Shopify vs WooCommerce in India: Real Costs and GST for Your Own Store
Shopify suits you if you want a store running this week and are happy to pay a monthly plan plus a fee on each online payment. WooCommerce suits you if you are comfortable with WordPress, hosting and plugins, and want lower running costs as sales grow. For GST, both make you a direct seller: you invoice, register and report yourself.
- Shopify Basic costs Rs 1,499 a month paid yearly or Rs 1,994 paid monthly, as on 12 Nov 2026, per Shopify's India pricing page.
- Shopify Payments is not offered in India, so you use a third-party gateway, and Shopify adds its own transaction fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, as on 12 Nov 2026.
- WooCommerce is free to download and use, but you pay for hosting, paid extensions and a gateway.
- An own store is not a marketplace sale. Selling goods to buyers in other states needs GST registration whatever your turnover.
In this guide
Why open your own store at all?
Marketplaces bring buyers, but they also set the rules: fees, return windows, which payment modes you offer, even whether your account stays open. An own store gives you the customer's details, your own brand and your own return policy. The price is that you must bring the traffic yourself, usually through social media, ads or repeat buyers.
Most small sellers do both. The marketplace pays the bills, and the own store builds something you control. So the real question is which platform costs less effort and money for the size you are now.
Shopify and WooCommerce side by side
| Shopify | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A hosted store builder. Shopify runs the servers | A free plugin for WordPress. You run the website |
| Plan cost (as on 12 Nov 2026) | Basic Rs 1,499 a month yearly or Rs 1,994 monthly; Grow Rs 5,599 yearly or Rs 7,447 monthly; Advanced Rs 22,680 yearly or Rs 30,164 monthly | Free to download and use |
| Other running costs | Paid apps and themes if you need them | Hosting, domain, paid extensions and themes. WooCommerce's own estimate is USD 25 to 350 a month for hosting and USD 29 to 299 a year per extension |
| Payment fees | Gateway's fee, plus Shopify's third-party transaction fee of 2% (Basic), 1% (Grow), 0.6% (Advanced) | Gateway's fee only. WooCommerce's own WooPayments is not offered to Indian merchants |
| Skill needed | Low. Most setup is point and click | Medium. Updates, backups and security are your job |
| Control | Within Shopify's rules and apps | Full, including the code and data |
Shopify's pricing page does not say whether GST is added to these plan prices, and its current offer of a short trial and a low first few months may change. Read the page and your first invoice before you decide. Gateway fees vary by provider and payment mode, so we have not printed any.
A worked example
Sneha sells handmade jewellery from Kolkata. She expects online prepaid sales of Rs 3,00,000 a month on her own store, through an Indian payment gateway. Gateway fees are the same on both platforms, so they are left out. WooCommerce costs are an illustration.
| Monthly cost | Shopify Basic | Shopify Grow | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan, paid yearly | Rs 1,499 | Rs 5,599 | Nil |
| Shopify transaction fee on Rs 3,00,000 | Rs 6,000 (2%) | Rs 3,000 (1%) | Nil |
| Hosting and extensions (illustration) | Nil | Nil | Rs 3,000 |
| Total | Rs 7,499 | Rs 8,599 | Rs 3,000 |
At Rs 6,00,000 a month the picture shifts. Basic becomes Rs 13,499 and Grow Rs 11,599, while WooCommerce stays near Rs 3,000. Grow costs Rs 4,100 more in plan fee and saves 1% on sales, so it overtakes Basic at about Rs 4,10,000 of monthly sales.
So is WooCommerce always cheaper? On paper, yes. But the illustration leaves out your time, and a developer's bill when a plugin update breaks checkout during a sale. If you have no one to look after the site, the Shopify fee buys you peace of mind.
What changes for GST when you sell on your own store?
On a marketplace, the operator collects the buyer's money, holds back TCS and reports your sales in its GSTR-8. On your own store none of that happens. Shopify and WooCommerce give you the software, and the buyer pays you through your gateway. So you should not expect GST TCS or 194-O TDS on these sales, and you are fully responsible for the tax.
- Registration. Section 24 makes registration compulsory for anyone making an inter-State taxable supply. If you ship goods to buyers in other states from your own site, you need a GSTIN from the start, whatever your turnover. The small-seller route that lets some marketplace sellers sell without a GSTIN does not cover your own website. More in GST registration limit.
- Invoices. You issue the tax invoice yourself, with your GSTIN, HSN and the right rate. Both platforms can do this through settings or apps.
- GSTR-1. Own-store consumer sales are reported by state and rate in your B2C figures. They are not sales through an e-commerce operator, so they do not belong in the marketplace tables. If you sell on marketplaces too, read GSTR-1 for multiple marketplaces.
- Fees. Keep the invoices for plan fees, apps and gateway charges. Where GST is charged to your GSTIN, it may be claimable as input tax credit. A foreign platform's invoice without Indian GST raises a reverse charge question worth asking your CA.
How to choose, step by step
- Estimate your online sales for the next year, and how much will be prepaid.
- Price both options from the official pricing pages on the day you decide, using the table above as the template.
- Be honest about skills. Who will update plugins, take backups and fix a broken checkout?
- Get your GSTIN ready before your first sale to another state.
- Set up tax invoices with your HSN codes and rates before launch, not after the first hundred orders.
The mistake people usually make
The usual mistake is treating the own store like a marketplace account for tax. Sellers wait for a TCS credit that never comes, or assume someone else is reporting the sales. On your own store, if you do not put the sale in your GSTR-1, no one does, until a notice asks why your bank credits are higher than your declared sales.
The second mistake is comparing plan prices and forgetting the transaction fee. On Rs 3,00,000 of monthly sales, Shopify Basic's 2% is four times the plan price itself.
Sources
- Shopify India pricing: plans and third-party transaction fees (checked 12 Nov 2026)
- Shopify Help: countries where Shopify Payments is available (checked 12 Nov 2026)
- Shopify Help: third-party payment providers (checked 12 Nov 2026)
- WooCommerce pricing: costs of running a store (checked 12 Nov 2026)
- WooPayments: supported countries (checked 12 Nov 2026)
- Section 24, CGST Act: compulsory registration (CBIC) (checked 12 Nov 2026)
- Section 2, CGST Act: definitions of e-commerce and e-commerce operator (CBIC) (checked 12 Nov 2026)
How AprilTax can help
Many sellers run an own store alongside Amazon, Flipkart or Meesho. For the marketplace side, AprilTax has a free GSTR-1 tool for online sellers: upload the sales reports, and it prepares your GSTR-1, runs about 30 checks and matches the TCS your marketplaces reported. You upload the JSON file on the GST portal yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify or WooCommerce cheaper in India?
Is Shopify Payments available in India?
Is WooCommerce really free?
Do I need GST registration to sell on my own Shopify or WooCommerce store?
Will TCS be deducted on my own website sales?
How do I report own-store sales in GSTR-1?
Can I claim GST on Shopify or gateway fees?
File your GSTR-1 free
AprilTax turns your Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho reports into a GSTR-1 file ready for the GST portal, with the checks done for you.
Open the free toolWhat sellers say
4.9 on Google →Read next
Stuck on a return or registration?
File GSTR-1 free with the tool, or hand it to a Tax Expert at a fixed fee.