WooCommerce vs Shopify — what to choose for a dropshipping store in Poland

TL;DR: WooCommerce wins if you have your own server and want a custom XML importer. Shopify wins if you want to get started over a weekend without DevOps.

The WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison is a topic for 50 articles. We’ll focus on a specific scenario: a dropshipping store in Poland, a supplier with an XML feed, Przelewy24 payments.

Shopify — what’s good

Start selling in 2 hours. No need to configure a server, nginx, SSL, or a database. The Basic plan is $29/month and you get hosting, SSL, CDN, checkout, and customer accounts.

The app ecosystem is large. Integration with Przelewy24? There’s an app. Bulk product import? There are apps. Dropshipping from a Polish supplier? Depends on the supplier.

Shopify — what hurts

An XML feed from a Polish supplier in a non-standard format? No app handles that. You have to pay for custom development or middleware that translates XML into CSV that Shopify can understand.

No control over the checkout code — Shopify Plus ($2000/month) or nothing. If you want to change anything in the purchase process, you depend on what Shopify makes available.

Costs grow: Basic plan + paid apps + transaction fee (0.5–2% if you don’t use Shopify Payments, and Shopify Payments is not available in Poland) = realistically 150–300 PLN/month just on infrastructure.

WooCommerce — what’s good

Full control over the code. Custom XML importer? Write a PHP plugin. Non-standard margin logic? WooCommerce hooks. Integration with any payment gateway? The API is open.

For the Polish market WooCommerce has a mature ecosystem: Przelewy24, PayU, InPost — all as official plugins.

Server costs are often lower than Shopify at scale: a VPS for 60–80 PLN/month handles a store with several thousand products if you have a well-configured cache.

WooCommerce — what hurts

Getting started requires DevOps: hosting, PHP, MySQL, nginx, SSL, cache configuration. For a technical person, that’s 2 hours. For someone without technical experience — a barrier.

WordPress and plugin updates need to be monitored. Skipping security updates is a risk of having your store compromised.

Our recommendation

For dropshippers with a Polish XML supplier and scaling ambitions: WooCommerce. The flexibility of import and the absence of transaction fees quickly offset the cost of configuration.

For someone who wants to test an idea over a weekend without a developer: Shopify Basic for 3 months, then decide.