Shopify or WooCommerce? Choosing a platform for your Australian store

If you’re starting an online store in Australia, the first big decision is the platform. For most small and growing brands it comes down to two: Shopify and WooCommerce. Both run thousands of successful Australian stores. They’re just built on different ideas, and the right one depends on how you sell.

The short version

• Shopify is a hosted service. You pay a monthly fee and Shopify looks after the servers, security and checkout. It’s quick to start and hard to break.
• WooCommerce is free software that runs on WordPress, on hosting you choose. You own everything, and you can change anything, but someone has to look after it.

Costs, honestly

Shopify charges a monthly plan, from tens of dollars a month for small stores up to Shopify Plus for high-volume brands, which starts at a few thousand US dollars a month. Card processing fees come on top, and if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, there’s an extra fee on every sale. Most stores also add paid apps for things like reviews, subscriptions or bundles, and those monthly fees add up.

WooCommerce itself is free. You pay for hosting, any paid extensions, and someone to keep it updated and secure. There’s no platform fee on your sales. For a store with real turnover, that difference can be significant over a few years.

Where each one shines

Choose Shopify if:

• you want to be selling quickly with as little upkeep as possible
• your products and shipping are fairly standard
• you’d rather pay a monthly fee than manage hosting and updates

Choose WooCommerce if:

• you want to own your store, your code and your customer data outright
• you need custom features: trade pricing, unusual shipping rules, product builders, subscriptions done your way
• content and SEO matter to you, since WordPress is hard to beat for blogs, guides and landing pages
• you sell on several channels and want stock synced your way

The things that matter more than the platform

Whichever you pick, these decide whether the store sells:

1. A fast checkout with the payment options Australians use: card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Afterpay.
2. Clear shipping. Show costs early. Surprise shipping at checkout is one of the top reasons people abandon a cart.
3. Good product pages: sharp photos, honest descriptions, reviews, and answers to the questions people ask before they buy.
4. Speed on a phone. Most shoppers will be on mobile data.
5. Abandoned cart emails. They bring back sales you’d otherwise lose, for almost no effort.

What we do

We build both, plus headless stores for brands that need app-level speed. For most of the Australian brands we work with, we recommend WooCommerce built properly, with custom code rather than a pile of plugins, hosted on our own servers in Sydney. You own it, there’s no fee on your sales, and it can grow into anything.

Our store packages start at $5,000, with products loaded, checkout, shipping and order emails set up for you. See them on our online stores page, or ask us which platform fits and we’ll give you a straight answer.