WooCommerce gives you complete control: your data, your server, your checkout, no platform fees on revenue. The trade is that everything the hosted platforms handle for you becomes your responsibility, and that responsibility is where most WooCommerce stores fail.
What we do
- store builds on custom or heavily customised themes
- performance work, which WooCommerce genuinely needs
- payment and shipping configuration for German trade
- security hardening and update routines
- migrations to and from WooCommerce
Performance needs real attention
WooCommerce adds substantial queries to WordPress. On a shared host with a large catalogue and a heavy theme, it becomes slow, and slow stores lose sales.
The work is concrete: object caching, page caching configured to exempt cart and checkout, an optimised product query path, indexed database tables, and a theme that does not load the entire catalogue to render a menu.
Total cost, honestly
WooCommerce is free; running it is not. Budget for competent hosting, paid extensions for functionality Shopify includes, and ongoing maintenance.
For many stores the total lands near a Shopify plan. The reasons to choose it are control and flexibility, not saving money — and anyone claiming otherwise has left maintenance out of the comparison.
German compliance
German e-commerce requires VAT-inclusive pricing, clear shipping costs, correct withdrawal instructions, proper invoice handling and legal pages reachable everywhere. Several German-specific extensions exist because default WooCommerce does not cover this.
Getting it wrong is a legal exposure, not a detail.
Security
A store handles payment flows and customer data. Keep core, theme and extensions updated, restrict admin access, enforce strong authentication, and test your restores. An untested backup is not a backup.
Migrations
Moving between platforms means mapping products, URLs, redirects, customers and order history. We plan redirects before launch and verify after, because that is where visibility is lost.
FAQ
Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
Not usually, once hosting, extensions and maintenance are counted. It is more flexible.
How many products can it handle?
Thousands, with proper hosting and caching. Tens of thousands needs architectural attention.
Do we need a maintenance plan?
Effectively yes. An unmaintained store handling payments is a liability.