Shopify vs WordPress: Which Platform is Better for Your Website in 2026?

Shopify vs WordPress are two of the most popular platforms for building websites, each offering unique strengths tailored to different needs. As we enter 2025, the demand for powerful, flexible, and user-friendly website solutions continues to grow, making the decision between these two platforms more crucial than ever.

Whether you're launching an online store or creating a content-driven site, understanding the key differences between Shopify and WordPress can help you make the right choice. In this article, we'll compare their features, ease of use, pricing, and more to help you determine which platform is the best fit for your goals.

• Pricing
• Sales features
• Payment gateways
• Ease of use
• Website design
• Apps & plugins
• Search engine optimization
• Blogging functions
• Maintenance
• Help & support

Without further ado, let’s jump into our Shopify vs WordPress breakdown!

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Shopify vs WordPress: At a Glance

This section gives you a quick overview of each platform, including its key strengths and potential limitations, so you can better understand how they serve different types of users.

Shopify vs WordPress: A Quick Comparison

Now that you know the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, let’s compare Shopify vs WordPress side by side. This quick overview will give you a snapshot of how they perform across key criteria such as pricing, features, ease of use, and more. If you’re short on time, this section helps you spot the differences at a glance and identify which platform fits your needs best.

Shopify vs WordPress: Pros and Cons

Here are some key pros and cons of Shopify and WordPress that you can consider.

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Shopify vs WordPress: Pricing (WordPress Wins)

With that in mind, let’s look at the typical expenses you’ll face on each platform so you can see how the WordPress vs Shopify cost differences actually play out.

Shopify pricing

Shopify pricing has three main pricing tiers: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced. This platform offers a 3-day free trial for all tiers so you can discover the Shopify dashboard and experience it yourself. Below are some of Shopify's pricing tier features.

For more complex businesses, Shopify provides a Plus Plan starting from $2,300/month on a 3-year term or $2,500 per month for a 1-year term.

Besides the subscription plan, themes, apps, and domain registration can add to your monthly expenses. Basically, these fees on Shopify will be like:

• Domain name: $12/year.
• Themes: $0 – $400 (one-time, non-refundable purchases)
• Apps: start from $0 (most apps charge monthly subscription fees)

WordPress pricing

Meanwhile, because WordPress.org is open-source and 100% free for anyone to download and install, all I needed was a domain name and web hosting. However, this also means that I have to perform backups, security updates, and any necessary upgrades.

From there, the cost of a WordPress site when using WordPress.org:

• Domain name: $10-$15/year.
• Hosting: from $3-$25+/month (depending on provider & features)
• Plugins: $0-$1,000/year (ongoing or one-off charge).
• Themes: $0-$200+ (free themes available).
• Security: from $50/year (ongoing or one-off charge).
• Developer fees: vary.

The cost to start a WordPress.org site can vary greatly, from $100 to $30,000 or more. This flexibility allows merchants to tailor their expenses to their specific needs and budgets.

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Shopify vs WordPress: Sales Features (Shopify Wins)

To understand why Shopify’s setup gives it the edge, let’s dive into the core sales tools WordPress vs Shopify offers and how they handle promotions, checkout, and multi-channel selling.

Shopify sales features

Shopify offers a comprehensive set of built-in sales tools, making it a powerful option for beginners and small businesses. This platform simplifies creating discounts and promotions, whether it’s through coupon codes, automatic discounts, or flash sales. Its checkout process is optimized for conversions, offering a streamlined experience for customers, including mobile-friendly design and guest checkout options.

Another standout feature of Shopify is its seamless integration with multiple sales channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Amazon. This allows you to manage all your sales from one dashboard, saving time and improving efficiency. It also includes an abandoned cart recovery tool by default, which automatically sends reminder emails to customers who leave items in their cart, helping recover potential lost revenue.

WordPress sales features

WordPress, by contrast, relies on plugins like WooCommerce to provide sales features. While WooCommerce offers essential eCommerce functionalities, additional plugins are often needed to match Shopify's capabilities.

When it comes to multi-channel sales, WordPress provides flexibility but at the cost of complexity. While WooCommerce supports integrations with platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you’ll need to manage these connections through third-party tools. Similarly, creating discounts and promotions is possible but may require advanced plugins for features like Buy One Get One (BOGO) offers or tiered pricing. WordPress does offer unmatched flexibility in customizing checkout experiences, but this often involves coding or premium plugins.

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Shopify vs WordPress: Payment gateways (Shopify Wins)

Building on that, let’s compare how Shopify vs WordPress supports payment processing, from the number of gateways to the setup process and extra fees you might face.

Shopify payment gateways

Shopify supports over 100 payment gateways, including popular options like PayPal, Stripe, and Square. Additionally, Shopify offers its proprietary payment solution, Shopify Payments, which eliminates transaction fees for businesses using it. This integration simplifies the payment process and reduces costs. However, if you choose to use a third-party gateway, Shopify charges additional transaction fees on top of the gateway’s fees, which can add to your expenses.

Another strength of Shopify is the ease of setting up payment options. The platform provides a straightforward interface for configuring payment methods, ensuring that even non-technical users can get started quickly. Shopify also supports multiple currencies and international payment gateways, making it suitable for global businesses.

WordPress payment gateways

On the other hand, WordPress, through WooCommerce, offers extensive flexibility in payment gateway integration. WooCommerce supports nearly all major payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, and others. Unlike Shopify, WordPress does not charge additional transaction fees for using third-party gateways, which can be a significant cost-saving advantage for businesses.

However, setting up payment gateways in WordPress often requires installing and configuring plugins, such as the WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway or PayPal Payments. While these plugins are generally easy to use, they may require more effort compared to Shopify’s built-in system. On the positive side, WordPress offers greater flexibility in customizing the payment process, allowing businesses to tailor the experience to their specific needs.

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Shopify vs WordPress: Ease of Use (Shopify Wins)

Here’s how that ease of use plays out in real life, from initial setup to daily store management on Shopify vs WordPress.

Shopify ease of use

Shopify is a hosted solution, so you can start to create and set up your eCommerce store with ease. There's no need for technical hassles since Shopify handles hosting, security, updates, and maintenance for you.

Here's our quick tutorial on how to set up Shopify within a few minutes.

Shopify's dashboard is widely praised for its user-friendly design, intuitive navigation, and streamlined workflows. Even beginners with no technical experience can quickly grasp the basics of setting up and managing an online store.

With Shopify's dashboard, I can easily view all the components of the front and back end of my store in one place. From here, I can configure your store’s settings, view orders and customer information, add/delete/modify products, and design your site.

Besides, Shopify has a 3-day free trial, so you can take this opportunity to see how Shopify works and whether it is suitable for you. Thanks to Shopify's policy, you could even reactivate your store after canceling the Shopify free trial. Your store name (domain) and all your data will be saved in 30 days.

WordPress ease of use

If you choose WordPress, you first need to choose and manage your web hosting. Then, you will need to download the WordPress package and install it on your web hosting server, and handle updates and security, which can be daunting for non-technical users.

Once WordPress.org is installed, the process becomes much easier.

The WordPress dashboard is straightforward.

The main navigation menu on the left-hand side provides clear access to essential areas like Post, Media, Pages, …

The central area of the dashboard provides an overview of your site's activity, including recent posts and comments, as well as quick draft options. You have the flexibility to customize the dashboard widgets to prioritize information relevant to you.

Overall, I find that WordPress offers great flexibility for design and functionality through thousands of themes and plugins. However, mastering WordPress can be challenging due to its complexity at the set up phase.

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WordPress vs Shopify: Website Design (WordPress Wins)

Let’s take a closer look at what the difference in WordPress vs Shopify flexibility means in practice, from theme options to the level of design customization you can achieve.

Shopify website design

If you want to make your online store stand out, check out the Shopify Theme Store. Shopify offers 880+ professionally designed themes, all of which are mobile-ready. All Shopify themes are easy to customize in all aspects (e.g., colors, fonts), and there's no need to touch a line of code.

If you need further customization, you can use Liquid – the coding language of Shopify. With Liquid, I can possibly change the existing Shopify template or layout or add a new one. Unlike ordinary HTML/CSS languages, Liquid is a bit different. It will take your time to accommodate or hire a Shopify technical expert to do it for you.

WordPress website design

WordPress.org has a huge truckload of templates. Its theme directory offers thousands of free themes and a vast array of premium options for the most popular WordPress themes. They are all highly customizable and allow me to modify every aspect of your website's appearance and functionality through code or page builders.

You are free to edit the source code as you wish. You can also utilize plugins that allow you to create a theme using drag-and-drop tools. WordPress also lets you change the body page (the center part) such as changing colors, uploading the logo, changing the background, or creating beautiful sliders. Or else, you have the option to hire WordPress experts to create a fully customized website design for you.

But the flexibility comes at a cost. WordPress themes can be challenging to customize if you're not familiar with coding or page builders. With so many themes available, it can be hard to find the right one for your store. Additionally, keeping WordPress themes updated for security and compatibility can be time-consuming, especially for non-technical users.

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Shopify vs WordPress: Apps & Plugins (WordPress Wins)

Now, we will examine how the Shopify vs WordPress difference in scale and flexibility affects the way you can expand your store’s capabilities on each platform.

Shopify apps & plugins

Shopify users have access to numerous APIs that empower merchants to expand their stores by seamlessly integrating with various apps. They can integrate third-party plugins or develop and integrate their own extensions.

What's more, there are over 13,000 apps available, including paid and free apps. Most of the Shopify apps are subscription-based and will vary based on tier and features.

WordPress apps & plugins

When you have a self-hosted WordPress.org site, you have the flexibility to choose from 60,000+ WordPress plugins. These plugins allow you to enhance and personalize your website to your needs.

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Shopify vs WordPress: SEO & Marketing Features (A Tie)

Want to know why this is such a close call between Shopify vs WordPress? Let’s break down how each platform approaches SEO and marketing, from basic optimizations to advanced customization.

Shopify SEO & marketing features

The platform has favorable SEO functionality, which makes it easy to create content that search engines love. As someone who has little knowledge of coding, I can easily edit the meta titles and descriptions, add 301 redirects, and change page URLs to boost my website's SEO results. Not to mention, Shopify has already prompted your products with SEO best practices.

Besides, Shopify comes with a wide range of apps and add-ons that I can use for store optimization and to ensure its ranking on search engines like Google or Bing. If picking up a suitable app is too difficult, why don't you take a look at our recommendations about the best Shopify SEO apps?

But what if you need further customization? That brings us to Shopfiy's main drawbacks.

Shopify's inflexible structure presents some major challenges:

• URL structure (e.g., /collections/product-name) can't be fully customized.
• The lack of subcategories within blog posts makes organizing content difficult. This can result in duplicate URLs (multiple URLs pointing to the same page), leading to potential SEO issues like content cannibalization.

However, you can overcome this difficulty by discovering and applying suitable SEO tips and tricks for your store. Let's take a look at 8 effective eCommerce SEO strategies that we've compiled as your reference.

WordPress SEO & marketing features

WordPress offers great flexibility for SEO optimization. You have full control over your site's structure, meta tags, URLs, and other technical aspects.

For technical SEO, WordPress grants users a vast variety of SEO controls, such as:

• Create clean, descriptive URLs that incorporate target keywords.
• Add and edit meta titles, descriptions, and other meta tags.
• Manage how search engines crawl and index your website via customizable files.
• Implement structured data to enhance search result listings with rich snippets.

Also, there is a vast library of SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math, which provide powerful tools for on-page optimization, keyword research, sitemaps, redirects, and more.

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WordPress vs Shopify: Blogging Features (WordPress Wins)

Below, we will compare WordPress vs Shopify and examine how their blogging features translate into real benefits for merchants who rely heavily on content.

Shopify blogging features

For many eCommerce merchants, Shopify's built-in blogging platform hits a balance between functionality and ease of use. It's a simple solution that covers the essentials without overwhelming users with complex features.

I find that Shopify offers strengths for tech-savvy merchants with:

• User-friendly blog editor, even for those without extensive blogging experience.
• Automatic SEO optimization for titles and descriptions.
• Seamlessly embedding images and videos enhances the visual appeal of blog posts.
• The ability to schedule posts and use tags streamlines content management and organization.

Yet, if your eCommerce strategy relies heavily on blog content or complex content structures, WordPress may offer more flexibility.

WordPress blogging features

WordPress offers a comprehensive suite of tools that simplify content creation, from drafting and editing to previewing and publishing. For eCommerce merchants with technical know-how, WordPress provides a powerful foundation for content marketing and brand building.

Basically, you can:

• Craft engaging blog posts, product descriptions, and other content with extensive formatting options.
• Embed images, videos, audio, and other media types to enhance your content.
• Deeply customize your blog's design and functionality through themes, plugins, and custom code.
• Add custom fonts to enhance your site's aesthetics and brand identity. This article explains why typography is important in attracting customers' attention and explains how to add custom fonts to WordPress.

So, if your online store relies on content to attract and engage customers, WordPress provides the tools and flexibility you need to manage and deliver that content effectively.

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WordPress vs Shopify: Maintenance (Shopify Wins)

This section will break down what this WordPress vs Shopify difference means for your day-to-day workload and the level of technical involvement each platform requires.

Shopify maintenance

As a fully hosted solution, Shopify ensures the highest level of server maintenance. This platform regularly pushes out technical upgrades and bug fixes, so you'll always benefit from the latest features and security fixes. When working with Shopify, I only need to devote a few days per year to maintenance issues.

WordPress maintenance

WordPress is a fast-moving platform, and new features are added and improved regularly. Frequent updates bring new features, performance enhancements, and security patches that ensure your website stays current and competitive. This is crucial for tech-savvy merchants who want to use the latest technologies and trends to improve their online stores.

Using WordPress does require regular attention. For busy merchants, this can be an additional task to manage. However, if you're tech-savvy, you may find this less burdensome as you are likely already comfortable with software updates and maintenance procedures.

Yet, in rare cases, updates can cause conflicts with themes or plugins. This is where technical knowledge becomes crucial for troubleshooting and resolving any issues that may arise.

Here, we provide comprehensive instructions on how to update WordPress. Check it out!

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Shopify vs WordPress: Help & Support (Shopify Wins)

Specifically, here’s how these Shopify vs WordPress support options compare in terms of availability, channels, and the quality of resources you can rely on.

Shopify help & support

Shopify offers outstanding customer service. I can get help with 24-hour support via phone call, support ticket, or chat live with a customer care representative.

In case you don’t want to contact support for each tiny question you have, there is also self-service that offers the knowledge base, video tutorials, and webinars.

WordPress help & support

WordPress.org does not offer direct support channels like phone or live chat. This can be frustrating for merchants who encounter urgent issues or complex problems requiring expert assistance.

If you're a tech-savvy merchant, while resourceful, you might still prefer a more direct line of communication for critical situations.

Apart from the official support channels, the web offers a wealth of advice and tutorials on WordPress-related topics. Other system users have compiled multiple text and video manuals, guidelines, and tutorials.

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Shopify vs WordPress: Which is suitable for you?

As you can see, Shopify wins on simplicity, maintenance, and built-in eCommerce tools, while WordPress stands out for flexibility, blogging, and customization. So we would recommend Shopify if you:

• You want a quick and easy way to launch an online store
• You prefer an all-in-one platform with hosting, security, and support included
• You don’t have technical skills or access to a developer
• You need built-in sales tools and multichannel selling from day one

On the other hand, WordPress will be the better option if:

• You want full control over your website’s design and functionality
• You’re comfortable managing hosting, plugins, and updates (or have a developer)
• You plan to create a content-heavy website with strong blogging features
• You’re looking for flexibility in choosing how much you spend and what features to add.

In the end, the right platform between Shopify vs WordPress depends on your goals, budget, and technical comfort level. Take time to assess what matters most for your business, ease of use or flexibility, and choose the one that aligns with your long-term vision.

If you want more expert tips and reviews of the eCommerce world, please don't forget to check out our articles on LitExtension blogs and Resources.

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Shopify vs WordPress – FAQs