WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, Drupal Commerce. When each one is the right call for your store.
The "best CMS for ecommerce" question has a different answer at 50 SKUs, 5,000 SKUs, and 50,000 SKUs. Most articles ranking ecommerce platforms skip that part. They list ten options, throw star ratings at them, and hope you find your project somewhere in the middle.
We work with four CMSes: WooCommerce on WordPress, Magento (now Adobe Commerce), OpenCart, and Drupal Commerce. Here is the short version of when each one fits.
WooCommerce on WordPress is the default for stores under 1,000 SKUs and for any project that already has WordPress for content. The plugin ecosystem covers about 95% of what a small to mid-size shop needs: subscriptions, bookings, multi-currency, B2B pricing tiers. Total cost to launch: $1,500 to $8,000. Monthly run cost: $99 to $400. Eight in ten people who land on this page should be looking at this option first.
Magento (Adobe Commerce) is the answer when the catalog crosses 5,000 SKUs, when you have multi-store setups under one company, when B2B pricing rules get complex, or when you already have a Magento team to maintain it. A $35/month VPS will not survive launch day for this one. Plan for $200 to $800 a month in hosting alone. Nothing else in the open-source world handles a 100,000-product catalog with the same flexibility.
OpenCart wins when budget is the hard constraint and you need a fully featured store under $500 to launch. Smaller plugin marketplace than WooCommerce, but the core is leaner and the admin panel is friendlier for non-technical owners.
Drupal Commerce covers a narrow but useful slot: content and commerce sharing the same publishing workflow. A magazine that sells subscriptions plus single issues, a museum that runs an editorial alongside ticket sales, a B2B publisher with gated technical content. Steeper learning curve than the other three, so do not pick it for a regular catalog store.
The migration cost between any two of these runs $3,000 to $30,000 depending on catalog size and customizations. The cheap question (which to pick) is much less expensive than the expensive question (which to switch to in three years).
We build and migrate stores on both OpenCart and Shopify. Here's the honest 2026 comparison: real costs, where each wins, and the migration most merchants actually want.
An agency's take on Shopify alternatives in 2026. The transaction-fee math nobody runs, what we move stores to by situation, WooCommerce vs Shopify honestly, and when to stay put.
WooCommerce vs Shopify with real total cost of ownership numbers, SKU-complexity break-even, SEO control, the lock-in question, and a decision matrix. From an agency that ships and migrates both.
Full ecommerce on WordPress: WooCommerce, Stripe and PayPal, shipping rules, transactional email, abandoned-cart recovery. Live in 14 days, fixed price, fixed scope.
Outdoor-gear retailer Northdrift had 1,840 SKUs on Shopify Plus paying $2k/mo. We migrated to WooCommerce + Bricks Builder over 5 weeks. Platform costs dropped 95%, organic traffic held within 4% week-over-week, and the editorial team got actual product-page flexibility.
The comparison every WP developer asks: Rank Math or Yoast? Real review from 50+ production sites, schema, sitemap submission, Pro vs Free.
Built a WooCommerce store for a fashion brand in 14 days that grew revenue from $60k to $168k in the first 6 months.
If you have outgrown Shopify (transaction fees biting, theme limits, cannot get the checkout you want), WooCommerce or Magento are the two open-source landings. We do not recommend Magento for sub-500-SKU stores migrating off Shopify; the operational overhead does not justify it. WooCommerce is the cleaner exit.
If you are coming from BigCommerce or Wix, the same answer holds: WooCommerce by default unless catalog size or B2B complexity pushes you to Magento.
None of our four is the right answer for one-product DTC brands with five SKUs and a $50/month budget. That is a Shopify Lite or Squarespace project, and we will say so on the call. We are not a fit for every store, and we do not pretend otherwise.
OpenCart, by a wide margin, if you self-host. Domain ($12/year) plus a $5/month VPS plus the free OpenCart core gets you a working store under $80 in the first year. WooCommerce on WordPress is the next cheapest at around $150 to $250 in year one once you add a paid theme and a SEO plugin. Magento has no realistic cheap tier; even the open-source edition needs a $50 to $100/month VPS to run smoothly.
Technically yes (Easy Digital Downloads for digital goods, MemberPress for subscriptions, WP Simple Pay for one-off Stripe payments), but WooCommerce is so dominant in the WordPress ecommerce ecosystem that fighting it usually costs more than going with it. The exception: if you sell only digital downloads or only memberships, the lighter alternatives are cleaner.
Three signals: a catalog over 5,000 active SKUs, multi-warehouse inventory tracking, or B2B pricing where 30+ customer groups each have their own discount matrix. If none of those apply, WooCommerce will handle the project at half the infrastructure cost.
Yes. OpenCart 4 is the current major version with regular security releases. The plugin marketplace is smaller than WooCommerce's (a few thousand vs 60,000+) but the core is more complete out of the box, which means you need fewer plugins for a typical store.
If you are decoupling the storefront and using a CMS as a content/catalog backend, all four work as headless commerce APIs. Magento has the most mature GraphQL layer. WooCommerce works through WP REST plus a custom GraphQL plugin. Drupal Commerce is the cleanest fit for content-heavy headless setups. OpenCart is workable but the smallest community of headless implementations.
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