For Australian DTC brands launching or scaling in 2023, the platform decision is almost always Shopify versus WooCommerce. Both are mature. Both will sell things. Both have strong fans. Here's the comparison without the religion.
Honest summary
Shopify wins for most DTC brands launching in Australia. WooCommerce wins for content-led stores, complex catalogues, or businesses that already run on WordPress.
If you don't fall clearly into the WooCommerce case, default to Shopify.
Shopify's case
- Hosted, secure, managed. No server, no PCI compliance, no security patches. The platform handles it.
- Best-in-class checkout. Shopify Pay is the highest-converting checkout in the world right now. Worth real money.
- Australian payment rails work cleanly. Stripe, Afterpay, Zip, all integrated, all GST-aware.
- Apps for everything. Reviews, subscriptions, bundles, upsells, half a million apps in the store.
- Liquid is constrained but reliable. Themes don't break in unpredictable ways.
Shopify's downsides
- Per-transaction fees. 1.4–2% on top of card processing, more on lower plans. Real money at scale.
- Apps stack creep. A typical store ends up paying $400–$1,500/month in app subscriptions.
- Limited backend customisation. Shopify Functions are improving but you'll hit the wall on truly custom logic.
- Theme limits. Some layouts are easier in WooCommerce.
- Vendor lock-in. Shopify owns your customer data; migrations are painful.
WooCommerce's case
- Free core. The plugin itself costs nothing. You pay for hosting, themes, and addons.
- Full control. It's PHP code on your server. You can change anything.
- Content + commerce. If you blog as much as you sell, WooCommerce shines. The blog tool is WordPress, which is unmatched.
- No transaction fees. Just card processing.
- Cheap at scale. 10,000 SKUs on WooCommerce can be cheaper than Shopify Plus by half.
WooCommerce's downsides
- You operate it. Hosting, security patches, backups, performance, your problem.
- Plugin compatibility. Updates can break combinations of plugins. There's a maintenance tax.
- Checkout is good, not great. Solvable, but takes work to match Shopify Pay's conversion.
- Slower out of the box. Optimising WooCommerce for performance is a real engineering project.
- Australian apps and integrations are sparser. Afterpay and Zip both work, but the polish is behind Shopify.
Shopify is rent. WooCommerce is owning a house. Both have great cases, depending on whether you'd rather call a plumber or fix the pipe yourself.
Total cost of ownership
Three-year TCO for a $1m revenue Australian DTC brand:
- Shopify standard plan + apps: ~$80k–$140k. Includes platform fees ($1.2k/yr), apps ($12k–$15k/yr), transaction fees ($14k–$20k/yr), build/refresh ($10k–$15k).
- WooCommerce on managed hosting + paid plugins: ~$60k–$110k. Includes hosting ($3k–$5k/yr), plugin licences ($2k–$4k/yr), card fees only ($10k–$14k/yr), build/maintenance ($30k–$50k).
WooCommerce is cheaper, but you trade money for time. The maintenance overhead is real and unfunded if you don't account for it.
Where the line moves
- You blog more than you sell: WooCommerce wins.
- Massive catalogue (5,000+ SKUs) with custom logic: WooCommerce wins.
- You already run on WordPress: WooCommerce wins.
- You want to launch in two weeks and not think about ops: Shopify wins, every time.
- Above ~$2m revenue with B2B needs: Shopify Plus is usually the answer.
The bottom line
For most Australian DTC brands launching in 2023, Shopify is the right answer. WooCommerce is right when content matters as much as commerce, or when you have a developer in-house who can manage it.
If you want three Australian developers to weigh in on your specific store, FindDevs gets you those quotes. Free, three real opinions, in 24 hours.