Starting a small online shop in 2026: Shopify or WooCommerce hosting?

If you sell a few dozen products and have never run a web shop, the real choice is between paying a hosted platform to handle the technical side, or renting hosting and running WordPress with WooCommerce yourself. Here is how the two compare on the prices their own sites show, and where each one fits.

Affiliate disclosure. Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It does not change the price you pay, and it did not decide what we wrote below. We have not run a paid test of every product here. Prices and limits come from each vendor's public pages, read on 14 November 2026, and can change. Check the vendor's page before you pay.

Short answer

Choose Shopify if you want to open in a weekend and never think about updates, backups or security patches. Choose WooCommerce on shared hosting if you want the lowest monthly cost and full control of your site and data, and you (or someone you pay) can handle maintenance. Either way, test with a handful of products first.

Shopify

Hosted shop platform

Basic plan: €27/month, or €19/month billed annually
3-day free trial, then an offer of €1/month for the first 3 months on standard plans
2% fee on orders paid through a third-party gateway (not Shopify Payments)
Hosting, security and updates are handled for you

See Shopify plans

Bluehost + WooCommerce

Hosting you manage yourself

Starter shared plan: $3.99/month on a 36-month term, renews at $9.99
eCommerce Essentials: $14.99/month intro, renews at $21.99, WooCommerce auto-install
30-day money-back on hosting; free domain for the first year
You handle updates, plugins and backups

See Bluehost plans

Business owner checking a website on a smartphone — Check your shop on a phone first: that is how most of your customers will see it.

Side by side

	Shopify Basic	Bluehost Starter / eCommerce Essentials
Entry price shown	€19/mo annual, €27/mo monthly	$3.99/mo (Starter) or $14.99/mo (eCommerce Essentials), 36-month term
Price after the intro period	Standard plan price	$9.99/mo and $21.99/mo
Maintenance	Handled by the platform	Yours: updates, plugins, backups
Setup time	Hours	Hours to days, depending on theme and plugins
Payment fees	2% extra with outside gateways	No platform fee; gateway fees only
Trial or refund	3-day trial	30-day money-back on hosting

Sources: shopify.com/pricing and bluehost.com/hosting/shared, read 14 Nov 2026. Taxes may be extra and eligibility varies by country. The 36-month hosting price is billed up front for the term.

Where each one fits

Shopify fits a first-time seller with a small catalogue who values time over a few euros a month. You pay more per month, and you pay a fee if you use a payment gateway other than Shopify's own. In exchange you do not touch servers.

WooCommerce fits someone who wants a low entry price and the option to move the site elsewhere later. We run a WooCommerce test store on our own server. Our honest note is that the shop itself is quick to set up, while the ongoing work is updates and backups. If nobody on your side will do that, the lower price is not really lower.

Watch the renewal price on hosting. The intro rate applies to the first term only, and the plan renews at the regular rate.

Overhead view of a small team working on laptops around a table — Whoever maintains the shop, decide that before you choose the platform.

After the shop is open: getting found

Semrush

An SEO and search-visibility toolkit. It is built for people who publish pages and want to see which search terms bring visitors. A shop with no product pages yet does not need it.

A free plan exists: 1 project and 10 reports per day
7-day free trial of paid plans; paid plans list from $139/month ($117.33/month billed annually) for 5 websites and 500 tracked keywords

Our advice: start on the free plan. Pay only after you have a dozen product pages and know which keywords you want to track.

See Semrush plans

Checklist before you pay anyone

List your products, photos and delivery rules on one page.
Check which payment methods your customers' country supports on your chosen platform.
Read the renewal price and cancellation terms, not just the first-month price.
Open the finished shop on a phone and buy one item yourself.