For a UAE store the decision usually comes down to one number: if you do not use Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an extra 2% of every sale on its Basic plan, on top of whatever your gateway charges. WooCommerce charges nothing per sale. Below about AED 50,000 a month that gap is small; above it, it compounds fast.
Last updated: 23 September 2026. Shopify and WooCommerce figures were read from their own public pages on 23 September 2026 and are linked to their source. Disclosure: this page is published by BIGBANG ITS FZE, which sells WordPress hosting and builds WooCommerce stores. We are not neutral on that, so every Shopify number here is quoted from Shopify’s own pricing page rather than characterised, and there is a section below on where Shopify is the better buy.
Shopify or WooCommerce for a UAE store?
They are not really the same kind of product:
- Shopify is a hosted platform. You pay a monthly fee and, in most cases, a percentage of every sale. Hosting, security, updates and PCI scope are Shopify’s problem. You trade control and per-sale margin for not having to think.
- WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin for WordPress — Woo’s own pricing page describes it as “the free, open-source ecommerce platform for WordPress” with “0% revenue share” and “no monthly subscription”. You pay for hosting, for any paid extensions, and for somebody to build and maintain it. There is no platform cut of your revenue.
The honest summary is that Shopify’s cost scales with your revenue and WooCommerce’s cost scales with your complexity. Which is cheaper depends entirely on which of those two is growing faster in your business.
What each actually costs (prices as of 2026-09-23)
Shopify plans, as shown on its UAE pricing page
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly | Fee if you do NOT use Shopify Payments | Shopify Payments card rate (UAE) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | USD 24/month | USD 32/month | 2.0% of every sale | 2.9% + AED 1.00 |
| Grow | USD 69/month | USD 92/month | 1.0% | 2.8% + AED 1.00 |
| Advanced | USD 299/month | USD 399/month | 0.6% | 2.7% + AED 1.00 |
| Plus | From USD 2,300/month on a 3-year term; USD 2,500 on a 1-year term | 0.2% | 2.5% + AED 1.00 | |
Source: shopify.com/ae/pricing and Shopify Plus pricing, read 2026-09-23. Worth knowing: Shopify’s global pricing page shows Basic at USD 27 and Grow at USD 72 monthly, while the UAE page shows USD 32 and USD 92. Advanced and Plus match. Check which page you are being quoted from.
Shopify Payments is available in the UAE — it is listed on Shopify’s own supported-countries page, with a dedicated UAE entry. Claims elsewhere that it is Plus-only or early-access in the UAE do not appear on any Shopify page we could find.
Add-ons Shopify publishes separately: domains from USD 9 per year, and paid themes as a one-time purchase, with listed prices on the theme store ranging from USD 100 to USD 400. Apps from the app store are priced by their developers.
WooCommerce costs
| Item | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce core | Free, open source, 0% revenue share | woocommerce.com/pricing |
| Hosting | Woo’s own published range: USD 25–350/month. Our WP Elite is USD 20.99 | Woo pricing page; our store |
| Paid extensions | Woo’s published range: USD 29–299/year each. Subscriptions USD 279/yr, Bookings USD 249/yr | Subscriptions, Bookings |
| WooPayments (UAE) | 2.90% + AED 1 per card transaction, +2.00% international, AED 60 dispute; no setup or monthly fee | WooPayments fees |
| Build and maintenance | Real and variable. Our WooCommerce multi-vendor build is USD 700 one-time | our e-commerce solutions |
The fee that decides it: Shopify’s third-party transaction fee
This is the mechanic most comparisons skip, and for a UAE merchant it is usually the whole argument.
If you use a UAE gateway — Telr, PayTabs, Network International, Checkout.com — instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own percentage on top of what that gateway charges you: 2.0% on Basic, 1.0% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus. That is a fee for not using Shopify’s own processor, and it is charged whether or not Shopify touched the money.
On AED 200,000 of monthly sales, the Basic-plan version of that fee alone is AED 4,000 per month, before your gateway’s own 2.25–2.9%. WooCommerce has no equivalent: whichever gateway you pick, you pay that gateway and nobody else.
This is also why the Shopify plan ladder is not really about features. Moving from Basic to Grow costs USD 45 more per month and cuts that fee from 2% to 1% — which pays for itself the moment your third-party-processed sales exceed roughly AED 16,500 a month.
UAE payment gateways, compared (prices as of 2026-09-23)
Only two of the main UAE options publish rates publicly, which is itself worth knowing.
| Gateway | Monthly fee | Per transaction | Published? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telr — Medium tier | AED 0 | 2.25% + AED 0.50 (+0.50% international) | Yes, full rate card |
| Telr — Small tier | AED 99 | 2.35% + AED 0.50 | Yes |
| Telr — Entry tier | AED 199 | 2.45% + AED 1.00 | Yes |
| Stripe UAE | AED 0 — “no setup fees, monthly fees, or any other hidden fees” | 2.9% + AED 1.00 (+1% international, +1% conversion) | Yes |
| WooPayments UAE | AED 0 | 2.90% + AED 1.00 (+2.00% international) | Yes |
| PayTabs | No UAE rates published — sign-up or “Talk to Sales” | No | |
| Checkout.com | “Tailored pricing” — contact sales only | No | |
| Network International / N-Genius | Not publicly readable; the page returned an access error on the day of checking | No | |
Telr’s tiers are gated by monthly sales volume, so the AED 0 monthly tier requires you to be above its volume band. Telr does not show a setup fee as a line item on that page, so we are not claiming there is none.
Total monthly cost at three revenue levels
Assumptions, stated so you can disagree with them: 100 orders per AED 25,000 of revenue, all domestic cards, annual billing on Shopify, and our WP Elite plan at USD 20.99 (AED 77) for the WooCommerce side. Build and extension costs are excluded from both columns because they are one-off or optional — they are covered in the next section.
| Monthly sales | Shopify Basic + Shopify Payments | Shopify Basic + a UAE gateway | WooCommerce on our hosting + Telr |
|---|---|---|---|
| AED 50,000 (200 orders) | AED 1,738 | AED 2,462 | AED 1,451 |
| AED 200,000 (800 orders) | AED 6,688 | AED 8,988 | AED 4,977 |
| AED 500,000 (2,000 orders) | AED 16,588 | AED 22,338 | AED 12,327 |
Derived from the published rates above, as of 2026-09-23, converted at AED 3.6725 per US dollar. Shopify Payments column uses 2.9% + AED 1; the UAE-gateway column adds Shopify’s 2% Basic-plan third-party fee to Telr’s 2.25% + AED 0.50; the WooCommerce column uses Telr’s tier appropriate to that volume. All three columns use the Basic plan so the comparison is like for like; moving to Grow or Advanced lowers Shopify’s third-party fee but raises the monthly. Your own numbers will differ — the point is the shape, not the decimals.
The pattern is consistent: WooCommerce is cheaper at every level tested, and the gap widens with revenue. The worst combination for a UAE merchant is Shopify plus a local gateway, because you pay two processors’ worth of percentage.
What WooCommerce costs that Shopify does not
We would be selling you something dishonest if we stopped at that table.
- Somebody has to build it. A Shopify store can be live in a weekend on a paid theme. A WooCommerce store usually needs a developer. Ours starts at USD 700 one-time for a multi-vendor build.
- Somebody has to maintain it. WordPress core, WooCommerce, the theme and every plugin need updating, and a broken update on a live store costs real money. Shopify does this for you and never breaks your checkout with a plugin conflict.
- Extensions add up. Subscriptions at USD 279 a year and Bookings at USD 249 a year are not unusual, and Woo’s own published range goes to USD 299 per extension per year.
- PCI scope is yours. With a hosted gateway the card data does not touch your server, but the responsibility conversation is still yours to have.
- Performance is yours. A badly hosted WooCommerce store is slower than any Shopify store. That is precisely why the hosting choice matters — see our guide to hosting for WooCommerce.
Where Shopify is genuinely the better buy
- You are testing an idea. Three days free and a low monthly fee beats a build cost you cannot yet justify.
- Nobody in the business is technical and you do not want an agency relationship.
- You sell across many channels — POS, social, marketplaces — and want them managed from one admin.
- You will use Shopify Payments anyway, in which case the third-party fee never applies and the maths above changes substantially.
- Your margin is high and your order volume is low. A percentage of a small number is a small number.
Shopify is a genuinely excellent product. The argument on this page is not that it is bad; it is that its pricing model takes a share of your growth, and that this is worth calculating before you commit.
Running WooCommerce on BIGBANG ITS
Our WordPress plans, cheapest first, with the ones we would actually recommend for a store marked:
| Plan | Monthly | Storage / RAM | Sites | Suitable for a store? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WP Start | USD 5.99 | 60 GB NVMe / 2 GB | 1 | A small catalogue only |
| WP Pro | USD 10.99 | 100 GB NVMe / 4 GB | 10 | Yes — a typical store |
| WP Elite | USD 20.99 | 500 GB NVMe / 6 GB | 25 | Yes — a busy store with heavy product photography |
| WP Max | USD 32.99 | Unlimited NVMe / 16 GB | Unlimited | Multiple stores or a marketplace |
Prices as of 2026-09-23 from our store. Every plan includes LiteSpeed caching, free SSL, free off-site backup and free migration. Larger stores move to a Cloud VPS from USD 8.90 per month. Store builds are on our e-commerce solutions page.
Which should you choose?
- Choose Shopify if you are starting out, have nobody technical, will use Shopify Payments, or value never thinking about updates more than you value the percentage.
- Choose WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, want a UAE gateway without paying a penalty for it, expect revenue to grow faster than complexity, or need a data and customisation model you own outright.
- Do the arithmetic first either way. Take last month’s revenue and order count, put them through the rates above, and the answer usually stops being a matter of opinion.
Related: WordPress hosting in the UAE compared, where to host: UAE, Saudi Arabia or Europe, and our WordPress hosting and website design pages.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is WooCommerce really free?
The plugin is. WooCommerce’s own pricing page describes it as “the free, open-source ecommerce platform for WordPress” with “0% revenue share” and “no monthly subscription”. What costs money is hosting, any paid extensions, your payment gateway’s fees, and building and maintaining the store. There is no platform fee on your sales.
How much does Shopify cost in the UAE?
On Shopify’s UAE pricing page as of 23 September 2026: Basic USD 24 per month billed annually or USD 32 monthly, Grow USD 69 or USD 92, Advanced USD 299 or USD 399, and Plus from USD 2,300 per month on a three-year term. Note that Shopify’s global pricing page shows lower Basic and Grow figures than the UAE page.
Does Shopify charge extra if I use a UAE payment gateway?
Yes. Shopify publishes a transaction fee for not using Shopify Payments: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. That is charged on top of whatever your gateway charges. WooCommerce has no equivalent fee.
Is Shopify Payments available in the UAE?
Yes. The UAE appears on Shopify’s own supported-countries list with a dedicated country page, and the UAE card rates are published on the UAE pricing page at 2.9% + AED 1.00 on Basic, falling to 2.5% + AED 1.00 on Plus. If you use it, the third-party transaction fee does not apply.
Which UAE payment gateways publish their rates?
Of the main options, Telr and Stripe publish full public rate cards, and WooPayments publishes a UAE rate of 2.90% + AED 1. PayTabs and Checkout.com do not publish UAE per-transaction rates and direct you to sales, and Network International’s N-Genius page was not publicly readable on the day of checking.
At what revenue does WooCommerce become cheaper than Shopify?
On the assumptions in the table above — 100 orders per AED 25,000, domestic cards, annual Shopify billing — WooCommerce on our hosting with Telr is already cheaper at AED 50,000 a month, and the gap widens with revenue. The crossover moves against WooCommerce if you need several paid extensions or ongoing developer time, which is why build cost belongs in your own calculation.
Can I migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce later?
Yes. Products, customers and orders export from Shopify and import into WooCommerce, and the practical work is usually the theme, the URL structure and the redirects rather than the data. Plan the redirect map before you switch so you do not lose search rankings on product URLs.
What hosting does a WooCommerce store actually need?
More than a brochure site. A store runs uncached requests on every cart and checkout page, so PHP workers and RAM matter more than raw storage. A typical store is comfortable on our WP Pro at USD 10.99 a month; a busy one with a large photographed catalogue belongs on WP Elite or a Cloud VPS.
Talk to us directly — we usually reply within minutes during business hours.
