# Online store: Shopify, WooCommerce or PrestaShop?

> Subscription or open-source platform, transaction fees, plugins, invoicing and shipping integrations. How to choose an online store platform in Romania.

Simplix · online-stores, ecommerce, pricing

The first thing you learn when you want an online store is that you have to pick a platform. The second is that everyone has a firm opinion about which one is best.

The platform matters, but less than you think. What matters more is what your store has to do and how much it costs you, in total, over the first two or three years. Let’s take them one at a time.

## What an online store has to do in Romania

Before the platform, think about how the store connects to the rest of the business. In Romania, almost every store needs:

- **payments:** online card payments (Netopia, EuPlătesc, Stripe), bank transfer and, very often, cash on delivery;
- **shipping:** FAN Courier, Sameday, Cargus, with automatic waybill generation and, more and more often, delivery to parcel lockers;
- **invoicing:** automatic invoices (SmartBill, Oblio and others) sent to **e-Factura**, mandatory since 2025 for sales to consumers too[^1];
- **stock and products:** importing the catalog, syncing stock with the inventory software;
- **marketing:** feeds for Google Shopping and marketplaces.

The right platform is the one that does all of this well, for your catalog and volume, at a cost you can sustain.

## Shopify: a turnkey store, on a subscription

Shopify is a hosted platform: you don’t deal with servers, updates or security. You pay a monthly subscription; at the time of writing, the basic plan in Romania starts at 99 lei a month billed yearly or 139 lei a month billed monthly[^2].

**What you gain:** you start quickly, the platform is stable and secure, and the admin panel is very good.

**What to watch out for:**
- **fees on sales.** If you use a payment processor outside Shopify (for example a local one, such as Netopia or EuPlătesc), you pay an extra fee on every transaction: 2% on the basic plan[^2]. It comes on top of the processor’s own fee;
- **apps are paid monthly.** Integrations with invoicing, couriers or other features usually come as apps with their own subscription. For example, an app integrating SmartBill starts at about 18 dollars a month[^3];
- **control is limited.** You do what the platform allows; the store can’t be moved to another server.

It suits a store that wants to start quickly, without a technical team, and accepts monthly costs that grow with sales.

## WooCommerce: the store inside WordPress

WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that turns a website into a store. You host it wherever you like, and the store is yours.

**What you gain:** great flexibility, thousands of extensions, integrations for all Romanian payment processors and couriers, and an admin panel many people already know. It’s the natural choice when you already have a WordPress site or a lot of content (blog, guides) alongside products.

**What to watch out for:** many extensions are paid yearly, and if the license expires you no longer get updates[^4]. Speed and security depend heavily on how it’s built: hosting, theme and the number of plugins make the difference between a fast store and a sluggish one.

## PrestaShop and OpenCart: platforms built for commerce

**PrestaShop** is a free, open-source platform built from the ground up for online stores, widely used in Europe and in Romania[^5]. Catalog management, product variants, pricing and promotions are built in, and extra modules are bought from the official marketplace or independent developers. It handles large catalogs with many product variants well.

**OpenCart** is also open source and free, simpler and lighter. It suits stores with clear needs that want a simple admin and a fast platform.

Both need hosting and updates, but have no subscription and no fee on sales.

## A custom solution: when no platform fits

Sometimes your store isn’t an ordinary store: configurable products, different prices for each B2B customer, rentals, subscriptions, tight integration with an ERP or a very high order volume. Then a generic platform gets in the way more than it helps, and a solution built specifically for you becomes cheaper in the long run.

## What it costs over the first three years

| What we compare | Shopify | WooCommerce | PrestaShop / OpenCart | Custom solution |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Platform | monthly subscription | free | free | part of development |
| Hosting | included | separate | separate | separate |
| Fee on sales | yes, with an external processor | no | no | no |
| Extensions, modules | apps with monthly subscriptions | yearly licenses | usually one-off payments | developed on demand |
| Building the store | low to medium | medium | medium | high |
| As you sell more | the cost grows | the cost stays stable | the cost stays stable | the cost stays stable |

In short: Shopify is cheap at the start and gets more expensive as you grow, while open-source platforms need a higher initial investment, but their cost doesn’t follow your sales.

## How we choose

We start from the catalog, the order volume, the payment and delivery methods and the systems the store has to talk to. Most often we recommend **PrestaShop, OpenCart or WooCommerce**, with payment, shipping and invoicing integrations configured and tested end to end, and for special cases, a custom solution.

An online store with us starts at €1,000 + VAT, with speed, SEO and the warranty included.

[See how we build online stores](https://www.simplix.ro/en/services/online-stores/)

[^1]: Emergency Ordinance no. 69/2024, which extended the e-Factura obligation to sales to consumers (B2C) from 1 January 2025. See also [ANAF’s e-Factura section](https://www.anaf.ro/anaf/internet/ANAF/despre_anaf/strategii_anaf/proiecte_digitalizare/e.factura) (in Romanian).
[^2]: [Shopify pricing](https://www.shopify.com/ro/pricing) for Romania, at the time of writing. The extra fee doesn’t apply if you use Shopify Payments.
[^3]: [SmartBill • Integration](https://apps.shopify.com/smartbill-integration), on the Shopify App Store.
[^4]: [What are WooCommerce.com subscriptions?](https://woocommerce.com/document/managing-woocommerce-com-subscriptions/what-are-woocommerce-com-subscriptions/)
[^5]: [PrestaShop](https://prestashop.com/), an open-source platform released under the OSL license.