When WooCommerce is
the right call
Shopify is what we recommend to most brands, and we will say so. These are the situations where it is not the answer.
WooCommerce makes sense if
- →You need control over checkout, pricing logic or the customer journey in ways a hosted platform will not permit.
- →Your product category sits outside a hosted platform’s acceptable use policy, regardless of whether it is legal to sell locally.
- →You run wholesale and retail from one catalogue, with different pricing per customer group.
- →You need to own your data, your hosting and your integrations outright.
- →You already run WordPress and want commerce inside the same system.
Stay on a hosted platform if
- →You sell conventional retail products and none of the constraints above apply to you.
- →You want the lowest total cost of ownership and the least to think about.
- →Nobody in your business wants to be responsible for updates, backups and security, and there is no budget for someone else to be.
What We
Build
Storefront
Custom WooCommerce theme and storefront UI, built mobile-first. Product catalogue, variants and structured data. SEO foundations, redirects and clean technical architecture.
Commerce Logic
Wholesale and membership systems with tiered pricing per customer group. Approval-gated registration. Custom shipping zones and rules. Checkout behaviour that changes by product type.
Payments & Fulfilment
Payment gateway integration with local providers including PayFast, Peach Payments, Yoco and Ozow. Courier and fulfilment integration with The Courier Guy, Bob Go and Aramex.
Age & Verification Controls
Age gating, customer verification and consent tracking where the product category requires it, built to survive an audit rather than to tick a box.
Measurement
Google Analytics 4, ecommerce event tracking and Search Console, configured at launch rather than bolted on when someone asks for a report.
Infrastructure
Hosting configuration, security hardening, automated backups and a staging environment, so changes are tested somewhere other than your live store.
Hosting and Maintenance,
Handled Properly
WooCommerce is self-hosted. That means someone is responsible for updates, security patches, backups and uptime. On a hosted platform that is the platform’s job. Here it is ours, and we price it honestly rather than pretending it disappears at launch.
Every WooCommerce build includes three months of our Care plan, continuing at R2,250 per month thereafter. On regulated or high-traffic stores we recommend the Growth plan at R5,500 per month. Hosting and annual plugin licences are quoted separately as pass-through costs, with renewal dates listed, so you can see exactly what you pay and to whom.
If you would rather maintain the store yourself, that is fine — hosting and maintenance transfer to you in writing at handover. What we will not do is hand over an unmaintained WooCommerce store and call it finished.
WooCommerce
Pricing
Every quote is fixed before we start. All prices are final — NexCommerce is not VAT registered.
| Tier | From | Suited To |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | R14,500 | Single store, up to 25 products, one gateway, one courier |
| Growth | R24,000–R38,000 | Up to 100 products, custom UI, multiple gateways and couriers, basic B2B or membership |
| Advanced | R45,000 | Large catalogue, custom functionality, multi-location, deeper integrations |
| Regulated & Complex | R65,000 | Age gating, verification, restricted-product workflows, wholesale portals |
| Migration | R12,500 | Either direction, priced by catalogue size — see migration |
Hosting, premium plugin licences and third-party subscriptions are quoted separately as pass-through costs. Payment terms are a 40/30/30 split. A Care retainer at R2,250 per month applies to every WooCommerce build after the first three months, or maintenance transfers to you in writing at handover.
Straight Answers,
Before You Ask.
Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
Usually not. There is no platform subscription, but hosting, premium plugin licences and ongoing maintenance typically exceed a Shopify plan on a store of any size. What you buy with WooCommerce is control, not savings, and we would rather you knew that before signing than after.
Is WooCommerce less secure?
Not inherently. It is less secure when it is left unmaintained, which is a different problem and a solvable one. Hardening, patching, backups and a staging environment are part of every build we deliver.
Can you build for a restricted or regulated product category?
We build the platform, the age gating, the verification flow and the compliance controls. Legal eligibility to trade and payment gateway approval remain your responsibility as the merchant, and we confirm both in writing before development starts — because a store nobody can take payment through is not a store.
Can you migrate my existing store to WooCommerce?
Yes, and we migrate in both directions. A migration covers products and variants, customers and order history, media, URL mapping with 301 redirects, metadata, analytics and Search Console. Redirect mapping is the whole job, not a final step — it is where badly run migrations lose rankings.
Will you tell me if Shopify is the better choice?
Yes. We are a Shopify Partner and build on both, so we have no reason to push you toward either. For most conventional retail brands Shopify is the better commercial decision and we will say so.
Not Sure Which Platform
Fits Your Business?
Book a free platform assessment. Thirty minutes on a call, then a written one-page recommendation covering the right platform for your model, payment gateway eligibility for your category, and an indicative budget. We assess the business and recommend the architecture — we do not push a platform.