WordPress or Shopify? 6 questions to help you choose

Measure first

Starting from scratch? Skip ahead. Thinking of switching? Measure what you have first, or you may solve the wrong problem. Look at three things:

• Search traffic: the Performance report in Google Search Console (Google’s free reporting tool for site owners) shows which pages earn clicks from Google. If you move, every one of those addresses has to survive or be redirected.
• Your real monthly cost: subscription or hosting, apps and plugins, payment fees, developer hours.
• What’s actually holding you back: the platform, or the way the site was built? A slow site, for example, is more often down to heavy images and too many plugins or apps than to the platform. We cover the usual causes in Why is your site slow?

1. WordPress or Shopify: store first, or content first?

Both can sell, and both can publish. The real question is which one does your main job with less effort.

Shopify is built for selling. Products, inventory, checkout, shipping and tax settings are in place from day one. It has pages and a blog too, but the store sits at the center.

WordPress is strongest at content: pages, posts and content types of your own, such as case studies, team members or events. If you need to sell, you add WooCommerce, the plugin that turns WordPress into a store; its core is free and open source.

A rough rule:

• If most of your revenue comes from selling products online, start with Shopify.
• If the site’s job is to explain, to be found on Google, or to collect requests and bookings, WordPress is the more natural home.
• If you need both, look at where the weight lies.

Selling on Etsy and thinking about a store of your own? We walk through the steps in From Etsy to your own brand.

2. Who will look after the site?

On Shopify, hosting and the SSL certificate (what makes your site load securely over “https”) come with your plan. Shopify runs the servers and the platform itself; what’s left for you is your theme and apps. For themes installed from the Shopify Theme Store, Shopify applies bug and security fixes automatically. Updates that bring new features are yours to add.

On WordPress, most of this is yours: the server, backups, security, WordPress itself, themes and plugins. (We mean the software from WordPress.org, installed on hosting you choose. WordPress.com is a separate service that manages hosting for you.) How much of this your host covers depends on the package, so ask up front what’s included for backups, updates and security.

• WordPress installs its own maintenance and security releases by default.
• Auto-updates for plugins and themes, apart from special cases, only run once you switch them on.
• The PHP version on your server (PHP is the language WordPress runs on) is part of the job too. WordPress.org currently recommends PHP 8.3 or newer.

You can hand this to a care plan, but someone has to do it. We explain how to make updates routine in WordPress security: no more fear of updates.

3. How much do you need to customize?

WordPress is open source, released under the GPL, a free-software license. You can study the code, change it and connect it to whatever you need. The limit is usually budget and upkeep: every custom part is one more part to maintain.

Shopify themes are written in Liquid, Shopify’s own template language, and missing features usually come from apps. You can do a lot within the platform’s rules, but not everything. For example, apps that change the information, shipping and payment steps of the checkout are available only on Shopify Plus, the top plan.

Ask yourself: do I need what a well-built store can do, or a workflow that’s specific to my business? Write down the three features you can’t do without, and check how each platform delivers them: built in, through an app or plugin, or as custom work. If the site must work closely with your other systems, having all the code in your hands makes WordPress easier to shape.

4. What will it cost in total?

Look at the total over two or three years, not the monthly figure.

• Shopify: your plan (currently Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus), a paid theme if you choose one, app charges and payment fees. Some apps charge monthly, others by usage. If you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a transaction fee to every order; the rate depends on your plan.
• WordPress: the software itself is free. You pay for hosting, a domain, paid themes and plugins (WooCommerce has paid extensions too) and maintenance hours.
• Both: your payment provider’s own fees, and your time or your team’s.

We don’t quote prices here: Shopify’s can differ depending on where your business is based, and hosting and plugin prices vary by provider. Compare like with like, using the pricing pages for your country.

5. Where are your customers, and how will they pay?

Shopify Payments, Shopify’s own payment system, is only open to businesses located in a supported country. As of October 2026, the list has 41 countries and regions, including the US, the UK, Canada, Japan and almost every EU country. Turkey isn’t on it. Without Shopify Payments, you work with another provider and the extra transaction fee above applies.

Selling to several countries? On Shopify, you set up markets for countries or regions, then manage local-currency prices, translations, international domains, duties and shipping with its own tools.

On WordPress, multilingual content isn’t built in; WordPress’s own documentation says so. You add it with a plugin, or run a separate site for each language. On WooCommerce, payments connect through plugins for providers such as Stripe and PayPal.

6. What if you want to leave later?

Know where the exit is before you walk in.

• Shopify: you can export your products and customers as CSV files (plain spreadsheet files), but product images aren’t included in the export. Your theme only works on Shopify; on another platform it has to be rebuilt.
• WordPress: you control the server and the database, and you can change hosts whenever you like. The Tools › Export screen saves your posts, pages, comments, categories, tags and users to a single XML file.

Before you commit, try an export once and see what comes out. Whichever way you move, the critical job is linking every old address to its new one with a permanent (301) redirect. That’s what Google recommends for site moves where URLs change. The details are in Keep your Google rankings through a redesign.

Where to start

Write your answers to the six questions on a single page. The platform that wins the questions that matter most to you is your answer. If it’s a tie, pick the one your team already knows how to run. If you already have a site and you’re asking “switch platforms, or fix the site?”, our free 48-point inspection reviews your current site for speed, tech, SEO, interface, sales and brand. The report also tells you which platform fits you, and why.