E-commerce platforms in 2026: what Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Squarespace actually cost

Most small business owners compare e-commerce platforms the way they compare phone plans: by the headline monthly price. That number is the least useful one on the page.

I run a small technology blog for Vietnamese small businesses, and the question I get most often is not "which platform is best" but "which one will not surprise me in month nine". So I pulled the pricing pages of the four platforms that dominate the small-business market in 2026 — Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Squarespace — and rebuilt the cost model line by line.

Everything below was checked on 30 September 2026 on each vendor's own pricing page. Prices change; treat this as a template for how to compare, not a permanent quote.

The five lines that decide your real cost

A platform invoice is rarely one number. It is five:

1. Monthly platform fee — the subscription you see advertised.
2. Payment processing — the percentage + fixed fee taken out of every order.
3. Hosting — included on hosted platforms, entirely your problem on self-hosted ones.
4. Themes and apps — what you pay to make the store look and behave the way you need.
5. Your time — the only line that never appears on an invoice and the one that hurts most when it goes wrong.

Payment processing is usually the largest of the five at low volume, and it is the line most people ignore when they compare plans.

The four platforms in one line each

• Shopify — hosted, all-in-one, biggest app ecosystem; you trade money and some customisation for speed.
• WooCommerce — a free, open-source plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store; you keep full ownership and inherit full responsibility for hosting, security and maintenance.
• BigCommerce — a hosted platform aimed at catalogues that are already growing, with fewer apps needed out of the box and zero platform transaction fees when you use its embedded payment provider.
• Squarespace — design-first, all-in-one, with hosting, domain and email folded into the subscription; excellent for boutiques, portfolios and digital products, less suited to very large catalogues.

The 2026 numbers, side by side

Estimated for a store with 100 products doing 200 orders a month at a $50 average order value — about $10,000 in monthly sales. The totals below are estimates built from the published component prices, with $0–$30/month of apps and $0–$20/month of email marketing added on top.

Cost category	Shopify (Basic)	WooCommerce	BigCommerce (Core)	Squarespace (Core)
Monthly platform fee	$29 billed yearly / $39 monthly	$0 (the plugin is free)	$29 billed yearly / $39 monthly	$29 billed yearly / $39 monthly
Hosting	Included	$25–$350/month (you pick the host)	Included	Included
Payment processing	2.9% + $0.30 per order	Gateway rates only (e.g. Stripe 2.9% + $0.30)	0% with an embedded provider; 2% of GMV with an open provider	2.9% + $0.30 per order (0% store fee on Core)
Premium theme	Free themes included; paid themes $180–$400 one-time	Free themes included; paid themes $50–$100 one-time	Free themes included; paid themes $150–$400 one-time	All templates included
Essential apps/plugins	$0–$30/month	$0–$30/month	$0–$30/month	$0–$30/month
Email marketing	$0–$20/month	$0–$20/month	$0–$20/month	Included on paid plans
Monthly total (est.)	$379–$429	$375–$425 on shared hosting	$229–$279	$379–$429
Annual total (est.)	$4,548–$5,148	$4,500–$5,100	$2,748–$3,348	$4,548–$5,148

Two things jump out of that table.

First, the platform fee is noise. $29 versus $0 versus $39 is a rounding error next to payment processing, which lands around $350 a month on $10,000 of sales at 2.9% + $0.30.

Second, BigCommerce is the cheapest option in this specific scenario — not because its subscription is lower, but because 2% of GMV on an open payment provider ($200) or 0% with an embedded provider beats a 2.9% + $0.30 gateway once order volume climbs. If you process a lot of small orders, that difference compounds.

WooCommerce is the platform where the estimate is most fragile. The software is genuinely free, but hosting is the line that swings it: a $25/month shared plan and a $150/month managed plan run the exact same plugin. Add a developer hour here and there and the "free" platform can cost more than Squarespace — the trade is that you own the store and the data outright.

Choosing by budget, not by feature list

• Under $30/month: WooCommerce on cheap shared hosting. Budget a few extra dollars for SSL and backups, and accept that you are the support desk.
• $30–$60/month: Squarespace (Core) and Shopify (Basic) both land here. Squarespace if design is the differentiator, Shopify if you expect order volume to grow and want payments and checkout handled for you.
• $60–$100/month: BigCommerce (Core) sits at the bottom of this band with no platform transaction fees on embedded payments, which starts to matter once you pass roughly 200 orders a month.
• Above $100/month, or 10x growth plans: Shopify or BigCommerce, for the upgrade paths. Squarespace is the one to outgrow first; it is excellent until it is not.

Five mistakes that cost more than the subscription

1. Choosing on price alone. A $29/month platform that loses sales to a slow checkout costs more than a $79/month platform that converts at twice the rate.
2. Over-engineering on day one. Build the store you need this quarter. Removing complexity later is far harder than adding it.
3. Ignoring total cost of ownership. Count apps, themes, payment fees, hosting, developer time and your own learning time before you sign up.
4. Skipping a test purchase. Buy something from your own store as a customer, on a phone, before launch. Clunky checkout is where small stores quietly bleed revenue.
5. Treating mobile as an afterthought. Most e-commerce traffic now arrives on a phone; a desktop-first template is a conversion tax you pay every day.

The exit cost nobody prices in

Migration is the hidden sixth line. Moving between hosted platforms means re-platforming themes, re-testing apps, re-mapping URLs and re-earning whatever search visibility you had. That is a strong argument for spending one extra afternoon choosing well the first time — and an equally strong argument for WooCommerce if you already have a WordPress site, because the content stays where it is.

What I would actually do

For a shop with no technical help and a plan to grow: Shopify, because the failure modes are expensive but rare. For a business that already runs on WordPress and has someone who can hold a terminal: WooCommerce, where the ownership maths wins after year one. For a catalogue heading past a few hundred products: BigCommerce, where payment fees shrink instead of growing. For a design-led brand selling few products: Squarespace, with a reminder that it is a starting point, not a finish line.

Whichever you pick, run the same exercise I did above: write down all five cost lines for your own order volume, then compare. The platform with the cheapest subscription is rarely the platform with the cheapest year.

The full comparison — feature table, pros and cons, migration notes and a security/compliance section — is published on my site: E-commerce platforms for small business: the 2026 comparison. I write about practical technology for small businesses at tanit365.com, including how to sell online in Vietnam.

Prices in this article were verified on 30 September 2026 from Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Squarespace pricing pages. I do not earn a commission from any platform mentioned here.