Why Shopify and WooCommerce coexist in our book.
Our Shopify book. Our WooCommerce book. Both running concurrently in the same agency book. Why we deliberately run both platforms instead of picking one, and what each fits.
Where Shopify wins
- Speed-to-launch. New brand, new storefront, no legacy WordPress baggage. Shopify ships faster.
- App ecosystem leverage. For brands needing subscription apps (Recharge, Loop), advanced reviews (Judge.me, Yotpo), or specialist functionality, Shopify's app ecosystem is deeper than WooCommerce's plugin equivalent.
- Multi-region pricing (Markets). Brands selling internationally with different price points or catalogues per region. Shopify Markets handles this natively; WooCommerce requires substantial custom work.
- B2B with Shopify (company accounts). Native B2B layer with Shopify Plus is cleaner than the WooCommerce + B2B-plugin equivalent for some hybrid B2C+B2B brands.
- Hosting and security as default. Brands that don't want to manage hosting + security choose Shopify because it's managed for them.
Where WooCommerce wins
- Cost economics at mid-market scale. Shopify Plus pricing kicks in around monthly revenue. For brands at that revenue tier with complex catalogues, WooCommerce + B2B for WooCommerce + custom checkout is often more cost-effective.
- Catalogue depth + customisation. ACF + custom post types + WooCommerce gives editorial flexibility for complex catalogues (engineering parts ecom, technical product detail, fitment data) that Shopify's catalogue model strains against.
- Existing WordPress investment. Brands already on WordPress for content + brand reasons, re-platforming both content and ecom to Shopify is more disruptive than adding WooCommerce to the existing WordPress.
- Australian hosting + data residency. Brands with Australian-data-residency requirements prefer WooCommerce on Australian hosts (Kinsta, Cloudways) over Shopify's global hosting.
- Custom-checkout depth for high-AOV. For high-AOV brands (interiors, furniture, jewellery, premium beverage), the checkout-customisation depth WooCommerce offers can outperform Shopify's checkout-customisation constraints.
How we counsel the platform decision
When a brand asks "should we be on Shopify or WooCommerce?", our answer is informed by running 9 of one and 16 of the other concurrently. We can show pattern depth on each. We can show migration patterns in both directions (Bujairami's WooCommerce → Shopify, plus less common Shopify → WooCommerce migrations for specific cases). We're not selling whichever platform we have margin on; we're recommending whichever platform fits the brief.
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Need help choosing between Shopify and WooCommerce?
Thirty-minute call. We'll talk through your brief, your catalogue, your AOV profile, your wholesale arm if any, and tell you honestly which platform fits.
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