Nyah Eliud
The real difference is who carries the cost, and when
Shopify is a monthly subscription. You rent a shop that is maintained for you, in dollars, forever. WooCommerce is free software on hosting you control: more work to set up, more responsibility afterwards, and no monthly platform fee.
For a business earning in FCFA, that difference compounds. A subscription in dollars is a bill that grows every time the exchange rate moves against you, in a year where you may have made no more sales than the last one.
Where WooCommerce wins
- No monthly platform fee, so a quiet month costs you hosting and nothing else
- Local payment gateways are easier to fit, because the code is yours to change
- You own the site, the data and the hosting account outright
- It sits on WordPress, so the shop and the content live in one place
For most businesses we work with here, this is the answer, and the deciding factor is usually the payment side rather than the price.
Where Shopify wins
- Nothing to maintain: no updates, no plugin conflicts, no server to worry about
- Reliable under sudden traffic without anyone tuning anything
- Faster to launch if your catalogue is simple and standard
- Support you can contact when something breaks at nine at night
If you sell internationally, take card payments as your main method, and would rather pay to never think about maintenance, it earns its subscription.
The questions that decide it
Ignore the feature comparison charts. Four questions settle it in practice.
- How will most customers pay? If the answer is mobile money, WooCommerce is usually the shorter road.
- Who maintains it in six months? If nobody on your team will, the subscription is buying something real.
- How predictable is your income? Fixed monthly costs are harder in a seasonal business.
- Do you need the shop and a content site together? WordPress does both without a second system.
What we doWe recommend one and explain why, in writing, before anything is built. If your situation genuinely suits Shopify we will say so, even though the WooCommerce build is the larger job for us.
The comparison in one table
| WooCommerce | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Free plugin on a WordPress site you host | A hosted store you rent monthly |
| Platform fee | None; you pay for hosting | Monthly subscription, billed in dollars |
| Mobile money | Through local payment gateways | Depends on what its payment apps support here |
| Maintenance | You, or a care plan | Shopify maintains the platform |
| Blog and content | Full WordPress alongside the shop | Possible, more limited |
| Owning your data | Everything is yours | Exportable, but the design stays behind |
For most businesses here, the payment question decides it. If your customers pay with mobile money, confirm the exact gateway you will use before choosing either platform.
Moving later is possible, and it is not free
Products and customers can be migrated between the two. What does not migrate cleanly is your URLs, and that is what costs you: pages that ranked disappear, links from elsewhere break, and the traffic takes months to recover if the redirects are done carelessly.
Choose as if you are staying for three years. Most people do.
Go further: the selling online guide, our online store service, store prices, or taking mobile money.
Questions people ask
The plugin is free. You still pay for hosting, a domain, and any paid extensions or payment gateway fees.
You can run a Shopify store from here, but check which payment methods are available for your customers, especially mobile money, before committing.
Yes. Products, customers and orders can be exported, but the design and some apps do not move, and page addresses need redirects so you do not lose search rankings.
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