WooCommerce or Shopify is a question global articles answer tidily and uselessly — because none of their criteria are local. For a store in Bosnia and Herzegovina the decision does not turn on themes, speed or extension counts, but on three things: can you take card payments, can you meet fiscalisation requirements, and who maintains the system when something breaks.
This comparison looks at both platforms through those criteria.
The short answer
Take WooCommerce if you need local integrations — fiscalisation, local accounting, a specific payment processor — or if you have someone to maintain the system.
Take Shopify if you want to sell rather than administer, if your catalogue is standard, and if you can live with what the platform offers.
The rest of this explains why.
Card payments
This is the decisive difference here, and where superficial comparisons go most wrong.
WooCommerce accepts any processor that has an extension, or for which one can be written. For the domestic processors used in BiH that is generally a solvable job. You get complete freedom and complete responsibility.
Shopify has Shopify Payments, which is not available in BiH. That means going through an external processor — and Shopify charges an additional fee on those transactions on top of what the processor itself takes. Support for domestic processors depends on whether an integration exists; if it does not, you have no way to build one yourself.
Before committing to Shopify, check specifically with your bank or processor whether your combination works. This is the one step you must not skip.
Fiscalisation
Retail in BiH is subject to fiscalisation, and that is an obligation the platform has to support rather than sidestep.
On WooCommerce you have order-level access in code and can connect a fiscal system or accounting software however necessary. If the regulation changes, the solution adapts.
On Shopify you work within what the platform and available apps permit. For standard cases that may be enough; for a specific requirement there is nowhere to solve it.
If your fiscalisation is complex or your accounting is strict, this is usually the point where the decision makes itself.
Cost over three years
Comparing monthly subscriptions is misleading because the costs sit in different places.
Shopify has a predictable cost: a monthly plan, plus fees, plus paid apps. Nothing surprises you, but nothing drops either.
WooCommerce has no subscription, but it has hosting, paid extensions and maintenance. If you do the maintenance yourself, it is cheaper. If you pay for it, the gap narrows or disappears.
The honest rule: WooCommerce is cheaper in money, Shopify is cheaper in time. Whichever resource is scarcer for you is your answer.
Maintenance and risk
This is the difference people only feel in year two.
Shopify does not break. No updates that take the site down, no compromise through an outdated extension, no backups to think about. For a company without a technical person this is real value, not a marketing line.
WooCommerce is WordPress, and WordPress needs maintenance. Core and extension updates, security patches, backups and the occasional extension conflict. With someone doing that, the system is stable for years. Without it, the average WooCommerce site falls apart within eighteen months.
The question is not which platform is better — it is whether you have the person. If you do not and do not plan to pay for one, Shopify is the more honest choice.
Ownership and freedom
WooCommerce is yours. Code, database, data, hosting — all of it can move to another contractor or another server. Nobody can change the rules on you.
Shopify is rented. You can export data, but not the site itself. Plan pricing, terms and app availability are outside your control.
For most small stores this is a theoretical difference. For a company building the store as part of a business system, it is not.
When the store is not standalone
If the shop has to talk to stock, an ERP, per-customer B2B price lists or supplier product feeds, the difference stops being a matter of taste.
WooCommerce gives you the database and the code, and therefore any integration you are willing to pay for. Shopify gives you an API and apps — enough for common cases, limiting for uncommon ones.
With complex integrations, often neither platform is the right answer; the right answer is a system built around your process in which the store is just one screen. That is a separate decision, and worth asking before committing to a platform.
Deciding in five minutes
Answer three questions.
Do you have someone to maintain the site? If not — Shopify.
Do fiscalisation or accounting integration require something specific? If yes — WooCommerce.
Does owning the system matter to you? If yes — WooCommerce.
Two out of three decides it. If the answers split, let the first question rule — an unmaintained store does not sell no matter how well it was chosen.
What matters more than the platform
Both platforms sell goods and both are good enough. Stores do not fail because of the choice between them — they fail because of bad photographs, copied descriptions, hidden delivery costs, and nobody answering messages.
Pick the one you can actually run, and get back to the work that decides the outcome — nine steps to launch and a realistic budget.
The one place where the platform choice really hurts later is fiscalisation and connecting to local accounting. Settle that before you choose, not after.
