--- title: "Shopify vs WooCommerce: which suits your shop? | OMB" description: "Shopify or WooCommerce? Hosted or self-managed, maintenance, extending and selling B2B, plus when headless or custom is the better fit." url: https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/blog/shopify-vs-woocommerce/ language: en updated: 2026-11-08 --- > Markdown version of https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/blog/shopify-vs-woocommerce/ for AI agents and LLMs. The HTML page is the leading version. Overview of the whole site: https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/llms.txt [Home](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/)[Blog](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/blog/)Shopify vs WooCommerce: which one suits your online shop? Websites and ecommerce # Shopify vs WooCommerce: which one suits your online shop? Shopify takes care of a lot for you, WooCommerce puts more in your hands. Which one fits depends on what you sell, to whom, and how much you want to manage yourself. Rubin Koot · Hoofdbakker 17 June 20265 min read In short - Shopify is hosted: hosting, payments and updates are handled by the platform. WooCommerce you run yourself, inside WordPress, with more control and more maintenance. - If you also sell to businesses, look above all at how your shop serves business customers, not just consumers. - Headless or custom only pays off when your design, channels or process demand what a standard shop can't do. In this article (6) 1. The difference in one sentence 2. When Shopify fits 3. When WooCommerce fits 4. Do you sell to businesses too? 5. When neither fits 6. How to choose Shopify or WooCommerce? Both sell perfectly well. The real question is who does the work behind the counter. And who you will be selling to in two years. We build shops in both, and also headless or fully custom. Which one it becomes, we never choose first. First what you sell, to whom and how. Then the branding and the design of the shop, from product page to checkout. Only then the platform. And every shop comes with strategy, design and SEO safeguarding, whatever it ends up being. ## The difference in one sentence Shopify you rent, WooCommerce you own. Shopify A hosted platform. Hosting, payments, stock and orders are handled by Shopify. You extend it with apps. You are on Shopify's platform, but you don't have to worry about servers and updates. WooCommerce An open-source plug-in that turns a WordPress site into an online shop. Your shop, your pages and your blogs live in the same dashboard. Full control over hosting and data, and so over the maintenance too. You don’t feel that difference on launch day. You feel it on a Tuesday evening, a year later, when something needs to change. With Shopify you log in and do it. With WooCommerce you log in, see updates for WordPress, WooCommerce and a handful of plug-ins, and hope they keep playing nicely together. That maintenance is no disaster, but it has to be someone’s job. ## When Shopify fits Shopify is built to sell, and you can tell. It fits well if: - you want to sell quickly and reliably without arranging hosting yourself; - you sell physical products with stock and shipping; - you want to grow with apps, extra channels and marketplaces. Take Stobe, a Dutch brand in portable mini projectors. Their old Shopify shop was dated: the theme no longer matched the brand, and every change needed a developer. We took care of the strategy, the design and the SEO safeguarding. Our build partner Hoort rebuilt the theme from the ground up, with sections and blocks that Stobe now drags and adjusts themselves. Products, customer data, orders and SEO settings all moved to the new shop. < 1 s load time for the new Stobe shop, with more than twenty sections Stobe adjusts themselves. According to the Hoort case study, the migration went without loss of orders, customers or findability. Source: the case study by our build partner Hoort (hoort.dev, 1 January 2026) Read the whole [Shopify case of Stobe](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/cases/stobe/), or how we handle [Shopify store development](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/shopify-store-development/) for a shop you manage yourself. Shopify makes less sense if your shop has very unusual processes, such as custom quotes or complex configurations. Then you end up stacking apps on apps to make it do something the platform wasn’t built for. ## When WooCommerce fits WooCommerce lives inside WordPress. That is also its greatest strength: your website and your shop are one system. It fits well if: - you already have a WordPress site, or want content and shop together; - you want full control over hosting and data; - your shop needs extra features that a plug-in already exists for. Jebra is a brand of tools and building supplies for roofers. Their shop has its own category page per product group, products by the piece or by the set with the price per piece shown, a wish list and a knowledge base with blogs. Exactly that combination of shop and content is what WooCommerce is good at. Livar does the same with meat from the Limburg Monastery Pig: an online shop, a stockist finder and a site in three languages, all in one WordPress environment. The flip side I always mention up front: WooCommerce demands maintenance on hosting, plug-ins and updates. That is why we build on a light base with only the plug-ins the shop really needs. More on that at [WooCommerce store development](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/woocommerce-store-development/). ## Do you sell to businesses too? This is where most platform comparisons fall silent. And in my view it is the most important question. Many online shops focus entirely on the consumer. While the business market is often more interesting for earning your stripes and making good margins. Imagine you sell kitchen knives. A consumer buys one. A restaurant group wants sets, its own price and a quote before ordering. If your shop has no entrance for that, you email that customer back with a PDF. Or worse: they order from someone who has it sorted. Both platforms can serve business customers, but each in its own way. Stobe got a separate entrance in Shopify for resellers, wholesalers and corporate gift companies. Livar got its own page in WooCommerce for hospitality and butchers, with business features such as a quote request. Jebra works with set prices for professionals. How far you need to go with that depends on your customers. Read more about [B2B ecommerce](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/b2b-ecommerce/) and how to give business buyers a place of their own in your shop. Unsure whether that business entrance is worth it? Then first look in your own orders and your inbox. How often does someone order more than a handful of units? How often does an email come in asking “can we get a quote for this?” or “do you deliver on invoice?” Every one of those emails is a business customer who now has to work around your shop. See them regularly, and you know enough. ## When neither fits Sometimes Shopify doesn’t fit, and neither does WooCommerce. Then there are two other flavours. **Headless.** Your shop system is separate from the front end your customers see. Behind the scenes runs Shopify or WooCommerce, for example, but the front end we build custom and it talks to the back end via an API. That pays off when your brand demands a design a standard theme can’t handle, when you sell through several channels from one shop system, or when speed and custom features weigh more than an off-the-shelf shop. **Fully custom.** No standard platform underneath, but software we build for your shop, for example in Laravel. That is the answer if you sell with configurations, quotes or prices per customer, or if your shop needs to connect to your own stock, ERP or planning system. In short: if a standard platform forces you to change your process. My honest opinion: most shops need neither. Headless and custom take more building and more maintenance than a standard Shopify or WooCommerce shop. That is why we always check first whether a standard platform will do. ## How to choose 01 ### What do you sell, and how? Physical products with stock and shipping point to Shopify or WooCommerce. Quotes, configurations or prices per customer point to custom. 02 ### Who manages the shop? If you don't want to deal with hosting and updates, Shopify fits. If you want full control, or already have WordPress, WooCommerce fits. 03 ### Who will you be selling to? If business customers are coming, look now at how your shop serves them. Building in a business entrance afterwards is more work than including it from the start. 04 ### Are you switching? Then take your products, customers, orders and old URLs with you. Findability you built up over years is not something you throw away for a new theme. Still not sure after these four questions? Then we work it out together. Whichever platform your shop ends up on, we start with what you sell. First know what’s in the display case. Then build the counter. Rubin Koot · Hoofdbakker Rubin is the founder of Online Marketing Bakery in Roermond. You take the stage, we fill the room. And we make sure it buys. [rubin@onlinemarketingbakery.nl](mailto:rubin@onlinemarketingbakery.nl) · [More about the bakers](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/about-us/) **Further reading:** [Ecommerce website design](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/ecommerce-website-design/) · [Shopify store development](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/shopify-store-development/) · [WooCommerce store development](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/woocommerce-store-development/) How we work: [first the offer, then the room](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/how-we-work/). Want to get going with a brief like this? We do that in [the Sold-Out Session: your offer and your event structure in one half-day](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/sold-out-session/) . In this article 1. The difference in one sentence 2. When Shopify fits 3. When WooCommerce fits 4. Do you sell to businesses too? 5. When neither fits 6. How to choose In short - Shopify is hosted: hosting, payments and updates are handled by the platform. WooCommerce you run yourself, inside WordPress, with more control and more maintenance. - If you also sell to businesses, look above all at how your shop serves business customers, not just consumers. - Headless or custom only pays off when your design, channels or process demand what a standard shop can't do. Fresh from the oven! Questions ## Questions about this topic. Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for SEO? Both give you the building blocks for good findability. The difference is in the product structure, titles, structured data and internal links. And when switching, above all in taking your old URLs with you, so the findability you had stays in place. Does a WooCommerce shop need maintenance? Yes. WordPress, WooCommerce and the plug-ins get updates, and someone has to look after the hosting too. That comes with it, and we agree up front how that is arranged. Can I move my existing shop to a new platform or theme? Yes. At Stobe, products, customer data, orders and SEO settings all moved to the new Shopify shop. We first look at what you sell now and what works well, and take that with us. Do I need a headless shop? Usually not. It pays off when your design, speed or channels demand what a standard shop can't do. A headless shop takes more building and maintenance, and we say so honestly in the first conversation. More from the oven ## Another slice? [Websites and ecommerce Webflow vs WordPress: which one fits your website? 3 Oct 2026 · 5 min](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/blog/webflow-vs-wordpress/) [Websites and ecommerce Building a custom platform: when is it the better choice? Lessons from Homie 27 May 2026 · 6 min](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/blog/building-a-custom-platform-lessons-from-homie/) [Advertising ChatGPT Ads: what Target CPA and Target CPC mean for your campaigns 5 Nov 2026 · 6 min](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/blog/chatgpt-ads-target-cpa-target-cpc/) [← Back to the blog overview](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/blog/) ## Your next event deserves a room that buys. Book a one-hour baker's chat. We figure out where your room leaks. If it's not for you, we'll tell you. [Book your baker's chat](https://calendar.app.google/xxHsojnQL4A574Me7) [Take the leak test](https://onlinemarketingbakery.com/en/leak-test/start/) You talk directly to Rubin, the head baker.