Shopify vs WooCommerce: Which Is Best for an Indian Online Store?

Here is a fact that changes most Shopify vs WooCommerce comparisons for Indian readers. Shopify Payments, the built-in gateway that lets Shopify waive its transaction fees, is not on Shopify’s list of supported countries, and India is missing from it. Merchants in unlisted countries must use a third-party provider such as Razorpay. On Shopify’s Basic plan, that means Shopify takes 2% of every online sale on top of what the gateway charges.

Most comparison articles are written for US or UK sellers, where that fee often does not apply. So they conclude that Shopify’s cost is “just the monthly plan”. For an Indian store, the real comparison is Shopify’s plan plus a per-sale fee, against WooCommerce’s hosting, extensions and the cost of someone maintaining it. This article works through that comparison with published numbers, then covers the parts that matter as much as cost: payments, SEO, security and what happens if you leave.

1. What each platform actually is

Shopify is a hosted service. You rent the platform by the month, and Shopify runs the servers, security, checkout and updates. You customise it with a theme and apps from its app store, within the limits Shopify sets.

WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. You choose your own hosting and install it there. You can change almost anything, and you, or a developer you pay, are responsible for keeping WordPress, the theme and every plugin updated and working.

Everything else in this comparison follows from that difference: one is a service you rent, the other is software you run.

2. Fees: what each platform costs an Indian store

Shopify publishes its India plan prices in rupees on its pricing page. WooCommerce publishes its cost estimates in US dollars on its own pricing page. Here they are side by side.

Sources: Shopify India pricing and WooCommerce pricing, checked 30 October 2026. WooCommerce figures are global USD estimates; Shopify’s page does not say whether GST is included. WordPress user accounts are a WordPress feature, not a WooCommerce pricing line.

A worked example at three sales levels

The gateway fee is the same on both platforms, so I leave it out to show only what the platform itself costs. These are Shopify’s monthly-billed prices plus its third-party fee, calculated from the published rates.

Calculated from Shopify India pricing, monthly billing, October 2026. Excludes apps, themes, GST on Shopify fees and the gateway fee, which applies on both platforms. Illustration only.

Three things stand out. Basic and Grow cost the same at about ₹5.45 lakh of monthly sales; above that, Grow is cheaper on fees. Advanced does not beat Grow on fees until roughly ₹57 lakh a month, so buy it for features, not savings. And at ₹10 lakh a month, a Shopify store on Grow pays about ₹17,000 a month to the platform. A WooCommerce store at the same sales has that amount available for good hosting and a maintenance retainer, which is the fair comparison.

At low sales, Shopify is hard to beat on cost once you price in maintenance honestly. As sales grow, the per-sale fee becomes the biggest line, and WooCommerce starts to look better if someone competent is maintaining it.

See also: for the full picture including build scope and Razorpay’s share, read what an e-commerce website costs in India.

3. Payments, COD and Indian checkout

Razorpay is a common gateway on both platforms. Its standard plan charges 2% per successful domestic transaction, UPI included, up to 3% on international cards, with 18% GST on the fee. That fee is identical whichever platform you choose. What differs is how the integration works.

Sources: Razorpay Shopify docs, Razorpay WooCommerce docs, Shopify manual payments, checked 30 October 2026. The WooCommerce COD row is my description, not from these pages.

The subscriptions row matters more than it looks. If you plan to sell refills, monthly boxes or memberships with automatic UPI or card renewals through Razorpay, its Shopify app does not support Razorpay Subscriptions. The WooCommerce plugin does, though Razorpay notes that it needs the paid WooCommerce Subscriptions extension installed. On Shopify you would need a different subscriptions app and gateway arrangement.

COD is a point in Shopify’s favour on fees: Shopify states it does not charge third-party transaction fees on manual payments, and COD is one. A store with a large COD share pays less in Shopify’s per-sale fee than the online-payment maths suggests.

4. Maintenance and security: the cost nobody quotes

With Shopify, platform security and updates are Shopify’s job. Your responsibilities are your own account security, who has access, and the apps you install. With WooCommerce, you run the software, so keeping it secure is your responsibility.

Patchstack, a WordPress security company, recorded 7,966 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2024, according to its State of WordPress Security report. It attributes 96% to plugins and 4% to themes, and found only seven in WordPress core itself.

Source: Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2025, covering 7,966 new vulnerabilities recorded in 2024. Global data.

So the risk sits mostly with plugins: installing many of them and not updating them. A WooCommerce store with a short list of well-maintained plugins, updated regularly and backed up, is a sound setup. One with forty plugins that nobody has touched since launch is a liability holding your customers’ addresses and phone numbers.

Shopify has a version of the same issue. Apps can slow your store and can access store data, so the advice is the same on both platforms: install only what you need and remove what you no longer use.

5. SEO and speed

Both platforms can rank well on Google. In my experience, how the store is built (page speed, product content, structured data, internal links) matters far more than which platform sits underneath. There are real differences, though.

• URL structure. Shopify uses fixed paths for products and collections (/products/ and /collections/). Its redirect help page says you cannot redirect URLs that use these fixed paths. WooCommerce on WordPress lets you set your own URL structure.
• Content. WordPress was built for publishing, so a WooCommerce store with buying guides, recipes or a blog keeps content and products in one system. Shopify has a blog, but it is simpler.
• Speed. Neither is fast or slow by default. Heavy themes and too many apps or plugins slow both. Hosting quality is a bigger variable on WooCommerce, because you choose it.

Speed is worth caring about. A Google-commissioned study by 55 and Deloitte, Milliseconds Make Millions, found that a 0.1-second improvement in mobile load time was associated with an 8.4% increase in conversion rates on retail sites (37 European and US brand sites, 2019). Google’s Core Web Vitals set the targets: main content within 2.5 seconds, a response to taps in under 200 milliseconds, and a CLS score under 0.1.

If search terms like these are new to you, start with what SEO is and how it works, then see our e-commerce SEO service.

6. Apps, extensions and flexibility

Both platforms rely on add-ons for features like reviews, WhatsApp buttons, GST invoices, courier integration and loyalty programmes. Shopify’s billing help explains that app charges appear on your Shopify bill, while some third-party apps bill you separately. WooCommerce lists its extensions at $29 to $299 a year each.

The bigger difference is how far you can go. On WooCommerce, a developer can change almost any part of the store, including checkout logic, B2B price lists or unusual product configurators, because you have the code. On Shopify, you work within what the platform and its apps allow; most stores never hit those limits, but stores with unusual flows sometimes do. When neither fits, a custom-built store is the third option.

7. Ownership and leaving later

You may outgrow your first platform, so it is worth knowing how hard it is to leave. Shopify lets you export products to CSV, but it notes that images are not included in the export file, and SEO titles and descriptions are only filled in where you customised them. Moving a store also means planning redirects from every old URL to its new one, so search rankings carry over.

With WooCommerce you hold the database and files on your own hosting, which makes moving hosts or developers simpler, as long as the hosting account is in your name. On Shopify, the equivalent safeguard is to own the store account yourself and give developers collaborator access, which you approve and can remove.

8. Which should you choose?

My opinion, based on the published fees and documentation cited in this article. Not market data.

If you are still unsure after this table, start with whichever one you or your team can run confidently. A well-run store on either platform beats a neglected one on the “right” platform.

See also: starting from scratch? Our step-by-step guide to starting an online store in India covers the decisions to make before you pick a platform.

Where this advice breaks down

• Prices change. Shopify, WooCommerce and Razorpay revise pricing and features. Every figure here was checked on 30 October 2026.
• Shopify Payments may come to India. If it ever appears on Shopify’s supported-countries list, the per-sale fee comparison changes completely.
• Hosting and maintenance costs vary widely. WooCommerce’s $25 to $350 hosting range is a global estimate. Indian hosting can be cheaper at the low end, and maintenance quality varies even more than price.
• Gateway rates are negotiable. Razorpay’s 2% is a published standard rate; higher-volume stores can often negotiate, and other gateways price differently.
• Global data. The Patchstack, Deloitte and Core Web Vitals figures are not India-specific. Treat them as direction.

Checklist before you decide

Shopify Payments is still missing from India’s row, so the per-sale fee is part of every Indian Shopify store’s running cost. Put that number next to the honest cost of running WooCommerce, and the right choice for your store is usually clear.