Shopify vs WooCommerce in Pakistan: which is better?

Shopify vs WooCommerce in Pakistan: the short answer

Shopify vs WooCommerce is a trade between money and time. Shopify costs more in rupees and asks little of your time. WooCommerce costs far less to start and asks you, or a developer, to run a website every month.

If you sell on cash on delivery inside Pakistan and have no one technical to call, Shopify is the easier of the two. If you have a developer or a WordPress site already, or many of your buyers pay by card or wallet, WooCommerce is the cheaper one to run. Here is how they compare on each point, with figures as of October 2026.

To compare every platform a Pakistani seller is likely to consider, not just these two, see the best ecommerce platform in Pakistan.

WooCommerce vs Shopify pricing: the first year in rupees

WooCommerce is cheaper to start by a wide margin. The gap shrinks as you add paid themes and extensions, which are mostly sold in dollars. All prices below are as of October 2026, converted at about Rs 278 to the dollar. The State Bank’s interbank rate was about Rs 277 on October 2.

Shopify’s Pakistan pricing page lists Basic at $25 a month billed monthly or $19 billed yearly, Grow at $65 or $49, and Advanced at $399 or $299. New stores get 3 days free, then $1 a month for 3 months. Shopify’s domain help says every store gets a myshopify.com address and can use one bought from any domain provider.

Shopify bills your card in dollars, and your bank adds to it. Bank Alfalah’s schedule of charges for July to December 2026 lists a 4.5% fee on foreign credit card transactions, or Rs 125 if that is higher. On top, the bank collects advance tax on card payments abroad: FBR’s withholding tax rate card for 2026–27 puts it at 0.5% if you are on the Active Taxpayers List and 1% if you are not. The bank’s schedule still shows the old 5% and 10%, so check what was actually deducted. At 4.5% plus 0.5%, $228 becomes about Rs 66,600. On the $1 months, the Rs 125 minimum fee is close to half the charge. Your own bank’s charges will differ, so read its schedule before you pay.

Pay monthly in year two and Basic costs $300 for the year: about Rs 83,400, or about Rs 87,600 once the same bank charges are added.

WooCommerce itself is free on WordPress.org. The hosting figures are HosterPK’s WordPress I plan and Websouls’ Startup plan; the .com prices are from Websouls and HosterPK, where a .com renews at Rs 3,900. The low end of the range pairs the cheapest hosting with the cheapest .com; the high end pairs the dearer ones.

From there, every paid piece adds up. WooCommerce’s own pricing page puts extensions at $29–299 a year each. The Astra Pro theme was $99 for the first year, renewing at $149: about Rs 28,900 on the same credit card. A paid theme and two $79 extensions, such as WooCommerce’s Product Add-Ons, take even the cheapest WooCommerce store past Shopify Basic’s first year.

Neither column includes a developer, and agency prices in Pakistan are rarely published, so get two written quotes. For Shopify’s numbers plan by plan, see what Shopify costs in Pakistan. For a whole store, with design and photos, see ecommerce website price in Pakistan.

WooCommerce vs Shopify fees on each sale

On cash on delivery, neither platform takes a fee. On card and wallet payments, Shopify adds its own fee on top of the gateway’s, and WooCommerce does not.

Shopify Payments is not on Shopify’s list of supported countries, so a Pakistani store takes cards and wallets through an outside gateway. Shopify’s help centre says third-party transaction fees apply on all third-party and alternate gateways. The Pakistan pricing page says the rate depends on your plan without listing it; the global pricing page shows 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. The fee is worked out on the order total, delivery and tax included, less discounts. Check the rate in your own admin before you connect a gateway.

WooCommerce’s pricing page lists its revenue share as none. You pay your gateway and nobody else.

Take a Rs 4,000 order, delivery included, paid by a Pakistani debit card through Safepay:

• Safepay’s pricing page lists 2.9% plus Rs 30 for domestic cards, so Safepay keeps Rs 146.
• On WooCommerce, that is the whole fee: Rs 146.
• On Shopify Basic, a 2% third-party fee adds Rs 80, for Rs 226 in all.
• At 100 card orders like this a month, Shopify’s share is Rs 8,000 a month.

Moving up a plan lowers the rate but raises the bill. Grow saves 1 percentage point and costs $30 a month more than Basic on yearly billing, about Rs 8,340, so it only pays for itself above roughly Rs 834,000 of card and wallet sales a month.

Some deductions do not depend on the platform. FBR’s rate card has the courier deduct 2% of your COD money and the gateway 1% of online payments as income tax, doubled to 4% and 2% if you are not on the Active Taxpayers List. Our guide to registering an online business explains it.

Setting up

Shopify is quicker to set up because there is no server. You sign up, pick a theme, add products, set delivery rates and switch on cash on delivery, all in Shopify’s admin. If you are new to it, our guide to what Shopify is (in Urdu) walks through the basics.

WooCommerce has more steps before the first product goes up:

1. Buy hosting and a web address.
2. Install WordPress, usually from your host’s control panel.
3. Install WooCommerce. Its WordPress.org listing asks for WordPress 7.0 and PHP 7.4 or newer, so check your host’s versions first.
4. Turn on the security certificate, so the site opens on https.
5. Pick and set up a theme, then add your pages and products.
6. Set up payments, delivery rates and backups.

None of this needs code, but all of it is WordPress. If you have not used WordPress before, expect to learn it or pay someone who has. Our guide to WooCommerce in Pakistan covers each step in more depth, including moving products across from Shopify.

Cash on delivery

Both handle cash on delivery with no platform fee. The difference is how the order moves once it comes in.

On Shopify, COD is one of the manual payment methods, alongside bank deposit and money order. Shopify charges no third-party fee on manual payments. A COD order shows as unpaid until you mark it paid on the order page, which you do when the courier sends you the cash.

On WooCommerce, Cash on Delivery is a built-in method. Orders stay at Processing until you mark them Complete, and you can offer COD only with the delivery methods you choose, for example inside Pakistan but not abroad. Direct bank transfer is built in too; those orders wait On hold until you check the deposit.

On either, confirm each COD order with the buyer before you book the courier. Our order confirmation messages are ready to copy, and stopping fake COD orders covers the rest.

JazzCash, Easypaisa and cards

WooCommerce has the clearer route to both wallets today. Shopify has JazzCash’s own app, but every gateway payment there carries Shopify’s fee.

On Shopify, the gateway list for Pakistan includes Safepay and Paymob for card payments. JazzCash publishes its own Shopify app, free to install and launched in February 2026, offering cards, wallets, vouchers and accounts; it had no reviews yet in October 2026. Safepay’s Shopify app is free to install, with Safepay’s own fee on each payment.

On WooCommerce, Paymob’s official plugin, updated in September 2026 with more than 5,000 active installs, lists debit and credit cards, Easypaisa and JazzCash for Pakistan. Safepay’s plugin on WordPress.org was last updated in 2020, though Safepay’s own site still offers a WooCommerce plugin, so ask Safepay which version to install. We found no JazzCash plugin from JazzCash itself on WordPress.org; plugins from other developers exist, so check when each was last updated.

Gateway fees are the same on either platform. Safepay listed 1.5% for wallet payments and 2.9% plus Rs 30 for domestic cards, with no setup or monthly fee, as of October 2026. Each gateway has its own sign-up papers and checks; our guide to payment gateways in Pakistan lists what each one wants.

You can also skip the gateway. Add a manual method on Shopify, or use Direct bank transfer on WooCommerce, that shows your JazzCash or Easypaisa account. You check each payment yourself, with no gateway fee and no Shopify fee. Our guide to a JazzCash business account (in Urdu) covers opening one.

Couriers and tracking

Shopify edges it only if you ship with M&P. Courier booking is an add-on on both, and the delivery charge is the same whichever you pick. PostEx’s public calculator quoted Rs 274.05 for 0.5 kg from Karachi to Lahore and Rs 156.60 within one city, fuel surcharge and GST included, before its COD fee.

On Shopify, M&P Express publishes its own free M&P Courier app for booking, labels and tracking, rated 3.4 from 7 reviews in October 2026. We did not find apps published by PostEx, Leopards or TCS themselves, so ask your courier which app it supports. Without one, you book in the courier’s portal and add the tracking number when you mark the order fulfilled.

On WooCommerce, we found no plugin on WordPress.org published by TCS, Leopards or PostEx themselves. Plugins from independent developers exist, most with a few hundred installs or fewer. Ask your courier which integration it supports and who keeps it working after WooCommerce updates, or book by hand and add the tracking number to the order.

To compare couriers before you sign up, use the courier charges calculator and our guide to the best courier service in Pakistan.

Speed, updates and security

Shopify hosts, updates and secures the store. With WooCommerce, all three are your job.

Shopify says it is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, the card industry’s security standard, and that this extends to every store on Shopify. Its pricing page lists a free SSL certificate, the padlock that turns on https, on every plan.

WooCommerce published 30 stable releases between October 2025 and September 2026 on its GitHub page, about one every 12 days. Each one, plus WordPress, your theme and every plugin, has to be applied and checked: does checkout still work, do COD orders still come in. Backups and security are yours or your host’s.

Speed on Shopify depends mostly on your theme and apps. On WooCommerce it also depends on the hosting plan you buy and how many plugins you add. On either, open your product page on a phone on mobile data before you launch.

Selling abroad

Shopify has more built in for buyers abroad, but its strongest parts are tied to Shopify Payments, which Pakistan does not have. Shopify’s currency conversion help says only stores using Shopify Payments with one-page checkout can use all of that feature.

On either platform, taking a foreign card depends on your gateway. Safepay’s pricing adds 0.3% for international cards. Delivery abroad is a separate contract with a courier that ships overseas.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: which is better for you

Shopify suits you if:

• You want the store live this week and have no developer.
• You will not run a server, and a dollar bill every month or year is fine.
• Most of your buyers pay cash on delivery, so Shopify’s transaction fee rarely applies.
• You ship with M&P, or you depend on a particular Shopify app.
• You sell to buyers abroad and want Shopify’s tools for it.

WooCommerce suits you if:

• You have a developer, or already run a WordPress website.
• Many buyers pay by card or wallet, so a platform with no fee on payments saves money every month.
• You want JazzCash, Easypaisa and cards through one official plugin, Paymob’s.
• You want your files and orders on a server you control.
• You need a custom feature that only a WordPress plugin offers.

If you want neither a dollar bill nor a website to look after, there is a third route.

A third option

Platforms built in Pakistan bill in rupees and come with local payments. Webx’s pricing page listed its Lite plan at PKR 1,950 a month with a 2.5% fee on online payments, and Basic at PKR 3,950 a month (PKR 2,965 billed yearly) with 1.25%, with no fee on cash on delivery, as of October 2026. Its help page describes a 7-day trial.

Storelala is free: making your store and selling on it costs nothing, and you do not need a card to start. You run it from your phone, and your store goes live at yourbrand.storelala.com. It can move to yourbrand.pk or yourbrand.com whenever you are ready, with the store and orders unchanged. Buyers pay by cash on delivery, JazzCash, Easypaisa or card, chosen at checkout. Orders wait in To confirm, To send and Done. Before you confirm one, you see the buyer’s earlier orders and any parcel they turned away, and a size can be changed on the call with the total and stock updating together. You book PostEx, Leopards or TCS right from the order screen, and the tracking number goes to the buyer on WhatsApp. If you are on Shopify now, you can bring your products across from a Shopify product CSV.

Wix is the other name sellers compare. Its help page lists Pakistan as N/A for payment providers, so a Pakistani Wix store can take cash on delivery as a manual payment, on a plan that accepts payments, but no cards or wallets through Wix.

For the full case, see the Shopify alternative in Pakistan, and run your own numbers in the COD profit calculator.

Questions sellers ask

Shopify vs WooCommerce: which is better in Pakistan?

For a seller with no developer whose buyers mostly pay cash on delivery, Shopify is easier: it hosts and updates the store, and COD carries no Shopify fee. For a seller with a developer, or with many card and wallet payments, WooCommerce costs less: the software is free and it takes no share of sales. Shopify Payments is not available in Pakistan, so every card or wallet payment on Shopify goes through a third-party gateway and carries Shopify’s third-party fee.

Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify in Pakistan?

To start, yes. As of October 2026, a lean WooCommerce store cost about Rs 8,500–13,400 for its first year of hosting and a .com address. Shopify Basic billed yearly was $228, about Rs 63,400 at Rs 278 to the dollar before bank charges. Paid themes, extensions and a developer narrow the gap, because they are often priced in dollars too.

What fees does Shopify charge that WooCommerce does not?

A third-party transaction fee on every payment taken through a gateway other than Shopify Payments, which in Pakistan means every card and wallet payment. Shopify’s global pricing page lists 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced; its Pakistan page says the rate depends on your plan. Cash on delivery and other manual payments carry no such fee. WooCommerce takes no share of your sales; you pay only your gateway.

Can I take JazzCash and Easypaisa on Shopify or WooCommerce?

Yes, through a gateway. On Shopify, JazzCash publishes its own app, and Shopify lists Safepay and Paymob as gateways for Pakistan. On WooCommerce, Paymob’s official plugin lists JazzCash and Easypaisa for Pakistan. On either, you can also add a manual method that shows your wallet number and check each payment yourself.

WooCommerce vs Shopify vs Wix: where does Wix fit?

Wix’s help page lists Pakistan as N/A for payment providers, so Wix cannot take card or wallet payments for a Pakistani store. You can still take cash on delivery as a manual payment, on a Wix plan that accepts payments. Wix prices vary by location, so check its plans page from Pakistan before you compare.

Do I need a developer for WooCommerce?

Not to install it, if you are comfortable with WordPress. You do need someone, you or a developer, to apply updates, keep backups, connect a gateway or courier plugin, and fix whatever an update breaks. Ask any developer for two prices: setup, and a monthly fee for upkeep.

Storelala is the Shopify alternative in Pakistan for sellers in Pakistan, with no dollar bill and no website to look after. It is free, with no card needed. Start your store today.