The trade in one sentence
WooCommerce is flexible and yours; hosted platforms are constrained and managed. Which is better depends entirely on whether you want control or want it handled.
There is no universally right answer here. There is a right answer for a business with unusual requirements and a different one for a business that wants to sell things.
Where WooCommerce wins
- Unusual product types, pricing rules or checkout requirements
- Deep integration with your existing systems
- No per-transaction platform fee
- Full data ownership and no platform lock-in
- Content and commerce in one place, which suits content-led selling
What it costs you
- Hosting appropriate to a shop, which is not cheap shared hosting
- Security and updates as your responsibility
- Plugin licences, which accumulate
- Development for anything beyond the standard
- Downtime risk that is yours to manage
The plugin problem is worse in a shop
Payment gateways, shipping calculators, tax handling, subscriptions, bookings — each is a plugin, each updates on its own schedule, and each can break checkout.
This is why staging and tested updates are not optional for a store.
Realistic running costs
| Line | Typical monthly |
|---|---|
| Hosting suitable for a shop | £30–£150 |
| Plugin licences | £20–£80 |
| Maintenance | £150–£400 |
| Payment processing | Per transaction, as anywhere |
That is often comparable to a hosted platform once everything is counted, which surprises people expecting WooCommerce to be free.