Short answer: Shopify is cheaper and faster to run below roughly $250,000 CAD in annual revenue. WooCommerce becomes cheaper above that, but only if you already have someone maintaining it. In Canada in 2026, the real cost gap is not the monthly fee. It is the payment processing spread and the maintenance labour nobody budgets for.
Summary
- Shopify Canada runs about $51, $146, and $543 CAD per month (Basic, Shopify, Advanced) on annual billing, plus Shopify Payments rates of 2.9%, 2.7%, and 2.4% + $0.30 CAD on domestic cards.
- WooCommerce software is free. A realistic Canadian operating stack runs $40 to $180 CAD per month in hosting, plugins, backups, and security, before any developer time.
- The number most store owners miss: Shopify charges an extra 0.5% to 2% platform surcharge on every order if you use any gateway other than Shopify Payments. WooCommerce charges nothing on top of Stripe or PayPal.
- Breakeven in most Canadian stores lands somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 CAD per year in revenue, assuming you value your own maintenance time at anything above zero.
- Platform choice matters less than checkout speed, product data quality, and whether anyone owns the store operationally.
Table of Contents
- Which is actually cheaper in Canada?
- What Shopify really costs in Canada in 2026
- What WooCommerce really costs in Canada in 2026
- The breakeven math at your revenue level
- Beyond cost: what each platform is genuinely good at
- Six mistakes Canadian store owners make
- The decision framework
- FAQ
Which Is Actually Cheaper in Canada, WooCommerce or Shopify?
WooCommerce is cheaper on paper and often more expensive in practice. The plugin costs nothing, but you pay for hosting, security, backups, plugin licences, and the hours somebody spends keeping it all from breaking. Shopify costs more in visible monthly fees and almost nothing in invisible ones.
The honest framing is this. Shopify sells you time. WooCommerce sells you control. If your bottleneck is time, Shopify wins even when it costs more. If your bottleneck is margin and you already have technical capacity, WooCommerce wins.
Most of the Canadian store owners we talk to are running lean teams where the founder is also the merchandiser, the customer service rep, and the person who notices the site is down. For that profile, the Shopify premium is usually worth paying until revenue justifies dedicated help.
What Does Shopify Actually Cost in Canada in 2026?
Shopify Canada bills in CAD. As of August 2026, annual-term pricing is roughly $51 CAD per month for Basic, $146 CAD for Shopify, and $543 CAD for Advanced. Shopify Plus starts around $2,300 USD per month. Monthly billing costs meaningfully more than annual, so check the toggle before you assume a number.
Shopify plan and processing rates (CAD, annual billing)
| Plan | Monthly (CAD) | Domestic card rate | Amex / international | Third-party gateway surcharge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $7 | Social and link-in-bio selling only | — | — |
| Basic | $51 | 2.9% + $0.30 | 3.5% + $0.30 | 2.0% |
| Shopify | $146 | 2.7% + $0.30 | 3.4% + $0.30 | 1.0% |
| Advanced | $543 | 2.4% + $0.30 | 3.3% + $0.30 | 0.6% |
| Plus | ~$3,150 | Negotiated | Negotiated | 0.2% |
Rates verified August 2026. Shopify adjusts pricing regionally and periodically, so confirm current numbers on Shopify’s Canadian pricing page before you build a model on them.
The costs that do not appear on the pricing page
- Apps. A working Canadian store usually runs subscriptions, reviews, upsells, and a shipping or tax app. Budget $50 to $300 CAD per month once you are past launch.
- Theme. A premium theme is a one-time $300 to $500 CAD. A custom-built theme is a project, not a purchase.
- The gateway surcharge. This is the expensive one. Using anything other than Shopify Payments adds 0.5% to 2% on top of what your processor already charges.
- Shipping and duties. Cross-border selling from Canada adds complexity that eats either app budget or staff hours.
The gateway surcharge deserves emphasis. On $500,000 CAD of annual revenue, a 2% surcharge on the Basic plan is $10,000 CAD per year. That single line item pays for a full year of managed WooCommerce hosting and a maintenance retainer several times over. It is also the reason Shopify plan upgrades often pay for themselves: moving from Basic to Advanced drops the surcharge from 2.0% to 0.6%.
What Does WooCommerce Actually Cost in Canada in 2026?
WooCommerce itself is free and open source. Everything around it is not. A realistic Canadian operating stack lands between $40 and $180 CAD per month in recurring costs, plus a build cost up front and maintenance labour on an ongoing basis.
A realistic WooCommerce stack, priced
| Line item | Low end (CAD/yr) | Realistic (CAD/yr) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed WordPress hosting | $300 | $700 | Shared hosting under $15/mo will not hold up under real cart traffic |
| Premium theme or child theme | $0 | $100 | Amortized; many operators use a well-supported free theme |
| Plugin licences | $200 | $900 | Subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping, tax, ACF Pro |
| Security and backups | $100 | $300 | Offsite backups are not optional on a store |
| Email and transactional delivery | $0 | $400 | Deliverability failures on order confirmations are silent revenue loss |
| Maintenance retainer or your own hours | $0 | $1,800–$6,000 | The line most spreadsheets leave blank |
| Total ongoing | ~$600 | $4,200–$8,400 | Excludes the initial build |
Payment processing on WooCommerce is typically Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30 CAD for domestic cards, or your own merchant account if you have negotiated better. Critically, WooCommerce takes no cut. There is no platform surcharge for choosing your own gateway, which is the structural advantage the whole cost case rests on.
Where WooCommerce costs blow up
- Plugin sprawl. Every feature you bolt on is another update path, another conflict risk, and another annual licence. Stores with 40 plugins are not stores, they are liabilities.
- Performance at scale. Catalogs past roughly 1,000 SKUs, or heavy variable products, need real infrastructure work: object caching, a tuned database, and often a dedicated server. That is a project, not a plugin.
- Nobody owning updates. The most expensive WooCommerce store is the one that was built well and then left alone for eighteen months.
- Emergency work. Break-fix billed hourly always costs more than a retainer. A hacked or down store during a sales period costs more than both.
If you are weighing a WordPress build against a hosted platform more broadly, our breakdown of WordPress versus a custom-coded website covers the same trade-off outside of ecommerce.
Which Is Cheaper at Your Revenue Level?
Cost crossover depends almost entirely on two variables: your annual revenue and whether you use Shopify Payments. Here is the comparison at four revenue levels, assuming an average order value of $80 CAD and Shopify Payments on the appropriate plan.
| Annual revenue (CAD) | Shopify plan + processing | WooCommerce stack + Stripe | Cheaper on paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| $50,000 | ~$612 plan + ~$1,637 processing = ~$2,249 | ~$1,200 stack + ~$1,637 processing = ~$2,837 | Shopify |
| $150,000 | ~$1,752 plan + ~$4,612 processing = ~$6,364 | ~$3,000 stack + ~$4,912 processing = ~$7,912 | Shopify |
| $400,000 | ~$6,516 plan + ~$10,100 processing = ~$16,616 | ~$6,000 stack + ~$13,100 processing = ~$19,100 | Shopify |
| $400,000 with a third-party gateway | ~$6,516 + ~$10,100 + ~$2,400 surcharge = ~$19,016 | ~$19,100 | Effectively tied |
Read that table honestly. On pure platform cost with Shopify Payments enabled, Shopify stays competitive far longer than the “WooCommerce is free” argument suggests. The crossover happens when one of three things is true:
- You cannot or will not use Shopify Payments, so the surcharge applies to every order.
- You need functionality that Shopify only supports through expensive apps, and the app stack passes $300 CAD per month.
- You already employ or retain someone technical, so WooCommerce maintenance is absorbed rather than added.
For most Canadian stores, that puts the practical crossover somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 CAD in annual revenue. Below it, the Shopify premium buys back time you do not have. Above it, the percentages start to matter more than the hours.
Beyond Cost: What Each Platform Is Genuinely Good At
Cost is the wrong first question for most stores. Capability fit decides whether you spend the next two years building or fighting your platform.
Shopify is the right call when
- You are selling a reasonably standard physical or digital product and want to be live in weeks, not months.
- Nobody on your team wants to think about hosting, updates, or PCI compliance.
- You want checkout that converts out of the box. Shopify’s checkout is the single most tested checkout on the internet and you inherit that work for free.
- You expect traffic spikes from launches, ads, or press and do not want to think about infrastructure.
- You sell across multiple channels: retail POS, social, marketplaces.
WooCommerce is the right call when
- Content is the growth engine. If organic search and long-form content drive your revenue, WordPress is still the better publishing environment, and your store lives inside it rather than beside it.
- Your product or pricing logic is unusual: complex bundles, membership gating, quote-based B2B, region-specific rules.
- You need to own your data and your customer relationship without platform terms sitting in between.
- You are integrating with systems that have good WordPress support and poor Shopify support.
- You already have a WordPress site with traffic and authority you do not want to fragment across two domains.
That last point is underrated. Splitting a store onto a subdomain while your content ranks on the main domain costs you internal link equity and confuses buyers. If your site already earns traffic, keeping commerce on the same domain is worth real money. Our guide to redesigning without losing SEO traffic covers what to protect during any platform move.
Head to head, honestly
| Factor | Shopify | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | 2 to 6 weeks | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Checkout conversion out of the box | Excellent | Good, needs optimization |
| Content and SEO flexibility | Adequate, constrained URL structure | Excellent |
| Custom logic and integrations | App-dependent, can be limiting | Effectively unlimited |
| Security responsibility | Shopify’s | Yours |
| Ongoing maintenance load | Low | Moderate to high |
| Data ownership and portability | Constrained | Full |
| Cost predictability | High | Variable |
| Best fit revenue band | $0 to $500K CAD | $250K CAD and up, or content-led |
Six Mistakes Canadian Store Owners Make
- Comparing $0 to $51 and stopping there. WooCommerce is free the way a puppy is free. The purchase price is not the cost.
- Ignoring the third-party gateway surcharge. If you have a negotiated merchant rate you love, run the surcharge math before committing to Shopify. It can erase the savings entirely.
- Choosing the platform before the catalog is defined. Product data structure, variants, and shipping rules determine platform fit more than anything on a pricing page. Define them first.
- Pricing in USD. Shopify Canada bills in CAD, but a lot of apps and hosting do not. Build your model in one currency and note the exchange exposure.
- Building WooCommerce with nobody assigned to maintain it. If you cannot name the person responsible for updates twelve months from now, choose Shopify.
- Migrating for cost alone. A platform migration costs $8,000 to $30,000 CAD in build and recovery time. It should be triggered by a capability wall, not a spreadsheet.
The Decision Framework
Answer these five questions in order. The first clear answer decides it.
- Can you use Shopify Payments? If no, and your volume is meaningful, weight heavily toward WooCommerce.
- Is content and organic search your primary growth channel? If yes, WooCommerce on your existing WordPress site.
- Does your product logic fit a standard catalog? If no, WooCommerce or a headless build.
- Do you have technical capacity, in-house or retained? If no, Shopify. This one overrides items two and three more often than founders like to admit.
- Is speed to launch the constraint? If yes, Shopify, and revisit in eighteen months.
If you want that decision made with your actual numbers rather than a generic table, our team runs this analysis as part of scoping. See website packages for build scope, or website growth packages if the store exists and the problem is conversion rather than platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is WooCommerce really free?
The plugin is free. Running it is not. A working Canadian store costs roughly $600 CAD per year at the absolute minimum and $4,200 to $8,400 CAD per year in a realistic setup once hosting, plugins, security, and maintenance are included. That is before the initial build.
Does Shopify charge extra if I do not use Shopify Payments?
Yes. Shopify applies an additional platform fee on every transaction processed through a third-party gateway: roughly 2.0% on Basic, 1.0% on Shopify, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus. This is on top of whatever your processor charges and it is the single largest hidden cost in the comparison.
Which platform is better for SEO in Canada?
WooCommerce, marginally, because WordPress gives you full control over URL structure, schema, internal linking, and content architecture. Shopify’s SEO is competent but constrained, particularly around forced URL paths for collections and products. The gap matters most for content-led stores and barely at all for ad-led stores.
At what revenue should I switch from Shopify to WooCommerce?
There is no universal number, but the practical crossover for most Canadian stores sits between $200,000 and $300,000 CAD in annual revenue, and only when you have technical capacity to absorb maintenance. Switch because you hit a capability wall, not because a spreadsheet says you could save 3%.
How much does it cost to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce?
Expect $8,000 to $30,000 CAD depending on catalog size, custom functionality, and how much of the design is rebuilt versus ported. Add a recovery period: most migrations see a temporary dip in organic traffic and conversion while redirects settle and the new checkout is tuned.
Can WooCommerce handle 1,000 or more products?
Yes, but not on cheap shared hosting. Large catalogs and heavy variable products need object caching, a properly tuned database, adequate PHP workers, and often a dedicated or cloud server. Budget for infrastructure work as part of the build rather than discovering it when the category pages time out.
Do I need a .ca domain to sell in Canada?
No. A .ca domain signals Canadian presence and can help with local trust, but .com performs fine and is easier to acquire. CIRA requires registrants to meet Canadian Presence Requirements, and .ca domains typically run $15 to $25 CAD per year through accredited registrars.
Which platform is cheaper for a store doing under $100K CAD a year?
Shopify, in almost every case, once you value your own time at more than zero. At that revenue level the monthly fee is small relative to what an unplanned outage or a failed update costs you in attention.
The Bottom Line
Platform choice is a capacity decision dressed up as a cost decision. Shopify converts money into time. WooCommerce converts time into control and margin. Below roughly $250,000 CAD in annual revenue, without a technical person on the team, Shopify is the correct default and the premium is cheap. Above it, or when you cannot use Shopify Payments, or when content drives your growth, WooCommerce earns its keep.
What neither platform will fix is a store with weak product photography, unclear positioning, and a checkout nobody has tested on a phone. Those cost more revenue than any platform fee on this page.
Build the Store on the Right Foundation
Wise Media builds ecommerce on both platforms and will tell you plainly which one your numbers support. If you want the decision scoped against your real catalog, revenue, and processing setup rather than a generic comparison table, start with our intake form and we will come back with a recommendation and a fixed scope.