Pick WordPress if the website is.

Still torn? Tell us what you sell and how you sell it, and we’ll tell you which one we’d build and why.