If you are about to start selling online from Mansfield, Nottingham or anywhere else in Nottinghamshire, the platform you pick will shape your monthly bills, what you can sell, and how easy it is to leave. Shopify, WooCommerce and OpenCart are the three we build on, and we have no reason to push you towards any of them, so here is the honest comparison.
We have built online shops since 2006, on platforms that no longer exist as well as these three. The pattern we keep seeing is businesses choosing on the basis of a friend’s recommendation or a slick advert, then discovering a year in that the platform does not fit what they sell or how they sell it.
The short answer
- Shopify if you want the easiest life, sell a focused range of ordinary products, and are happy paying a monthly fee for someone else to run the platform.
- WooCommerce if you already have, or want, a WordPress site, sell anything restricted (CBD, vaping, alcohol, knives), or want to own the whole thing with no platform fee.
- OpenCart if you have a large catalogue, trade customers with different price lists, or you value speed and low running costs over a big app store.
If none of those lines jumped out, keep reading. If one did, that is probably your answer.
Shopify
Shopify is a hosted platform: you pay monthly, they handle the hosting, security, updates and payments, and you run the shop through a clean admin that most people pick up in an afternoon. It is the reason it dominates small-business e-commerce.
Good at
- Getting a shop live quickly, often within a few weeks.
- Security and uptime you never have to think about.
- Selling in a physical shop too: Shopify POS keeps online and till stock in sync, which is a big deal for Nottinghamshire retailers with a high street presence.
- A huge app ecosystem for reviews, email, subscriptions and loyalty.
Watch out for
- The monthly bill grows with you. The plan is £25 to £300+ a month, and the apps you will inevitably add each cost £5 to £50. We regularly see “£25 a month” shops paying £150.
- Restricted products. Shopify Payments will not process CBD, vaping and several other categories, and the platform can close a store for policy breaches at short notice. We wrote about selling CBD on Shopify versus WooCommerce years ago and the advice still stands.
- Trade pricing and complex catalogues need apps or Shopify Plus, which starts at roughly £1,700 a month.
- You are renting. Leaving is possible but it is a migration project, not an export button.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the shop plugin for WordPress. It turns the world’s most common website platform into a store, which means your shop, blog, service pages and everything else live in one system you own.
Good at
- Businesses that are as much about services and content as products: a blinds company that sells online but mostly generates fitting enquiries, for example.
- Restricted products. With a UK high-risk payment gateway, WooCommerce will happily sell what Shopify will not.
- No platform fee. You pay for hosting and support (from £1 a day with us) and the odd premium plugin.
- Total flexibility. If it can be built, it can be built in WooCommerce.
Watch out for
- It needs looking after. Updates, backups and security are your job or your agency’s. Abandoned WooCommerce shops are where most of our rescue work comes from.
- Plugin sprawl. Every feature is a plugin, and every plugin is a renewal and a potential conflict. Keep the count low.
- Performance at scale. Thousands of products with lots of variations need proper hosting and tuning.
OpenCart
OpenCart is the one people have not heard of, and the one we still recommend more often than you would expect. It is a dedicated open-source shop system: no licence fee, fast out of the box, and built around catalogues rather than content.
Good at
- Large catalogues. Thousands of SKUs, multiple attributes and filters, without the performance headaches.
- Trade and B2B. Customer groups with separate price lists, quantity breaks, account-only pricing and quote requests are core features, not add-ons.
- Low running costs. Hosting from £1 a day and no monthly platform fee, ever.
- Multi-store from one admin, useful if you run two brands.
Watch out for
- Smaller ecosystem. Fewer extensions and themes than WooCommerce, and fewer developers who know it well. Ask any agency how many OpenCart shops they currently look after.
- Content is secondary. If you need a rich blog and service pages alongside the shop, WordPress does that better.
- Design work costs more than picking a Shopify theme, because there are fewer good ones to start from.
We have looked after OpenCart shops for well over a decade; our OpenCart web design post explains why we have not dropped it.
The costs side by side
| Shopify | WooCommerce | OpenCart | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | £25 – £300+ a month | None | None |
| Hosting & support | Included | from £1 a day + VAT | from £1 a day + VAT |
| Typical apps / plugins | £20 – £150 a month | £0 – £300 a year | £0 – £200 a year |
| Card fees | 1.5% – 2% + 25p (Shopify Payments) | Gateway rates, typically 1.4% – 2% | Gateway rates, typically 1.4% – 2% |
| Build with dijitul | £1,500 – £6,000 + VAT | £1,500 – £8,000 + VAT | £2,500 – £10,000 + VAT |
| Three-year running cost (small shop) | ~£2,000 – £9,000 | ~£1,100 – £2,000 | ~£1,100 – £1,700 |
Questions to ask before you decide
- What do I sell? Restricted products rule Shopify out immediately.
- How many products, and how many variations? Under 200 simple products, any platform. Thousands with trade pricing, OpenCart or WooCommerce.
- Do I also sell in person? Shopify POS is genuinely good; the others need an EPOS integration.
- Who will run it day to day? Shopify is easiest for a non-technical owner. WooCommerce and OpenCart are easy too, but only if someone is doing the updates.
- Is the shop the whole business, or part of it? If you mostly generate enquiries and sell a bit online, WooCommerce keeps everything in one WordPress site.
- How do I feel about a fee that rises as I grow? Some owners do not mind. Some really do.
What we would pick for three typical Nottinghamshire shops
A Mansfield gift shop with 80 products and a high street unit
Shopify. Small range, ordinary products, physical till. Shopify POS keeps stock straight across both, the owner can run it themselves, and £25 to £40 a month is a fair price for never thinking about hosting. We would keep the apps to reviews and email.
A trade supplier in Worksop with 3,000 parts and account customers
OpenCart. Customer groups with their own price lists, quantity breaks, big filtered categories and no monthly fee scaling with turnover. Shopify would need Plus or a pile of apps to do the same job; WooCommerce could do it but would need more tuning at that catalogue size.
A Nottingham CBD brand launching direct to consumer
WooCommerce. Shopify is off the table because of payments and policy risk. WooCommerce with a UK high-risk gateway, on hosting we manage, gives them a shop they own that cannot be switched off by a platform. Their content and education pages, which matter enormously in that market, live in the same WordPress site.
Get a straight recommendation
Tell us what you sell, roughly how many products, and whether you have a physical shop, and we will tell you which platform we would build on and what it would cost. Fixed quotes, and we build on all three, so there is no wrong answer for us to steer you towards. See our Shopify website design page or get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify cheaper than WooCommerce?
Shopify is usually cheaper to set up and dearer to run. Expect £25 to £300 a month for the plan plus app fees and slightly higher card charges unless you use Shopify Payments. WooCommerce has no platform fee, so you pay for hosting (from £1 a day with dijitul) and the occasional premium plugin. Over three years a WooCommerce shop is normally cheaper; over three months Shopify often is.
Can I sell CBD or vape products on Shopify in the UK?
You can list them, but Shopify Payments will not process them, so you need a specialist high-risk gateway, and Shopify can close stores that breach its acceptable use policy at short notice. For CBD and vaping we recommend WooCommerce or OpenCart with a UK high-risk payment provider.
Is OpenCart still a good choice in 2026?
Yes, for the right shop. OpenCart is fast, licence-free and handles large catalogues, customer groups and trade pricing well. It has a smaller ecosystem than WooCommerce and needs a developer who knows it, which is why fewer agencies recommend it. We have built on it for well over a decade.
Can I switch platforms later?
Yes. Products, customers and orders can be migrated between all three, and with proper redirects you keep your Google rankings. It is a project rather than a button, so it is worth choosing carefully the first time.
How much does an online shop cost to build?
With dijitul, a small shop on any of the three platforms typically costs £1,500 to £6,000 + VAT, and larger catalogues or integrations sit above that. See our 2026 website cost guide for full price bands.
dijitul is a web design and SEO studio at The Bungalow, 11 St John St, Mansfield. We have built online shops for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire businesses since 2006. Photo by Kampus Production via Pexels.
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