WooCommerce vs. Shopify for a Houston small business

Most WooCommerce vs Shopify comparisons cover the same ground, meaning features, themes, app counts, and fees. Those lists answer the easy question. The harder question is what each platform demands of its owner once the store is live.

For a Houston business with two to 50 employees and no developer on staff, that is the question that decides how the next two years feel. The short version is that Shopify runs the platform for you, while WooCommerce leaves both the running and the maintaining to you.

What you are actually buying

Shopify is a hosted platform, which means one company runs the servers, the checkout, the security patches, and the software updates, then sells you the result as a subscription. The Basic plan is $29 a month billed yearly, or $39 a month billed monthly.

We checked those prices in August 2026. Both vendors change plans and fees without much notice, so confirm the current rates on Shopify’s pricing page and WooCommerce’s WooPayments fee schedule before you build a budget around them.

WooCommerce is open-source software with no license fee, a plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. It runs on the same foundation we compared for marketing sites in Webflow vs. WordPress, and you supply everything around it. That means hosting from a separate company, the WordPress software underneath, a theme, and the extensions that add what the core plugin leaves out. Every piece of it is yours to keep current.

Processing fees are one place the two barely differ. For US online card sales, WooPayments charges 2.90% plus 30 cents per transaction, and Shopify Payments on Basic charges 2.9% plus 30 cents at its standard rate. The payment layer will not decide this for you.

What the owner is responsible for

The cleanest way to compare the two is to write down what the owner is responsible for before a single sale happens.

On Shopify, that list is your business, meaning orders, inventory, product photos, and marketing. The platform applies its own patches in the background, and that upkeep you never see is the product you are paying for.

On WooCommerce, the list starts with the update queue. WordPress core, the WooCommerce plugin, the theme, and every extension release updates on their own schedule, and any one of them can conflict with another.

Skipping those updates is not a neutral choice either. WooCommerce and its extensions are plugins, and the plugin layer is where an unmaintained WordPress store accumulates security exposure over time.

What happens when something breaks

The difference between the two shows most clearly under pressure, during a product launch, a holiday sale, a traffic spike, or a security advisory that names one of your plugins.

When a Shopify checkout misbehaves during a sale, the fix is Shopify’s job. Every plan includes 24/7 support, starting with live chat, and the infrastructure under your store is the same one carrying every other Shopify store through the same sale.

When a WooCommerce checkout misbehaves, the first person to notice is usually a customer. The fix depends on your host, your extension stack, and whoever you can reach at the time, because nobody at the platform is watching your store.

Traffic spikes work the same way. Shopify absorbs a busy sale without you having to think about it. On WooCommerce, your hosting plan sets the ceiling, and raising that ceiling in the middle of your best sales day is your job.

Security advisories split the same way. When a flaw turns up in Shopify’s platform, Shopify fixes it before you hear about it. When one turns up in a plugin your store depends on, nothing happens until someone on your side reads the advisory and applies the patch.

What the free license leaves out

WooCommerce’s strongest pitch is that the software costs nothing to license, and that is true. The work of running a store platform does not disappear with the license fee, though. It moves to you.

You can see what that work is worth by looking at what it costs to hire out.

Codeable, a marketplace that sells vetted WordPress developer time, prices projects off an $80 to $120 an hour rate it publishes on its own pricing page (checked August 2026), plus a 17.5% fixed service fee.

WP Buffs, which sells WordPress care plans, lists $179 a month for security and unlimited edits, and $239 a month for the tier that adds ecommerce plugin management (its own plans page, checked August 2026).

Those are two sellers’ published list prices, not a market survey, and a Houston shop may quote differently. What matters is that the line item exists at all, because it is the same work Shopify’s subscription already covers.

Paid extensions follow the same pattern. Conditional shipping rules, recurring billing, and tax automation are commonly paid extensions, each with its own annual renewal. The free core is the entry point rather than the whole bill.

None of this makes WooCommerce a bad platform. An owner with the skills and the hours can do the upkeep themselves and run a store on little more than a hosting bill. Whether that comes in under a Shopify subscription depends on the host. Some owners like that work. The trade is that what you save in fees you spend in hours, and those hours come out of the selling you opened the store to do.

Which platform we recommend

For most Houston small businesses with two to 50 employees, Shopify is the default for a store. It is the platform you can hand to a staff member without also handing them a maintenance job.

The one exception is a store whose subscription or B2B pricing logic needs code-level access.

Shopify places a fully customizable checkout at its Plus tier, from $2,300 a month. WooCommerce’s open codebase lets a developer build custom pricing rules directly, on any hosting plan.

A business inside that exception is already paying for development work, so the upkeep that comes with WooCommerce becomes part of a job someone already owns rather than a new burden.

If you are earlier in the decision and still weighing the wider field of store platforms, our guide to choosing your ecommerce platform walks through it.

If you would rather own a store than a maintenance schedule, we build Shopify stores for Houston businesses. Our website migration service moves existing stores over without losing the Google rankings you have earned.

We do not build or maintain WordPress, so we are not the people to take over the upkeep of a WooCommerce store. What we do is move stores off it.

If you want a recommendation for your own store, get in touch and we will tell you which platform fits what you sell.

Frequently asked questions

Which is better, WooCommerce or Shopify?

For most Houston small businesses with two to 50 employees, Shopify. It hosts, patches, and supports the store so the owner’s time goes into selling. The named exception is a store whose subscription or B2B pricing logic needs WooCommerce’s code-level access.

What are the disadvantages of WooCommerce?

WooCommerce puts the whole stack on the owner, including hosting, WordPress updates, extension compatibility, and security, so the store works only as well as its upkeep. Owners who do not want that job end up paying for it as freelance hours or a monthly care plan.

How much does Shopify take from a $20 sale?

On the Basic plan with Shopify Payments, the standard online card rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents, so a $20 sale costs about 88 cents in processing. Using a third-party payment provider instead adds a 2% fee on Basic (rates checked August 2026).

Is WooCommerce really free?

The core plugin is open-source software with no license fee, by WooCommerce’s own description. Everything around it is separate, including hosting, paid extensions with annual renewals, and the work of keeping it updated and secure. The license costs nothing, and the cost of running the store comes from everything around it.