For a first store selling physical products in India, we would pick Shopify — and we say that as a company that builds more WooCommerce sites than Shopify ones. Running a Shopify store here realistically costs ₹6,000–10,000 a month once you add the plan, the apps and the extra percentage Shopify charges because you are on a third-party payment gateway. A comparable WooCommerce store runs at ₹2,500–5,000 a month, but the updates, backups and security are now yours. The build cost is much the same either way. The difference shows up in month thirteen, not in week one.
Everything below is India-specific: rupee figures, Razorpay and UPI, GST invoices, Shiprocket and Delhivery, and cash on delivery. Platform prices change, so treat every figure here as a starting point and check the current pricing page before you pay anyone.
What each one actually costs to run in India
The table below is a running-cost comparison for a store with roughly 100 products doing a few lakh rupees a month. All figures exclude 18% GST and exclude what your payment gateway charges on each order.
| Cost line | Shopify | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Platform licence | Around ₹2,000–2,500 a month on the entry plan, higher if you pay monthly instead of annually | Nothing. The plugin itself is free |
| Hosting | Included | ₹1,000–2,500 a month for hosting a store can actually live on. The ₹300 shared plan will not hold |
| Theme | Free themes exist; a good paid theme is a one-time ₹15,000–25,000 | Free themes exist; a good paid theme is a one-time ₹5,000–8,000 |
| Extra fee on every order | Shopify adds a percentage because you use a third-party gateway — roughly 2% on the entry plan, lower on higher plans | None, at any volume |
| GST invoicing | App, usually ₹500–900 a month | Plugin, free up to about ₹4,000 a year |
| Shiprocket or Delhivery | Free app, you pay per shipment | Free plugin, you pay per shipment |
| Cash on delivery | Available as a manual payment method; OTP verification needs an app | Built in and free; pincode and value rules need a plugin |
| Other apps and plugins | ₹3,000–8,000 a month is normal, billed in US dollars | ₹0–1,500 a month, mostly annual licences |
| Updates, backups, security | Shopify’s problem | Yours, or an agency care plan |
| Typical year-one running cost | ₹90,000–1,20,000 | ₹40,000–60,000 |
| How long it survives if nobody touches it | Years | Months |
| What we charge to build it | ₹99,999 | ₹99,999 |
Payments: Razorpay, PhonePe and the fee nobody budgets for
Both platforms have official, maintained integrations for Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU and PhonePe. Gateway charges sit around 2% plus GST on cards and net banking, while UPI currently carries no merchant discount rate, so if two-thirds of your prepaid orders arrive over UPI your blended cost lands well below 2%. Which gateway to sign with is a separate decision and we keep it in its own guide.
The India-specific part is Shopify’s own cut. Shopify Payments, Shopify’s in-house payments product, is not offered to Indian merchants, so every Indian Shopify store runs on a third-party gateway and pays Shopify a percentage on top of what that gateway charges. Confirm the exact figure for your plan on Shopify’s India pricing page before you sign up, because it is the biggest single variable in this comparison.
Then run the arithmetic rather than guessing. If the next plan up costs roughly ₹5,500 more a month and cuts that fee by one percentage point, it pays for itself at about ₹5.5 lakh a month in sales — below that, stay on the cheaper plan. WooCommerce has no equivalent fee at any volume, and that one line is why large Indian stores drift towards WooCommerce or something custom as they scale.
GST invoices, and what “GST-ready” usually means
A usable GST invoice needs your GSTIN, the buyer’s GSTIN on B2B orders, HSN codes per product, the correct CGST and SGST split for a buyer in your own state, IGST for a buyer outside it, and the place of supply. Neither platform does this properly out of the box. On WooCommerce you add a GST plugin. On Shopify you add an invoicing app or push orders into your accounting software.
Decide early where the invoice of record lives. Most Indian businesses end up raising the real invoice in Tally or Zoho Books and treating the store’s PDF as a customer-facing copy. Settle that with your CA in week one, not during the first quarter’s filing. Neither platform files a return for you, and any agency that tells you a store is “fully GST compliant” on its own is overstating what software can do.
Shipping, COD and the RTO number that decides your margin
Shiprocket, Delhivery, NimbusPost and iThink Logistics all have ready integrations for both platforms, and the app or plugin is free in each case — you pay per shipment. A direct Delhivery account usually needs volume before the rates beat an aggregator, so most first stores start with an aggregator and move later.
Cash on delivery is where the two genuinely differ. WooCommerce ships with COD free and lets you restrict it by pincode or order value with a plugin. Shopify treats COD as a manual payment method, and you will want a verification app on top, which is another monthly line in dollars.
The bigger cost is RTO. Return-to-origin on COD orders is commonly quoted between 15% and 30% in apparel and accessories, lower in electronics, worse during sale periods. Each one costs you forward freight, return freight and packaging with no sale at the end. Practical checks that work on either platform:
- Verify every COD order by OTP or a WhatsApp confirmation before you manifest it.
- Offer a 2–5% prepaid discount. It is cheaper than one RTO.
- Block COD above a value threshold, and on pincodes with a bad history.
- Pull an RTO-by-pincode report after 60 days and stop offering COD to the worst 5%.
- Send the tracking link on WhatsApp, not only email. Indian buyers do not open the email.
None of that is a platform feature. It is an operating habit, and it will affect your profit more than the Shopify-versus-WooCommerce decision does.
Apps and plugins: where the monthly bill comes from
On Shopify almost everything beyond the basics is an app, priced in US dollars. A normal Indian stack — reviews, COD verification, GST invoicing, an upsell app, a page builder — lands at ₹3,000–8,000 a month and moves with the exchange rate. It is predictable, it is billed to a card, and it never breaks.
On WooCommerce most equivalents are free or a one-time annual licence, which is why the running cost is lower. The trade is that every plugin is code you now own the risk for. The usual cause of a dead WooCommerce store is eleven plugins nobody has updated since launch. WooCommerce is not free; it is unbundled. You pay in attention instead of subscription, and if nobody in your business will give it that attention, the honest answer is Shopify.
SEO: the one place the platforms are genuinely different
WordPress with WooCommerce gives you full control of URLs, unlimited content, proper category and blog structure, and mature tooling for on-page work and schema. If your plan is to rank for informational searches and sell from that traffic, WooCommerce is the better base.
Shopify forces its own URL structure for products and collections, and its blog is basic. For product and brand searches this rarely matters, and Shopify pages are fast out of the box.
Be realistic about the first year, though. A new store has no content and no links, and marketplace and aggregator pages will hold the generic product searches for a long time. For most first stores the SEO difference is theoretical until there is a content plan and a budget behind it. If organic is genuinely your channel, start the content on day one rather than after launch — that is what our SEO services work on, and we will tell you when paid social is the cheaper route for your category.
Who should pick which
Choose Shopify if
- This is your first store and nobody in the business is technical.
- You have up to a few hundred simple products with variants.
- Your traffic will come from Instagram, Meta ads and Google ads.
- You want to launch in weeks and never think about servers, updates or backups.
- A fixed, slightly higher monthly bill is worth less risk to you.
Choose WooCommerce if
- You already have a WordPress site with traffic worth keeping.
- Content and organic search are a real part of the plan, not an afterthought.
- Your pricing has logic in it: B2B rates, distributor tiers, bulk slabs, made-to-order items, mixed GST rates.
- The catalogue is large or changes constantly.
- You are doing enough volume that a percentage fee on every order is a real number.
- You want the code and the database in your own hands. If the logic goes past what a store plugin can express, you are no longer choosing a platform — you are looking at custom software.
Choose neither if
If you have fewer than about fifteen products, most orders already arrive on WhatsApp, and you sell through exhibitions or dealers, a full store is overhead you do not need this year. A catalogue with prices and a WhatsApp order button will earn more than a checkout nobody uses. That is the route we point people to on small business websites, and it costs us the bigger project.
What it costs to move from one to the other
Migration is not a button. A data migration tool for products, customers and orders costs roughly ₹6,000–18,000 for a mid-sized catalogue. Then the theme is rebuilt, because themes do not transfer. Then you need a redirect map from every old URL to the new one, and re-testing of payments, GST invoices, shipping rules and COD before you switch DNS.
For a 100-product store, budget ₹40,000–1,20,000 and two to three weeks. Expect a traffic dip of a few weeks even with clean 301 redirects, and a longer one without them. Move only when a specific number is driving it: a platform fee that has grown into lakhs a year, or a business rule the current platform cannot express. Moving because a new agency prefers a different platform is not a reason, and we have talked clients out of it.
What we would pick for a first store
Shopify, in most cases — not because it is better software, but because it has fewer ways to fail while you are still learning what sells. The costs of that choice, stated plainly: a percentage of every order to the platform, an app bill in dollars, less control over URLs and checkout, and the fact that you are renting rather than owning. When those become expensive, you move, and by then you will have the sales data to justify it.
For the record, our E-commerce Store package is ₹99,999 (excluding 18% GST) on WooCommerce, Shopify or custom, covering up to 100 products, Razorpay/PhonePe/UPI, Shiprocket or Delhivery, GST invoices and abandoned-cart WhatsApp recovery, in three to four weeks with 90 days of support. The platform does not change our price, because the work — catalogue, payment testing, GST setup, shipping rules, launch checks — is identical. Domain, hosting, gateway and courier accounts are opened in your name and stay yours. If you have fifteen products and WhatsApp orders, we will steer you to the ₹24,999 business website instead; you can see how we work on web development in India.
The short version
- Shopify costs roughly ₹6,000–10,000 a month to run in India plus a percentage of every order; WooCommerce costs roughly ₹2,500–5,000 a month plus the maintenance you now own.
- Payments, GST invoicing and Shiprocket work on both. COD is easier and cheaper on WooCommerce; RTO discipline matters more than either platform.
- WooCommerce wins on SEO and on unusual business logic. Shopify wins on reliability and on not needing anyone technical.
- First store, no technical person: Shopify. Content-led plan, complex pricing or serious volume: WooCommerce. Under fifteen products and WhatsApp orders: neither, yet.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify or WooCommerce cheaper in India?
WooCommerce is cheaper to run. A working WooCommerce store costs about ₹2,500–5,000 a month for hosting, plugin licences and maintenance. Shopify lands at roughly ₹6,000–10,000 a month once you add the plan, apps billed in US dollars, and the percentage Shopify takes on every order because Indian merchants use third-party gateways. The build cost is similar. WooCommerce is cheaper in cash and dearer in attention.
Does Shopify work with Razorpay and UPI in India?
Yes. Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU and PhonePe all have official Shopify integrations, and UPI works through them. The catch is that Shopify Payments is not offered to Indian merchants, so Shopify adds its own percentage on top of your gateway’s charge — around 2% on the entry plan, less on higher plans. Check the current figure for your plan before signing up; it decides which plan is cheapest.
Can I raise GST-compliant invoices on Shopify or WooCommerce?
Not out of the box on either. WooCommerce needs a GST plugin; Shopify needs an invoicing app or a link to your accounting software. Both can then print GSTIN, HSN codes, the CGST and SGST split for in-state buyers and IGST for out-of-state buyers. Neither files your returns. Most businesses keep Tally or Zoho Books as the invoice of record and treat the store PDF as a customer copy.
Which handles cash on delivery better?
WooCommerce. COD is built in and free, and pincode or order-value rules take one plugin. Shopify offers COD as a manual payment method, and OTP verification is a paid app. The real issue is RTO, commonly quoted at 15–30% on COD in apparel. Verify orders by OTP or WhatsApp, offer a small prepaid discount, and stop shipping COD to your worst pincodes.
How much does it cost to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce?
For a store of about 100 products, budget ₹40,000–1,20,000 and two to three weeks. That covers a data migration tool at roughly ₹6,000–18,000, a rebuilt theme, a full 301 redirect map, and re-testing of payments, GST invoices and shipping. Expect a short traffic dip even with clean redirects. Move only when a specific number justifies it, such as platform fees running into lakhs a year.