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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Shopify runs the operation, Webflow controls the design. Pick the one for the half your business is short on.
- Webflow has no native subscriptions since January 2026, sells in one currency per site, and its checkout can be styled but not restructured.
- Both charge a percentage somewhere: 2% per order on Webflow's Standard ecommerce plan, up to 2% on Shopify if you skip Shopify Payments.
Most Webflow vs Shopify comparisons end in a feature table, and feature tables do not decide anything. The shorter version: Shopify is a store that can have a website. Webflow is a website that can have a store. The right one depends on which half your business is short on.
Every store in our portfolio runs on Shopify or WooCommerce. Our Webflow work is sites where the design does the selling and the transaction is simple or happens somewhere else. That split is not loyalty to a platform. It is what the stores needed.
The short answer
- Choose Shopify when selling is the business: more than a handful of products, inventory, shipping rules, discounts, and you want payments, tax and fraud handled for you.
- Choose Webflow when the store is secondary: a few products or digital goods next to a site where design and content do the work, edited every week by a marketing team.
- Choose neither when you need custom checkout logic, pricing per customer group, or the customer list in a database you own. That is a WooCommerce conversation, or Shopify Plus if the budget is there.
Where Webflow stops
Webflow is excellent at what it was built for: design control down to the pixel, a CMS that puts articles and products side by side, clean markup, and publishing without a plugin to update. As a store, it has four hard edges.
- No native subscriptions. Recurring billing depended on Webflow User Accounts, which Webflow shut down in January 2026. Subscriptions now need Stripe or a membership tool bolted on.
- One currency per site. There is no built-in currency conversion or localized pricing. Selling in several currencies means a third-party layer or a different platform.
- A checkout you can style but not restructure. You can make it look like your brand. You cannot add steps, rules or logic without replacing it with a third-party checkout.
- Catalog limits by plan. 500 items on the Standard ecommerce plan, 5,000 on Plus, 15,000 on Advanced. Fine for a boutique catalog, tight for anything that grows by variants.
There is also a fee most people miss: on the Standard ecommerce plan, Webflow keeps 2% of every order, on top of card processing. Plus and Advanced charge no transaction fee.
Where Shopify stops
Shopify runs the operation: inventory, shipping, tax, fraud checks, returns, point of sale and sales channels, on infrastructure that stays up during a launch. That is the reason to choose it, and it comes with its own ceiling.
- The checkout is theirs. Below Shopify Plus, you can extend the checkout but not redesign how it works. The limit is also why it converts reliably.
- A fee if you bring your own payment provider. With Shopify Payments there is no extra transaction fee. With any other provider, Shopify charges 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus.
- Apps become rent. Most stores add reviews, subscriptions, bundles or search as monthly apps. Each one is small. Together they are a second plan price.
- Distinctive design costs extra. Themes get you live fast. A store that has to look like nobody else needs custom theme work, which is where most of a Shopify build goes.
More on how we weigh those costs is on our Shopify page.
The fee math, as a ratio
Both platforms charge a percentage somewhere, and a percentage has one property worth modeling before launch: a store doing well pays more than a store doing badly. That is fair, and it is also predictable.
The test is the same on both. Take your expected monthly sales and apply the percentage you would pay: 2% on Webflow Standard, or Shopify's third-party fee if you plan to keep your current payment provider. If that number is larger than the price difference to the next plan up, the next plan is cheaper. Do the math before launch, not in month nine.
What we have seen in our own work
- MUZE, a functional chocolate brand in Brooklyn, sells a shelf product that had to survive a thumbnail before it ever survived a shelf. Packaging and store were designed as one system, on Shopify.
- Marie Birdie, golf apparel for young players, needed a catalog reorganized around how golfers actually shop, then a blog built to be found. Shopify handled the catalog; the design work was in the structure.
- Franco's Pasta came to us with a site that did not work on phones, a broken checkout flow, and a look that said nothing about a handmade Italian product. The rebuild was on Shopify, because the problem was selling, not styling.
- Storybook, a wellness brand in Miami, is the opposite case. Design was the differentiator and the team was small, so a hosted platform they could edit themselves was the right trade. It is a Webflow site, and it is not a store.
None of these would have been better on the other platform. The stores needed operations. Storybook needed design and a team that could publish without us.
Five questions to decide in an afternoon
- How many products, and will that number pass a few hundred once you count variants? If yes, Shopify.
- Do you need subscriptions, several currencies or pricing per customer group? If yes, not Webflow.
- Who edits the site every week, and what do they edit, products or content? Content-heavy teams feel at home in Webflow. Product-heavy teams feel at home in Shopify.
- Does your checkout need anything the standard one does not do? If yes, Shopify Plus or WooCommerce.
- At the sales you expect, what does the percentage cost against the next plan? Write the number down before you sign.
If three or more answers point the same way, you have your platform. If they split, the store is probably more complicated than either default, and that is worth a conversation before you build. Our platform guide covers the same decision with WordPress and WooCommerce in the mix.
If you are already on the wrong one
Moving between them is routine. Products, customers and order history move; the design is rebuilt. The rule that matters is the one we apply to every migration: nothing that currently ranks is allowed to break, so every URL is mapped to its new address before anything is designed. We wrote up how that works in redesigning without losing your rankings.
We build on Webflow, Shopify and WooCommerce, so the recommendation you get is about your store, not about what we would rather sell. If you want a second opinion on yours, tell us what you sell and how.
Ask it on a call. A Growth Audit also shows which pages already bring in customers and what to fix first.
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