WordPress or Shopify? How to choose for your business website

Start with what you are selling

If most of your business happens through online orders, with products, stock, shipping and payments, you are building a store first and a website second. If you sell a service, run a restaurant, rent villas or want people to call or enquire, you are building a website that might also take a few payments.

That one difference settles the question for most of the businesses we work with. Write down what you want the site to do in its first year, in order of importance, before you look at any platform.

When Shopify makes sense

Shopify is built for selling. Products, inventory, checkout, payments, discount codes and order emails all work well from day one, and you never have to think about hosting, security updates or backups. For a brand that lives on its online sales, that peace of mind is worth a lot.

The trade-off is that you rent rather than own. You pay a monthly plan, many useful features come as paid apps, and you work inside the way Shopify wants things done. Content-heavy pages, like long service pages or a busy blog, are possible but feel less natural than on WordPress.

When WordPress makes sense

WordPress suits businesses whose website is mainly about explaining, persuading and getting enquiries. You can shape every page the way you want, run a proper blog, and build the kind of content that helps you show up on Google and in AI answers. You own the site and can move it to any host.

The trade-off is care. A WordPress site needs updates, backups and someone keeping an eye on plugins. Left alone, it slows down and becomes a security risk. We wrote more about this in what website maintenance actually includes.

What about selling on WordPress?

WordPress can sell too, using WooCommerce. It works well for businesses with a modest product range, or where the content matters as much as the shop, for example a food brand with recipes and stories alongside its products.

For a large catalogue, frequent sales and a lot of daily orders, we usually lean towards Shopify, because it handles that load with less maintenance.

The costs people forget

The build cost is the number everyone compares, but the running cost is what you live with. On Shopify, add up the monthly plan, the apps you will need and the payment charges. On WordPress, add up hosting, any paid plugins, and the time or retainer for updates and fixes.

Also think about who will make small changes after launch. If your team wants to edit prices, add products or change a banner without calling anyone, the platform they find easier is often the right answer.

How we usually decide with clients

We ask three questions. How much of your revenue will come through the website itself? Who will update the site every week? And how important is content, such as a blog, case studies and detailed service pages, to how people find you?

If online sales lead, we lean towards Shopify. If enquiries, content and search visibility lead, we lean towards WordPress. When a client is somewhere in between, we talk through both honestly before anything is designed. You can see the kind of sites we build on our website design page.