Most Shopify-versus-WooCommerce comparisons quote U.S. prices, forget payment processing, and ignore the maintenance that WooCommerce needs. For a small Nova Scotia store, those three things decide the answer.
Here’s the short version. For a small store doing a few thousand dollars a month online, the platform fee is the smallest part of the bill. Card processing is the largest, and it’s nearly identical on both. The real difference is who maintains the site: Shopify includes it in the subscription, WooCommerce leaves it to you or someone you pay. If you’ll handle updates yourself, WooCommerce usually costs a little less. If you’d pay someone to, Shopify usually costs less.
Below is a worked three-year example in Canadian dollars, with every assumption visible, so you can swap in your own numbers.
What Each Platform Actually Charges (2026, CAD)
Shopify
Shopify bills Canadian merchants in Canadian dollars. From its Canadian pricing page, as of September 2026:
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing (per month) | Shopify Payments online card rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $49 | $37 | 2.8% + 30¢ |
| Grow | $132 | $99 | 2.6% + 30¢ |
| Advanced | $517 | $389 | 2.4% + 30¢ |
If you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced. For most small Canadian stores that makes Shopify Payments the obvious choice.
Many comparison articles still show older U.S.-dollar prices or old plan names. Check the pricing page itself before deciding.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is free. What you pay for is everything around it:
- Hosting that can handle a store, with backups and SSL.
- Payments. Stripe’s standard rate for domestic Canadian cards is 2.9% + CA$0.30, and WooPayments charges the same for domestic cards.
- Premium plugins for things you’d get as Shopify apps: shipping rates, subscriptions, product add-ons, better search. Many are priced in U.S. dollars.
- Maintenance: WordPress, WooCommerce and plugin updates, security, backups, fixing the occasional conflict. Either your time or a care plan.
A Worked Three-Year Example
This is an illustration, not a quote. The assumptions: a Nova Scotia store selling $4,000 a month online, about 50 orders averaging $80, all paid by Canadian cards. Build and design costs are excluded because they’re similar on both platforms and vary more by project than by platform.
| Cost over 36 months | Shopify Basic (annual) | WooCommerce, you maintain it | WooCommerce, paid care plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform or hosting ($37 vs assumed $25/mo hosting) | $1,332 | $900 | $900 |
| Card processing (2.8% vs 2.9%, + 30¢ per order) | $4,572 | $4,716 | $4,716 |
| Apps or premium plugins (assumed $40/mo vs $400/yr) | $1,440 | $1,200 | $1,200 |
| Maintenance (assumed $75/mo care plan) | Included | Your time | $2,700 |
| Total | $7,344 | $6,816 | $9,516 |
Three things stand out.
Card processing is the biggest single cost in every column, between half and two-thirds of the total, and the two platforms are within a few dollars a month of each other on it. Arguing about a $12 difference in platform fees misses where the money actually goes.
Maintenance decides the winner. WooCommerce is cheaper only if your time is free. If you’d rather pay someone to keep it updated and secure, Shopify comes out ahead in this example.
App creep is the Shopify risk. The $40 a month assumed here is modest. Stores that add reviews, upsells, subscriptions, loyalty and email apps can spend several times that. Audit your apps once a year.
When Does Shopify’s Grow Plan Pay for Itself?
Grow costs $62 a month more than Basic on annual billing and saves 0.2% on card processing. The card savings alone only cover the difference once online card sales pass roughly $31,000 a month ($62 ÷ 0.002). Below that, upgrade for features you need, such as more staff accounts or better reporting, not for the fee.
The Tax Details That Affect Canadian Stores
- HST on subscriptions and services. A GST/HST-registered business can generally claim back the tax on Canadian invoices. For software bought from foreign vendors, including many WooCommerce plugins, add your GST/HST number to your account or you may pay tax you can’t recover. We explain why in the Google Ads HST guide; the same logic applies to other foreign software.
- Exchange rates. U.S.-dollar plugins and apps cost more when the Canadian dollar is weak, and your card may add a foreign transaction fee.
- Charging the right rate. Both platforms need correct Nova Scotia HST at checkout. If your store predates April 2025, check it with our five-minute HST test.
Which One Should You Choose?
| Choose Shopify if… | Choose WooCommerce if… |
|---|---|
| You want to run the store, not the software | You or someone on your team is comfortable with WordPress updates |
| You don’t want to think about hosting, security or backups | You already have a WordPress site with content that ranks well |
| You’ll sell in person too and want one system for online and point of sale | You need unusual product logic, bookings or custom pricing that plugins handle well |
| You want predictable monthly costs | You want full ownership of the code, data and hosting |
| You plan to grow into multiple sales channels | Your store is a small part of a content-heavy site |
One case deserves a special mention: a business with an established WordPress site that ranks well and wants to add a small shop. Adding WooCommerce to that site usually beats moving everything to Shopify, because migrating a site that already ranks carries real risk. What can go wrong is covered in losing rankings after a redesign.
Run Your Own Numbers
Take the table above and replace four inputs: your monthly online sales, your average order value, the apps or plugins you’d genuinely need, and whether you’ll maintain WordPress yourself. Those four decide it. The platform’s headline price almost never does.
We build on both platforms, so we don’t have a reason to push one. As part of our e-commerce website work, we’ll run this comparison with your real numbers before recommending anything. For what the build itself typically costs in Halifax, see how much a website costs. Or send us your sales volume and product list and we’ll tell you which way we’d go.
