WooCommerce or Shopify for an Austrian shop

Shopify suits you if you want to rent a finished shop, never think about a server, and can live with Shopify's fees and terms. WooCommerce suits you if you want the shop on your own hosting, with your own database, and the freedom to change anything, and you accept that someone has to keep WordPress and its plugins up to date. If the shop is the core of your business and needs its own logic, neither may be the best fit, and a custom shop is worth a look.

We build and host WooCommerce shops and custom shops on Laravel and Nuxt. We do not build on Shopify. Every Shopify number below comes from Shopify's own pages, with the date we checked it.

Shopify's Austrian pricing page listed these plans on 5 November 2026, in euros per month:

The page does not say whether these prices include VAT. Shopify hosts the shop, so there is no separate hosting bill. Paid themes and apps come on top, and their prices vary.

WooCommerce itself is free and open source, "with no monthly subscription". The costs sit elsewhere: hosting, a theme, paid extensions if you need them, and the time it takes to keep WordPress, WooCommerce and every plugin updated. Those depend so much on the shop that any single number would be made up. Ask whoever builds it for a written list of running costs before you start.

Payment fees matter more than the plan once orders come in. The rates for Austrian merchants, as published on 5 November 2026:

Sources: Shopify pricing, WooPayments fees, Stripe pricing and Stripe local payment methods.

Cards from further away cost more everywhere. Shopify lists 3.5 % on Basic down to 3 % on Plus for Amex and international cards. WooPayments adds 2 % for cards from outside Europe. Stripe charges 3.15 % + €0.25 for cards from outside the EEA and the UK, and 2.8 % + €0.25 for premium EEA cards. WooPayments states that 20 % VAT applies to its fees unless you have a valid VAT ID.

One Shopify detail changes the math: if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of that provider's, 2 % on Basic, 1 % on Grow, 0.6 % on Advanced and 0.2 % on Plus.

On Shopify, most of this runs through Shopify Payments, which is available in Austria. EPS is switched on by default once Shopify Payments is set up, for customers in Austria who pay in euros. EPS payments cannot be charged back, because the customer confirms them in online banking, but Shopify keeps its processing fee when you refund one. Klarna has its own rate on the pricing page. For Apple Pay you need a card provider that supports it, Shopify Payments or another one. PayPal comes as PayPal Express Checkout: every new store gets an account that you finish setting up, and PayPal's own fees apply.

On WooCommerce you choose the payment extension. WooPayments is available in Austria and lists an EPS rate. Stripe's extension lists EPS, Klarna, Apple Pay and Google Pay among its methods. PayPal publishes its own extension, WooCommerce PayPal Payments.

In the shops we build, customers pay by card, EPS, Klarna, Apple Pay and Google Pay through Stripe, with PayPal added when you want it. Pick the methods your customers already use. For Austrian customers we would always put EPS next to the card.

Shopify is software as a service. Your products, customers and orders live on Shopify's systems. Its Terms of Service say Shopify does not take ownership of what you upload but needs a worldwide licence to it (section 8.1), and that it may "suspend or terminate your Account or the Terms of Service for any reason, without notice and at any time (unless otherwise required by law)" (section 14.3). After termination the store goes offline and you lose access to the account (section 14.4). You can export products as CSV, but the product images are not in that file, only links to them. Export what you need regularly, not on the day you leave.

WooCommerce runs on hosting you choose, and the database is yours. You can copy it, move it to another host or hand it to another agency. The price of that control is responsibility: someone has to install updates, watch for security holes and keep backups that actually restore.

For the shops we look after, that someone is us. We host them on our own servers, rented at Hetzner in Germany, test every update on a copy first and test backups by restoring them.

Shopify extends through apps and themes. Its limits show up in the checkout: checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps are "available only to stores on a Shopify Plus plan". If your checkout needs something unusual, find out early what that means on your plan.

WooCommerce is PHP inside WordPress, and you can change any part of it with a plugin or your own code. We have built a configurator where customers put together ice-cream buckets with their own label, and a search agent that tells customers when a matching product arrives, both as WooCommerce plugins. The trade-off: every plugin is code someone has to keep updated, and ten plugins from ten vendors age at ten different speeds.

When the shop is the business itself, with its own pricing rules, stock tracked per item or a checkout in your own look, we build it custom on our open-source Laravel shop package with a Nuxt front end. That is more work up front, and you get exactly the shop you need.

This is not legal advice, and the wording of your terms, imprint and privacy policy belongs with your legal adviser. Some duties, though, are features someone has to build:

• Imprint. Under § 5 ECG, the shop has to keep name, address, email and further details "leicht und unmittelbar zugänglich" at all times. In practice: a link in the footer of every page.
• Cookie consent. § 165 (3) TKG 2021 allows storing or reading information on the visitor's device only with consent, unless it is strictly necessary to provide the service. Analytics and marketing tags wait until the visitor agrees.
• Order button. § 8 (2) FAGG requires the final button to say "zahlungspflichtig bestellen" or something equally clear.
• Model withdrawal form. § 4 (1) Z 8 FAGG requires the information on the right of withdrawal together with the model form from Annex I Part B. Link it from the checkout and the order confirmation.
• Withdrawal function. For contracts concluded through an online interface after 30 September 2026, § 13a FAGG requires a function labelled "Vertrag widerrufen" or equally clear, available during the whole withdrawal period. It lets the customer send a withdrawal with name, order details and an address for the confirmation, through a button labelled "Widerruf bestätigen". The shop then has to send a receipt on a durable medium with the date and time.
• Accessibility. Since 28 June 2025, shops selling to consumers have to be accessible, unless the micro-enterprise exemption applies. Our guide on accessibility in online shops covers what that means.

Shopify offers a built-in cookie banner that it sets up for visitors from the EEA if you sell there, plus a privacy policy template. For the withdrawal function, check what your theme or an app provides. On WooCommerce and in custom shops, each of these points is a piece of work on the build list, and we build them.

Shopify, if you sell standard products, want no server to worry about, your team is happy working in Shopify's admin and the fees work out at your volume. That is a sound choice. We are just not the right people to build it.

WooCommerce, if you already run WordPress or want content and shop in one place, sell standard products with a few special wishes, and want your data on hosting you control.

A custom shop, if the shop is the core of your business, needs logic that plugins only approximate, or has to show live stock and order status the moment they change. We build those on Laravel and Nuxt with a WebSocket connection, so the page updates without reloading.

Want help with the decision? Our online shop service shows what we build and host. Describe your products and how you sell through the contact form, and we tell you which of the three we would choose and why, including when the answer is Shopify.