WooCommerce vs Shopify
for Canadian Stores in 2026

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The “WooCommerce vs Shopify” debate online is mostly written by people selling one or the other. Here’s the version we give clients in a discovery call, with real numbers for the Canadian market.

The short answer

• Shopify — pick it if your time is more valuable than the platform fees, you want fewer moving parts, and you’re below $1M / year revenue.
• WooCommerce — pick it if you want full control, are comfortable with WordPress, and your store has unusual needs (B2B pricing, multi-currency, deep customizations) that Shopify makes painful.

The long answer follows.

Platform fees (the headline difference)

Shopify

• Basic: $39 CAD / mo
• Shopify: $105 CAD / mo
• Advanced: $399 CAD / mo
• Transaction fees if you use a payment processor other than Shopify Payments: 2%, 1%, or 0.5% depending on plan — on top of your processor’s fee.
• Shopify Payments (Stripe under the hood) waives the platform transaction fee. Rate: 2.9% + 30¢ per online card transaction.

WooCommerce

• Software: Free (open source).
• Hosting: $30–$80 / mo for decent managed WordPress hosting (Kinsta, WP Engine, Cloudways).
• Payment processor: 2.9% + 30¢ on Stripe / Square. No platform fee on top.
• Plugins: Many free, but you’ll buy 3–8 paid plugins on a real store. Budget $200–$700 / year.

For a store doing $200K / year, total platform cost typically comes out roughly equal — Shopify ~$1,260 + Shopify Payments fees, WooCommerce ~$960 hosting + plugins + Stripe fees. The difference is in your time, not your money.

Canadian sales tax: GST / HST / PST

This is where Canadian stores get the most pain — rules differ by province, and customer location determines which tax applies. Both platforms support it; one does it better out of the box.

Shopify

Shopify’s “Tax Service” handles HST/GST/PST/QST automatically based on customer address. You set your nexus (provinces where you’re registered to collect tax) and it does the math. Tax-exempt customers, B2B GST/HST numbers — supported. Tax reports filterable by province for filing time.

WooCommerce

Out of the box, WooCommerce only knows about a single “tax rate.” To handle provincial GST/HST/PST correctly, you either:

• Use the free Canada Tax Manager for WooCommerce or similar plugin (manual setup, ~30 minutes), or
• Use TaxJar or Avalara integration ($19+ / mo) for automatic rates.

Functional, but you’re configuring it yourself. For a single-province seller, this is a one-time setup. For a Canada-wide seller with thresholds and provincial PST registrations, Shopify saves real time.

What each is genuinely better at

Shopify is better when…

• You want to be selling within 2–3 weeks of starting.
• You don’t want to think about hosting, updates, security, backups.
• Your store is fairly standard — physical products, simple variants, standard checkout.
• You want a healthy app ecosystem (subscriptions, loyalty, reviews) plug-and-play.
• You’re selling across multiple sales channels (Instagram, TikTok Shop, Amazon, in-person POS).

WooCommerce is better when…

• You need real customizations — B2B pricing tiers, account-based catalogs, multi-warehouse inventory, complex variant logic.
• Your store is already on WordPress and the content side is significant (blog, articles, course materials).
• You want full data ownership and can host wherever you want.
• Privacy & control matter to you (no platform “owning” your customer data).
• You have or are budgeting for a developer — WooCommerce rewards customization, Shopify resists it.

What about Shopify Plus and BigCommerce?

If you’re past ~$2M / year and need B2B + multi-store + serious customization, Shopify Plus opens up. It’s $2,500–$2,800 USD / mo. BigCommerce Pro is similar territory, sometimes cheaper.

At that scale, the platform choice matters less than the developer experience — pick the platform your team will be happiest on.

Our default recommendation

For new Canadian ecommerce projects under $1M / year, we lean Shopify in the first conversation. The tax handling alone justifies it for most stores, and the time-to-launch is real. We move clients to WooCommerce when their requirements genuinely don’t fit (B2B, account pricing, complex catalogs) — we’ve built both HBDepot.ca (home improvement) and other catalog-heavy stores on WooCommerce when Shopify would have created friction.

Either way, the right answer is the one that matches your store’s shape. Book a free 60-min ecommerce discovery call and we’ll talk through your specific situation — product type, catalog size, B2B vs B2C, multi-channel plans — and recommend the platform that actually fits.