Shopify is the simpler choice for most new Australian online stores, and WooCommerce is the better choice when your store needs custom rules, unusual products or full ownership. Shopify charges a monthly plan fee from $42 AUD (billed yearly) and handles hosting, security and updates for you. WooCommerce is free software that runs on WordPress, so you pay for hosting, any paid extensions and someone to look after it. Both charge card processing fees on every sale. Most comparisons on page one quote US prices or are several years old, and few mention Australia Post, GST or local payment rates. Every price here is in AUD as listed on 28 October 2026, and prices change, so treat them as a point-in-time snapshot.
Key Takeaways
- Shopify’s Australian plans cost $42 to $431 a month billed yearly, or $56 to $575 billed monthly, with Plus from $3,700 a month.
- WooCommerce’s core plugin is free. Your costs are hosting, care, paid extensions such as the $159-a-year Australia Post extension, and payment fees.
- On a $10 sale through Shopify Payments on the Basic plan, the listed card fee is 47 cents. Using a third-party gateway adds Shopify’s 2% fee on top of the gateway’s fee.
- Shopify is easier to run and its Australian stores pass Core Web Vitals more often. WooCommerce gives you more control and you own the whole site.
- Pick Shopify for a standard store you want to run yourself. Pick WooCommerce for custom products, drops, club stores or content-heavy stores.
The short answer
Choose Shopify if you want to sell standard products with the least setup and upkeep. Choose WooCommerce if your products or rules do not fit a standard store, or you want to own and control every part of the site.
In the interest of transparency, Keener builds online stores on WooCommerce, not Shopify. That does not make Shopify the wrong choice. For many stores it is the right one, and the sections below say so where it applies.
| Shopify | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Software cost | Plan fee, $42 to $431/month billed yearly | Free core plugin |
| Hosting, security, updates | Included, handled by Shopify | Your responsibility, usually via a host or care plan |
| Card fees (domestic, online) | 1.7% + 30c (Basic) down to 1.35% + 30c (Advanced) with Shopify Payments | Gateway rate, e.g. Stripe 1.65% + A$0.30 or WooPayments 1.75% + $0.30 |
| Extra fee for third-party gateways | 2% (Basic), 1% (Grow), 0.6% (Advanced) | None |
| Australia Post | Account linking at no extra cost on Basic and Grow | Paid extension, $159 a year |
| Mobile Core Web Vitals pass rate, Australia, Sept 2026 | 76.5% | 42.6% |
| Ownership | You rent the platform, data exportable | You own the site and data, can move host |
| Best for | Standard stores run by the owner | Custom products, unusual rules, content-led stores |
What Shopify costs in Australia
Shopify’s Australian plans start at $42 a month billed yearly and $56 a month billed monthly. These are the AUD prices on Shopify’s Australian pricing page on 28 October 2026:
| Plan | Billed yearly (per month) | Billed monthly | Online card rate (Shopify Payments) | In-person card rate | Third-party gateway fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $42 | $56 | 1.7% + 30c | 1.85% | 2% |
| Grow | $114 | $149 | 1.55% + 30c | 1.75% | 1% |
| Advanced | $431 | $575 | 1.35% + 30c | 1.65% | 0.6% |
| Plus | From $3,700 | Not listed | 1.15% + 30c | 1.45% | 0.2% |
American Express online costs more, from 2.9% + 30c on Basic. Shopify says there are no setup fees on any plan. The pricing page does not say whether GST is included in plan prices or added on top, so check your first invoice.
Themes and apps are where Shopify costs grow. Free themes exist, but many stores buy a premium theme and add paid apps for reviews, subscriptions, product options or bundles. Each app usually carries its own monthly fee. Price your must-have apps before you compare totals.
What WooCommerce costs in Australia
WooCommerce itself costs nothing, but a working store does. The plugin’s WordPress.org listing says the core platform is free and that it “offers additional paid commercial upgrades or support”. It has more than 7 million active installations.
Here is what you actually pay for.
Hosting and care
You need hosting suited to a store, plus someone keeping WordPress, WooCommerce and plugins updated and backed up. As one example, Keener’s website care plans start from $60 a month (ex GST) and include cloud hosting with room for 25,000 visits a month, weekly overnight updates, uptime monitoring, threat defence and daily backups stored in two places. Busy stores may need more. The guide to website hosting costs in Australia compares options.
Extensions
Paid extensions add features Shopify handles through apps. Prices on the official WooCommerce marketplace on 28 October 2026, in AUD for a one-year plan:
- Australia Post Shipping Method: $159 a year. Live Australia Post rates at checkout based on weight and dimensions.
- WooCommerce Subscriptions: $406 a year.
- Product Add-Ons: $115 a year, for extra product options such as gift wrapping.
Many stores need only one or two paid extensions. Some need none.
Payment gateway fees
WooCommerce does not add its own transaction fee, so you pay only your gateway. Two common choices in Australia:
- Stripe: its Australian pricing lists 1.65% + A$0.30 for domestic cards and 3.5% + A$0.30 for international cards, with fees including GST.
- WooPayments: 1.75% + $0.30 for domestic cards, plus 1.5% for international cards, plus 2% if currency conversion is needed. WooCommerce’s WooPayments fee schedule notes there is “a 10% GST on fees we charge”.
The build
A WooCommerce store needs to be designed and set up, and most owners pay someone to do it. A Keener WooCommerce build is quoted to scope, and online stores sit at the longer end of our 6 to 10 week build time, because products, payments and shipping all need setting up and testing. Shopify stores often also use a designer, so budget for setup on either platform. For general build pricing, see how much a website costs in Australia.
How much each takes from a sale
On a typical domestic card sale, the fee gap between Shopify and WooCommerce is small. Shopify’s extra fee only bites when you use a third-party gateway.
Using the rates listed by Shopify, Stripe and WooPayments, here is what each option takes from a $10 sale:
- Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments: 1.7% of $10 plus 30c = 47c.
- Shopify Basic with Stripe: Stripe’s 1.65% plus 30c (46.5c) plus Shopify’s 2% third-party fee (20c) = about 67c.
- WooCommerce with Stripe: 46.5c, including GST.
- WooCommerce with WooPayments: 1.75% plus 30c (47.5c), plus 10% GST on the fee = about 52c.
The fixed 30c per order matters more than the percentage on cheap items. On a $10 sale it is most of the fee. If your average order is small, look hard at that fixed charge.
GST and Australian shipping
Both platforms can charge GST and ship with Australian carriers. Shopify makes Australia Post simpler to set up.
GST. Both let you set prices to include GST and show tax correctly at checkout. Shopify’s plan comparison lists “Estimate and collect duties and taxes” as included on every plan. WooCommerce has tax settings built in, and you set the 10% GST rate yourself. Either way, check your setup with your accountant, especially if you sell overseas.
Australia Post. Since February 2026, Shopify merchants in Australia on the Grow and Basic plans “can now connect their Australia Post account to Shopify at no additional cost” and buy domestic and international labels in the Shopify admin, with tracking numbers syncing to orders automatically. Shopify announced the change in a changelog post on 9 February 2026. On WooCommerce, the official Australia Post extension costs $159 a year for live rates at checkout.
Sendle. On WooCommerce, a free Sendle plugin by developer Joovii, with 700+ active installs, books shipments, sends tracking emails and supports Australian satchel bookings. Sendle’s own Shopify app listing showed as “not currently available on the Shopify App Store” when checked, so confirm the current Sendle option for Shopify before relying on it.
Ownership and lock-in
With WooCommerce you own the whole store. With Shopify you rent the platform. A WooCommerce store is files and a database you control. You can change hosts, developers or design without asking permission, and nobody can change the platform’s rules or fees under you.
Shopify is a hosted service. It handles the hard technical parts, and you can export your products, customers and orders. You cannot take your Shopify theme, apps or checkout to another platform. If you leave, you rebuild the store elsewhere.
For many owners that trade is worth it. Shopify does the security, updates and scaling, and that has real value.
Flexibility for unusual products
WooCommerce handles unusual products and rules better because you can change almost anything. Shopify does standard products very well, and its apps cover many extras. When a store needs logic that apps cannot handle, WooCommerce is usually easier to bend.
Three Keener client stores show the kind of needs that point to WooCommerce:
- Ayres The Label was rebuilt from Shopify onto WooCommerce to run custom drops.
- LA Custom uses WooCommerce with car search and sizing, so customers find parts that fit their vehicle.
- Blakk Sportswear, an Indigenous-owned teamwear brand, runs club stores on WooCommerce, letting individual clubs sell their own gear.
These are cases where the store’s rules are the product. A standard clothing or homewares store does not need this, and Shopify will serve it well. See ecommerce website design for how Keener approaches WooCommerce builds, and sports marketing for club and event stores.
Content and SEO
Both can rank well, but WooCommerce suits stores that rely on content. Because WooCommerce runs inside WordPress, your blog, guides, landing pages and products all live in one system with full control over URLs, structured data and internal links. That helps stores that win customers through buying guides, fitment information or local pages.
Shopify covers the SEO basics well and has a blog built in, but its URL structure is more fixed and deeper changes need apps or developer work. For most product-led stores that is fine. For content-led stores, it can become a limit. The guide to getting your website on Google covers the steps that matter on either platform, and Keener’s SEO service explains how ongoing SEO works.
Speed
On Australian real-user data, Shopify stores pass Core Web Vitals far more often than WooCommerce stores. HTTP Archive’s Core Web Vitals data for September 2026, also shown in its technology report, has 76.5% of 22,851 Australian Shopify origins passing on mobile, compared with 42.6% of 9,593 WooCommerce origins and 50.7% of all Australian sites.
That is a real point in Shopify’s favour. It does not prove the platform causes the difference. Every Shopify store runs on Shopify’s managed infrastructure, while WooCommerce stores run on everything from cheap shared hosting to well-tuned cloud servers. A WooCommerce store on good hosting with caching and a lean build can be fast. A poorly hosted one, overloaded with plugins, will be slow. If you choose WooCommerce, budget for good hosting.
Who should pick which
Choose Shopify if you sell standard physical products, want to run the store yourself, would rather not think about hosting or updates, and your needs are covered by Shopify plus a few apps. This describes a lot of new Australian stores.
Choose WooCommerce if your products need custom options, fitment or sizing logic, member or club pricing, drops or unusual checkout rules. It also suits you if content drives your sales, you already run WordPress, or you want to own the store outright and avoid platform fees on third-party gateways.
If you are unsure, list the five things your store must do that a basic shop does not. If Shopify and its apps cover all five, start there.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Shopify take from a $10 sale?
On the Basic plan with Shopify Payments, the listed online card rate is 1.7% plus 30 cents, so 47 cents on a $10 sale. Amex costs more, at 2.9% plus 30 cents. If you use a third-party gateway instead, Shopify adds a 2% fee (20 cents) on top of that gateway’s own fee. Shopify’s Australian pricing page does not state whether GST is added to fees.
What is the downside of using Shopify?
The main downsides are ongoing costs and lock-in. You pay a monthly plan fee, often plus paid apps and a premium theme, and you pay an extra fee if you use a gateway other than Shopify Payments. You cannot move your Shopify theme, apps or checkout to another platform, so leaving means rebuilding. Some custom store rules are hard to build.
Is WooCommerce paid or free?
The WooCommerce core plugin is free and open source. You still pay for hosting, a domain, any paid extensions, payment gateway fees and usually a developer to build and maintain the store. Official extensions are sold by yearly subscription. For example, the Australia Post shipping extension was $159 a year on 28 October 2026.
Is Shopify built on WordPress?
No. Shopify is its own hosted platform. In a post on its engineering blog, Shopify’s team describes its main codebase as “one of the oldest, largest Rails codebases on the planet”, meaning it is built on Ruby on Rails. WooCommerce is the option that runs on WordPress.
Next step
Start with what your store has to do, then price both platforms against it, including apps, extensions, hosting and your time. If Shopify covers it, Shopify is a good choice. If your store needs custom rules or you want to own it outright, talk to Keener about an ecommerce website and we will tell you honestly which platform fits.