Every comparison of these two is written by someone earning a commission from one of them. So here is the short version up front: Shopify costs more and asks less of you. WordPress with WooCommerce costs less and asks more. Everything below is detail on that trade-off.
What actually separates them
| Shopify | WordPress + WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A hosted service you rent | Software you install on your own hosting |
| Monthly cost | Fixed subscription per plan | Hosting only, but add-ons stack up |
| Transaction fees | Extra percentage unless you use their payment product | None from the platform itself |
| Who handles updates | Shopify | You, or whoever maintains it |
| Who handles security | Shopify | You, or whoever maintains it |
| Design freedom | Constrained by the theme system | Effectively unlimited |
| If it breaks at 11pm | Their support | Your problem |
| Moving away later | Hard — you rebuild | You own the files and the database |
The costs nobody puts in the comparison table
Both platforms are advertised at a price that is not what you end up paying. The gap is bigger than most people expect, and it goes in different directions.
On Shopify, the subscription is the floor. On top of it: the transaction percentage if you use an external payment provider, and the apps. Reviews, subscriptions, advanced shipping rules, proper invoicing for Spain — these are frequently paid monthly add-ons, and four or five of them can quietly exceed the subscription itself.
On WooCommerce, the software is free and the hosting is cheap, but a shop needs more server than a brochure site, and the plugins that do the serious work are mostly annual licences. Then there is the cost that never appears on any invoice: somebody has to keep it updated, and if that somebody is you, it is time you are not spending selling.
Before deciding, write down every function your shop genuinely needs and price it on both platforms. Not the marketing page — the actual list. The answer flips depending on what is on that list, which is exactly why generic comparisons are useless.
What changes when you sell in Spain
This is where the international comparisons stop being useful, because they are written for a different market.
- Invoicing: Spanish customers, and every business customer, expect a compliant invoice with sequential numbering. Neither platform does this properly out of the box for Spain; both need an add-on.
- VAT: selling to other EU countries brings its own rules once you pass certain thresholds, and the platform needs to handle rates by destination.
- Payment methods: card is universal, but Bizum is normal here and is not standard on international platforms. Check before committing.
- Cash on delivery: still requested in parts of Spain more than in other markets. Trivial on WooCommerce, more awkward elsewhere.
- Language: if your customers are Spanish and foreign residents, you need two languages properly — not a translate widget.
None of these is a dealbreaker for either platform. They are the questions to ask before you sign up, because discovering them after you have built the shop is expensive.
Choose Shopify if
- You want to be selling next week and you do not want to think about servers.
- Nobody in the business is technical and nobody is going to become technical.
- Your catalogue is straightforward: products, variants, done.
- Volume is high enough that support at midnight is worth paying for.
- You would rather spend on a subscription than on your own hours.
Choose WordPress and WooCommerce if
- You already have a WordPress site, content and rankings you do not want to abandon.
- The shop is part of a bigger site rather than the whole business.
- You need something specific that the hosted platform simply does not do.
- You want the design to look like your brand and nothing else.
- You want to own the whole thing and be able to move it anywhere.
The question that actually decides it
Not price, and not features. It is this: who is going to look after this in six months?
A WooCommerce shop that nobody updates becomes a security problem, and shops hold customer data and payment flows, so the stakes are higher than on a normal site. If there is no honest answer to who maintains it, the hosted platform is the right call even if it costs more — you are paying someone to do the job you were not going to do.
If there is an answer — an agency, a developer, a maintenance arrangement — then WooCommerce usually works out cheaper over a few years and leaves you owning the result.
And a third option people forget
If you sell a handful of products, or one product in a few variants, you may not need a shop platform at all. A single well-built product page with a payment link, or orders taken over WhatsApp, converts perfectly well and costs a fraction to run.
A full catalogue, categories, stock control and order management only earns its cost once there is enough volume to justify it. Plenty of small brands build the shop first and then discover the shop was never the bottleneck.