An online store charges you in three layers: the monthly subscription, a platform transaction fee if you pay through an outside gateway, and the payment processing fee on every order. The plan that looks cheapest in layer one can end up the most expensive once layers two and three are added. This guide puts all three layers side by side — and does the arithmetic at three sales volumes.
Basic plan, billed monthly. Annual billing lowers the monthly equivalent (from $29/mo on Basic).
The plugin is free. Hosting, a domain and payment processing are separate costs — see the breakdown below.
Core plan, billed annually ($36/mo billed monthly). Selling requires Core or above.
Core plan, billed monthly ($29/mo billed annually). Plans were renamed in June 2026 — details below.
| Shopify | WooCommerce | Wix eCommerce | BigCommerce | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Most new and growing product stores | WordPress users who want ownership and control | Content-led sites adding a modest store | Catalog-heavy stores and B2B sellers |
| Layer 1 — subscription | Basic $39/mo, Grow $105/mo, Advanced $399/mo (billed monthly; annual billing lowers each) | $0 for the software. You pay separately for hosting (vendor's own guide frames typical hosting at $25–$350/mo), a domain (~$10–$20/yr) and any paid extensions | Core $29/mo, Business $39/mo, Business Elite $159/mo (billed annually; monthly billing is higher) | Core $39/mo, Growth $105/mo, Scale $399/mo (billed monthly; $29/$79/$299 billed annually). Plans renamed June 2026 |
| Layer 2 — platform transaction fee | 0% with Shopify Payments. With an outside gateway: 2.0% (Basic), 1.0% (Grow), 0.6% (Advanced) — on top of that gateway's own fees | None. WooCommerce takes no cut of your sales on any gateway | None on ordinary product sales. Exception: selling memberships/subscriptions through Wix's "Pricing Plans" feature adds 4% (Core), 2% (Business), 0% (Elite) | Since June 2026: 0% on orders through an embedded payment provider (Stripe, PayPal/Braintree, Adyen and others on its list); 2.0% (Core), 1.0% (Growth), 0.6% (Scale) on orders through other providers |
| Layer 3 — payment processing (US online cards) | Shopify Payments: 2.9% + 30¢ (Basic), 2.7% + 30¢ (Grow), 2.5% + 30¢ (Advanced) | WooPayments: 2.9% + 30¢, no monthly fee. Stripe and other gateways price similarly; the choice is yours | Wix Payments: 2.9% + 30¢ where available. Not available in Japan — Japanese stores connect Stripe, PayPal or a local provider at that provider's rates | Via its preferred PayPal/Braintree route, the published processing rate steps down as your plan rises. You can also connect 65+ gateways at their own rates |
| Sales caps / forced upgrades | None on standard plans | None — your hosting is the limit | None published on standard plans | Yes: Core covers up to $30K and Growth up to $100K in trailing-12-month sales; above that you move up a plan. Scale charges 0.9% on sales above its monthly allowance |
| Hosting & security | Included | Your responsibility: hosting, SSL (usually bundled free), updates, backups, security | Included | Included |
| Extending the store | Large paid app store; recurring app fees add up | Thousands of plugins; official extensions commonly $49–$279/yr each | App market, smaller and less commerce-deep than Shopify's | More built in (promotions, faceted search, B2B on higher tiers), smaller app market than Shopify |
| Trade-off to know | Using outside payment methods (e.g. local methods in some countries) quietly adds layer 2 to those orders | "Free" covers the software only — your time on maintenance is a real cost that no price table shows | Store depth (variants, B2B, complex shipping) is thinner than the dedicated platforms; Wix Payments is unavailable in some countries, including Japan | The famous "no transaction fees" claim expired in June 2026, and the sales caps mean success itself triggers a plan upgrade |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors and checked in November 2026. Rates vary by country — for example, Shopify Payments card rates in Japan differ from the US rates above. Plans and fees change; always confirm the current figures on the vendor's site before you commit.
Headline subscriptions are the smallest part of a store's platform bill once orders start flowing. The examples below are our own arithmetic on the published rates above — not vendor quotes, and not a promise about any store's results. Assumptions, kept identical for every platform: average order value $50, all orders paid by card through each platform's standard payment route (so no layer-2 fee applies), monthly billing, before tax. WooCommerce's fixed costs use $25/mo hosting (the low end of the range in WooCommerce's own pricing guide) plus a $15/yr domain.
| Monthly sales | Shopify Basic | WooCommerce | Wix | BigCommerce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000/mo (100 orders) | $214/mo | $201/mo | $211/mo (Core) | ≈$218/mo (Core) |
| $20,000/mo (400 orders) | $739/mo | $726/mo | $746/mo (Business) | $771/mo (Growth*) |
| $100,000/mo (2,000 orders) | $3,539/mo (Basic) · $3,405/mo on Grow | $3,526/mo† | — | — |
* BigCommerce stores at $20,000/mo exceed the Core plan's $30K trailing-12-month cap partway through the year, so Growth is the realistic tier. † At $100,000/mo a WooCommerce store would need substantially stronger hosting than the $25/mo assumed here, so treat that figure as a floor, not a quote. Wix and BigCommerce rows are left blank at $100,000/mo because plan eligibility and negotiated rates make a like-for-like figure misleading.
Three things the arithmetic shows. First, at $20,000/mo in sales the subscription is only about 1–15% of the platform bill — processing fees dominate, which is why comparing monthly prices alone misleads. Second, there is a break-even where a "more expensive" plan becomes the cheaper one: on Shopify, Grow's processing rate is 0.2 points lower than Basic's while the subscription is $66/mo higher on monthly billing, so Grow overtakes Basic at roughly $33,000/mo in sales (about $25,000/mo on annual billing). Grow to Advanced needs roughly $147,000/mo before the fee saving alone repays the higher subscription. Third, the quietest cost is layer 2: if 30% of a $20,000 month ($6,000) is paid through an outside gateway on Shopify Basic, the 2% platform fee adds $120/mo — $1,440 a year — more than the price gap between plans. This is exactly the situation for stores that need local payment methods a platform's built-in processor doesn't cover.
Shopify bundles hosting, checkout, and its own processor, Shopify Payments, into one subscription: Basic $39/mo, Grow $105/mo, Advanced $399/mo on monthly billing, with annual billing lowering each plan's monthly equivalent. The fee design rewards staying inside its walls: orders paid through Shopify Payments carry only the card processing fee (from 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic), while orders paid through an outside gateway add a platform transaction fee of 2.0% / 1.0% / 0.6% by plan, on top of that gateway's own charges. For Japanese stores, Shopify publishes yen pricing and domestic card rates, and covers the major cards plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay — but convenience-store and buy-now-pay-later methods require an outside provider, which is where the layer-2 fee appears.
WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. There is no subscription and no platform transaction fee — but a working store is not free. The honest breakdown of what the $0 actually leaves you to buy: hosting (mandatory; WooCommerce's own pricing guide frames typical hosting at $25–$350/mo, with basic shared hosting below that range), a domain (~$10–$20/yr), SSL (usually bundled free with hosting), payment processing (WooPayments at 2.9% + 30¢ in the US, or any gateway you choose — WooPayments supports merchants in dozens of countries including Japan), and paid extensions as needs appear (official extensions commonly $49–$279/yr each). In exchange you get full ownership: your host, your data, your choice of every component.
Wix starts from the other direction: a drag-and-drop website builder, with selling switched on from the Core plan ($29/mo billed annually) up through Business ($39/mo) and Business Elite ($159/mo). Its fee structure is the simplest here: Wix charges no transaction fee on ordinary product sales, and where Wix Payments is available it processes cards at 2.9% + 30¢. Two details matter. First, the exception: memberships and subscriptions sold through Wix's "Pricing Plans" feature do carry a platform fee (4% on Core, 2% on Business), on top of processing. Second, geography: Wix Payments is not available in Japan — Japanese stores connect an outside provider such as Stripe, PayPal or a local service instead, and pay that provider's rates (with no extra Wix fee on product sales).
BigCommerce is the feature-heavy option: promotions, faceted search, multi-currency and multi-storefront tooling are built in rather than sold as apps, and higher tiers add serious B2B features. But its pricing changed fundamentally on 1 June 2026, and most older comparisons are now wrong. The plans were renamed — Standard became Core ($39/mo), Plus became Growth ($105/mo), Pro became Scale ($399/mo) — the annual sales caps tightened to $30K (Core) and $100K (Growth) in trailing-12-month sales, and the platform's long-standing "no transaction fees" position ended: orders through an embedded payment provider (Stripe, PayPal/Braintree, Adyen, Checkout.com, Klarna and others on its published list) carry no platform fee, while orders through any other provider now add 2.0% / 1.0% / 0.6% by plan. Stores are billed in USD, and its localisation for Japan is thinner than Shopify's, so Japanese sellers should check language, payment and support coverage carefully.
Total cost is driven by sales volume and average order value, not by the subscription. Run your own numbers through the three layers — subscription + any platform fee on your payment mix + processing — before looking at feature lists.
If most orders can go through the platform's own or embedded processor, layer 2 is zero almost everywhere. If you need outside methods — local payment options, specific BNPL, a gateway you already contract — the platform fee on those orders can outweigh any subscription saving.
WooCommerce's low fixed cost assumes someone competent handles hosting, updates and security. If that's not you, price in managed hosting or help — or take a hosted platform where that work is included.
Check the ceilings: BigCommerce's sales caps, Wix's commerce depth, Shopify's app costs, WooCommerce's hosting at higher traffic. Migrating a working store is the most expensive outcome of all — choose the platform you won't need to leave.
It depends on volume and on who does the maintenance work. In our worked examples from published prices (average order $50, standard payment route), WooCommerce has the lowest cash cost at $5,000–$20,000/mo in sales if you run it yourself, and Shopify's Grow plan becomes the cheapest of the hosted options at around $100,000/mo. At every volume, payment processing — not the subscription — is the biggest line item. These are calculations on published rates, not guarantees; your payment mix and country change the result.
The software is. A running store is not: hosting, a domain, payment processing and usually some paid extensions are all required, and someone has to handle updates and security. WooCommerce's own pricing guide frames typical hosting alone at $25–$350/mo. "Free" is accurate about the licence and misleading about the store.
Not in the way older articles describe. Since 1 June 2026, orders processed through a payment provider on BigCommerce's embedded list carry no platform fee, but orders through other providers add 2.0% (Core), 1.0% (Growth) or 0.6% (Scale). Its plans were also renamed (Standard → Core, Plus → Growth, Pro → Scale) and the sales caps were lowered. Always check the current pricing page rather than a pre-2026 comparison.
Three things. Shopify offers yen-denominated plans, Japanese card rates and payouts to Japanese bank accounts, but convenience-store and pay-later methods need an outside provider — and those orders attract Shopify's transaction fee. Wix Payments is not available in Japan at all, so a Wix store there runs on Stripe, PayPal or a local provider. And BigCommerce bills in USD with thinner Japanese localisation. None of this rules a platform out, but it belongs in the cost calculation.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing, not from operating stores or invented testing. Where a judgment appears — for example, that a plan "only pays for itself at high volume" — it is arithmetic on the published prices, shown in the worked examples so you can redo it with your own numbers.