How much does WooCommerce really cost (mid-size case)
WooCommerce is free. On the official site, yes: download the plugin, attach it to WordPress, open the store. What is missing from the core price is everything else. Licenses, hosting, shipping tools, transactional email, tracking, someone who keeps the stack up when an update fails or hosting stops answering. “Free” is an accounting myth: it counts only the software line and ignores TCO (Total Cost of Ownership: not just what you spend to go live, but also licenses, infrastructure, and support to keep it running).
I work with Woo and Shopify. I pick by project, not by faith. This is not an anti-Woo crusade. It is the bill for a real mid-size store, with numbers I have seen up close.
Which store I am counting
I am talking about a mid-size e-commerce I have worked on for years and still work on. A regulated catalog (supplements), not a shop with two hundred SKUs and a free theme. About 55 plugins (the figure I have also used in public). Custom theme, funnels, search, compliance, data layer, shipping, email. It is not “Woo out of the box”. It is a stack that grows one piece at a time, until one Tuesday you are patching three things at once.
If your store has ten plugins and a part-timer, these numbers are not one-to-one. If you are scaling catalog, ads, and logistics, yes: the pattern is the same.
The annual bill, piece by piece
I start with micro plugin licenses: about €4,000 a year. Inside that sit pieces like Doofinder (€1,788), FunnelKit (€249), the YITH stack, Complianz, Datalayer, and others that look “small” alone. Added up, they are not.
Then infrastructure and satellite services: hosting €770, Qapla’ (shipping) €1,978, RFMCube €717, Postmark (email) €1,518, Stape €600.
Software plus infra: more than €16,600 a year. I am not inventing every line that closes the total: the pieces above are the ones that weigh and that I can cite without padding. The point is not a full Excel dump. It is that, at mid-size, the “free” platform already costs five figures before you count who keeps it alive.
Then there is support. I do not put it in timesheet hours: on a stack like this, the “theoretical” hour does not describe the work. Failed updates, a site that crashes, hosting that does not answer, tracking that breaks after a cookie change: ordinary maintenance and emergencies sit in the same retainer. It is a budget line, not a timesheet. On a loaded mid-size store, that ongoing support weighs as much as the licenses, sometimes more. A quote that says “a few hours a month of plugins” is selling a different object.
So real TCO is: software and infra (here over €16,600) plus ongoing support. No marketing. No ads. No warehouse. Just keeping what sells online and tidy.
What counts (and what is noise)
The noise is “Woo is open source, so you save”. That counts for little if you then pay Doofinder, Qapla’, Postmark, and support that also covers the Tuesday when everything breaks together.
What counts is the stack: how many plugins, how coupled they are, how much you need someone on watch. Tracking counts: on a regulated catalog, claims, consent mode, and server-side are not optional. Logistics tied to checkout counts: if Qapla’ or the equivalent owns your order flow, that line does not vanish when you change theme.
Concrete example. Doofinder alone, on this store, is almost €1,800 a year. It is not “a search plugin”. It is UX, internal ranking, conversion. On Shopify you replace it with an app. You often still pay. You move the line. You do not delete it.
The distinction I care about: the cost is not “Woo versus Shopify”. It is “how much custom stack you built on top of the platform”. Woo invites you to build. Then that build has an annual rent in licenses and in support.
An honest Shopify comparison
Shopify does not zero costs. It moves them.
Grow plan: about €1,100 a year. Support on a leaner store usually drops: less WordPress update surface, fewer “Tuesday updates”, fewer pieces stepping on each other. It does not disappear. It changes shape.
Specialized apps you still pay: Klaviyo, Qapla’, Doofinder (or rivals) do not become free because you changed checkout. Email, shipping, search, RFM: they stay. What you really cut, on many mid-size stores, is maintenance surface.
I am not saying “move to Shopify and save the TCO”. I am saying: if your Woo TCO is driven by stack and by support full of emergencies, Shopify shifts weight onto the plan plus apps. If your TCO is already mostly mandatory external tools, migration moves less than the pitch deck claims.
When Woo makes sense (and when it does not)
Opinion from projects, not from a white paper. Woo makes sense when you need real control over the catalog, over particular Italian flows, over integrations Shopify handles poorly or expensively, or when the internal team already knows WordPress and technical debt is under control. It also makes sense at the start, if you stay light and do not pile up 55 plugins “in case we need them”.
It does not make sense (or costs too much for the benefit) when the mid-size store lives on patches, multiplying micro-licenses, and support that is already a serious budget line. There you are not “leveraging open source”. You are running an internal software product with a CMS in front.
Important distinction from the generic “just migrate” advice: migration is not a button. It is catalog, redirects, tracking, email, shipping, training, peak-season risk. I do that work when the stack demands it, not when someone read that Woo is free and Shopify is modern. TCO decides. The press release of the week does not.
Starter and mid-size are not the same object
You see Woo quotes between $1,500 and $2,000 for a starter. Theme, basic setup, few plugins. Real work. It is not the store I am talking about. Comparing that ticket to a mid-size stack with 55 plugins and years of layering is like comparing a bicycle to a delivery van. Both have wheels. The TCO does not.
If they quote you the starter and you already run funnels, server-side tracking, and integrated logistics, you are buying the wrong slice of the conversation. Ask for twelve-month TCO: licenses, hosting, tools, ongoing support (ordinary and emergencies). Do not stop at “how much to put it online”.
TCO checklist (before you argue about platforms)
Before you fight over Woo or Shopify, put on the table:
- Sum of recurring plugin/app licenses.
- Hosting and satellite services (email, shipping, tracking, search).
- Ongoing support: what it includes (updates only, or also emergencies, hosting, tracking).
- What would stay the same after a migration (spoiler: often shipping, email, search).
- How much you are willing to pay not to discover Sunday-night crashes alone.
If licenses and infra alone already clear five figures, and on top you put support that is not “two hours of plugins”, the problem is not the free core download. It is the stack.
If you are weighing a migration “for AI”, read the three tickets first (show up in the answer, buy the slot underneath, checkout in chat): WooCommerce, Shopify, and what actually matters for AI. Do not tear down the store for a channel that may not ask you to change platform.
FAQ
Is WooCommerce really free? The core is. Mid-size TCO is not. On this store, software and infra top €16,600 a year before you count ongoing support. No ads, no warehouse.
If I move to Shopify, do fixed costs disappear? No. You pay the plan (Grow around €1,100/year) and usually shrink maintenance surface, but apps like Klaviyo, Qapla’, or Doofinder remain. You move where you pay. You do not delete the need for search, email, and shipping.
Is support just “updating plugins”? On a loaded mid-size store, no. Ordinary work and emergencies sit in the same account: failed updates, crashes, hosting, tracking. If the quote only shows “a few hours of plugins”, ask what is excluded when the site does not answer on Sunday.
If you want an honest read of your stack (licenses, infra, support, what would stay the same after a platform change), I can run a cost audit without selling you a migration by default. Write via michy.it: we put the numbers on the table, then we decide.
