WooCommerce or Shopify? How an Australian Business Should Choose

Most Australian businesses choosing an online store end up with the same two names on the shortlist: WooCommerce and Shopify. Both can run a serious store, both work with Australian payments and shipping, and both have plenty of developers. The difference is in who looks after the platform, how much you can change, and what you pay for over time. This guide compares them on the things that matter for an Australian business, then says when each one is the better fit.

The short answer

Choose Shopify if you want a store that is quick to launch, low on maintenance and built around a standard way of selling products. Choose WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, need the store to do something unusual, want full control of your data and code, or sell in ways Shopify handles awkwardly, such as complex B2B pricing or bookings. Neither is better in general. One will suit your business better.

How they differ

Shopify is a hosted platform. You pay a monthly subscription, and Shopify runs the servers, security and core software. You customise the store with a theme and apps from the Shopify App Store.

WooCommerce is a free, open source plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. You choose your own hosting, and you (or your developer) are responsible for updates, security and backups. You customise it with plugins, or with custom code where nothing off the shelf fits.

That one difference, hosted versus self-hosted, drives most of the comparison below.

WooCommerce vs Shopify for Australian businesses

	Shopify	WooCommerce
Hosting and security	Included and managed by Shopify	Your own hosting; you or your developer manage security and updates
Running costs	Monthly plan, plus paid apps and possible transaction fees	Hosting, paid plugins and maintenance; no platform subscription
Customisation	Within Shopify’s structure; deep changes can be limited	Almost anything, if you can build it
Ease of use	Very easy for staff to learn	Easy once set up, but more moving parts
Content and blogging	Basic blog	Full WordPress content tools
B2B and wholesale	Available, with the strongest features on higher plans	Flexible through plugins or custom code
Data ownership	Exportable, but the platform is Shopify’s	Full ownership of code and database
Maintenance	Low	Ongoing, and important

Running costs: what to compare

Comparing the headline subscription is misleading. Over a year, the real cost of either platform is the sum of several lines, and the totals can end up closer than they look.

Shopify running costs

• The monthly plan, which rises as you move to higher tiers.
• Paid apps, which often add more each month than the plan itself.
• Payment processing fees, and an extra transaction fee if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments.
• A premium theme, if you use one, and developer time for changes.

WooCommerce running costs

• Quality hosting suited to an online store, which matters more than most people expect.
• Paid plugins and their annual licence renewals.
• Payment processing fees from your chosen provider.
• Ongoing maintenance: tested updates, security, backups and monitoring.

Ask any developer you talk to for a twelve-month running cost estimate on both platforms for your store, not just the build cost. We quote each build in writing after a short scoping call.

Payments, GST and shipping in Australia

Payments

Both platforms work with the payment options Australian shoppers expect: cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, PayPal, and buy now pay later services such as Afterpay and Zip, through built-in options, apps or plugins. Check that your preferred provider settles in Australian dollars to an Australian bank account, and what it charges per transaction.

GST

Both can show prices including GST, calculate GST on orders and produce tax invoices. If you sell to customers overseas, or to businesses that need tax invoices with your ABN, test those scenarios before launch. Your accountant should confirm the settings, especially if you sell GST-free items alongside taxable ones.

Shipping

Both connect to Australia Post, Sendle, StarTrack and the major couriers, either directly or through shipping apps and plugins. Live rates, flat rates by zone, free shipping thresholds and click and collect are all possible on both. Bulky or dangerous goods, or freight to remote areas, usually need more setup on either platform.

SEO and content

Both platforms can rank well in Google. WooCommerce has the edge for content-heavy stores, because it sits on WordPress, the strongest blogging and content tool of the two, with full control over URLs, schema and page structure. Shopify handles the technical basics well and is fast by default, but its URL structure is fixed and its blog is basic. If content marketing is a large part of how you plan to attract customers, that counts towards WooCommerce. If you will rely more on ads, marketplaces and social, it matters less.

B2B, wholesale and unusual ways of selling

This is where the choice often gets decided. If you sell to trade customers with their own price lists, payment terms, minimum order quantities or approval steps, or you sell bookings, rentals, subscriptions with unusual rules, or made-to-order products with complex options, WooCommerce can usually be bent to fit, either with plugins or custom development. Shopify can handle much of this too, but the strongest B2B features sit on its higher-priced plans, and some requirements are hard to meet within its structure.

Manufacturers selling both wholesale and direct face this decision often. Our guide to manufacturers selling directly to customers covers the wider choices.

Maintenance and who does it

Shopify’s biggest advantage is that you do not maintain the platform. Updates and security happen without you. With WooCommerce, someone must apply and test updates, watch security, keep backups and fix things when a plugin conflicts with another. That work is manageable and well understood, but it has to be done, and an unmaintained WooCommerce store is a risk to your customers’ data and your sales.

When to choose Shopify

• You sell physical products in a fairly standard way.
• You want to launch quickly and keep technical work to a minimum.
• Your team will run the store day to day without a developer.
• You plan to sell across Shopify’s connected channels, such as social and marketplaces.

When to choose WooCommerce

• You already have a WordPress site with content that ranks.
• You need custom features, complex B2B pricing, bookings or unusual product options.
• You want full ownership of the code and data, and freedom to choose your hosting.
• You have, or will pay for, someone to maintain it properly.

A worked example

This is a hypothetical, not a client. Take a Perth homewares brand selling about two hundred products direct to consumers, with a small wholesale side to gift shops. The owner runs the store with one staff member and has no developer. Shopify suits the retail side well, and its wholesale features cover the gift shops adequately on a higher plan. Low maintenance matters more to this business than deep customisation.

Now take a Brisbane industrial supplier with three thousand products, trade accounts with customer-specific pricing, quotes for large orders and an existing WordPress site with years of technical articles that bring in search traffic. WooCommerce, with custom WooCommerce development for the trade pricing and quote requests, keeps the content and its rankings in place and handles the pricing rules without forcing the business into a new way of working.

Can you switch later?

Yes, in either direction, but it is a project. Products, customers and order history can be migrated, and URLs must be redirected properly so you do not lose search rankings. Choosing carefully at the start is cheaper than migrating in two years.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• How Much Does eCommerce Website Development Cost in Australia?
• How to Choose the Right eCommerce Development Company
• Should You Build or Buy an eCommerce Website?