Shopify vs WordPress (2025): We Review Features, Pricing, and More

Running an online store can be an expensive endeavor, so finding the best value deal is important. Of the two, Shopify has the best pricing with plans starting from $29 per month (billed annually). I’ll break it down further below:

How Much Does Shopify Cost?

• Shopify has three core premium plans – you can sell online with any
• Shopify’s pricing ranges from $29 to $299 per month (billed annually)
• Get your first three months for just $1 per month
• You can test the platform with its three-day free trial

How Much Does WordPress Cost?

• WordPress is free to download
• Pay extra for features (for example, plugin costs can start from $5 per month)
• Budget for a hosting provider (Hostinger’s WordPress hosting plans start from $2.99 per month)

The Winner

Shopify is the best value for money

While WordPress is free to use, costs can add up quickly. Shopify’s plans might seem more expensive initially, but you get everything you need to run your online store in one package.

Try Shopify

Shopify is our top ecommerce website builder for 2025, so there’s an obvious winner when it comes to sales features. The majority of features are built-in, setting it apart from WordPress which requires you to download third-party tools if you want to run a business online.

With Shopify, you’ll be able to sell unlimited products, set up abandoned cart recovery, offer discount codes, and expand your store across multiple channels, including marketplaces and social media platforms, like TikTok.

To sell using WordPress, you’ll need to install the ecommerce plugin WooCommerce. This is the most popular option and comes with the standard features to sell, including the ability to sell unlimited products and showcase product reviews. However, WooCommerce requires more upkeep and management from you, whereas Shopify bundles it all together. You can read our full Shopify vs WooCommerce review to see the key differences.

The Winner

Shopify's sales features help you grow

Shopify’s built-in sales features are much easier to get to grips with, especially if you’re new to running a business and selling online. Plus, you don’t need to go hunting around for specific tools, like you would with WordPress, since Shopify houses everything in your account.

Try Shopify

WordPress might offer more apps in general, but Shopify provides a focused app market for online stores. Shopify’s app store features over 8,000 integrations, supporting businesses with everything from marketing to sourcing new products.

On the other hand, WordPress boasts over 60,000 plugins, so the platform doesn’t fall behind in this area by any means. A large majority of these are free to use, but others range from $5 to $150 per month or require a one-off payment. In comparison, Shopify’s apps are generally cheaper to use on average. Plus, Shopify provides a lot of functionality within its platform already.

Play

The Winner

Shopify offers over 8,000 apps

It’s quality over quantity in this match-up! While WordPress has a greater range and variety of apps on offer for stores, you’ll first need to find them and review if they’re worth using or too risky. Not only does Shopify provide secure and high-quality apps, but you can add them to your store with a single click.

Try Shopify

A main part of building your online store is adding products and overseeing your inventory, but that isn’t enough to get customers to buy them. When it comes to SEO and marketing, it’s a tie between the two.

Shopify has a number of built-in marketing and SEO tools to support its merchants, whereas WordPress relies on plugins again. That said, you get greater control and flexibility over advanced settings with WordPress.

📨 Marketing

Shopify merchants can use Shopify Email for email marketing campaigns, as well as contact forms for collecting leads. This means you have everything at your fingertips to get your store’s name out there and boost engagement and sales.

Shopify is also a great option if you’re looking to build a community across your website and social media platforms, since you can connect and advertise your store across multiple channels, including Instagram and TikTok. You can even promote your Shopify business in Roblox now!

As expected, WordPress requires plugins for most of its marketing functionality, but there are a lot of popular brands on offer, including:

• Mailchimp for email marketing
• Hubspot for CRM
• Google Ads for creating ad campaigns
• Pretty Links for affiliate marketing

Of course, there’s still the issue of having to install and manage these apps yourself. With Shopify, you can access everything from your dashboard which keeps things simple.

🔍 SEO

For beginners and anyone less tech-savvy, Shopify handles the SEO basics for you. For example, you can use its AI-powered Shopify Magic tool to generate optimized product descriptions to help your products get discovered. You can also edit metadata, add alt text to images, and get personalized suggestions on how to improve your site.

In fact, Shopify is one of the best website builders for SEO that we’ve tested.

WordPress leaves SEO up to the user. While this grants you greater control, you need the know-how to tweak and action changes to improve areas like site speed. Of course, you can use a plugin, like Yoast SEO, to help you along the way, but Shopify’s SEO tools are more beginner-friendly.

The Winner

Both Shopify and WordPress help you promote your store

While Shopify may have WordPress beat in regards to built-in tools, WordPress gives you access to more advanced techniques because of its open-source structure. One is more convenient, one is more adaptable, so it really depends on what your business prioritizes.

To put it simply, WordPress offers greater customization options. However, you’ll need some coding knowledge and a lot of time to implement your designs, so it won’t be the right option for beginners. If you choose to build with Shopify, the onboarding and editing process is more accessible, but limited in comparison to WordPress.

The Winner

WordPress gives you total creative control

WordPress has a wider choice of themes (with more free options than Shopify!), and you have greater control over the look of your website thanks to its advanced editor. But, be warned that WordPress won’t be ideal for complete beginners to website building.

We’ve spent over 300 hours testing and building with the top ecommerce builders. Our in-house research process is carried out regularly to ensure our reviews and recommendations are accurate, up-to-date, and fair.

If you’re looking to build an online store, Shopify has my recommendation. Not only are its sales features the best we’ve tested this year, but businesses can manage everything from a single dashboard for convenience.

With WordPress, your success is entirely dependent on which plugins you decide to use and the hosting provider you opt for. Ultimately, which one you decide on depends on your budget, skill level, and business needs, but Shopify is the better choice for ecommerce websites overall.