profile 01
DTC brand, under $500K/yr.
Small team, no in-house engineer, catalog-heavy, simple B2C.
→ Shopify Basic or Grow.
§
§ · compare
Shopify vs WordPress. When each one wins.
Honest comparison by use case, not by platform loyalty. Fees, speed, SEO, maintenance burden, B2B, internationalization — scored against the store-size profile that maps to yours.
§ 01 · the honest version
Neither wins. It's use case, not platform.
Most Shopify vs WordPress articles exist to justify an affiliate commission or a single-platform agency's roster. We have built on both since 2017 and the honest answer is that neither wins categorically. Shopify wins for operational simplicity, catalog-heavy ecommerce, and teams without engineering depth. WordPress with WooCommerce wins for content-heavy brands, niche B2B catalogs, and teams that already have a developer on staff. The decision is almost entirely about your content-to-catalog ratio and your team's engineering capacity.
§ 02 · side by side
Eight dimensions that matter.
| criterion | Shopify | WordPress + WooCommerce | our pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Hours to days | Days to weeks | Shopify |
| Subscription cost | $29-$2,300/mo (Plus) | ~$0 platform + $20-500/mo hosting | WordPress (small stores) |
| Transaction fees | 0% on Shopify Payments, 0.5-2% otherwise | Gateway-only (2.9%+$0.30 Stripe) | Either |
| Maintenance burden | Very low (managed) | High (updates, security, backups) | Shopify |
| Content / blog SEO | Adequate | Best in class | WordPress |
| Ecommerce SEO | Strong out of the box | Strong with Yoast/Rank Math | Either |
| B2B features | Strong (Plus company accounts) | Plugin-dependent | Shopify Plus |
| Customization ceiling | Liquid + Functions + Hydrogen | Full code access | WordPress |
§ 03 · pick by profile
Four profiles. Four different answers.
profile 02
Content-led brand, any size.
Media business, course platform, membership site, blog as primary channel.
→ WordPress with WooCommerce.
profile 03
$2M+ DTC, growth-stage.
Catalog heavy, needs checkout extensibility, multi-region, B2B expansion coming.
→ Shopify Plus.
profile 04
B2B industrial, 10K+ SKUs.
Deep product data, custom pricing per account, integration with ERP.
→ Depends. Shopify Plus B2B if tight ERP integration; WooCommerce if custom logic beyond Plus's surface.
§ 04 · questions
Five answers.
Which is cheaper: Shopify or WordPress?
True cost over 3 years is usually comparable, but the shape is different. Shopify has higher subscription fees ($29-$399/mo) and transaction fees on non-Shopify Payments (0.5-2 percent), plus per-app subscriptions. WordPress with WooCommerce has low subscription cost but compounds on hosting ($20-$500/mo depending on scale), premium plugins ($50-$500/year each), developer hours for updates and security, and the occasional compromised-site recovery. Stores under $250K/yr often run cheaper on WordPress; stores above $1M/yr usually run cheaper on Shopify once developer time is priced in.
Which has better SEO: Shopify or WordPress?
WordPress has the edge on content SEO (blog system, taxonomy flexibility, plugin ecosystem led by Yoast and Rank Math). Shopify has the edge on ecommerce SEO since 2023 (canonical management, product schema, sitemap generation, mobile speed out of the box). The practical answer depends on your content mix. A content-heavy brand with 100+ articles and a small catalog usually wins on WordPress. A catalog-heavy brand with 500+ SKUs and light blog content usually wins on Shopify. Both are ranking-competitive when set up properly; neither is intrinsically better.
Which is easier to maintain?
Shopify by a wide margin. Shopify pushes platform updates automatically, handles hosting, handles PCI compliance, pushes security patches centrally, and has a predictable apps ecosystem. WordPress requires manual core updates, plugin updates (8-20 installed on a typical WooCommerce store), theme updates, server patches, backup verification, and security hardening. Small WordPress stores without maintenance end up compromised at some point; every agency we know has cleaned up a hacked WooCommerce site. Shopify's closed ecosystem is a maintenance tax in feature flexibility but a dividend in operational simplicity.
Which supports B2B and international better?
Shopify Plus is noticeably stronger for B2B since the 2023 company-accounts launch: NET-30 terms, catalog pricing per customer, company-level role-based access, and quote flows. WooCommerce has B2B via plugins (B2BKing, WooCommerce B2B) but the feature set is more fragmented and requires more engineering to stitch together. For multi-currency and multi-language, Shopify Markets handles 3+ regions cleanly out of the box; WooCommerce needs plugins (WPML, Polylang) and hreflang discipline the site owner has to enforce. Both work; Shopify Plus saves engineering hours at scale.
When should I migrate between platforms?
Migrate WordPress to Shopify when: store does $500K+/yr and monthly maintenance burden exceeds 8 hours, or when WooCommerce incidents (broken checkout, plugin conflicts, security issues) are recurring, or when you need Shopify Plus features (checkout extensibility, B2B, Shopify Functions). Migrate Shopify to WordPress when: content publishing is a core business model (media brands, course sites), catalog is small and flexibility in custom post types matters more than ecommerce feature depth, or when per-month Shopify fees are compounding on a thin-margin business. Neither migration is cheap; plan 12-24 weeks and see our /services/shopify-migration/ page for the full methodology.
§ 05 · audit the platform decision
Platform audit. Before you migrate.
30-minute audit call. Written recommendation with specific next steps. Most audits conclude "do not migrate"; we get paid the same either way.