Why not use WooCommerce for a WordPress membership or content site?

WooCommerce is the obvious choice for selling on WordPress. It’s free, it’s open source, it runs inside the site you already have, and thousands of extensions cover almost anything a shop needs. For many sites it’s the right answer.

The question is where you want the shop to live. WooCommerce puts it inside WordPress. Shopify keeps it outside, and RedeemID connects the two through the Shopify customer account. This guide sets out what each choice means in practice, so you can pick the one that fits.

What WooCommerce puts inside WordPress

With WooCommerce, WordPress becomes the store as well as the site:

Checkout runs on your server. The cart, checkout and account pages are WordPress pages, served by your host. Payments go through a gateway plugin you connect, such as Stripe or PayPal.
Orders and customers live in your database. So do subscriptions and memberships, through extensions such as WooCommerce Subscriptions and WooCommerce Memberships.
Renewals run in WordPress. A subscription renews on a schedule your site runs: it charges the saved card, records the order, and changes the member’s access when a payment fails.
The shop is part of every update. WooCommerce, its extensions, the payment gateway and your theme all update on WordPress’s cycle, and a conflict between any of them can reach checkout.

None of that is a flaw. It’s the trade: full control, one system, no platform fee, and every job of running a store on the same site as your content.

What changes when Shopify runs the shop

With Shopify for commerce and WordPress for content, each does one job:

Shopify runs the store. Checkout, payments, taxes, refunds, receipts and order history are Shopify’s, on Shopify’s servers. Subscriptions come from a subscription app; who should have access is set by Shopify Flow or the app.
WordPress runs the site. Posts, pages, courses and downloads stay in WordPress, edited the way they are now.
The customer has one account. RedeemID signs customers in to WordPress with their Shopify customer account, the same one they use at your store. It mirrors that account on their WordPress user, with its name, email, status and tags, and locks content on the server against what the account holds. See Add Shopify customer login to WordPress.

The site keeps no billing. WordPress never holds a grant Shopify doesn’t know about, so a cancelled subscription or a disabled account in Shopify closes the site too.

Where the difference shows

Caching and load

A WooCommerce cart sets cookies, and cart, checkout and account pages can’t come from a shared page cache, so busy sales days land on your WordPress server. With Shopify, checkout traffic goes to Shopify. Your pages stay cacheable, and RedeemID keeps a member’s page out of the shared copy. See Caching a WordPress membership site.

Customer data

WooCommerce keeps orders and addresses in the WordPress database, so every backup and every staging copy holds them. With Shopify, they stay in Shopify. RedeemID keeps the account’s name, email, status and tags on the WordPress user, with the customer’s marketing consent and a purchase summary, and no orders or addresses. See Privacy requests across Shopify and WordPress.

Staff and tools

Running a shop in WordPress means managing orders in WordPress. With Shopify, orders, fulfilment, discounts and customer service stay in Shopify’s admin and apps, and the people editing content in WordPress never need to see them.

Selling in more places

A Shopify catalog can also sell in person with Shopify POS, on social channels and in other sales channels, from the same products and the same customer accounts. RedeemID shows that catalog on WordPress with product, collection and cart blocks. See Add Shopify products and a cart to WordPress.

When WooCommerce is the better fit

Pick WooCommerce, not Shopify and RedeemID, if:

You don’t want a monthly platform plan. Shopify charges for its plans. WooCommerce is free, though paid extensions, payment fees and hosting add up.
Everything should live on one site. If one system and one database matter more to you than splitting the jobs, WooCommerce keeps them together.
You need checkout itself to be custom. WooCommerce’s checkout is yours to change in PHP. Shopify’s checkout is Shopify’s, with the changes it allows.
Your WooCommerce store works. A shop that sells, renews and supports its customers well doesn’t need moving to try an architecture.

RedeemID doesn’t work with WooCommerce. It reads Shopify customers only, so WooCommerce orders and customers are invisible to it.

When Shopify for the shop makes sense

Shopify for commerce and WordPress for content suits a site that:

Already sells on Shopify, and wants its customers signed in on the WordPress blog, guides or members’ area with the same account.
Sells access, through memberships, subscriptions or single items, and would rather not run billing in WordPress. See Membership plugin or paywall service for the other options.
Wants WordPress to stay a content site, with fewer plugins in the path of checkout and no customer orders in its database.

RedeemID itself is free, with no per-member fee and no revenue share. You pay for Shopify, and for any subscription app you choose. See Pricing.

Moving from WooCommerce

The posts, pages and URLs stay put. The store moves into Shopify with Shopify’s import tools or a migration app, RedeemID’s blocks replace WooCommerce’s, and existing customers link their Shopify account to their WordPress user when the emails match. Move from WooCommerce to Shopify and keep WordPress has the order of work and the redirects.

Written for: Shopify stores, Membership sites

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