How we price this: SoftwareSift reads every number off the vendor pricing page, dates it, and re-checks it monthly. Our links to Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce are all plain and earn us nothing -- nothing on this page is shaped by a commission. The figures are US list prices in USD. With e-commerce the monthly plan fee is the part that matters least: the real cost is the cut each platform takes on every sale, and the penalty some charge for using your own payment processor.
All three are priced differently on purpose. Shopify charges a monthly plan plus card processing, and adds a surcharge if you do not use Shopify Payments. BigCommerce charges a monthly plan with no transaction fee on its main gateways -- but caps your annual sales per tier. WooCommerce charges nothing for the software at all; you pay for hosting and your payment processor. To compare them you have to model an actual store, not read the stickers.
The real monthly cost to process $5,000/month in sales
We model a small store doing $5,000 a month in online card sales (about 50 orders), each platform on its entry plan billed annually, card processing at the standard online rate of roughly 2.9% + 30 cents.
| Platform | Entry plan (billed annually) | Plan fee/mo | Card processing | Extra transaction fee | Real monthly cost at $5K/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Basic | $29 | 2.9% + 30c (Shopify Payments) | 2% if you use another gateway | ~$189 (Shopify Payments); about $100 more on a third-party gateway |
| BigCommerce | Growth | $79 | ~2.9% (Stripe/PayPal, embedded) | $0 with embedded providers | ~$239 |
| WooCommerce | Free plugin + hosting | $0 (+ ~$20 hosting) | ~2.9% + 30c (your processor) | $0 | ~$180 |
Verified June 11, 2026 from the Shopify and BigCommerce pricing pages and WooCommerce.com. Model assumes $5,000/month in online card sales (about 50 orders), each plan billed annually, processing at ~2.9% + $0.30 (about $160/month on $5,000). Shopify Basic $29/mo annual ($39 monthly); its third-party-gateway fee is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, charged only when you do not use Shopify Payments. BigCommerce Core ($29/mo) caps at $30K/year in sales, so $60K/year ($5K/mo) puts a store on Growth ($79/mo); embedded providers (Stripe, PayPal Braintree, Adyen, Klarna) carry no BigCommerce transaction fee. WooCommerce is a free plugin with no platform or transaction fee; cost is WordPress hosting (roughly $10-30/month for a small store) plus your processor's rate.
What the headline hides
- Shopify taxes you for not using its bank. Use any gateway other than Shopify Payments and Shopify adds 2% on Basic (1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced) on top of your processor's own fee. On $5,000/month that 2% is an extra $100/month -- $1,200 a year -- purely for choosing your own processor. Shopify Payments avoids it, which is the point.
- BigCommerce has no gateway penalty, but it has GMV caps. There is no transaction fee when you use an embedded provider like Stripe or PayPal, but each plan caps annual sales (Core $30K, Growth $100K, Scale about $400K) and auto-upgrades you to the next tier when you cross it. You do not choose the upgrade -- your sales volume does -- so the plan you start on is rarely the plan you stay on.
- WooCommerce's platform is free; the cost moves to hosting. No license fee, no transaction fee, no gateway penalty -- but it runs on your own WordPress hosting (roughly $10-30/month for a small store) and you maintain it. The trade is lower fees for more responsibility.
- Processing is the common floor. All three sit around 2.9% + 30c per online card sale; on $5,000/month that processing alone is about $160, more than any plan fee here. The plan price and the penalty-or-cap structure -- not the processing rate -- are where the platforms actually diverge.
Which fits a small store?
For the lowest real cost when you can manage hosting, WooCommerce wins -- no platform or transaction fee, just hosting plus standard processing (about $180/month on $5,000 in sales). Shopify Basic is the simplest all-in-one and competitive at about $189/month if you use Shopify Payments; budget the 2% surcharge if you need a different gateway. BigCommerce charges no gateway penalty and keeps Stripe or PayPal fee-free, but its annual GMV caps push a growing store up tiers faster than the sticker suggests. Decide how you want to take payments first -- your own gateway (WooCommerce or BigCommerce) or Shopify's own (Shopify Payments) -- and the cheapest platform for your sales volume follows from that.
Go deeper
- CRM pricing, real first-year cost compared
- Accounting software pricing, the promo-cliff modeled
- How SoftwareSift models true cost
Check current pricing at the source: Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce. We link straight to the vendor and earn nothing on the click.
SoftwareSift Team. We earn affiliate commissions on some tools we cover, disclosed on every link; this never changes the prices or the math we report.