WooCommerce

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 846 words

WooCommerce costs nothing, and a self-hosted WooCommerce shop costs about 2 hours a month plus whatever extensions you end up buying, which for a store selling subscriptions runs to a few hundred dollars a year. That is still cheaper than Shopify for most small shops, and it comes with full ownership of your data, your checkout, and your customer list. It also comes with running WordPress, which is the part people underestimate, so this guide is about what you are actually signing up for.

You are running WordPress with a shop bolted on

services:
  wordpress:
    image: wordpress:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: wp
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: change-me
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wp
    volumes:
      - ./wp-content:/var/www/html/wp-content
    restart: unless-stopped
  db:
    image: mariadb:11
    environment:
      MARIADB_DATABASE: wp
      MARIADB_USER: wp
      MARIADB_PASSWORD: change-me
      MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: change-me-too
    volumes:
      - ./db:/var/lib/mysql
    restart: unless-stopped

Bring that up behind Caddy with TLS, finish the WordPress installer, then Plugins, Add New, WooCommerce, and the setup wizard walks you through currency, shipping, tax, and payments. From that point on, WooCommerce ships updates roughly monthly, WordPress core several times a year, and every plugin and theme on its own schedule. Budget an hour or two a month for updating on a staging copy first, because a plugin conflict on a live checkout is lost revenue, not an inconvenience. The catalogue's "requires WordPress maintenance" con is the single most important line on its page.

The extension bill is the real price

Core is generous: unlimited products with variations, cart and checkout, shipping zones with flat and free rates, coupons, basic tax rates, customer accounts, order management, and a REST API at /wp-json/wc/v3/ that covers all of it. Digital downloads are core too. Where money appears is the moment you want subscriptions, bookings, memberships, or advanced shipping-rate logic. Woo's own Subscriptions extension is about $240 a year at last check; most official extensions sit between $49 and $199 a year, and a store that needs 5 of them is spending what a mid-tier Shopify plan costs. Third-party plugins are often cheaper, and often the reason for the conflict in the previous section.

Payment processing costs the same everywhere. WooPayments and the Stripe plugin both charge about 2.9% plus 30 cents per card transaction in the US at last check, and Shopify's own processing is in the same range. Self-hosting does not save you that; it saves you the platform fee and the lock-in.

Cache everything except the cart

WordPress with WooCommerce will run on the catalogue's 512 MB, and it will feel like it. The setup that makes it fast on a 2 GB VM: PHP 8 with OPcache enabled, a Redis object cache plugin so product queries stop hitting MariaDB, a page cache with the cart, checkout, and account pages excluded (every cache plugin has this exclusion; check that it is set), and images compressed on upload. Skip the page cache exclusion and customers will see each other's carts, which is the WooCommerce bug report that never stops being filed.

The security floor for a shop

A shop is worth more to an attacker than a blog, so the floor is higher: TLS everywhere, a non-default admin username, 2FA on every admin account, a login rate limit, XML-RPC disabled unless something needs it, and security updates applied within days rather than at the monthly session. Card data should never touch your server. Use WooPayments or Stripe's hosted fields so the card number goes from the customer's browser to the processor, which keeps you on the lightest PCI self-assessment. Back up the database and wp-content/uploads daily to somewhere off the box and do a test restore once a quarter; an order history you cannot restore is a business you cannot run.

When it is the wrong tool

Building a custom storefront in React or a mobile app, with WordPress as nothing but an API: Medusa (Node) or Saleor (Python, GraphQL) are designed as headless commerce and will fight you less than WooCommerce's REST API will. No time and no interest in updates: Shopify at about $39 a month for the basic plan at last check, and the honest trade-offs are in the Shopify alternatives piece. A large catalogue with complex B2B pricing: look at the dedicated PHP platforms before assuming WordPress will stretch that far.

What I'd do

A small shop, physical or digital goods, with an owner willing to spend 2 hours a month: WooCommerce on a 2 GB VM, MariaDB, Redis object cache, page cache with the cart excluded, WooPayments or Stripe, and a staging copy for updates. Buy the 1 or 2 official extensions the business actually needs and resist the rest. The moment the extension bill passes $500 a year or the update sessions start eating weekends, price Shopify honestly and decide whether ownership is still worth it; for most, it is.