WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is activated like any other plugin in an existing WordPress installation. After that, product types (simple products, variants, digital goods), stock levels, tax rules, shipping zones and a checkout process are available. The software is developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. Because WooCommerce is part of WordPress, the shop and editorial content run in the same system: blog articles, guides and product pages share users, navigation and design. That is the main reason why companies with a well-maintained WordPress website choose WooCommerce.

The costs arise in operation. You need hosting that stays fast under load, regular updates to WordPress, the theme and plugins, backups, a payment provider and usually several paid extensions, for subscriptions, product filters or accounting integrations, for example. Every extension is additional code that has to be kept up to date. A WooCommerce shop without clear responsibility for updates becomes slow and vulnerable over time. For TWINT, PostFinance Card or payment on invoice you need the plugin of a Swiss payment provider that supports these methods.

A typical case: a specialist retailer has run a WordPress website for years with guide articles that rank well on Google and now wants to sell thirty products online. Here WooCommerce is often the obvious choice, because the existing content, URLs and rankings are preserved and the product pages can be linked directly from the guides. The picture is different for a new shop with no existing website and nobody to look after updates: there, a rented system such as Shopify is usually the calmer solution.

The honest distinction: WooCommerce is not 'free Shopify'. It is a flexible tool with full control over code and data that demands maintenance in return. Anyone who buys in that maintenance ends up with running costs comparable to a Shopify plan; anyone who does not carries the risk themselves. The system comparison for Swiss shops is shown on the e-commerce agency page.