"WooCommerce is free." You've probably read it before. And it's true – the plugin itself doesn't cost anything. But the real total cost of a WooCommerce store? It's much higher than that zero-euro figure suggests. In this article we compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of WooCommerce versus Shopify for an average Dutch store in 2026 — honestly, concretely and without sales talk.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the sum of all costs you incur to keep a platform running. Not just the monthly subscription or hosting bill, but also: plugin licences, developer hours, security updates, downtime, performance optimisation and ultimately the migration costs when your platform holds back your growth. Anyone who only looks at the sticker sees half the picture.
WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress. The platform itself is free, but to make it a professional store you structurally have the following cost items:
Shared hosting is too slow for a serious store. Managed WordPress hosting at providers like Cloudways, Kinsta or WP Engine quickly costs €30 to €120 per month for e-commerce workloads. Add a CDN, staging environment and automatic backups and you're at the upper end.
WordPress's free plugin library has more than 59,000 plugins — but most serious functionality costs money. Think of:
A well-equipped WooCommerce store quickly costs €800 to €2,000 per year in plugin licences alone.
This is the line item store owners underestimate the most. WooCommerce requires active management: WordPress updates, plugin updates, resolving conflicts, database optimisation and security patches. A developer costs on average €75 to €150 per hour. Count on at least 2-4 hours per month for regular maintenance. That's €1,800 to €7,200 per year — excluding emergency interventions for problems.
WooCommerce stores are themselves responsible for PCI DSS compliance, SSL certificates, firewalls and DDoS protection. The WordPress ecosystem counted more than 7,900 CVEs (security vulnerabilities) in plugins and themes in 2025. One unmanaged plugin can leave your store vulnerable. Security plugins help, but don't eliminate the risk.
An unoptimised WooCommerce store loads in 2.5 to 3.5 seconds. Every extra second of load time costs conversions: research shows that 53% of mobile users drop off at more than 3 seconds load time. To make WooCommerce fast you need caching, a CDN, image optimisation and often database tuning — all extra costs or developer hours.
Shopify operates on a SaaS model. The base plan costs €39/month (Basic). That includes everything: hosting, SSL, CDN, PCI DSS Level 1 compliance and 24/7 support. What's not included:
The average Shopify merchant installs 6 to 12 paid apps, with an average of €15 to €50 per app per month. That brings the monthly bill to €130 to €250 per month — well above the advertised €39.
If you don't use Shopify Payments (in the Netherlands via Stripe), Shopify charges a 2% extra platform fee per transaction on the Basic plan. For a store with €50,000 monthly revenue via an external gateway (e.g. Mollie) this costs €1,000 per month or €12,000 per year. WooCommerce charges no platform fee.
Premium Shopify themes cost €150 to €400 one-off. Custom development via the Liquid template system is generally more expensive than WordPress development, because there are fewer developers with Shopify expertise.
Based on international market data for 2026, the annual TCO looks as follows for an average Dutch store using Shopify Payments and Mollie respectively:
| Store size (annual revenue) | WooCommerce TCO/year | Shopify TCO/year | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter (€50K) | €800–€1,800 | €1,800–€3,600 | WooCommerce €1,000–€1,800 cheaper |
| Growing (€250K) | €1,800–€3,600 | €3,600–€7,200 | WooCommerce €1,800–€3,600 cheaper |
| Mid-market (€500K) | €2,400–€5,400 | €4,800–€9,600 | WooCommerce €2,400–€4,200 cheaper* |
| Enterprise (€2M+) | €6,000–€14,400 | €12,000–€28,000 | WooCommerce €6,000–€13,600 cheaper* |
*Provided Shopify Payments is available and used. When using external gateways (e.g. Mollie), the cost advantage of WooCommerce is even larger thanks to Shopify's 2% platform fee on the Basic plan.
Shopify guarantees 99.99% uptime via its managed infrastructure. WooCommerce stores on shared hosting or a poorly configured VPS can be down significantly more often. Downtime costs direct revenue: for a store with €250,000 annual revenue, one hour of downtime costs an average of €28.
Plugin conflicts are the most common cause of WooCommerce problems. After every major WordPress or WooCommerce update there's a chance one or more plugins break. The developer hours to fix this are hard to budget — but always there.
Shopify scales automatically during peak traffic — during Black Friday, sales or viral moments. WooCommerce requires manual server scaling or a cloud setup, which takes both technical knowledge and extra costs.
WooCommerce has a clear cost advantage in specific scenarios:
But: cheaper in licence costs doesn't always mean cheaper in total ownership cost. Developer hours for maintenance, downtime costs and the opportunity cost of a slow store can quickly wipe out the price difference.
Shopify has a clear advantage when:
For many store owners, the TCO analysis is the starting point of a migration decision. The move from WooCommerce to Shopify is significant: products, customers, order history, content and SEO rankings all have to be transferred. The wrong approach costs rankings, revenue and trust.
Syncer.nl is a Shopify Plus partner specialising in complex platform migrations. With its own Live Sync® technology, Syncer handles migrations where your store stays accessible during the transition. No downtime, no lost data, no panic. After hundreds of successful migrations for both Dutch and international stores, Syncer knows exactly what can go wrong — and how to prevent it.
Want to know what a migration of your WooCommerce store to Shopify really costs and delivers? Start with a free migration scan and get a concrete analysis of your situation within 48 hours.
Request a free migration scan →
The question "WooCommerce or Shopify?" isn't a question about sticker prices — it's a question about total cost of ownership. WooCommerce is cheaper in direct licence costs, but requires more investment in maintenance, security and scalability. Shopify is more predictable and safer out of the box, but can become more expensive due to app costs and transaction fees on external gateways.
For most growing Dutch stores: the real costs of WooCommerce exceed the Shopify costs once you include developer hours, downtime and performance investments. Be honest about the bill — and then make a decision.
