Shopify vs WooCommerce vs Magento: Which Should You Choose?

I build online shops on Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento, so I don’t have a favourite platform to sell you. “Which one should I use?” is a question I’m asked often, and here’s the short version of my answer.

Shopify is the safest default for most small and medium UK retailers who want to start selling quickly without managing servers. WooCommerce suits businesses that already run on WordPress, lean heavily on content, or want full ownership and control. Magento earns its extra cost and complexity when you have a large catalogue, trade customers with their own pricing, multiple storefronts or serious integration needs.

All three run plenty of successful shops. The right choice depends less on which is “best” and more on your catalogue, your team, your budget and how much of the technical side you want to own. Below I compare them on the things that matter in practice, with current UK pricing.

Shopify is a hosted platform. You pay a monthly subscription and Shopify looks after the servers, security, checkout and PCI compliance, so your time goes on products and marketing rather than updates and hosting.

At the time of writing, Shopify’s UK plans are:

• Basic: £19 a month billed yearly, or £25 billed monthly
• Grow: £49 a month billed yearly, or £65 billed monthly
• Advanced: £259 a month billed yearly, or £344 billed monthly
• Plus: from £1,800 a month for larger businesses

Card payments through Shopify Payments cost from 2% + 25p per online transaction on Basic, falling to 1.7% + 25p on Grow and 1.5% + 25p on Advanced. If you use a third-party payment provider instead, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Check Shopify’s pricing page for the latest figures, as they do change.

• Quick to launch and easy for non-technical staff to run.
• No hosting, server updates or security patching to manage.
• A proven, well-optimised checkout.
• A huge app ecosystem for reviews, subscriptions, marketplaces and more.
• Built-in tools for selling in person, on social channels and in other markets.

• App subscriptions add up. It’s common to spend more on apps than on the plan itself, so I always review a store’s app list before adding anything new.
• Extra transaction fees apply if you don’t use Shopify Payments.
• Full checkout customisation is limited to Shopify Plus.
• Some structures are fixed, such as the /products/ and /collections/ URL patterns.
• Unusual pricing or product logic can need custom development, which adds cost.

I explain what a custom theme and store set-up involves on my Shopify development page.

WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress website into an online shop. Because it’s self-hosted, you own the whole thing: the code, the data and where it lives.

The plugin is free, but a working shop isn’t. Expect to pay for good hosting, a theme or custom design, and often several premium extensions for things like subscriptions, bookings or advanced shipping, many of which are billed annually. There’s no platform transaction fee; you pay your payment provider’s card fees only.

• Complete control over design, functionality and data.
• Excellent if content matters: blogs, guides and landing pages live alongside the shop.
• Flexible URL structures and SEO control.
• Huge plugin ecosystem and a large pool of developers.
• No platform fee on each sale.

• You’re responsible for hosting, updates, security and backups.
• Performance depends heavily on hosting quality and how carefully the site is built.
• Plugin conflicts and update issues are a real risk without proper maintenance.
• Large catalogues or high order volumes need careful optimisation.

If you already have a WordPress site, my WordPress development page explains how I build and look after WooCommerce shops.

Magento comes in two forms: Magento Open Source, which is free to use, and Adobe Commerce, the licensed version with extra business features and support from Adobe. It’s designed for shops that have outgrown simpler platforms.

• Large catalogues with complex attributes, configurable products and layered navigation.
• B2B selling, including customer-specific pricing, trade accounts and quote workflows.
• Multiple stores, brands, languages and currencies from a single installation.
• Deep integration with ERP, stock, warehouse and accounting systems.
• Fine-grained control over pricing rules, promotions and checkout logic.

• Higher build costs and a need for a developer who knows the platform well.
• It’s more demanding on hosting than WordPress and needs a properly configured server.
• Upgrades take planning. Adobe now ships one main release each year, with each 2.4.x release supported for three years from launch, so staying current is an ongoing commitment rather than an occasional job.

One recent change has made Magento more accessible: the popular Hyvä frontend theme, known for making Magento stores much faster, became free and open source in November 2025, removing a licence cost that used to sit on top of many builds.

You can find out more on my Magento 2 development page.

Plan prices are only part of the cost. Transaction fees, apps, hosting and maintenance often matter more. Here’s a quick illustration using Shopify’s published UK rates for standard online card payments.

Moving from Basic to Grow costs £30 a month more on yearly billing, and cuts your card rate by 0.3 percentage points. At £10,000 a month of online card sales, that rate saving is worth £30, so the two plans cost the same in fees. Below that level, Basic is usually cheaper on fees alone; above it, Grow starts to pay for itself, before you even count its extra staff accounts and features.

The same sum between Grow and Advanced gives a break-even of roughly £105,000 a month in card sales, which is why most growing shops sit on Basic or Grow for a long time. Your own numbers will depend on card mix, international orders and returns, but working this through before you choose a plan is time well spent.

For WooCommerce and Magento, do the same sum with hosting, extension licences and a realistic maintenance budget in place of the subscription.

When someone asks me which platform they should use, I start with these questions rather than a favourite:

1. How many products do you sell, and how many options does each one have?
2. Who will run the shop day to day, and how comfortable are they with technology?
3. Do you sell to trade customers on different prices or account terms?
4. Does the shop need to connect to stock, accounting, ERP or marketplace systems?
5. What budget do you have for ongoing maintenance, not just the build?
6. Where do you expect the business to be in two to three years?

The answers usually point clearly to one platform. If they don’t, that’s a sign it’s worth talking it through before committing.

• You want to launch quickly and keep technical overheads low.
• Your team is small and not technical.
• Your products and pricing are fairly standard.
• You’d rather pay a predictable monthly fee than manage hosting and updates.

• You already run a WordPress website you’re happy with.
• Content marketing is a major part of how you attract customers.
• You want full ownership of your code and data.
• You have, or will pay for, someone to maintain the site properly.

• You have thousands of products with complex options.
• You sell to trade customers with their own price lists or account terms.
• You need several storefronts, languages or currencies managed together.
• Your shop must integrate tightly with business systems such as an ERP.

Your business doesn’t really fit an off-the-shelf shop at all, for example complex product configurators, quote-based ordering or a trade portal tied into your own processes. In those cases a custom application built with Laravel, sometimes alongside a standard platform, can be the cleaner long-term answer.

Moving between platforms is very possible, and common as businesses grow. Products, customers and order history can usually be migrated, but the step that most often goes wrong is search engine optimisation. Product and category URLs normally change, so every old address needs a permanent redirect to its new equivalent, or rankings and traffic can drop sharply after launch.

Budget for a migration properly rather than treating it as a quick copy and paste. My guide to how much a website costs in the UK covers the wider budgeting picture.

• Shopify UK pricing and plan comparison
• WooCommerce
• Adobe Commerce lifecycle policy
• Hyvä Themes