The Shopify vs WooCommerce debate has been going on for a decade, and neither platform has "won" — because the right choice genuinely depends on your situation. After building stores on both for Australian businesses, here's my honest assessment.
The case for Shopify
Speed to launch: you can have a functioning store live in a weekend. Hosting, security, SSL, and checkout are all handled for you. Shopify's infrastructure is enterprise-grade — you don't have to worry about your store going down during a flash sale. And their checkout converts at rates that most self-hosted alternatives can't match because it's trusted, fast, and tested against hundreds of millions of transactions.
The downsides for Australian businesses: transaction fees (0.5–2% on non-Shopify Payments), platform fees that increase as you grow, and less design flexibility without learning Liquid — Shopify's template language. At AUD $52–$538/month plus apps, it's not cheap. Most well-equipped Australian Shopify stores are spending AUD $150–$300/month on mandatory apps before accounting for the base plan.
The case for WooCommerce
No transaction fees. WooCommerce itself is free — you pay for hosting, domain, and the plugins you choose. And because it runs on WordPress, you have complete control over design, functionality, and your own data. WordPress still has a meaningful edge over Shopify for complex SEO needs — more control over URL structure, schemas, and technical elements.
The honest downside: you're responsible for hosting, security, backups, and updates. A poorly managed WooCommerce site can be hacked, slow, or unstable. I've seen both extremes. A badly maintained WooCommerce store is a worse outcome than a basic Shopify store — but a properly maintained WooCommerce store on good hosting (Cloudflare, WP Engine, or SiteGround) is genuinely excellent and cheaper long-term.
My recommendation by situation
Under $50k/year in online sales: start with Shopify. Lower barrier, faster to learn, and you can always migrate later. Already on WordPress: add WooCommerce — it's a natural extension of your existing setup. Over $200k/year: evaluate properly. At this scale, the platform fee and transaction fee difference is real money, and WooCommerce's economics often win. Complex products or B2B: WooCommerce with custom development usually wins on flexibility.
The honest version of this decision: most Australian businesses I work with are better served by Shopify for the first 2–3 years, and the ones who hit WooCommerce's ceiling are usually glad they started on the simpler platform and migrated with a larger catalogue and more data to work with.
The real cost comparison over three years
Abstract fee comparisons miss the point. Let me give you the actual numbers for an Australian store doing AUD $300,000/year in online sales.
Shopify Advanced (to eliminate transaction fees): AUD $538/month plan + AUD $80/month essential apps = AUD $7,416/year. Shopify Basic with 2% transaction fee: AUD $52/month + AUD $6,000/year in transaction fees + AUD $80/month apps = AUD $7,584/year. WooCommerce on quality managed hosting (WP Engine): AUD $60/month hosting + AUD $600/year plugins = AUD $1,320/year. WooCommerce's year-one cost advantage: approximately AUD $6,000. Over three years with growing sales volume, that advantage compounds significantly and often funds the developer you need for maintenance and improvements.
That said, the comparison only holds if your WooCommerce store is properly maintained. A WooCommerce store on cheap shared hosting with outdated plugins is a security liability and a performance problem. The cost savings disappear if you factor in site downtime, a security breach, or the cost of emergency developer hours to fix a problem that properly managed hosting would have prevented.
Migration: what actually happens when you switch platforms
The most common migration I handle is WooCommerce-to-Shopify for Australian businesses that outgrew their technical capacity to manage WordPress. It's doable, but there are real risks that most migration guides don't address honestly.
Product data migration is reliable using Matrixify or LitExtension — products, variants, images, customer records, and order history transfer cleanly. The dangerous part is URLs. Shopify has a different URL structure than WooCommerce. If you've built SEO rankings on your existing URL structure, you must implement perfect 301 redirects for every URL that changes. Shopify limits URL redirects in the admin, and larger catalogues hit this ceiling. Products that were ranking page one can drop to page three in the weeks after a migration if redirects aren't handled correctly. This is the most common migration failure I see, and it costs businesses real revenue during the period when they should be celebrating their new platform.
Neither platform is objectively better than the other for Australian businesses in every scenario. Start with Shopify for simplicity and speed, build toward WooCommerce if and when the economics of your specific situation make the switch worthwhile — and handle any migration with the same rigour you'd bring to a major operational change.