Web Development
2026-10-05 · 9 min read
Sapun Lamichhane
Founder & CEO of Arcetis
Shopify is a hosted platform, you pay a recurring subscription and Shopify handles hosting, security, and infrastructure for you. WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin you install on your own hosting, which gives more control but puts maintenance and security responsibility on you or whoever you hire to manage it.
Neither approach is wrong, they simply trade convenience for control in opposite directions.
It is worth being honest with yourself about how much ongoing time you or your team can realistically spend on technical maintenance, since that answer, more than any feature comparison, usually points toward the right platform for your specific situation.
“Generic Shopify vs WooCommerce comparisons ignore the one detail that matters most in Nepal: neither platform makes local payment gateways automatically easy, they just make them easy in different ways.”
Shopify bills internationally in US dollars since it has no local Nepal billing, plans commonly run from roughly $25 to $65 or more a month, which works out to a meaningful recurring NPR cost once converted, on top of development costs that typically range NPR 80,000 to 3,00,000 depending on customization.
WooCommerce has no mandatory subscription, hosting typically costs NPR 3,000 to 15,000 a year for a small store, and development can run cheaper for simple stores, roughly NPR 60,000 to 2,50,000, though it generally needs more ongoing plugin management and updates than Shopify does.
Transaction fees are another real difference to factor in, Shopify charges additional transaction fees on top of its subscription when you use a payment processor other than Shopify Payments, which in Nepal's case means most merchants, while WooCommerce itself does not add transaction fees beyond whatever your chosen payment gateway charges directly.
Shopify Payments, the platform's own built-in payment processor, is not available in Nepal. That means Nepali merchants need third-party apps or workarounds to accept eSewa, Khalti, or local card payments, which adds setup complexity and sometimes extra app subscription costs.
WooCommerce, by contrast, has plugins built more specifically for Nepali payment gateways, since it is open and self-hosted, making local payment integration generally more straightforward, even if it takes more technical setup overall.
This is worth testing early in the evaluation process rather than assuming, try setting up a sandbox or test transaction with your preferred local gateway on each platform before committing, since the actual user experience of checkout varies more than generic comparisons suggest.
Shopify suits non-technical owners who want to avoid maintenance headaches entirely and are comfortable paying a recurring subscription in dollars for that convenience. WooCommerce suits businesses already on WordPress, or those who want full control and are willing to pay for, or personally handle, security updates and plugin management.
Neither choice is permanent, but migrating later costs real time and money, so it is worth thinking through which trade-off fits your business before building rather than after.
Businesses that already have an in-house developer or a reliable WooCommerce-savvy partner often find the self-hosted route genuinely manageable, while those without that kind of ongoing technical support usually find the predictability of Shopify's hosted model worth the recurring subscription cost.
Shopify handles traffic spikes, like a Dashain sale, without you needing to think about server capacity, since that is built into the subscription. WooCommerce needs genuinely good hosting to handle the same spike, and an underpowered host can cause a store to slow down or crash at exactly the moment it matters most.
If you choose WooCommerce, budgeting for solid hosting is not optional, it is part of the real cost of the platform choice.
It is also worth asking any developer you hire how they plan to handle a sudden traffic spike on WooCommerce specifically, caching configuration and hosting tier both matter enormously here, and a generic WordPress hosting plan built for a blog is usually not adequate for a store expecting a seasonal surge.
There is no universal winner, the right choice depends on your technical comfort, your appetite for a recurring dollar subscription versus more hands-on maintenance, and how important local payment gateway simplicity is to your launch timeline.
Arcetis builds and migrates stores on both platforms depending on what a business actually needs, rather than defaulting to whichever is easier to sell.
Whichever platform you choose, keep your product data, images, and customer records exported and backed up independently, so a future migration, if you ever need one, starts from your own data rather than requiring a difficult extraction process.
Not through Shopify Payments itself, which is unavailable in Nepal. Merchants typically use third-party apps or custom integrations to accept eSewa and Khalti on Shopify, which adds some setup complexity compared to WooCommerce.
Often yes in direct subscription terms, since there is no mandatory monthly fee, but the comparison depends on hosting quality, developer time for maintenance, and how much custom work your store needs either way.
Yes, migration is possible in both directions, but it involves real time and cost to move products, orders, and customer data, plus rebuilding design and app integrations, so it is worth choosing carefully upfront rather than planning to switch quickly.