Neither platform's own payment service works here, and that changes the whole comparison
Most Shopify-versus-WooCommerce comparisons are written for sellers in the US or Europe, where both platforms offer a built-in way to take card payments. From Pakistan, neither does. That single fact moves the comparison away from feature lists and towards four practical questions: how you will be paid, what the store costs each month, who keeps it running, and how much control you need. This guide walks through each one, using the platforms' own published terms rather than anyone's ranking, and ends with a simple way to decide.
Shopify is a hosted service. You pay a monthly fee and Shopify runs the servers, security, updates and checkout. It is the faster way to launch and the one you never have to maintain, but you pay in US dollars every month and, from Pakistan, a platform fee on card payments.
WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. You (or whoever builds it) choose the hosting and look after it. It costs less per sale and gives you full control over everything, but someone has to keep WordPress, the plugins and the backups up to date for as long as the store exists.
If you want to be taking orders this month and never think about a server, lean Shopify. If you want full control, already run WordPress, or want to avoid a per-sale platform fee, lean WooCommerce. The rest of this guide is about the details that should tip you one way or the other.
Shopify Payments is not available in Pakistan. Shopify publishes the list of countries where its own payment processing works, and Pakistan is not on it. A store run from Pakistan therefore takes card and wallet payments through a third-party payment provider.
That matters because Shopify charges its own transaction fee whenever an order is paid through a third-party provider, on top of whatever the provider charges. On Shopify's pricing page in September 2026 that fee is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. On a PKR 5,000 order paid by card on the Basic plan, that is PKR 100 to Shopify before the gateway takes its own share.
WooCommerce's own processor is not available here either. WooPayments, the payment service WooCommerce runs itself, lists the countries where merchants can use it, and Pakistan is not among them. So on WooCommerce you also connect a separate gateway, usually through a plugin. The difference is that WooCommerce adds no platform fee of its own; you pay only what the gateway charges.
Gateway fees themselves are the same story on both platforms. We cover what Pakistani gateways typically charge, and why wallets and bank transfers matter as much as cards, in our 2026 cost guide. Before you commit to either platform, check that the gateway you actually want to use offers a working connection for it.
Most online orders in Pakistan are still paid in cash at the door (our guide to starting a store in Pakistan has the figures), and that softens Shopify's fee problem considerably. Shopify's help centre says you aren't charged third-party transaction fees for manual payments, and it lists cash on delivery, money orders and bank transfers as manual payment methods.
So a Shopify store that is mostly COD pays the platform fee only on the share of orders paid online. Work it out with your own mix: if nine orders in ten are cash on delivery, the fee is a small line; if you are pushing customers towards prepaid orders to cut refusals, it grows with your success. Confirm the fee shown in your own Shopify admin before relying on it, because terms can change.
Both platforms handle COD as a checkout option out of the box. What neither does by itself is collect the cash; that is your courier's job, and the terms your courier offers on COD will affect your margin far more than the platform will. Our guide to choosing a courier in Pakistan covers what to negotiate. Several couriers and shipping aggregators publish ready-made connections for both Shopify and WooCommerce, so booking and tracking are not a reason to choose one over the other; just check that the courier you want supports the platform you pick.
Shopify publishes its prices in US dollars. In September 2026 its pricing page lists:
It also offers a short free trial followed by a low introductory price for the first few months. Prices can differ by region, so check the page yourself. Because you pay in dollars, you need a card that can make international payments, and your rupee cost moves with the exchange rate. Paid themes and apps from the Shopify App Store are extra, and many apps are billed monthly too, so budget for them before you add a dozen.
WooCommerce the plugin is free. The store is not. You pay for hosting (which must be good enough to stay fast when you run a sale), a domain, often a premium theme, and any paid extensions for payments, shipping or subscriptions. Most of those can be paid in rupees to a local host. The cost that is easy to forget is labour: someone has to install updates, watch for plugin conflicts and restore a backup when something breaks. If that is a developer, it is a monthly retainer, not a one-off.
For what a store costs to build and run in Pakistan either way, including the one-off build and a .pk domain, see our 2026 cost guide. As a rough rule: Shopify costs more per month and per online sale but almost nothing in upkeep; WooCommerce costs less per month but more in somebody's time.
This is the question most first-time sellers underestimate. On Shopify, hosting, security patches, the checkout, uptime during a sale and platform updates are Shopify's problem. If the store goes down on the night of a big sale, it is down for everybody on Shopify and it is their engineers who fix it.
On WooCommerce, every one of those is yours. WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and each plugin release updates separately, and an update can occasionally break something. A cheap shared host that is fine for a brochure site may slow to a crawl under a sale. None of this is hard for someone who knows WordPress, and it is exactly why so many Pakistani stores run on WooCommerce happily, but it has to be someone's job. Before choosing WooCommerce, name that person.
Whichever you choose, keep regular backups you can actually restore, and know who has the admin logins. On WooCommerce that means a scheduled backup of both the files and the database; on Shopify it means keeping your own exports of products, customers and orders.
WooCommerce gives you complete control. You own the code and the server, you can change any template, add any field to checkout, and structure your URLs however you like. For a store that needs something unusual, such as custom pricing rules, a wholesale area or an unusual checkout, that freedom is the main reason to choose it.
Shopify trades some of that control for simplicity. You customise through themes and apps rather than by editing the platform, and some structure is fixed: product pages sit under /products/ and category pages under /collections/, for example. For most small stores this makes no practical difference.
Both can rank well on Google. What matters far more than the platform is whether each product page has its own title and description, real product copy rather than the supplier's text, proper image descriptions, and a sitemap submitted to Search Console. We list the six SEO controls to demand of any platform in our AI website builder vs WordPress comparison, and the same list applies here.
Moving between the two is possible and people do it in both directions, but it is a project, not a button. Products, customers and orders can be exported and imported. The design, the apps or plugins and their settings cannot; they have to be rebuilt on the other side. And every old product and category address needs a redirect to its new one, or you lose the Google rankings those pages had earned.
Two habits make a future move cheaper whichever you choose: keep your product data (titles, descriptions, prices, images) clean and complete in the platform itself rather than in images or page-builder blocks, and make sure the domain is registered in your own name, not the developer's. Our WordPress comparison covers what a move actually involves in more detail.
Answer these honestly and the choice usually makes itself.
If you are still weighing whether to build the store yourself at all, our guide on hiring a developer versus using a builder answers the question that comes before this one.
You do not have to settle this before you start. WebNewBiz builds a full online store — products, checkout, payments, orders and customers — on WooCommerce, Shopify or our own native engine, from a description of your business. So you can pick the platform that fits the answers above, and the store, the website around it and your CRM are set up together. Plans are on the pricing page.
Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for a store in Pakistan?
Neither is better for everyone. Shopify suits a seller who wants to launch quickly and never think about hosting, updates or security, and who accepts a monthly fee in US dollars plus a platform fee on card payments taken through a third-party gateway. WooCommerce suits a seller who wants full control, already uses WordPress, or wants to avoid a per-sale platform fee, and who has someone to look after hosting, updates and backups.
Does Shopify Payments work in Pakistan?
No. Pakistan is not on Shopify's list of countries where Shopify Payments is available, so a store run from Pakistan takes card and wallet payments through a third-party payment provider instead. WooCommerce's own processor, WooPayments, is not available to Pakistani merchants either, so on both platforms you will be using a separate gateway.
Does Shopify charge a fee on cash on delivery orders?
Shopify's help centre says you are not charged third-party transaction fees for manual payments, and it lists cash on delivery, money orders and bank transfers as manual payment methods. The fee applies to payments taken through a third-party gateway: 2% on the Basic plan, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, on top of whatever the gateway itself charges. Check the fee shown in your own admin, because terms can change.
Is WooCommerce really free?
The WooCommerce plugin itself costs nothing, but a working store does. You pay for hosting and a domain, often for a premium theme and for extensions such as payment or shipping connections, and for the time it takes to keep WordPress, the plugins and backups up to date, whether that is your time or a developer's.
Can I move from Shopify to WooCommerce later, or the other way round?
Yes, but it is a project, not a button. Products and customers can be exported and imported, while the design, apps or plugins and their settings have to be rebuilt, and every old product and category URL needs a redirect so you keep your Google rankings. Choosing carefully at the start is cheaper than moving later.
Once the platform is settled, the next decisions are practical ones: read our guide to starting an online store in Pakistan for payments, returns and tax, then choose a courier. When you are ready, compare plans on the pricing page and start for $1, or browse the rest of the guides.