Once you have decided you genuinely need to sell online, the next question arrives immediately: what do we build it on? For most Australian retailers the shortlist comes down to two names, Shopify and WooCommerce.
Plenty of comparisons will tell you Shopify is easier and WooCommerce is more flexible. That is true, and it is not much help, because it is the answer for any business. Retail is a specific case. You have real stock that can run out, products that come in four sizes and three colours, possibly a shopfront with a counter, a delivery arriving every fortnight, and customers who expect to pay the way they pay everywhere else.
This guide is about the factors that actually decide it for a retailer. If you want the broader plain-English comparison including plain WordPress, our WordPress, Shopify or WooCommerce guide covers that ground. And if you are not yet certain a full store is the right move, start with when to build an eCommerce store instead of a brochure website. Choosing a platform for a store you do not need is an expensive way to begin.
The question that decides it - do you also sell in person?
If you take money across a counter as well as online, this single factor outweighs everything else on the list.
The problem is stock. Sell the last one in the shop at 2pm, and the website needs to know before someone buys it at 2:05pm. Overselling is not a minor annoyance in retail. It means apologising, refunding, and losing a customer who was ready to buy.
Shopify’s advantage here is genuine. Its point-of-sale is part of the same system as the online store, so the counter and the website share one stock count without you connecting anything. For a shop with a till, that removes an entire category of problem.
WooCommerce can absolutely do it, but you are joining a separate point-of-sale system to your store. That is another connection to set up, another subscription, and another thing that can silently stop syncing. It works well when set up properly. It is simply more moving parts.
If you are online-only, this factor disappears completely and the decision opens right up.
Stock, variants and the size of your catalogue
Retail lives or dies on getting this bit right, and it is where a lot of stores become painful to run.
Variants. A single t-shirt in five sizes and four colours is twenty stock lines to track. Both platforms handle variants, but Shopify’s structure is more opinionated and quicker to set up out of the box, while WooCommerce is more configurable if your products do not fit a neat grid. Bundles, made-to-order options, custom fields, unusual pricing rules.
Catalogue size. A few dozen products runs comfortably on either. Several thousand products with heavy variant counts starts to reward WooCommerce’s control over how the store is built and hosted, provided it is hosted properly. Badly hosted WooCommerce at scale is genuinely slow, and slow kills retail conversion.
Suppliers and reordering. Think about how stock arrives and gets counted in, not just how it goes out. If you receive regular deliveries, whichever platform you choose needs a workflow your team will actually follow on a busy Thursday.
The honest summary: standard retail products favour Shopify’s speed to set up; unusual products or complex rules favour WooCommerce’s flexibility.
What Australian shoppers expect at the checkout
This is where being an Australian retailer specifically matters, because expectations here are not identical to overseas.
- Buy now, pay later. Afterpay and Zip are normal, not exotic, particularly for clothing, homewares and anything over a couple of hundred dollars. Both platforms support them. The thing to watch is stacked fees: your payment provider, any platform transaction fee, and the buy-now-pay-later provider each take a cut. Model the combined cost per sale before you commit.
- Card, PayPal and digital wallets. Table stakes on both. Apple Pay and Google Pay noticeably lift mobile conversion, so make sure whatever you build has them switched on.
- Shipping that reflects reality. Australian postage is expensive and distance-dependent. Both platforms handle live rates, but decide early whether you are doing flat rate, live-calculated, or free over a threshold. That decision affects your margins more than the platform does.
- Click and collect. Increasingly expected if you have a physical shop, and one of the best margin-savers there is because postage disappears. This is far simpler when your store and counter share one system.
- Returns. Australian Consumer Law applies to online sales, so you need a clear policy and a process for handling it. Whichever platform you pick, make returns easy to find and easy to action.
What it actually costs at retail turnover
Platform cost comparisons usually stop at the monthly fee, which is the least interesting part.
Shopify charges a predictable monthly subscription, and depending on your plan and payment setup may take a transaction fee on top of standard card processing. The appeal is that costs are flat and forecastable, and hosting, security and updates are handled for you.
WooCommerce has no licence fee, but you pay for hosting, maintenance, security and often several paid extensions. There is no platform cut of your sales.
The practical consequence is a crossover point. At lower or seasonal turnover, Shopify’s fixed fee usually works out cheaper once you count the hosting and maintenance you would otherwise be paying for. As turnover climbs, a percentage of every sale starts to outweigh a fixed monthly cost, and WooCommerce tends to pull ahead. Where exactly that crossover sits depends on your margins, your plan and how much custom work you need, which is why the sensible move is to model it on your own numbers rather than trust a general rule.
One thing worth saying plainly: for most small retailers, the platform fee is not the expensive part. Photography, stock, postage and the hours spent packing dwarf it. Choose for fit first and cost second.
Who is going to run it?
Be honest about this, because it decides whether the store thrives or stalls.
Shopify is designed to be run by the business owner. Adding products, changing a banner, running a sale and reading reports are approachable without technical help. That independence has real value when you want a promotion live this afternoon.
WooCommerce gives you more control and no ceiling, but it expects someone to look after it: updates, backups, hosting, extension compatibility. That is fine if you have a web partner on maintenance, or you are comfortable in WordPress. It is not fine if the plan is to build it and never touch it.
If nobody in the business has time or appetite for maintenance and there is no support arrangement, that pushes strongly toward Shopify regardless of the other factors.
Peak trading, speed and reliability
Retail has spikes. Black Friday, Christmas, a product that suddenly takes off. Two things matter.
Speed. Shopify is fast by default. WooCommerce is fast when hosted well and slow when hosted cheaply, and retail is unforgiving of slow. Every second of load costs conversions on product pages.
Uptime under load. Shopify absorbs traffic spikes as part of the service. WooCommerce depends on your hosting, so if you expect big peaks, that is where the money needs to go.
If your year has a genuine peak, factor it in. A store that falls over on your busiest day costs more than the platform ever will.
SEO, content and owning your audience
Both platforms can rank well, and the difference is smaller than WordPress advocates often claim, but there is a real distinction.
WooCommerce sits inside WordPress, which remains the strongest content platform available. If your strategy involves substantial content (buying guides, how-tos, a real blog feeding your product pages) that integration is a genuine advantage.
Shopify handles product SEO perfectly well, with clean structure and solid technical foundations, though it is more constrained in URL structure and its blogging tools are basic by comparison.
For most retailers, the deciding factor is not the platform’s SEO ceiling but whether anyone will actually produce content. If the answer is no, this section should not sway your decision. Either way, product pages deserve the same care as service pages, the principles in writing pages that rank and convert apply directly to a product catalogue.
Getting out later
Nobody plans to migrate, and plenty of retailers eventually do.
Products, customers and orders can be moved between the two. What does not move is your theme, your apps or extensions, and any custom checkout work, and URLs need careful redirecting or you will lose the search rankings you have built.
That does not mean you are trapped. It means platform choice is a several-year decision, so choose for where the business is heading rather than only where it is today. A retailer planning a second location, or wholesale, or a jump in catalogue size, should weigh those plans now.
Which suits which retailer
- Shop with a counter, plus online. Shopify, most of the time. One stock pool across till and website is worth a great deal.
- Online-only, standard products. Either. Shopify if you want to run it yourself; WooCommerce if you want control and lower per-sale cost as you grow.
- Unusual products, custom pricing, bundles, made-to-order. WooCommerce, for the flexibility.
- Content-led retail where guides and articles drive product sales. WooCommerce, for the WordPress content strength.
- Wholesale plus retail with different pricing for trade customers. WooCommerce is generally more accommodating, though both can be made to work.
- Small catalogue, no technical support, wants to launch quickly. Shopify.
This is the same staged thinking behind our work with Lincoln Morrey Photography: a portfolio-led site paired with an online shop, built around how the business actually sells rather than around a platform chosen first. You can see the range of builds across our client projects.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for a retail shop in Australia?
If you also sell in person, Shopify usually wins, because its point-of-sale ties the counter and the website to one stock pool without extra integration. If you are online-only, sell unusual products, or want full control and no transaction fees on top of your payment costs, WooCommerce is often the stronger long-term option. The in-person question decides it more often than any other factor.
Which is cheaper for a retailer, Shopify or WooCommerce?
It depends on turnover. Shopify charges a predictable monthly fee, so costs stay flat and easy to forecast. WooCommerce has no platform fee but you pay for hosting, maintenance and extensions, which is usually less at higher volumes. Low or seasonal turnover generally favours Shopify; steady, higher turnover eventually favours WooCommerce, though the crossover point varies by setup.
Can I sync my in-store and online stock?
Yes, but how easily depends on the platform. Shopify’s own point-of-sale keeps one stock count across the counter and the website by default. WooCommerce can do the same, but you are connecting a separate point-of-sale system, which means another moving part to set up and maintain. If one accurate stock number matters to you, weigh this heavily.
Do I need Afterpay or Zip on my online store?
For many Australian retailers, yes, buy-now-pay-later is a normal expectation for clothing, homewares and higher-priced goods, and its absence can cost sales. Both platforms support the major providers. What differs is the total cost, since fees stack up across your payment provider, any platform transaction fee and the buy-now-pay-later provider itself. Work out the combined cost per sale before committing.
How hard is it to move from Shopify to WooCommerce later?
It is doable but not trivial. Products, customers and orders can be migrated, but your theme, apps and any custom checkout work do not come with you, and URLs need careful redirecting to protect search rankings. Treat platform choice as a several-year decision rather than something to revisit annually, and choose for where the business is heading, not only where it is now.
The bottom line
For Australian retailers the choice is less about features than about how your shop actually operates.
If you sell across a counter as well as online, Shopify and its point-of-sale solve the stock problem in a way that is hard to beat, and it is built to be run by the owner. If you are online-only, sell products that do not fit a neat template, plan to grow turnover substantially, or want your store sitting inside the best content platform available, WooCommerce gives you more room and a lower cut of every sale. Provided someone is looking after it.
Decide on the in-person question first, then variants and catalogue, then who maintains it. Cost comes last, because at small-retailer scale the platform fee is rarely what makes or breaks the numbers. Government guidance at business.gov.au is a useful companion on the wider obligations of selling online in Australia.
If you would like a straight recommendation based on how your shop actually trades (stock, counter, catalogue and all) request a chat with 7 Marketing and we will talk it through before anyone builds anything. Prefer to start in writing? Get in touch through our contact page and tell us what you sell and how.