I am a long time user of WordPress and WooCommerce as an eCommerce platform. 

The reasons I got into using those two are likely the same as for everyone: both WooComerce and WordPress are free, so this leaves me with more money for marketing. And a secondary reason: both WooCommerce and WordPress are open-source, which means you can customize them to do pretty much anything you want. 

So what is my conclusion after over five years of using this combo? 

It is not really “free!”

There is the obvious cost of having to pay for hosting. And if you want to do anything useful with WooCommerce, you need to add up extensions and plugins that are not free. The same goes for professional-grade plugins that you will install into the main WordPress site. The total costs with software add to about $50/mo, and to that, you need to add your hosting, which for serious stores it will not be a “starter plan.”

But there is a hidden cost that I don’t see many people talk about. And that is the time and focus you need to put into setting up WordPress and WooCommerce and then maintaining it to make sure it remains secure and up to date. And when (not if) something breaks down, it’s up to you to fix it. 

As a software developer, I am OK with fiddling with tech, fixing bugs, diving deep into the code. But as I transition into being and thinking like an entrepreneur, I notice that instead of working on my business, on my marketing, on coming up with new ways to find and support my target audience, I spend a lot of time tinkering with code. And while it is fun, it does not scale. 

The web is changing at an ever-increasing rate. Sometimes just trying to keep up eats a lot of my time. And the thing with “time” is that it is a non-renewable resource. You cannot ever get a refund on a time you’ve spent doing something. 

So what do you want to do? Spend time learning how to put together the free tools and fix them when they get broken? Or would you instead spend time creating content, products or doing marketing, or simply taking some time off to spend with the family? 

For all these reasons, I am now looking into and recommending the Shopify solution. 

Shopify is right for you if:

• you are serious about your store, so you will generate sales
• you don’t have any tech skills, and you don’t want to spend time learning tech
• you don’t want to worry about security, backups, performance, or maintenance 
• you value time more than money

If you know of another eStore platform that saves you time, let me know in the comments below. I’d also like to know your experience with WooCommerce as it relates to this article.