How it works
Shopify hosts the shop on its own servers. You choose a theme, add products, connect a payment method and a domain, and the checkout, taxes, shipping rules, security and updates are handled by Shopify. There is nothing to install and nothing to patch. Many people ask how it works, and the answer is that most of the technical work has been done for you in exchange for a monthly fee and a set of limits.
What you actually pay
| Cost | What it is | How to think about it |
|---|---|---|
| Plan fee | Monthly, in tiers; Shopify publishes UK prices and changes them, so they are not restated here | The entry plan is tens of pounds a month; higher tiers unlock lower payment rates and more staff accounts |
| Payment processing | A percentage plus pence per transaction on Shopify Payments, lower on higher plans | Comparable to any card processor; the rate falls as the plan fee rises |
| Transaction fee | An extra percentage on every sale if you use a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments | Avoidable by using Shopify Payments; punitive if you cannot |
| Apps | Monthly subscriptions for features the core platform lacks: reviews, bundles, subscriptions, advanced shipping | The hidden cost. Five or six apps at a few pounds to tens of pounds each often exceed the plan fee |
Source: Shopify’s published UK pricing and app store; figures not restated because Shopify changes them. The structure is what matters for the decision.
On a shop with healthy margins the total is a reasonable price for never thinking about hosting. On a shop selling thousands of low-margin lines, the percentages compound and the same money would pay for a great deal of WooCommerce hosting and care.
Worth it when
- A small team runs the shop with no developer. Shopify is very hard to break and the support is real.
- The products are standard: a size, a colour, a price, a stock level. The default checkout does exactly this.
- You would rather pay monthly than own, and the monthly is small against your margin.
- You sell through several channels (marketplace, social, point of sale) and want one system for stock.
- You need to launch fast. A competent Shopify store is live in days.
Not worth it when
- Margins are thin and volume is high. Plan fee plus payment rate plus apps is a percentage of every sale, for ever.
- The buying journey is unusual. A pick-and-mix builder that fills bags to the gram, a gift-list service where guests buy from a couple’s list, made-to-measure products: Shopify’s checkout is locked down for good reasons and will not bend to these. We built a Rochdale sweet shop’s pick-and-mix on WooCommerce for exactly this reason.
- You have a very large catalogue with many variations. Shopify has variant limits per product and a 17,000-product store with a custom feed is more comfortable on WooCommerce.
- You want to own the site outright and be able to move it to any host or developer. On Shopify you licence the platform; leaving is an export and a rebuild.
- Search traffic is the plan. Shopify’s SEO basics are fine and its URL structure is rigid; WooCommerce gives full control of structure, schema and feeds, which is what produced our largest measured result.
What leaving involves
Products, customers and orders export as spreadsheets. The theme, the apps’ data and the checkout do not. Moving off Shopify is a rebuild on the new platform with the products imported and every URL redirected one to one so search rankings follow. Routine if planned, expensive if forced. Decide on the platform for the shop you expect to have in three years, not the one you have today.
