There is no single best platform, but there is usually an obvious one once you answer two questions: how unusual is what you sell, and who is going to keep the software patched. Answer those and the field narrows to one.
If you sell ordinary products, want to be open soon, and nobody at the business wants to be responsible for software: a hosted platform. If you already run WordPress, or you need control over the whole stack: WooCommerce on your own hosting. If your pricing, catalog or sales process is genuinely unusual: neither, off the shelf, and you should talk to a developer before you buy anything.
Platform comparisons usually list features, which is why they do not help: every platform has a cart, a catalog and a checkout. These two questions actually discriminate.
| Option | Who maintains it | Where it fits | What makes people leave |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Shopify, including the servers and the storefront certificate | Ordinary products, small to large catalogs, a team that wants to sell rather than administer | Wanting behavior the platform will not allow, or an app bill that grew past what a build would have cost |
| WooCommerce | You, on hosting you control | An existing WordPress site, or a business that wants to own the stack | Nobody keeping it updated, which is how a store gets slow and then breached |
| Wix or Squarespace | The platform | A small catalog attached to a site that is mostly brochure | Outgrowing the store side, which is the weaker half of both. See Shopify vs Wix and Shopify vs Squarespace |
| A custom build | Whoever built it, on hosting sized for it | Unusual pricing, quoting, integrations, or a catalog tied to another system | Nothing, when it was the right call. Regret, when it was bought for a catalog a template would have carried |
The same three routes as everywhere else on this site, with the recommendation stated plainly rather than implied.
Best for: Ordinary products, and nobody who wants to maintain software.
The default recommendation for a small business selling straightforward products. Hosting, updates and the storefront certificate are the platform's problem, which is worth more to a small team than the control it costs.
Best for: An existing WordPress site, or a wish to own the whole stack.
The right answer when the site is already WordPress, or when you want the store and the content in one place you control. It needs a hosting plan and a maintenance habit, and both are things we sell.
Best for: A sales process a template will not carry.
When the catalog or the pricing is the complicated part, buying a platform first and forcing the business into it is the expensive mistake. Start with what your sales process does.
Whichever you choose, register the domain name in your own name, at a registrar, rather than accepting one bundled inside the platform. It costs the same and it is the difference between changing platforms and being stuck on one. The same goes for business email: keep it separate from the store, so a platform change never touches your inbox.
And export your product and customer data on a schedule from day one. Hosted platforms keep their own backups of their own systems, which is not the same thing as you having a copy. Website backups covers the self-hosted side.
Tell us what you sell and who would be maintaining the site. We will tell you which column you are in, and we will say so when the answer is the one that earns us nothing.
For most small businesses selling ordinary products, a fully hosted platform such as Shopify is the best answer, because it removes the maintenance work that a small business has nobody to do. The exceptions are real though: if you already run WordPress, or you sell in a way a template will not carry, hosted is the wrong column and WooCommerce or a custom build is the right one.
Not better, different. Shopify is better at getting you selling and keeping you out of software maintenance. WooCommerce is better at control, at fitting into a WordPress site you already have, and at doing something the hosted platform will not let you do. The full comparison is at Shopify vs WooCommerce.
On the monthly line it usually looks cheaper, because the software itself is free and you are only paying for hosting. It stops looking cheaper once you count paid extensions and the time somebody spends keeping the site current. Neither is expensive compared to the cost of a store that is down or breached, which is the comparison that actually matters.
Manufacturers are usually the clearest case for not choosing a hosted platform off the shelf. Trade pricing per customer, quantity breaks, quote requests instead of a cart, spec sheets and drawings, and a catalog that has to agree with an existing system are all things you either build or bolt on. Start from what your sales process does and pick the platform that will carry it, rather than the other way round.
No, and the one decision worth making early is the one people skip: register your domain name in your own name at a registrar rather than inside whichever platform you try first. That keeps the address yours and makes changing your mind a technical detail instead of a migration.
