Shopify or your own store: the right answer depends on three of your own numbers

This is the most common question from anyone about to sell online in Portugal, and the honest answer is that both options work. There are successful stores on either side.

What changes is where your money goes, what happens if you want to move, and how each behaves as volume grows.

There is also one detail specific to the Portuguese market that alters the arithmetic significantly. We will get there.

The two options, in plain terms

Shopify is a subscription platform. You pay monthly, and in return someone else handles hosting, security, updates and the checkout. You build the store from themes and extend it with apps. Plans start around 27 to 29 euros a month.

Your own store means the software lives on hosting you control. In Portugal the most common choice is WooCommerce, which is free and open source, running on WordPress. You pay for development and hosting, you pay no platform subscription, and keeping everything running is your responsibility or that of whoever you hire.

The Portuguese detail that changes the maths

Here is the information almost no international article will give you.

Shopify's own payment system does not include MB WAY or Multibanco references natively. To offer them, you install an app from a Portuguese provider such as ifthenpay or Eupago.

And there is a second effect, which is what catches people out: when you use a payment processor that is not Shopify's own, Shopify charges an additional percentage on every sale, varying by plan.

So for a Portuguese store wanting to offer the payment methods Portuguese people actually use, the cost per sale on Shopify tends to be the monthly fee, plus the payment provider's commission, plus the platform's additional charge.

On WooCommerce the same providers offer official modules and there is no additional platform charge. You pay the provider's commission and nothing else.

None of this rules Shopify out. It does mean the cost comparison has to be made with all three figures, not with the monthly fee alone.

The three numbers that decide

Before choosing, establish these three values for your business.

Your monthly sales volume. An extra percentage point is irrelevant on two thousand euros a month and is real money on fifty thousand. The higher the volume, the more transaction costs weigh, and the more attractive your own store becomes.

How complex what you sell is. Simple catalogue, ordinary product variants, conventional shipping? Shopify handles it quickly. Configurable products, per-customer pricing, integration with an ERP or a management system you already run? Your own store gives freedom the other does not.

The technical capacity available to you. This is the most underestimated of the three. Your own store needs someone responsible for updates, backups and problems at three in the morning. If you do not have that person and do not want to buy maintenance, Shopify's monthly fee is buying you peace of mind, and that has genuine value.

Where each one wins

Situation The choice that usually fits better
You want to launch quickly and validate the idea Shopify
Simple catalogue, physical products, normal shipping Shopify
Nobody available for technical maintenance Shopify
High volume and tight margins Your own store
Needs integration with an ERP or internal software Your own store
You want full control over checkout and data Your own store
You sell services, subscriptions or digital products Depends, assess case by case

An illustration with round numbers

To make this concrete, imagine a store doing ten thousand euros of sales a month with an average order value of fifty euros, so two hundred orders.

On Shopify you pay the plan fee, plus the Portuguese payment provider's commission on each of the two hundred transactions, plus the platform's additional charge for using an external processor, applied across the ten thousand euros.

On WooCommerce you pay hosting, any maintenance you contract, and the provider's commission on the same two hundred transactions. The additional platform charge does not exist.

The conclusion is not universal, which is why you have to run it with your own figures. At low volumes the annual difference tends to be small and Shopify's convenience is worth it. As volume rises, the additional percentage grows in a straight line while the fixed costs of your own store stay roughly flat, and at some point the balance tips.

Project it for the volume you expect in two years, not today's. That is the decision you are actually making.

The two questions nobody asks in time

Who owns the customer data? In your own store it sits in a database you control, which you can export, analyse and cross with the rest of the business. On a platform, you export what the platform lets you export.

What does moving cost in three years? Leaving one platform for another means migrating products, customers, orders and page addresses, and recovering search rankings. Not impossible, but a project. Worth asking before choosing rather than after.

What tends to go wrong with each

On Shopify, the most frequent problem is accumulating apps. Every missing feature is solved by installing one more, each with its own monthly fee, and after a year the bill bears no resemblance to the original plan. List everything you need up front and check what requires a paid app.

On WooCommerce, the most frequent problem is neglect. A site nobody updates for two years becomes slow, vulnerable, and more expensive to recover than maintaining it would have been. If you take this route, buy maintenance from day one, even minimal.

Both problems are predictable, which is why they are worth discussing before deciding.

A middle path that works well

For anyone who does not yet know whether the product sells, there is a route that avoids deciding prematurely.

Start with a catalogue site, no checkout, with enquiries by form or message. It costs a fraction, validates real demand, and shows you which products sell and what questions customers ask.

With that in hand, the choice between platform and own store stops being a bet and becomes arithmetic.

How Digito helps

We work with both, which is precisely why we can advise without an agenda.

We run the numbers with your figures: expected volume, real commissions from Portuguese payment providers, subscriptions and maintenance costs, for the first year and the third. The result often contradicts the client's initial expectation, in both directions.

Then we build whichever you choose, integrate MB WAY and Multibanco either way, and connect it to your invoicing software so you are not left with manual work every day.

If you are undecided, we will do the maths with you before there is any commitment.

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