It's one of the first questions every new online store asks, and the honest answer is: it depends on your products, your team and where you sell. Here's how we help clients decide.
The short version
Choose Shopify if you want to launch quickly, don't have a developer on hand and sell fairly standard products. Choose WooCommerce if you need full control, have unusual pricing or shipping rules, already run WordPress, or need a local payment gateway that Shopify doesn't support well.
Costs
Shopify has a predictable monthly fee plus app subscriptions, and transaction fees if you don't use Shopify Payments. WooCommerce itself is free, but you pay for hosting, premium plugins and maintenance. For small stores the totals are often similar. For larger or unusual stores, WooCommerce can be cheaper over time, but only if it's maintained properly.
Payments
This is often the deciding factor outside the US and Europe. Shopify Payments isn't available in every country, and some local gateways only offer plugins for WooCommerce. Before choosing a platform, check which gateways your customers actually trust and how payouts reach your bank.
Shipping
If you ship overseas with rates by weight and zone, or have special rules for certain products, WooCommerce gives you more flexibility out of the box. Shopify handles standard shipping well, and apps can cover more complex cases, at extra monthly cost.
Flexibility and ownership
WooCommerce runs on your own hosting, so you control the code, the data and the design completely. Shopify is a hosted platform: simpler and very reliable, but you work within its rules and app ecosystem.
Our recommendation
Start from your customers: where they are, how they pay and how you deliver. Then pick the platform that makes those three things easy. If you're unsure, a short call with someone who has built both usually settles it in 20 minutes.