Shopify vs WooCommerce vs a Custom Store in Malaysia

The short answer

All three can run a good store. They differ in who pays for what each month, who keeps the store running and how far you can change it.

What each one costs over three years

The launch price is the smallest part of the bill. Compare what you pay over the years you run the store: the build, the monthly charges and the fees taken from every order. Payment gateway fees are left out of the totals, because the same gateway costs the same on all three. The one exception is noted under Shopify.

Shopify: a plan, apps and a fee on every order

Shopify shows Malaysian stores local prices, billed in US dollars: Basic at US$25 a month or US$19 billed yearly, Grow at US$65 or US$49, and Advanced at US$399 or US$299. Basic includes no staff accounts, so a store with staff needs Grow, which has five, or Advanced, with fifteen. Shopify Plus starts at US$2,300 a month on a three-year term. Shopify also charges Malaysian stores SST on its fees and does not accept an SST number for exemption, and the service tax rate on digital services is 8%.

The bigger cost is the fee on each order. Shopify Payments, the option that avoids it, is not available in Malaysia, so a Malaysian store takes FPX, DuitNow and card payments through a third-party gateway such as HitPay, Curlec or Billplz. Shopify then adds its own fee to every online order: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. It comes on top of the gateway’s fee and is not returned when you refund an order. Only point-of-sale orders and manual payments, such as cash on delivery or a bank deposit, are exempt. Some gateways charge extra on Shopify too: HitPay lists an additional 0.5% through its Shopify app. A RM 100 order paid by FPX through HitPay on the Basic plan costs RM 2.20 in HitPay fees, RM 0.50 for its Shopify app and RM 2.00 to Shopify.

Features most stores add later are apps with their own monthly charge, also billed in US dollars. From the Shopify App Store: Smile loyalty rewards is free up to 200 orders a month, then US$15, US$79 and US$199 as orders grow, and letting customers redeem points at checkout needs Shopify Plus. Judge.me reviews costs US$15 a month on its paid plan. Booking apps such as Sesami (US$19 to US$299 a month) and BookThatApp (US$25 to US$110) charge by plan and booking volume.

WooCommerce: free software, with hosting and renewals

WooCommerce itself is free and open source. You pay for the hosting it runs on and for the extensions that add features. WordPress hosting in Malaysia starts at about RM 20 a month on a three-year term: ServerFreak’s WP Ultimate plan, which it describes as ideal for WooCommerce, is RM 1,540 for three years, and Exabytes’ AI Ecommerce plan is RM 92.99 a month on a 36-month term. Managed hosts such as Kinsta start at US$35 a month.

Extensions from the WooCommerce Marketplace are billed yearly: WooCommerce Subscriptions US$279, Bookings US$249, Memberships US$199, Points and Rewards US$179, Product Bundles US$79 and Product Add-Ons US$79. If a renewal lapses, the extension keeps working but stops receiving updates and security patches. Someone also has to keep WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and every plugin updated and backed up, which is either your time or a developer’s.

A custom store: a bigger build, then a fixed care fee

A custom store is built once for your business, so the larger cost comes first. Our published prices start at RM 5,999 for an ecommerce website and RM 12,000 for custom platforms, which include ecommerce platforms. Care for a store with a real backend starts from RM 250 a month and covers hosting, SSL, domain renewal and upkeep. After that there is no platform fee on your sales and nothing extra to subscribe to: subscriptions, loyalty or bookings are part of the store. Your quote depends on what the store has to do.

Worked example: a small store

This is an illustrative calculation, not a quote. The store sells RM 8,000 a month from a simple catalogue, is run by its owner and needs no paid add-ons. Shopify is on the Basic plan, billed yearly. WooCommerce and the custom store are on a care plan from RM 250 a month, which includes hosting. The builds use our published starting prices: RM 5,999 for the Shopify and WooCommerce stores and RM 12,000 for the custom store. US dollars are converted at RM 4.09, Bank Negara Malaysia’s middle rate on 1 October 2026, and SST is left out.

At this size Shopify is the cheaper start, and WooCommerce costs less still if you look after it yourself: ServerFreak’s WP Ultimate hosting is RM 1,540 for three years. For a small store with ordinary needs, that is the honest answer.

Worked example: a growing store

The same assumptions, for a store selling RM 60,000 a month, about 600 orders, with subscriptions, a points programme and product reviews. Shopify is on the Grow plan billed yearly, because the store has staff, with the Smile loyalty app at US$79 a month (up to 1,000 orders), Judge.me reviews at US$15 a month and Shopify’s free Subscriptions app, which needs PayPal or another gateway Shopify supports for subscriptions (see below). WooCommerce uses the Subscriptions and Points and Rewards extensions, and product reviews are built into WooCommerce. The custom store has all three built in.

Now Shopify costs more than twice as much as either of the others, and the gap grows with your sales: its 1% alone is RM 7,200 a year at this volume. WooCommerce and the custom store cost about the same over three years. Over five years the custom store pulls ahead, at RM 27,000 against RM 30,365 for WooCommerce and RM 77,091 for Shopify, because its build is paid once while renewals and fees keep coming. Between WooCommerce and custom, the decision then rests on speed, upkeep and fit, covered below.

Where the lines cross

With no paid apps, a custom store costs the same as Shopify over three years once sales reach about RM 17,000 a month on the Basic plan, or about RM 21,600 on Grow. Above that, Shopify costs more every month. Every paid app lowers that point, which is why stores that sell subscriptions, run a loyalty programme or take bookings tend to reach it early. Run the sums with your own sales, plan and apps before you decide.

Efficiency: speed and the work behind each order

How fast the store loads

Google measures what real visitors experience with three Core Web Vitals, and HTTP Archive publishes how many sites on each platform pass all three. In August 2026, on mobile, 76.5% of Shopify stores passed, against 48.7% of WordPress sites and 39.5% of WooCommerce stores. Among Chrome users in Malaysia, the figures were 69.6% for Shopify and 41.6% for WooCommerce. Shopify’s hosted platform is fast on average. WooCommerce stores pass less than half as often, because every plugin and theme adds weight that someone has to manage.

A custom store is not automatically fast either. It loads only the code your store needs and carries no theme or app scripts, so its speed is yours to control rather than a platform’s. How the three measures work, and how to read them, is in our Core Web Vitals guide.

How much work each order takes

A store is more than a checkout. Someone packs the order, answers the customer, renews the subscription, credits the points and books the appointment. On Shopify and WooCommerce, each of those jobs often lives in its own app or plugin with its own records, so staff switch between screens and the same customer exists in several places. A custom store keeps one record for each customer and each order, and every screen works from it.

Our concept builds show what that looks like, with sample data:

• Sundial, a café group: table ordering, points and vouchers, the kitchen display and head-office campaigns run on one set of records. A paid order adds the points, and switching an item off hides it on every menu.
• Underline, a tuition centre: downloads, monthly plans, classes and the parent portal share one account per family, so a purchase reaches the student and the parent at once.
• Rentak, a fitness studio: bookings, memberships, the waitlist, coach cover and the member community all work from the same bookings.
• Teduh, an aircond company: a WhatsApp request becomes a quote, the quote becomes a job and the job becomes an invoice, without anyone retyping it.

Customisation: what you can change

Shopify

Shopify’s checkout editor lets every plan change the logo, colours, fonts and background. Apps can add to the thank-you and order status pages on any plan, but apps in the information, shipping and payment steps need Shopify Plus, and so do custom apps that use Shopify Functions to change how the checkout behaves. Each product can have up to three options and 2,048 variants, and Shopify notes that some themes do not support more than 100 variants.

Subscriptions are the sharpest limit for a Malaysian store. Shopify’s own Subscriptions app works only with Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, Authorize.net, Adyen or Stripe, which Shopify says is available only to select merchants, and it warns that local and non-card payment methods might not be available for subscriptions. Third-party subscription apps have the same list. With Shopify Payments unavailable here, a subscriber cannot simply pay by FPX or DuitNow.

Selling to businesses is possible on every plan, with up to three active B2B catalogues below Plus. Deposits and partial payments on business orders need Plus.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce gives you the code, so almost anything can be changed through plugins or custom work. The cost is upkeep and risk. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 42% more than in 2024. 91% were in plugins, and 46% had no fix from the developer when they were disclosed. Every plugin you add is software someone has to keep current.

Subscriptions renew automatically only through gateways whose extension supports it, such as Stripe or PayPal. With other gateways, each renewal becomes an order the customer has to pay by hand.

A custom store

A custom store follows your rules instead of bending them around a template, and the checkout follows how your customers actually buy, so the steps that lose them can be removed. Each of our concept builds runs rules a template would not have:

• Teduh: staff can discount up to 10%, the owner up to 20%, and nothing higher can be sent.
• Rentak: cancelling is free until 12 hours before class, and the first late cancel in 30 days is waived.
• Sundial: points are added only when an order is paid, and vouchers check expiry, minimum spend, channel and item.
• Underline: a 10% sibling discount, and a Family plan that covers up to three children.

Recurring payments can use Malaysian methods too. Curlec, for example, bills subscriptions by card or by e-Mandate, where the customer authorises direct debits from their bank account.

What changes for a Malaysian store

• Payments: FPX, DuitNow QR and e-wallets such as Touch ’n Go and GrabPay come through local gateways on all three routes, and on Shopify each order also carries Shopify’s fee. What four Malaysian gateways publish is tabulated on our ecommerce page.
• Tax on the platform: Shopify adds SST to its fees for stores in Malaysia.
• Currency: Shopify plans, Shopify apps and WooCommerce extensions are billed in US dollars, so their cost in ringgit moves with the exchange rate.
• E-invoicing: LHDN’s e-invoice applies in phases by turnover, and from 1 September 2026 businesses with annual turnover under RM 3 million are exempt. A custom store can send e-invoices straight to LHDN’s MyInvois system, which provides APIs for business systems.

Who owns what, and how you leave

On Shopify you can export products, customers, orders, gift card codes, discount codes and financial data as CSV files, and download your theme. Product images are not in the product file, customer passwords cannot be moved and themes are licensed to the one store they were bought for. When a store is closed, its apps are uninstalled.

WooCommerce runs on your own hosting, so the files and the database are yours to move. With a custom store from us, you own everything we build: the code, the content, the domain, the hosting account and every account opened for the project. There is no lock-in, and if you move to another provider we help with the handover.

When Shopify or WooCommerce is the better choice

Custom is not automatically right. A small catalogue with ordinary needs often launches faster and cheaper on Shopify or WooCommerce, and we will say so. That is usually the case when:

• your sales are below about RM 15,000 a month and you need no paid apps;
• you are testing whether a product sells at all;
• you sell a few dozen products, take card and FPX payments and ship with one courier;
• you already run WordPress and have someone who keeps it updated, which suits WooCommerce.

We build on both. See Shopify development and WooCommerce development.

When a custom store wins

• Your sales are high enough that Shopify’s fee costs more than a care plan: above roughly RM 17,000 a month on Basic or RM 21,600 on Grow, and sooner with paid apps.
• You sell more than products: subscriptions, memberships, bookings, courses or downloads.
• Your subscribers want to pay by FPX or direct debit, not only by card or PayPal.
• Your business has rules a template lacks, such as trade prices, approvals, deposits or credit terms.
• Several outlets, warehouses or sales channels must share one stock count.
• Your monthly app bill keeps growing.
• You pay for ads, so slow product pages cost you money on every click.

What a custom store costs with us

Our ecommerce websites start from RM 5,999 and custom platforms from RM 12,000, both published on our pricing page. Care for a store with a backend starts from RM 250 a month and covers hosting, SSL, domain renewal and upkeep. We build a free working prototype first, with no payment obligation, so you can click through your store before you commit. Tell us what you sell and we will work out the three-year numbers for your business.