WooCommerce vs Shopify for South African stores: costs, payments and control
Shopify rents you a shop and looks after the building. WooCommerce gives you the shop to own, on hosting you choose, with someone to look after it. For a South African store the payment rules and the exchange rate decide more than the feature lists do.
The honest comparison of WooCommerce vs Shopify for a South African store comes down to three questions, and none of them is about features. What will the store cost in rand once the exchange rate and the payment fees are in? How will you take payments, given how Shopify treats South Africa? And who is in control when you want something the platform did not plan for? Shopify suits an owner who wants a standard shop with no hosting, no updates and no developer, and who is happy paying a monthly subscription in US dollars. WooCommerce suits an owner who wants to own the store outright, pay nothing per sale beyond the gateway’s own fee, and change anything at all, with someone competent looking after it. We build WooCommerce stores, so read what follows knowing that, and check every claim against the linked pages.
What is the difference between WooCommerce and Shopify?
Shopify is a hosted service: you rent a store by the month, Shopify runs the servers, and you work inside its limits. WooCommerce is free, open-source software that turns a WordPress website into a store; you own the result, but you also carry the hosting, the updates and the security, or pay someone to.
Every other difference follows from that one. Shopify’s own South African pricing page (as at 2 October 2026) lists web hosting, a free SSL certificate and 24/7 support (chat on the lower plans, phone on Plus) as part of every plan, and offers a three-day trial followed by US$1 a month for three months. You can be selling in an afternoon, with a chat window if it goes wrong.
WooCommerce’s own pricing page describes it as “the free, open-source ecommerce platform for WordPress” with “no platform fees, no revenue share”, then lists what you pay for instead: hosting from a provider you choose, extensions bought one at a time, and a payment processor you pick. The WooCommerce plugin page on WordPress.org (as at 2 October 2026) shows more than seven million active installations and puts the ownership point plainly: “you retain full ownership of your store’s content and data forever.”
What does each one cost in South Africa?
Shopify costs a fixed monthly subscription in US dollars plus a percentage of every sale when you use a South African payment gateway. WooCommerce costs nothing to license; you pay for the build, the hosting and whichever paid extensions you need, and nothing per sale beyond the gateway’s own fee. The two curves cross, and where depends on your turnover.
Shopify’s South African pricing page (as at 2 October 2026) prices its plans in US dollars: Basic at US$19 a month paid yearly or US$25 paid monthly, Grow at US$49 or US$65, Advanced at US$299 or US$399, and Plus from US$2,300 a month. Each plan also carries a fee for using a third-party payment provider: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. The next section explains why that fee applies to almost every South African store.
WooCommerce’s pricing page (as at 2 October 2026) says the core platform is “Free, with no monthly subscription”, puts hosting at “$25 – $350/month for most stores”, and prices extensions at “$29 – $299/year per extension”. Its comparison row for a third-party payment fee reads “None”. What it cannot tell you is what a South African developer charges, so here are our published prices.
Our Professional package starts at R25,000 (ZAR) incl. VAT and includes a WooCommerce store as one of its four options, with up to 50 products loaded and PayFast and one shipping method set up; a larger store is quoted up from there. Our managed hosting is R450 a month, and a care plan, which includes that hosting, is from R975 a month, both incl. VAT; what an online store costs in South Africa, to build and to run each month lists what each price includes and what pushes a store past it.
| Cost line | Shopify (own pricing page) | WooCommerce (own pricing page, and Fyre’s published prices) |
|---|---|---|
| Software licence | Included in the subscription | Free, open source |
| Monthly platform fee | US$19 to US$399 a month, or from US$2,300 on Plus, billed in dollars | None |
| Hosting | Included | Choose a provider; ours is R450 a month incl. VAT |
| Fee per sale on a South African gateway | 2%, 1%, 0.6% or 0.2% by plan, on top of the gateway’s fee | None; only the gateway’s fee |
| Themes and extras | Theme editor included; apps are not in the plan price | Extensions US$29 to US$299 a year each, or custom code you are licensed to use |
| Build | Do it yourself, or hire a Shopify Partner | From R25,000 incl. VAT for a store in our Professional package |
| Updates and security | Shopify’s job | Yours, or a care plan from R975 a month incl. VAT |
The subscription is the number everyone quotes and the least important one. A store turning over R100,000 a month on Shopify Basic pays its gateway’s fee and then 2% of that turnover to Shopify, on top of the dollar subscription. The same store on WooCommerce pays its gateway and its hosting. The full running-cost picture is in what a WooCommerce store really costs to run.
How do payments work on each platform in South Africa?
Shopify’s own payment service, Shopify Payments, is not offered to South African businesses (South Africa is not on Shopify’s list of supported countries), so a South African Shopify store uses a third-party gateway and pays Shopify’s extra percentage on every order. WooCommerce has no payment service of its own here either, but charges nothing for the gateway you choose.
This is the point comparisons written overseas miss. Shopify’s help centre keeps a list of the countries where Shopify Payments is supported (as at 2 October 2026). South Africa is not on it, and the page says that if your country isn’t listed “then you need to use a third-party payment provider”. Shopify’s page on third-party payment providers adds that third-party transaction fees “apply on all third-party and alternate payment gateways”, at the rate by plan from the pricing page.
WooCommerce’s equivalent, WooPayments, lists the countries it supports (as at 2 October 2026), and South Africa is not on that list either. The difference is that WooCommerce does not penalise you for it: you install a gateway plugin, pay its fee, and WooCommerce takes nothing.
PayFast, the gateway we set up in the Professional package, connects to both. Woo publishes its own PayFast extension for WooCommerce (as at 2 October 2026), which handles subscriptions, deposits and pre-orders and notes that “Payfast is only supported in South Africa”. PayFast publishes a Shopify integration that works by pasting your merchant ID and key into the store. So the gateway does not decide the platform; the platform decides what you pay on top of the gateway. PayFast’s fees, payouts and set-up are covered in PayFast for store owners, and the other South African gateways in taking payments online in South Africa.
Who controls the store: design, features and data
On Shopify you control what the theme editor exposes; beyond that you edit Shopify’s template code or hire a Shopify Partner. On WooCommerce you control everything, because it is your software on your hosting, and the limit is your developer’s skill and what you are willing to pay for their time. The second is more freedom and more responsibility.
Shopify’s help page on customising themes describes the theme editor for changing settings and rearranging content, and then says: “If your theme doesn’t include settings for the changes that you want to make, and you’re comfortable with HTML, CSS, and Liquid, then you can edit your theme code.” For most owners that means a developer, and the page suggests a Shopify Partner, working inside Shopify’s rules.
On WooCommerce the same request is a plugin, and that is the kind of work we do on stores. Smallies World, a client since 2024, runs a WooCommerce store we host and maintain; the work since has included bulk-purchase discounts and, in 2026, custom page animations built as a plugin. None of it needed a platform’s permission.
WordPress.org’s WooCommerce page says you “retain full ownership of your store’s content and data forever”. We say the same: your website and its content are yours, and you can move them wherever you like. Custom code we write stays our copyright and you are licensed to use it on your own site; if you need to own it outright, we agree that in writing before the work starts. We build on Blocksy rather than a paid theme, and a paid plugin you want is licensed to your own account, so the store does not depend on our licences.
Leaving Shopify is partial. Shopify’s help page on exporting products describes a CSV export for a backup, for moving products to a new Shopify store, or for bulk editing. The products come with you as a spreadsheet; the theme, the apps and the checkout do not. If you later want the store on your own hosting, the design is rebuilt.
Which is better for SEO?
Both give search engines what they need to crawl a shop; the difference is how much of the rest you can change. Shopify’s help centre documents its sitemap, its site structure and an editable robots.txt.liquid. WooCommerce sits inside WordPress, where every part of a page is yours to edit.
Shopify’s SEO section has pages on optimising your site structure, finding and submitting your sitemap, hiding a page from search engines and editing robots.txt.liquid. That is a reasonable toolkit; what it does not give you is a free hand with the rest, because the templates are Shopify’s.
A WooCommerce store is a WordPress site, so the product pages, the category pages, the blog and the structured data live in one place you control, and an SEO plugin sets each page’s title and description in Google. That matters most when a store’s search traffic depends on category pages and buying guides rather than on the brand name. Getting them found is covered in ecommerce SEO.
What are the disadvantages of WooCommerce?
WooCommerce’s disadvantages are the cost of owning it: you or your developer carry hosting, updates, backups and security; a store built from many plugins can break when one updates; and the free platform is not free once hosting, extensions and a competent developer are paid for. A store nobody maintains is the usual way WooCommerce goes wrong.
That is what our website rescue service exists for. If you choose WooCommerce, choose who looks after it in the same decision, and make sure the hosting includes daily off-site backups and a staging copy, so an update can be tested before it reaches customers. On our hosting, Wordfence runs on every site with hardening on the server, and a care plan tests updates on staging first.
Two more, in fairness. The hosting range WooCommerce quotes on its pricing page is wide because a busy store needs better hosting than a brochure site. And WooCommerce has no 24/7 chat line; support is whoever you have hired. Ours is published on our website maintenance and care plans page: a new enquiry answered the same business day, and for care-plan clients one business day on the basic plan, and four business hours on the full plan or when a site is down.
What are the disadvantages of Shopify for a South African store?
Shopify’s disadvantages here are the dollar subscription, the extra percentage on every sale because Shopify Payments is not offered in South Africa, and the limits of a rented platform: changes beyond the theme editor need a developer or an app with its own price, and leaving means exporting a spreadsheet and rebuilding the rest.
Both costs are in the table above; the fee per sale is the larger one for a store that sells well.
Then there are the apps. Shopify’s pricing page lists integration with “1000s of apps”, and its help page on app charges on your Shopify bill explains that an app’s subscription or usage charge is added to your regular Shopify bill and a one-time app charge is billed separately. A store that adds reviews, bundles and a loyalty scheme through apps therefore pays for each app on top of the plan, and none of that code is yours. On WooCommerce the same features are extensions bought by the year, or code written once.
Which should you choose?
Choose Shopify if you sell a standard catalogue, want to be live this week without a developer, and accept a dollar subscription plus a percentage of sales in return for a 24/7 chat line. Choose WooCommerce if you want to own the shop, pay nothing per sale beyond the gateway, connect it to your business, or change anything.
| Your situation | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Starting small, testing whether the product sells | Shopify | Three-day trial then US$1 a month for three months (Shopify’s pricing page); nothing to build; walk away if it fails |
| An established business adding a store to a WordPress website | WooCommerce | One site, one login, one host; the store and the content live together |
| Turnover high enough that 2% or 1% of it is real money | WooCommerce | No fee per sale beyond the gateway |
| Pricing rules, stock systems or accounting that must connect to the store | WooCommerce | Custom plugins and integrations, quoted after discovery |
| No developer and no wish to have one | Shopify | Hosting, updates and support are in the subscription |
| You want the store to be an asset you own and can move | WooCommerce | “Full ownership of your store’s content and data forever” (WordPress.org’s WooCommerce page) |
Notice what is missing from that table: the lowest price. At the very bottom, a do-it-yourself Shopify store on a trial costs less than any built store. In the middle, where most established South African businesses sit, the per-sale fee tips it: once 1% or 2% of monthly turnover, plus the dollar subscription, passes what hosting and care cost on WooCommerce, the running cost favours owning the store; the build is the price of getting there, and what a WooCommerce store really costs to run works the sums.
An owned store only works with someone looking after it. That someone is what we sell, at the prices in the cost table above. Thrive Raw Food For Dogs, an online store built in 2025, is still with us for hosting, maintenance and support; the work since launch has included product updates, an MRPeasy set-up and helping Frozen Food Company set up its delivery plugin. The full picture of building a store here, from platform to delivery, is in building an online store in South Africa, and the package detail is on our ecommerce web design page.
If you are weighing the two, tell us what you sell, roughly how many products, and what the store must connect to, and we will reply the same business day. A store that fits our Professional package has a published starting price; one that needs custom plugins or integrations is scoped in discovery before we quote.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Shopify take from a $20 sale?
It depends on your plan and your country. A South African store cannot use Shopify Payments, so it pays Shopify’s third-party payment fee on every order: 2% on Basic, which is 40 US cents on a $20 sale, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus (Shopify’s South African pricing page, as at 2 October 2026). The gateway’s own fee comes on top, and the monthly subscription is separate.
Who is Shopify’s biggest competitor?
Nobody publishes an official ranking, so the honest answer comes from the platforms’ own pages. WooCommerce’s pricing page (as at 2 October 2026) compares its costs against Shopify first, then BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Wix and Adobe Commerce, and WordPress.org lists more than seven million active WooCommerce installations. For a South African business deciding between renting and owning a store, WooCommerce is the comparison that matters.
Which country uses Shopify the most?
The United States. Shopify’s annual report for 2025 says that, as at 31 December 2025, its merchants came from more than 175 countries: 44% in the United States, 31% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 16% in Asia Pacific, Australia and China, 5% in Canada and 5% in Latin America. A South African store is in the second group, and South Africa is not on Shopify’s list of countries where Shopify Payments is supported.