WooCommerce Pricing 2024: What Fees Should You Know About?

WooCommerce is a popular open-source platform made for building online stores on WordPress. It’s free to use, but running a WooCommerce store involves various costs that you should understand before starting. Knowing these costs will help you plan your budget better and ensure the success of your store.

Here’s a deep dive into WooCommerce Pricing.

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WooCommerce Pricing: Quick Overview

WooCommerce is a free plugin but you’ll face several costs when setting up and running your store. These include hosting, domain names, themes, and plugins. Some are necessary while others are optional but highly beneficial. Here's a breakdown of the different costs associated with running a WooCommerce store.

Necessary WooCommerce costs	Fee
Hosting	$120 per year on average, but varies depending on the hosting service. For example, WordPress premium plan costs around $80 if billed annually.
Domain	$15 on average, high-value or privately-held domain names can cost significantly more.
Themes	Thousands of free themes to choose from. Paid themes from $20 to $100 per year.
Native payment extensions	2.9% + $0.30 per sale on average WooPayments has no setup charge and no monthly fees. You pay 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction made with U.S.-issued credit or debit cards. There’s an additional 1% fee for cards issued outside of the U.S. Other options include Stripe (2.9% and $0.30 per transaction), PayPal (2.9% and $0.49 per transaction), and Authorize.net (2.9% and $0.30 per transaction + $25/month.)
Native shipping extensions	WooCommerce Shipping extension is free. More advanced options cost around $100 per year.

Additional WooCommerce fees
Email	Free to $119 per year, depending on the tool used.
WooCommerce product recommendations	$99 annually.
WooCommerce bookings	$249 annually. Allow customers to book appointments, make reservations or rent equipment without leaving your site.
WooCommerce subscriptions	$279 annually. Let customers subscribe to your products or services and pay on a weekly, monthly or annual basis.
Developer fees	WooCommerce developer fees will range from $10 to $100+ per hour. WooCommerce provides a list of hand-selected, high-quality experts.

WooCommerce Fees Explained

WooCommerce is technically free to use, but there are various costs associated with running an online store.

The base WooCommerce plugin is free, providing essential eCommerce functionality. You can list products, manage sales and process payments without paying for the plugin itself.

The free version of WooCommerce includes basic features like product listing, inventory management and payment integration with PayPal and Stripe.

However, the free plugin doesn’t include features like advanced shipping, subscription management or booking appointments. To unlock these, you’ll need paid extensions. Additionally, while WooCommerce is free, you'll need to invest in hosting, themes and other essential services.

Key factors influencing costs include the number of products, store size and your need for customizations. Larger stores with more traffic require better hosting and additional tools, while small stores can get by with basic setups.

Hosting Costs for WooCommerce

Hosting is one of the most critical aspects of running a WooCommerce store. A slow or unreliable website can lead to lost sales, so choosing the right hosting provider is essential.

A good hosting provider ensures your website is fast, secure and reliable. It should also offer 24/7 customer service so you can always get help when needed. It’s also important that your hosting service can scale alongside your business.

Since WooCommerce stores often have large product inventories, hosting plays a key role in store performance. Some examples of hosting providers include Bluehost, Dreamhost and Siteground.

The cheapest hosting option is shared hosting. You can find shared hosting options for between $2 and $10 per month. While shared hosting is cheap, it also gives your online store limited options to grow. It can also suffer from slow loading times and, in some cases, security issues.

The next option is Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. VPS hosting enables you to share a server with a limited number of other users, which can help increase loading speeds and give you greater control. VPS hosting can cost anywhere between $20 and $100 per month.

If you want the next level of hosting, you should go for dedicated hosting providers. Prices tend to start around $100 per month but can easily be higher. You’ll enjoy the privacy, speed and control of having a server all to yourself.

You can also opt for hosting providers with specialized Woocommerce hosting plans such as SiteGround and WordPress Engine.

Domain and SSL Costs

The next step in building your Woocommerce store is choosing your domain name. Choosing a domain name is crucial for branding.

Certain hosting providers include the domain name in their pricing plans. However, you can also buy them separately. The cost typically ranges from $10 to $20 per year.

Short, easy-to-remember domains—which help your business—usually cost more.

You’ll also need to pay for a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. An SSL certificate ensures that your customers' data is secure.

Most hosting providers offer free SSL certificates through services like Let's Encrypt, but paid options can range from $10 to $200 per year depending on the level of security you need.

WooCommerce Extensions and Plugins Pricing

While WooCommerce itself is free, you might need paid extensions to run your store effectively. Paid extensions can help you add product page features, enhance the checkout experience, add customizations, and more.

An example of where you may consider paid extensions are ones that help with marketing. For example, the Affiliate For WooCommerce extension enables you to run your own affiliate program, track referrals, sales and commissions; make payouts, create commission plans and marketing campaigns. This extension is billed annually at $179.

Themes and Custom Design Costs

Although WooCommerce has plenty of free themes to choose from, a paid theme can help your store stand out. They also come with more functionalities, for example, paid themes provide customer service options while free options are limited to Q&A sections.

Paid WordPress and WooCommerce themes cost between $20 to $100 per year. It’s worth taking the time to select a theme that will provide all the ecommerce blocks you need, as well as functionalities that will help your store succeed.

Payment Processing Fees

In order to accept payments online, your store will need a payment gateway. There are several providers that can be integrated with WooCommerce, but the pricing will vary depending on which provider you choose.

Choosing the right provider at the start will help you save money in the long-run. Especially if you have customers making payments from abroad.

For example, WooPayments has a fee of 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction, and there’s an additional 1% fee for cards issued outside of the U.S. Stripe has a fee of 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction, but you can connect Stripe to Wise to receive international payments without cross-border fees.

WooCommerce Shipping Extension Fees

For small businesses, the free shipping options that come with WooCommerce can be more than enough to cover their needs. For larger businesses, there are shipping extensions available. These extensions cost around $100 per year, and can help with defining multiple shipping rates based on location, price, weight, shipping class or item count.

WooCommerce Pricing for Small vs Large Stores

For small stores with a low budget, it’s possible to set up a WooCommerce store by simply setting up the domain name and choosing a hosting plan. This means a small business will only need to pay around $150 to have a working WooCommerce store.

For larger businesses with more complex needs, the cost of building a WooCommerce store can go into the thousands. Especially when considering the cost of hiring developers.

Additional Costs to Consider

The most significant additional cost to consider when building a WooCommerce store is the cost of a developer.

WooCommerce can be set up without hiring a developer. However, if you are looking to build a professional and complex site with many functionalities, then hiring a developer to design and build your site may be necessary.

The cost of doing so can range from $1000 to $20,000 depending on the needs of your site, and the experience level of your developer.

Conclusion: Is WooCommerce Worth It?

WooCommerce offers a wide range of paid extensions that can add up when building a store. However, these extensions are all optional.

Ultimately, WooCommerce offers a lot of control over which features you include in your ecommerce store. The option to customize your store as your business expands makes WooCommerce worth considering as an ecommerce platform.