How Much Does WooCommerce Cost? Three Stores Priced Line by Line (2026)

How much does WooCommerce cost? The plugin itself is $0, and it takes no platform fee on your sales, but a working store pays for hosting, a domain after year one, card processing and whichever paid extensions its products need. We priced three store shapes from vendors' US pages read on 9 and 10 October 2026. Before card fees, a 10-product hobby shop costs $35.88 in year one and $235.87 in year two; a 200-SKU retailer costs $312.88, then $332.87; a subscription store costs $596.88, then $616.87.

Card processing then adds 2.9% + $0.30 per order through WooPayments, the same headline rate most hosted builders charge. So WooCommerce is cheap for a small catalogue on a short hosting term with an owner who maintains it. It stops being cheap when a store needs several paid extensions, a bigger server, or someone paid by the hour to keep it running. If nobody on your side can update plugins and test the checkout afterwards, skip it.

The short answer: a $0 licence and a five-line bill

WooCommerce is free, open-source software, and Automattic takes no cut of what you sell through it. That is where most answers stop. The rest is that the plugin needs a WordPress site to live on, and the site needs a server. Every store therefore pays for at least three things: hosting, a domain and card processing. Most also pay for a theme or a few extensions. Your time is a sixth line that no vendor invoices.

WooCommerce's own pricing page is candid about how wide the range is. It quotes $25 to $350 a month for hosting a typical store and $29 to $299 a year for each paid extension. Ranges that wide are trying to describe every store at once. Ours are narrow because we chose three stores and priced each line on the day.

The bill of materials, line by line

Every price below was read on the vendor's own US page on 9 or 10 October 2026. The billing column matters as much as the price: a per-sale line grows with the store, a yearly line renews whether you sell or not, and a prepaid hosting term hides its renewal price until the term ends.

Hosting: the line with a cliff

All three hosts sell the first term cheaply and the renewal at list. SiteGround's StartUp plan is $2.99 a month prepaid for 12 months, then $17.99; GrowBig is $4.99, then $29.99. Hostinger's WooCommerce plans need a 48-month prepayment: Unlimited costs $191.52 upfront ($3.99 a month) and renews at $16.99, while Cloud Startup costs $383.52 ($7.99 a month) and renews at $25.99. Bluehost's eCommerce Essentials is $14.99 a month on a 36-month term and renews at $21.99. The longer the prepaid term, the later the cliff, and the more cash leaves on day one.

Domain, theme and backups

Each of the three hosts includes a domain for the first year, so year one carries no domain line. From year two you pay the registrar's renewal; we use Hostinger's published .com renewal of $19.99 a year, because SiteGround's and Bluehost's renewal prices were not on the pages we read. The Storefront theme is free and maintained by Woo, and paid themes in the WooCommerce marketplace sell from $49 a year. Daily backups come with all three hosting plans, which removes a line that many cost guides still price separately.

Extensions: priced per year, per extension

Woo sells its paid extensions as yearly subscriptions to updates and support. The list prices: Shipment Tracking $59, Product Add-Ons $79, Product Bundles $79, Bookings $249 and Subscriptions $279. Each has a two-year option at 20% off, so Subscriptions costs $446.40 for two years rather than $558. Renewal is automatic by default. If a subscription lapses, the extension stays installed but stops receiving updates, security patches included. Most purchases carry a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Payments and your hours

WooPayments charges 2.9% + $0.30 on a US domestic card, with no setup fee and no monthly fee for online sales. International cards add 1.5%, currency conversion adds 1%, a dispute costs $15, and instant payouts cost 1.5% of the amount paid out. Maintenance is the line we leave out of the totals, because it depends on who does the work. Our Shopify vs WooCommerce cost comparison prices it in minutes a month at three hourly rates.

Store one: the hobby shop

Ten products and ten orders a month at $50 each, so $500 a month in sales. It sells finished physical goods with flat-rate shipping and needs nothing beyond core WooCommerce. It runs on SiteGround StartUp, which hosts one website with unmetered traffic, with the free Storefront theme.

Year one costs $35.88 in hosting and $210.00 in processing ($174.00 at 2.9% of $6,000, plus $36.00 at $0.30 on 120 orders): $245.88 in all. Year two is when the hosting renews: $215.88 for StartUp at $17.99 a month, $19.99 for the domain and the same $210.00 in processing, so $445.87. The fixed part of the bill rises from $35.88 to $235.87, more than six times over, on a store that sold exactly the same amount.

This is about as cheap as a WooCommerce store gets, and it still pays to notice who carries the upkeep. Value your time at $20 an hour and one hour a month of updates and checks ($240 a year) already costs more than the renewed hosting.

Store two: the 200-SKU retailer

Two hundred products and 160 orders a month at $50, so $8,000 a month. It ships parcels and wants tracking numbers in its order emails (Shipment Tracking, $59), sells gift sets assembled from existing products (Product Bundles, $79), and uses a $79-a-year marketplace theme. A catalogue this size wants more server, so we put it on Hostinger's WooCommerce Cloud Startup plan, prepaid for 48 months.

The prepayment is $383.52 on day one. Spread over its four years that is $95.88 a year, which is how we count it here. Year one: hosting $95.88, theme $79, extensions $138, processing $3,360.00 ($2,784.00 on $96,000 of sales plus $576.00 on 1,920 orders). Total $3,672.88. Year two adds the $19.99 domain: $3,692.87.

Processing is 91% of this store's bill, and at 2.9% + $0.30 it would be much the same on most hosted platforms. The part WooCommerce decides is the $312.88 fixed bill in year one. The catch is cash flow and the far side of the term: in month 49 the hosting renews at $25.99 a month, $311.88 a year, more than three times what the store paid per year before.

Store three: the subscription store

A monthly box: 100 orders a month at $30, so $3,000 a month. It needs WooCommerce Subscriptions ($279) for recurring billing, Product Add-Ons ($79) for gift notes and options, and Shipment Tracking ($59). It uses the free Storefront theme and runs on Bluehost's eCommerce Essentials plan at $14.99 a month on a 36-month term.

Year one: hosting $179.88, extensions $417, processing $1,404.00 ($1,044.00 on $36,000 plus $360.00 on 1,200 orders). Total $2,000.88. Year two adds the domain: $2,020.87. Set processing aside and the extensions are 70% of the fixed bill. This is the store type where licences, not the server, set the price, and where the two-year option earns its keep: the same three extensions cost $667.20 for two years instead of $834.

The 1% switch to leave off

WooPayments offers US merchants a second billing engine for subscriptions, called Stripe Billing. It still requires the Subscriptions extension, and it adds 1% to every order that contains a subscription payment, charged on the whole order rather than the subscription item alone. On this store that is $30 a month, or $360 a year, more than the extension itself costs. Woo's own documentation lists more features and simpler support on the default engine; Stripe Billing's one advantage is that renewals keep charging if your site is down for days.

The chart lines up the fixed part of all three bills, year one against year two. The hobby shop's bar jumps because its hosting term is 12 months long. The other two barely move in year two, because their hosting is still inside a prepaid term and only the domain is new.

Year two and beyond: what renews, and when

Renewals do not arrive together. Extensions and the domain renew on the anniversary of purchase, every year. Hosting renews when the prepaid term ends, which is month 13 on SiteGround, month 37 on Bluehost and month 49 on Hostinger's 48-month term. The timeline puts each date on a four-year line.

Two practical consequences follow. Compare hosts on the price you will pay after the term, not the headline: $17.99, $21.99 and $25.99 a month for the three plans in our stores. And remember that a long prepayment moves the cliff out of view without removing it. Put the renewal date in your calendar in the month you buy, and decide then whether you will move host or pay the higher rate.

Which extensions you need, by what you sell

Core WooCommerce already sells physical and downloadable products and takes card payments through WooPayments, so a shop selling finished goods may need nothing paid at all. Paid extensions fill specific gaps. Answer each question in the flow and add a licence for every yes.

Appointments and rentals need Bookings at $249 a year; recurring billing needs Subscriptions at $279. Before buying either, check whether your host already bundles a tool for the job. Bluehost's Essentials plan lists subscriptions among its pre-installed commerce tools, for example, so confirm what that tool does before paying for a second one.

Costs you can skip, and the ones you can't

You can skip a paid theme, since Storefront is free and Woo maintains it. On these three hosts you can skip a separate backup service. You can hold off on most extensions until a product actually needs one, and you can push the domain bill back a year with any of the hosts above. Once you know you will keep an extension, the two-year plan saves 20% against paying the single-year price twice.

You cannot skip hosting, the domain from year two, card processing or updates. Letting an extension's subscription lapse looks like a saving, but Woo states that an expired extension stops receiving security patches and compatibility updates, and a checkout is the wrong place to economise. The same goes for maintenance time: either you spend it, or you pay someone who does.

Edge cases that change the bill

International buyers. WooPayments adds 1.5% on cards issued outside your account's country and 1% when it converts currency, so a store with many overseas orders should model 4.4% or 5.4% per order, not 2.9%.

Payouts and disputes. Instant payouts cost 1.5% of each payout; the standard schedule avoids that. A dispute costs $15, refunded if you challenge it and win.

Paying hosting monthly. None of the three hosts' headline prices is month to month: SiteGround's is prepaid for 12 months, Bluehost's needs a 36-month term and Hostinger's a 48-month prepayment. Hostinger lists Cloud Startup's regular price at $27.99 a month, a guide to what shorter commitments cost.

Mixed carts on Stripe Billing. If you turn it on and allow subscriptions and one-off products in one checkout, the 1% applies to the whole order, so an expensive non-subscription item in the same cart pays it too.

Is WooCommerce the cheap option?

For a small catalogue run by someone who maintains it, yes: $35.88 of hosting in year one and a card rate no higher than Shopify Basic's. For a subscription or bookings store, licences add $249 to $417 a year before a single sale, and on SiteGround StartUp the hosting renews at six times its intro price. If those numbers still work for you, start your store with WooCommerce and put the renewal dates in your calendar on day one.

If the line items look long, a hosted platform folds hosting, security and checkout into one monthly fee: Shopify Basic is $29 a month on yearly billing, with the same 2.9% + $0.30 on US cards. Run your own volume through the fees calculator, or see where both rank in our best ecommerce website builders.