Choose Shopify if you want a store running in weeks with hosting, security and speed handled for you. Choose WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, sell a lot, and have someone to maintain it. In Malaysia and India, Shopify's extra fee on third-party gateways is usually the deciding number.
Shopify vs WooCommerce at a glance
The two platforms solve the same problem in opposite ways. Shopify rents you a finished, hosted store. WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress site you host into a store.
- What you pay for: Shopify charges a monthly plan plus a fee per sale on third-party gateways. WooCommerce has no platform fee, but you pay for hosting, extensions and upkeep.
- Who keeps it running: Shopify handles hosting, security and platform updates. With WooCommerce, you or your developer do.
- Speed: Shopify stores pass Google's Core Web Vitals far more often (figures below).
- Flexibility: WooCommerce lets you change almost anything, because you own the code and the server. Shopify limits you to what its themes, apps and APIs allow.
What each costs to run
Shopify's prices differ by market, and Malaysian stores pay in US dollars. On Shopify's India pricing page, Basic is ₹1,499 a month on yearly billing (₹1,994 monthly), Grow ₹5,599 and Advanced ₹22,680. For Malaysia, Basic is US$19 a month on yearly billing, about RM78, or US$25 monthly, about RM102.
Some Malaysian guides quote Shopify Basic at RM139 to RM175 a month. Those figures don't match Shopify's own page in October 2026; check it before you budget.
WooCommerce describes itself as an open-source platform with no monthly platform fees. Your costs are hosting, any paid extensions, and maintenance.
Price guides put maintenance for a WooCommerce store at roughly RM1,500 to RM5,000 a month in Malaysia, or ₹10,000 to ₹40,000 in India, if you pay someone to do it. Our website maintenance cost guide covers what that includes.
The fee that decides it: payments in Malaysia and India
In most countries, Shopify waives its extra transaction fee when you use Shopify Payments. That option doesn't exist here: Shopify's supported countries list doesn't include Malaysia or India.
So every Shopify store in both markets uses a third-party gateway and pays Shopify 2% per sale on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, on top of the gateway's own fee. WooCommerce has no equivalent; you pay only the gateway.
WooCommerce's own payments product doesn't help either. WooPayments isn't available in Malaysia or India, so both platforms end up on the same local gateways: Billplz, Curlec, HitPay or Stripe in Malaysia; Razorpay or Cashfree in India. Our payment gateway fees comparison has their rates.
When WooCommerce becomes cheaper
Put the two biggest running costs side by side: Shopify's per-sale fee against paying someone to maintain WooCommerce. The Shopify subscription and WooCommerce hosting are small next to these, so the comparison comes down to those two.
- Malaysia: Shopify Basic's 2% fee equals RM1,500 a month, the low end of WooCommerce maintenance, at about RM75,000 a month in sales.
- India: Shopify Basic's 2% fee equals ₹10,000 a month at about ₹5,00,000 a month in sales.
Below those levels, Shopify is usually cheaper in total once you count upkeep. Above them, WooCommerce starts to win, provided it's maintained properly.
On Shopify Grow, where the fee is 1%, the crossover roughly doubles. If someone in your team maintains WooCommerce for free, it wins much earlier.
A year on each platform: worked examples
Here's the arithmetic for two store sizes in each market, using Shopify Basic on yearly billing and the low end of paid WooCommerce maintenance. Gateway fees are the same on both platforms, so they're left out.
Malaysia:
- RM40,000 a month in sales: Shopify costs about RM10,532 a year (RM932 subscription plus RM9,600 in 2% fees). WooCommerce maintenance alone is RM18,000. Shopify is cheaper.
- RM100,000 a month: Shopify rises to about RM24,932 a year; WooCommerce maintenance stays around RM18,000. WooCommerce is cheaper, before hosting.
India:
- ₹3,00,000 a month: Shopify costs ₹89,988 a year (₹17,988 subscription plus ₹72,000 in fees), against ₹1,20,000 for WooCommerce maintenance. Shopify is cheaper.
- ₹8,00,000 a month: Shopify costs ₹2,09,988 a year; WooCommerce maintenance stays around ₹1,20,000. WooCommerce is cheaper.
Run your own numbers with your real sales and quotes. The pattern holds: Shopify's cost grows with every sale, while WooCommerce's grows with complexity.
Speed and Core Web Vitals
Shopify stores are faster out of the box. The 2025 Web Almanac found that 76% of Shopify stores had good Core Web Vitals on mobile, against 35% of WooCommerce stores.
That gap is about setup, not a limit of WooCommerce.
WooCommerce runs on whatever hosting you choose, with whatever theme and plugins you add, and most stores end up on cheap shared hosting with a heavy theme. A well-built WooCommerce store on good hosting, with servers near your customers in Malaysia, Singapore or India, can be fast too. It just takes work Shopify does for you.
WooCommerce is still the more common choice: the same report found it on 44.4% of ecommerce sites on mobile, against 25.3% for Shopify.
Security and upkeep
Shopify handles platform security. WooCommerce inherits WordPress's security model, and that's mostly about plugins.
Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 91% of them in plugins. A WooCommerce store with a payment plugin, a shipping plugin and a dozen others needs weekly updates, backups and a staging site to test them on. Skip that and the savings disappear in the first incident.
Languages and local requirements
Both platforms can serve stores in several languages. Shopify offers its Translate & Adapt app, with manual or AI translation; WooCommerce relies on plugins such as WPML or Polylang.
The harder part is SEO: each language needs its own URLs and hreflang tags, or Google won't show the right version. Our guide to multilingual SEO for Malaysia and India covers how to set that up on either platform.
Which one to pick
Pick Shopify if:
- You're launching your first store and want to sell within weeks.
- Nobody on your team wants to manage hosting, updates or security.
- Monthly sales are below roughly RM75,000 or ₹5,00,000.
- Speed matters and you don't want to tune hosting yourself.
Pick WooCommerce if:
- You already run a WordPress site with traffic and content you want to keep.
- You need unusual pricing, B2B rules or checkout logic Shopify apps can't handle.
- Sales are high enough that Shopify's per-sale fee costs more than proper maintenance.
- You have a developer or agency on a maintenance plan.
Consider a custom build if the store is part of a larger product, such as a marketplace or a booking platform. Our ecommerce website cost guide covers all three routes, and our web development team can tell you which fits your numbers, or send us your brief.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Shopify or WooCommerce cheaper in Malaysia?
- For most small stores, Shopify, once you count the cost of maintaining WooCommerce. Shopify's 2% fee on third-party gateways means WooCommerce becomes cheaper only at higher sales, roughly RM75,000 a month on Basic, or earlier if your team maintains WooCommerce itself.
- Does Shopify charge transaction fees in India?
- Yes, if you use a third-party gateway, which every Indian store must because Shopify Payments isn't available in India. The fee is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, on top of the gateway's own charges.
- Is WooCommerce better for SEO than Shopify?
- Not automatically. WooCommerce gives more control over URLs and content, but Shopify stores pass Core Web Vitals far more often. A well-structured store with good content can rank on either.
- Can I move from Shopify to WooCommerce later?
- Yes. Products, customers and orders can be exported and imported, though themes and apps don't carry over. Plan permanent redirects from every old product and category URL so you keep your search rankings.
Related reading
- Multilingual SEO for Malaysia and IndiaMultilingual SEO for Malaysia and India: URLs per language, hreflang codes for English, Malay, Chinese, Tamil and Hindi, and the mistakes that hide pages.
- How long does it take to build an app?How long it takes to build an app: 8 to 16 weeks for most, plus store review. Phase by phase, the 2026 store rules that add work, and how to launch sooner.
- Choosing a domain name for Malaysia and India.my, .com.my, .in or .com? Who can register each domain in Malaysia and India, how your choice affects Google rankings by country, and what to pick.
Prices and fees checked on each vendor's official pages in October 2026. Exchange rate used: US$1 to RM4.09 (Bank Negara Malaysia reference rate, 9 October 2026). Maintenance figures are price-guide ranges, not quotes.