E-commerce Platform Comparison — Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopware and More, by Price List and Exit Terms

An e-commerce platform comparison only makes sense once you're comparing comparable things. Shopify and WooCommerce aren't two versions of the same product: one is a store on subscription, the other is free software that still needs a server, updates and a developer. So we start with the model, then run platforms through five criteria, then line up cards for individual platforms and two head-to-head pairings: Shopify or WooCommerce, and WooCommerce or PrestaShop.

Prices, fees and data-export terms come from vendor price lists and documentation read on 30 September 2026. We don't score platforms or quote reviews — we show what the vendor promises in writing, and how to check it yourself. Price lists change often, so open the link and check the current version before you decide. A detailed cost breakdown — subscription, payment gateway, implementation, monthly running cost — sits in a separate article: how much does an online store cost.

Model first, brand second: SaaS, open source or your own code

The model decides who pays for the server, who updates the system, and what you can take with you if you decide to leave. The brand decides the details.

SaaS — a store on subscription

A SaaS (Software as a Service) platform is a store you rent on subscription. The vendor runs the servers, updates the software and is responsible for platform security, while you configure the store in a panel. Vendors state this plainly in their own price lists: Shopify's Irish pricing page lists "unlimited web hosting" and a free SSL certificate as included.

The subscription isn't the final price, though. You typically pay extra in three places:

• payments — the processor's own commission, and on some platforms a surcharge for using an external gateway (Shopify charges 2% on Basic, falling to 0.2% on Plus);
• orders or volume — some platforms meter by order count or gross merchandise value rather than a flat fee;
• apps, templates and a higher plan — once you need a feature outside the subscription, or outgrow a product or order limit.

A SaaS platform, by definition, serves the same software to many stores at once — a multi-tenant architecture, which we cover in a separate article on multi-tenant systems. For you, this means two things: you can't change the platform's code, and you get new features and price-list changes together with every other customer on it. What you gain and give up in this model is covered in the guide to SaaS, and what a vendor commits to on availability is covered in the article on SLA agreements.

Open source — the code is free, everything else is on you

WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopware Community Edition, Magento Open Source and Medusa are software you download with no licence fee. Nobody takes a cut of your sales — WooCommerce states it plainly in its own price list: "no platform fees, no revenue share." You pay for everything around the code: hosting, extensions, implementation, and above all regular updates to the engine and plugins, testing after every update, backups and security. You do this yourself, or you pay someone to.

In exchange, the code and database sit on a server you control — you can change the cart, add an unusual integration, or move the store to a different hosting company without the vendor's permission.

Headless and your own code

A third model is a headless store. commercetools, one vendor of this kind of system, defines it as an architecture that "separates the frontend experience layer from backend commerce functionality, exposing capabilities through APIs" — it splits the layer the customer sees from the store's engine, connecting the two through an API. The engine can be a SaaS or an open-source platform. Shopify, for example, offers the Hydrogen toolkit for building your own front end, and the Oxygen service to host it, which per its documentation is "available at no extra charge on paid Shopify plans." Medusa, meanwhile, is an open-source framework for building your own store backend.

Headless buys you freedom over design and performance, at the cost of a second layer to maintain. When that trade-off pays off is covered in headless vs. a classic store. We build stores in this model ourselves — see an online store built headless.

Five criteria for comparing e-commerce platforms

Instead of asking which platform is "best," pick two or three candidates and score each from 1 to 5 against five criteria. You're scoring fit to your store, not the platform "objectively."

1. Total cost. Not just the subscription — the whole billing model. Platforms charge in different places: a flat subscription with no commission (several of the SaaS options below), a subscription plus a percentage at an external payment gateway (Shopify), or zero licence cost in open source plus the cost of implementation and ongoing care. Run your own numbers in the e-commerce TCO calculator.
2. Catalogue and features. How many products, how many variants, which attributes. Limits sit in the price lists — Shopify has no product-count limit at all; BigCommerce auto-upgrades you by gross merchandise value. Check the features you'll need from day one too: variants, bundles, discount codes, B2B selling.
3. Sales channels and integrations. Whether you also sell on a marketplace, which payment gateways you want to connect, which invoicing and warehouse system you need to link to. An example of how this shows up on the bill: Shopify charges 1% (capped at $99/month) for marketplace-channel order sync above 50 orders a month.
4. Control and data. What you can change yourself, and what you take with you if you leave. On SaaS, you change what the panel and apps allow, and on exit you take a CSV data export — the scope differs by platform (details in the cards below). In open source, you have the whole codebase and database.
5. Team skills. Who will update the system, test the cart after an update, and react when something breaks. If the answer is nobody, choose a model where the vendor does it, and limit the number of add-ons.

If one criterion matters more to you, give it a weight and multiply the score before you add them up — cost ×1.5, say, if budget is tight. That's a suggestion for your own calculation, not a rule. The highest score is today's candidate; the second is your plan B.

Every criterion, with price-list examples, is laid out in more detail in the platforms hub. Before you score anything, test your shortlist for real: Shopify offers 3 days free, then €1/month for 3 months; PrestaShop Hosted gives a 14-day trial.

SaaS platforms — cards by price list, read 30 September 2026

Each card carries the same fields: starting price, fees on sales or orders, data export, and who it fits (drawn from price-list features, not reviews). A full plan breakdown and a worked example for 100 orders sit in how much does an online store cost.

Shopify

• Starting price: Basic €32/month billed monthly, or €24/month billed annually; Grow €92/€69, Advanced €384/€289, Plus from €2,100/month (Irish pricing page, EUR shown). The page doesn't state whether these amounts include VAT. Trial: 3 days, then €1/month for 3 months.
• Fees on sales: Shopify Payments charges, by plan, 2%/1.7%/1.5%/1.4% + €0.25 excluding VAT for a standard online card (higher for Amex and international cards). If you connect an external gateway instead, Shopify adds its own fee on top of the gateway's commission: 2% on Basic, down to 0.2% on Plus — not charged on manual methods like cash on delivery.
• In the subscription: hosting, SSL, no product-count limit, no setup fee. Apps and premium templates cost extra.
• Export: customers, orders and products to CSV (customers, orders, products).
• Fits: a store that will take payments through Shopify Payments (and so skip the external-gateway surcharge), needs an uncapped catalogue, or plans a headless front end on Hydrogen.

Wix

• Starting price: not quoted — Wix's plans page shows prices by the visitor's location, and we couldn't confirm a euro price.
• Fees on sales: "Accept payments" and "eCommerce" sit only on the Core, Business and Business Elite plans — a currency-independent fact, confirmed regardless of the price shown.
• Export: products to CSV (up to 5,000 rows, no digital products), orders and contacts (up to 50,000) (exporting products).
• Fits: a store that wants a drag-and-drop editor and doesn't mind confirming its own country's price before committing.

Squarespace

• Starting price: not quoted in EUR — geo-priced. Basic charges a 2% transaction fee on top; higher plans charge 0%.
• Export: products, orders and contacts to CSV.
• Fits: a design-led store where the 2% fee at the entry tier is an acceptable trade for the template quality, or that's ready to move straight to a higher plan.

Square Online

• Starting price: a genuine free plan, confirmed on the Ireland and France pages — €0/month, "No monthly fees." Plus is €25/month and Premium €69/month, both billed annually.
• Fees on sales: 1.4% + 25 cents + VAT per EU/EEA card on Free and Plus (2.9% + 25 cents + VAT for non-EEA cards); 1.4% + 15 cents + VAT on Premium.
• Fits: a store testing demand with zero fixed cost, confirmed for Ireland and France specifically — check your own country's page before assuming the same terms apply.

Ecwid

• Starting price: no free plan any more. Starter is €5/month for up to 10 products; Venture is €35/month (€29/month billed annually) for up to 100 products. The pricing page lets you switch between USD and EUR (the amounts are the same in both) and states that prices exclude taxes.
• Fees on sales: none from the platform itself — "we don't charge any setup or transaction fees on any of our plans." The payment processor's own fee still applies.
• Export: products, orders and customers to CSV.
• Fits: a small catalogue where a flat, low subscription with zero platform commission matters more than deep customisation.

BigCommerce

• Starting price: Core $29/month, Growth $79/month, Scale $299/month, billed annually ($39, $105 and $399 billed monthly). The pricing page quotes USD only. Each plan has a cap on trailing 12-month sales: once you pass $30K on Core or $100K on Growth, you're moved up to the next plan automatically; on Scale, sales above the cap carry a 0.9% fee.
• Fees on sales: none on orders paid through BigCommerce's embedded payment providers; orders through other ("open") providers carry a fee of 2.0% of the order value on Core, 1.0% on Growth and 0.6% on Scale.
• Trial: 15 days; if you don't pick a plan, the store's data is kept for 90 days, then deleted.
• Export: products, customers and orders to CSV.
• Fits: a growing catalogue where an automatic upgrade as sales grow is an acceptable trade — confirm EU availability and euro pricing with the vendor.

E-commerce platform comparison in one table

The table is a starting point, not your store's actual cost: at a few hundred orders a month, a per-order fee or an external-gateway percentage can outweigh the difference between plan prices.

Open source: WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopware, Magento, Medusa

In open source you don't pay for a licence — you pay for what surrounds it. Here's what the vendors themselves say.

• WooCommerce — per the vendor, "the free, open-source ecommerce platform for WordPress." Its own pricing page gives its own ranges: hosting $25–350/month for most stores, extensions $29–299/year each. Example: WooCommerce Subscriptions costs $279/year.
• PrestaShop — a standalone store engine, free in its open-source version. The vendor also sells a hosted version, PrestaShop Hosted: €29/month billed monthly, or €24/month billed annually, excluding VAT, with a 14-day trial. On leaving, it states: "you're free to recover all your ecommerce data if you want to stop your subscription."
• Shopware — Community Edition is free under the MIT licence. Paid plans: Rise from €600/month, Evolve from €2,400/month (excluding VAT), Beyond quoted individually; the vendor notes that price depends on the store's gross merchandise value (GMV) and other factors.
• Magento / Adobe Commerce — Magento Open Source is distributed under the OSL-3.0 licence. Adobe Commerce's licence price isn't confirmed: Adobe publishes no list price in anything we could retrieve. If you're considering this platform, ask for a written quote.
• Medusa — the core is MIT-licensed (excluding Enterprise Edition materials, as the repository's own LICENSE file notes). The vendor's own cloud version, Medusa Cloud, costs from $29, $99 or $299/month depending on plan, with a 0.0% fee on sales and overage charges past usage limits.

Whichever engine you pick, you pay for hosting, extensions, implementation, tested updates, backups and security. None of these line items appear in any vendor's price list — and they're the ones that decide whether the store still runs the way it did on day one, a year later.

Shopify or WooCommerce? WooCommerce or PrestaShop?

Below are two head-to-head comparisons, built only from what the price lists and documentation say.

Shopify or WooCommerce

• Fee model. Shopify: subscription plus Shopify Payments' own fee, or an external processor's fee plus Shopify's own surcharge (2% on Basic, down to 0.2% on Plus). WooCommerce: no platform fee at all — "no platform fees, no revenue share" — you only ever pay the payment processor and your hosting bill.
• Starting price. Shopify Basic is €32/month billed monthly (€24 billed annually); WooCommerce's licence is free, but hosting runs $25–350/month per the vendor's own estimate — compare like with like by adding hosting to Shopify's bundled-in cost.
• Trial. Shopify: 3 days, then €1/month for 3 months. WooCommerce has no trial concept — you install it and start paying for hosting immediately.
• What's included. Shopify: hosting, SSL, no product-count limit, updates handled by the vendor. WooCommerce: nothing beyond the plugin itself — hosting, SSL, updates and security are entirely on you or your contractor.
• Export. Shopify: customers, orders and products to CSV. WooCommerce: the whole database already sits on a server you control, so there is nothing to ask the vendor for.
• Who maintains the code. Shopify: the vendor. WooCommerce: you or your contractor, including every update to WordPress core, the theme and every plugin.

The fact-based takeaway: if you want a maintained platform with nothing to patch yourself and you're happy to pay for that through Shopify Payments or an external-gateway surcharge, the price lists point to Shopify. If your team already knows WordPress and wants content (a blog, landing pages) in the same system as the store, with full control over hosting and code, they point to WooCommerce.

WooCommerce or PrestaShop

• Architecture. WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin — the store and your content (blog, pages) live in one system. PrestaShop is a standalone store engine.
• Licence and fees on sales. Both free, with no platform fee on sales.
• The vendor's own hosted version. PrestaShop has PrestaShop Hosted (€29/month excluding VAT) with a stated data-recovery guarantee on exit. WooCommerce only publishes an indicative third-party hosting range ($25–350/month).
• Implementation cost. We found no published EU-wide benchmark comparing what it costs to implement WooCommerce and PrestaShop, so we don't quote a figure. What differs is where the money goes: PrestaShop Hosted bundles hosting (50 GB, run by Gandi) into one monthly price, while with WooCommerce the cost depends almost entirely on the host and the developer you choose.
• Who maintains the code. Both: you or your contractor — updates to the engine and every plugin or module, testing after each update, backups.

The fact-based takeaway: WooCommerce makes sense when content (guides, a blog) matters to the store as much as the catalogue, and someone on the team knows WordPress. PrestaShop makes sense when you want an engine built only for selling, or the vendor's own hosted tier.

What if a SaaS platform disappears or changes its price list

Choosing a SaaS platform also means choosing a vendor and its future decisions. The underlying risk is structural, not specific to one market: the technology a store runs on can disappear, get acquired, or have its pricing rewritten, even when the vendor itself keeps trading. You can't control that decision. What you can control is whether your data leaves with you — and that is worth checking before you sign, not after:

• before signing, check in the documentation what you can export (products, customers, orders) and in what format;
• during the trial, do an actual export — open the file and check whether variants, photos and order history are in it;
• while the store is running, export data regularly and keep a copy outside the platform.

A CSV file is data, but not the whole store: the template, configuration, URLs and redirects still have to be rebuilt on the new platform. Google recommends permanent redirects (301 or 308) and keeping them in place "generally at least 1 year" (Google Search Central). How to move a store without losing its rankings is covered in store migration; the migration checklist helps too. Why exit terms are worth checking before signing a cloud contract, generally, is covered in cloud security.

How to choose a platform in 15 minutes

1. Narrow the model (5 minutes). Take the which e-commerce platform quiz — seven questions on catalogue, budget and plans, ending in a recommendation. Always check the tool's prices against the price lists linked in this article — those are the binding ones.
2. Score 2-3 candidates on the five criteria (5 minutes). Cost, catalogue, channels, control, team skills — a 1-to-5 scale, optionally weighted toward whichever criterion matters most.
3. Calculate the cost (5 minutes). Enter your candidates into the e-commerce TCO calculator, which compares several platforms over a multi-year horizon. For a start-up budget specifically, use the online store cost calculator.

That leaves a hands-on trial and a test export. The next steps for launching a store are in how to start an online store, and starting with no budget at all is covered in free online stores. The rest of our platform-selection articles sit in the platforms section.