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Which Ecommerce Platform Is Right for You? Shopify vs WooCommerce vs BigCommerce vs Adobe Commerce vs Custom

I've watched a founder spend four months and around forty grand building a "perfect" custom storefront for a business doing \$8k a month. It was...

The Sellarix team · 7 May 2026 · 7 min read

I've watched a founder spend four months and around forty grand building a "perfect" custom storefront for a business doing $8k a month. It was gorgeous. It also meant every tiny change needed a developer, and the developer had moved on. That store would have been live in a weekend on Shopify, with money left over for ads. So before you pick a platform, I want you to sit with one uncomfortable question: what are you actually optimizing for? Because the platform that's "best" for a 9-figure brand can quietly bankrupt a side hustle, and vice versa. I've helped people launch on all five of these, and migrate off most of them too. None of them is a scam. They're just tools tuned for different jobs. Let me walk you through how I actually think about this, with real numbers instead of vibes.

The story the market share data tells

Here's the thing nobody says out loud: most of these platforms coexist because they serve genuinely different merchants. Look at the raw counts. WooCommerce powers roughly a third of all tracked ecommerce stores globally, somewhere around 4.5 million of them as of mid-2025, because it's free to start and rides on WordPress, which already runs a huge chunk of the web. Shopify sits around 10% of stores globally but punches way above its weight on bigger merchants, holding about 27% of the top one million ecommerce sites and processing nearly $300B in GMV in 2024. Adobe Commerce (Magento) powers far fewer stores, roughly 100k-ish, but it's overrepresented at the enterprise end, around 7-9% of the top 10k-to-1M sites. BigCommerce is the smallest of the named SaaS players by store count, in the tens of thousands. Translation: lots of small stores cluster on Woo and Shopify, and the heavy-traffic brands skew toward Shopify Plus and Adobe. The "custom build" bucket is real too, Store Leads tracks well over a million "custom cart" stores, but that bucket hides everything from a thoughtful headless setup to a half-abandoned bespoke mess.

Chart: Entry-level all-in monthly cost by platform, log scale (estimates)
Chart: my blended entry-cost estimate per platform. Shopify/BigCommerce from published plans; WooCommerce is plan-free but carries hosting + plugins; Adobe Commerce reflects a ~$22k/yr starting license; Custom is a rough dev + hosting blend. Sources below.

What each one actually costs

Let me be specific, because "it depends" is a cop-out. Shopify's Basic plan runs $39/mo month-to-month (about $29 billed annually), Grow is $105, Advanced is $399, and Plus starts around $2,300/mo. The catch most people miss: if you don't use Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a 0.15%–2% surcharge on every order on top of your processor's fees. BigCommerce mirrors Shopify's tiers almost exactly on price ($39 / $105 / $399, with Enterprise starting around $1,499/mo) but charges 0% platform transaction fees on every plan, which is a genuinely nice difference. The twist with BigCommerce is the sales threshold rule: cross roughly $50k in annual sales and you're forced up to the next plan whether you want the features or not. WooCommerce is the one people call "free," and the software is. But you're now the landlord. Hosting ($20–$100+/mo as you grow), SSL, a theme, security, and a stack of plugins are all on you. The flip side is no per-order platform surcharge and total data control. Adobe Commerce is a different universe: the license alone starts near $22k/yr for sub-$1M merchants and climbs to $125k+/yr at the top, and that's before development and hosting, which routinely push real TCO into the $150k–$300k+/yr range for a mid-market store. Custom is whatever you can spend; there's no ceiling and no floor, which is exactly the problem.

The honest comparison

Platform How it works Cost (est.) Who it fits Strengths Gaps
Shopify Fully hosted SaaS, app store for everything \$39–\$399/mo + Plus \$2.3k; surcharge if not using Shopify Payments SMBs to mid-market who want speed over control Fastest to launch, reliable, huge ecosystem, strong checkout App costs creep, payment lock-in pressure, less deep customization
WooCommerce Open-source WordPress plugin, you self-host Plugin free; hosting + plugins \~\$20–\$200+/mo Content-led stores, devs, budget-conscious growers Total control, no platform fees, owns the data, cheap to start You own maintenance, security and uptime; plugin sprawl gets messy
BigCommerce Hosted SaaS, more built-in features out of the box \$39–\$399/mo + Enterprise; 0% transaction fees Catalog-heavy and B2B merchants who hate app fees No transaction fees, strong native B2B, generous built-ins Smaller app ecosystem, forced plan jumps at sales thresholds
Adobe Commerce Enterprise platform (PaaS/on-prem/new SaaS) License \~\$22k–\$125k+/yr; TCO often \$150k–\$300k+/yr Complex catalogs, multi-store, big B2B, real dev teams Endlessly customizable, B2B depth, multi-site/region Expensive, heavy to run, needs ongoing specialist developers
Custom build Bespoke or headless stack you commission No fixed floor; often \$40k+ upfront then ongoing dev Unique models or scale where no platform fits Exactly your requirements, no platform constraints Slow, costly, you carry all risk; bus-factor on your devs

How I'd actually decide

Forget the feature checklists for a second. The real variable is where you are on the revenue-and-team curve. Under roughly $10k/mo with no developer? I push people to Shopify or BigCommerce almost every time. The lower setup friction and predictable bill beat saving $30/mo on hosting, and your time is worth more spent on product and ads. The fact that Shopify reports 93% of its stores load fast, and that its merchants render meaningfully faster on average, matters here too, because you inherit that without doing the work.

A miniature shopping cart beside a laptop on a desk
Photo: "Mini shopping cart placed on a table next to a laptop" by Shixart1985, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Once you've got a developer and you're in the $10k–$50k/mo range, the math shifts. WooCommerce starts winning on long-run TCO because you dodge per-order surcharges and you can replace paid SaaS apps with free plugins. Shopify itself claims roughly 36% lower TCO than Woo at scale, but that comparison conveniently assumes you're paying for a stack of apps and a maintenance team on Woo; if you have in-house dev capacity, Woo's year-two and year-three costs tend to flatten while Shopify's app bill keeps climbing. Both can be right. It depends on whether maintenance is a cost you pay in cash or in your own team's hours. Adobe Commerce earns its price only when you genuinely have enterprise complexity: huge catalogs, multiple storefronts and regions, deep B2B rules, and a team to run it. If you're reaching for Adobe to feel "serious," stop. And custom? I'd only build custom when no platform can model your business, or when you're at a scale where platform fees dwarf a dev team's salary. The founder I mentioned at the top didn't have either reason. He had a Shopify-shaped business and an ego-shaped budget. One more honest note, since I work in this space: whatever you pick, the thing that quietly determines your ceiling is whether your product data is clean, structured, and portable. Migrations and AI tooling both live or die on that. That's the bet behind Sellarix, keeping your catalog agent-ready so the platform underneath becomes a swappable decision instead of a prison.

The takeaway

Pick the cheapest platform that won't block you in 18 months, then spend the saved energy on demand. Shopify and BigCommerce for speed and predictability, WooCommerce when you have dev hands and want control, Adobe when you're truly enterprise, custom only when nothing else fits. The wrong move isn't picking the "lesser" platform, it's over-building for a scale you haven't earned yet. So here's my question for you: if you had to migrate off your current platform next quarter, how painful would it actually be, and what does that tell you about whether you chose the tool or the tool chose you?

Sources

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