TL;DR
- Shopify: default choice for 80% of new EU stores in 2026. Faster to ship, cheaper to run, more stable.
- WooCommerce: makes sense when you need full code control, have an in-house dev team, or have a specific content-heavy model.
- Woo → Shopify migration: typically 6–10 weeks, budget €3,500–9,500. Pays back in year 1 through lower upkeep and higher conversion.
Real annual costs (store 50–500 orders/mo)
| Item | Shopify Basic | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $39/mo (~€430/yr) | €0 |
| Hosting | included | Cloudways / SiteGround ~€14–45/mo (~€480/yr) |
| Theme | ready $200 one-time custom €1,800–5,800 | ready $60 custom €2,350–7,000 |
| Apps / plugins | ~$40–150/mo (~€700/yr) | $20–80/mo (~€350/yr) |
| Updates / security | €0 (Shopify auto) | €190–470/yr |
| Tech maintenance | ~€45–115/mo | ~€115–350/mo |
| Transaction fees | 0% (Shopify Payments) 2% (other gateways) | 0% (pay gateway: 1.5–2.9%) |
| Total year 1 | ~€5,200 | ~€6,600 |
| Total year 3 | ~€9,000 | ~€13,500 |
The gap widens over time because WordPress upkeep is a lumpy cost — every PHP upgrade, every plugin, every conflicting plugin is hours of work. Shopify maintains itself.
Where Shopify wins in EU 2026
Integrations with EU market
Carriers (InPost, DHL, DPD, GLS, UPS) all have official Shopify apps. Payment gateways — Stripe, Adyen, Klarna, Mollie, PayU — native. Accounting (Xero, QuickBooks, DATEV, iFirma) — through middleware or apps.
Performance
Core Web Vitals on Shopify (Dawn 2.0+) are green out of the box. On Woo you manually config cache, LiteSpeed, image optimization, plugin pruning — and LCP > 3s is still the norm.
Security
Shopify: PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2, auto updates. WordPress + Woo: constant vigilance — 43% of WP sites in 2025 had an active vulnerability (Sucuri).
Apps
Shopify App Store has 8,000+ apps in 2026 — great subscriptions, upsell, AI personalization. Woo plugins are lottery quality.
Where WooCommerce still makes sense
Content-first store with huge blog
500+ blog articles, categories, authors, tags? WordPress is still the better CMS for large editorial blogs.
Specific custom requirements
Need full control of checkout, promotion logic, URL structure to the millimeter? Woo gives you the whole PHP stack. Shopify enforces abstractions (Liquid, Functions).
No monthly platform fee
If you already run WordPress for a blog/landing, adding Woo only costs setup time. For stores under €12k/yr revenue, that's sensible.
Wondering which platform for your store?
30 minutes — we'll show numbers for your GMV, products, and growth plans.
Book a call →When to migrate Woo → Shopify
Signals it's time: site down 2+ times/month, CWV red for 3 months, upkeep > €350/mo, 200+ orders/mo with sync issues, going cross-border (multi-currency / language), lacking native marketing automation (Klaviyo, Omnisend).
Our migration checklist
- Audit current store (2 days)
- Shopify setup + custom theme (3 weeks)
- Data migration — products (Matrixify), customers (password reset), historical orders (1 week)
- Integrations — 3PL, payments, Klaviyo, GA4, Meta Pixel (1 week)
- SEO migration — 1:1 301 redirects, Schema, sitemap, GSC reindex
- Testing + launch — QA, staging, off-peak DNS switch (2 days)
- First 2 weeks monitoring — rankings, conversion, errors
Common myths
"Shopify is expensive." — Over 3 years Shopify comes out cheaper than running a proper Woo store. Do the TCO math.
"Shopify has worse SEO." — False in 2026. Shopify added meta editing, custom URLs, Schema via themes, and good SEO apps.
"You can't change anything on Shopify." — True: checkout is locked on Basic/Shopify. But Liquid gives full control over everything else. Shopify Plus unlocks checkout.liquid.
"WooCommerce is free." — Platform yes, everything around it no. Real upkeep for a good Woo store: €350–700/mo.
Conclusions
In 2026 for 80% of EU stores I'd recommend Shopify. For the other 20% — content-first, highly custom, or tight starting budget — WooCommerce still has a place. Platform choice is a 3–5 year decision, not a seasonal one. Count TCO, not just implementation cost.