WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which Platform is Right for You?

For many retailers, the ecommerce platform decisions made 5 or 10 years ago are now being stress-tested. With customer expectations continuously rising, trading peaks are bigger, marketing channels are more complex, and now throw AI into the mix, internal teams are under pressure to move faster than ever. 

What once felt flexible and cost-effective, can become operationally heavy; developer dependency increases, plug-in updates stack up, and performance becomes harder to guarantee.

That’s why so many brands are making the move to Shopify. It’s fast, scalable, and designed for retailers who want to spend less time wrestling with tech and more time selling. This blog will help you weigh up whether to stick with WooCommerce or switch to Shopify. 

What is Shopify? 

Shopify is a fully managed ecommerce platform designed for both B2C and B2B brands. Infrastructure, hosting, security, and core platform updates are handled centrally, allowing businesses to focus more towards merchandising, marketing, and customer experience. 

What is WooCommerce? 

WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce plugin that converts WordPress sites into an online store. Offering flexibility and control to customise functionality through themes, plugins, and third-party integrations. However, hosting, security, performance, and maintenance sits outside the core platform. 

• Superior Checkout

Shopify Plus has the best-converting checkout rate compared to other ecommerce platforms, outperforming by up to 36%. With Shop Pay enabled, conversion is lifted by up to 50%. The platform includes built-in tools for abandoned cart recovery, helping businesses re-engage potential customers and recover lost sales. 

• Scalability & Reliability

Shopify is designed for growth and maintains 99.9% uptime, unlike WooCommerce, where hosting is external and reliability, in particular site speed, can’t be controlled. Downtime can cost sales and reputation, and Shopify can ensure large sale events or product launches will go without a hitch, whatever the traffic volume. 

• Out of the box solution

WooCommerce requires several time-consuming steps before you’re ready to go; sign up for hosting, buy a domain name, sign up for WordPress, and add WooCommerce as a plug-in.

Shopify simplifies the process by bundling everything together and tailoring it to each customer’s needs. 

• App Ecosystem

The Shopify app store has over 8,000 curated apps, compared to WooCommerce’s approximately 800. 

Whether it’s inventory management, real-time analytics, token gating, or loyalty programmes, retailers can extend store functionality and better leverage data through a wide range of integrated applications.

The Challenge

Prior to migrating, Rooflights.com was facing ongoing operational challenges associated with managing their platform. Day-to-day website maintenance had become increasingly time-intensive, limiting the team’s ability to focus on growth initiatives and customer experience improvements. 

The Migration

Partnering with Quickfire, Rooflights made the transition to Shopify. The migration focused on improving both performance and usability across the customer journey. Key improvements included: 

• A streamlined checkout designed to reduce friction
• A UX-led redesign to create a clearer, more intuitive path to purchase
• New contact forms and live chat functionality to enable faster customer support
• Product card carousels implemented across PDPs, PLPs, and key landing pages to improve product discovery
• ‘You May Also Like’ upsell functionality to promote complementary accessories and increase AOV. 

The Results

The transformation was immediate: 

• Conversion Rate increase by 10%
• New user growth month-on-month increase by 9% 
• 25% increase in time efficiency

Behind these improvements was a structured, collaborative implementation process that ensured both technical delivery and internal alignment. 

As the Rooflights team noted: “The sense of community they foster is remarkable, making it easy to collaborate and feel supported at every step. Their culture is one of openness, encouragement, and a genuine willingness to help, which has been invaluable.”

Not every ecommerce brand needs to migrate. For some, open-source flexibility can remain the best fit. However, reassessment becomes worthwhile when: 

• Developer dependency slows execution 
• Maintenance consumes budget
• Peak trading invites performance anxiety
• Infrastructure complexity limits experimentation

Not every challenge can be solved by layering another app, plug-in, or new feature. Sustainable growth requires selecting a platform that aligns with your business goals and ambitions – and can scale with you as complexity increases over time.

If you’re serious about growth, the choice is clear. Shopify delivers speed, scalability, and simplicity that WooCommerce can’t match. 

Still have some questions? Download our WooCommerce to Shopify migration guide. 

Or ready to migrate? Let’s talk about how to get your brand off WooCommerce and onto Shopify without headaches. Contact us here.