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Self-Hosted Ecommerce
WooCommerce Development for Stores a Hosted Platform Can't Model
Self-hosting is a trade, not a discount. You take on hosting, patching and PCI scope, and in return you get a checkout, a pricing model and a content system that bend to how you actually sell. When that trade is wrong for you, we will say so and build it on Shopify instead. Already running WordPress? See our WordPress development work.
When Self-Hosted Commerce Beats Hosted
Three situations where a hosted platform costs you more than it saves. If none of them describe your business, buy the subscription and get on with selling.
Your price isn't one number per SKU
Contract pricing, quantity breaks, dealer tiers and quote-to-order don't fit a one-price product record. On a hosted platform you stack apps until three vendors each own a piece of your checkout.
Your catalog has logic inside it
Kits, configured builds, made-to-order lead times, freight-quoted items and inventory that an ERP owns are cart-level code. A settings screen can't express them.
Content is how people find you
If most of your traffic lands on guides and comparisons rather than product pages, splitting content and commerce across two systems buys you two template sets and two redirect maps to keep in sync.
And When It Doesn't
Buy the Hosted Platform
Straightforward catalog, standard checkout, and nobody on your side who wants to own updates and hosting? A hosted platform absorbs patching, uptime and PCI scope for a monthly fee, and that fee is cheaper than one bad outage. We build those too. The question was never which platform is better — it's which cost you would rather carry.
Where the Two Approaches Actually Differ
Not in the places most comparison tables point at. Both sit on top of the same card processors, so your per-transaction rate lands in the same range either way. These are the differences that change what you can actually build.
Self-hosted vs hosted
Three Real Trade-offs
Who carries the operational risk
Self-hosted: You do. Hosting, WordPress and PHP updates, backups, malware scanning and PCI scope are yours — delegated to us or handled in-house, but yours.
Hosted: The platform does. Patching, uptime and compliance are bundled into the subscription, and that is most of what the subscription buys.
How far the checkout bends
Self-hosted: Checkout is PHP you can change. Conditional shipping rules, custom fields, tiered pricing and quote-to-order are development work with one owner.
Hosted: Checkout belongs to the platform. Extension points cover a lot now, but you work inside their boundaries and each app you add owns a piece of the flow.
Where content lives
Self-hosted: One WordPress install owns articles and products, so a guide can link straight into a category, share a template, and sit under the same redirect map.
Hosted: The blog ships with the store and the editorial tooling is lighter. Teams that publish heavily usually end up bolting on a second CMS.
What Owning the Stack Gets You
A hosting bill instead of a platform subscription
WooCommerce core is free. Hosting runs roughly $20-100/month — a real cost, just a different line item.
No surcharge for bringing your own gateway
Your rate is whatever Stripe or PayPal publishes. Hosted platforms commonly add a percentage on top when you decline their first-party payment product — self-hosted has nothing to decline.
A checkout you can rewrite
Custom fields, conditional shipping, tiered pricing and quote-to-order become code changes rather than app subscriptions.
One system for content and commerce
Articles, category pages and products share templates, internal links and a single set of redirects.
An exit that is an export
Products, orders and customers sit in your own database. Leaving is a migration, not a rebuild from zero.
What We Build
The Six Pieces of a WooCommerce Store
No page builder stack, no marketplace theme with 40 plugins holding it together. See our full ecommerce development services, or read how website maintenance keeps a self-hosted store patched.
Custom Theme Development
A theme written for your catalog, so product and cart templates are yours to change later.
- Templates built against real SKUs
- Checkout fields matched to fulfilment
- A design system you can extend
Plugin Development & Integration
Where an off-the-shelf extension doesn't cover the rule, we write the rule.
- Stripe, PayPal and ACH gateways
- Live-rate and table-rate shipping
- ERP and inventory sync
Mobile Checkout
Most of your cart abandonment happens on a phone. That is where we test it.
- Thumb-reach cart and checkout
- Core Web Vitals on real devices
- Apple Pay and Google Pay
Search & Performance
A stock WooCommerce install gets slow and duplicates its own URLs. We plan around both.
- Product and Offer schema
- Redis object cache and CDN
- Filter URLs that don't self-duplicate
Tracking That Works Before Launch
We wire and verify measurement on the current store first, so the new one has a baseline to beat.
- GA4 ecommerce events, verified
- Checkout drop-off by step
- Ad platform conversion tracking
Migration & Ongoing Care
Moving platforms is a redirect problem before it is a data problem. Then someone has to patch it.
- A redirect for every indexed URL
- Staged updates, offsite backups
- Uptime and malware monitoring
Extensions We Reach For, and Where We Write Code Instead
Every extension is another dependency to update and another vendor who can break your checkout. We use them where they earn their place and build the rest.
Extensions Worth the Dependency
Catalog Structure
- Variable products, bundles and kits
- Stock thresholds and low-stock alerts
- CSV import mapped to your existing SKUs
- Reviews with Product schema attached
Payment & Checkout
- Stripe, PayPal, ACH and wallet payments
- Field-by-field checkout, only what you need
- Abandoned cart recovery emails
- Subscriptions and recurring billing
Shipping & Tax
- Live carrier rates at the cart
- Table rates, free-shipping thresholds, local pickup
- Automated sales tax by jurisdiction
- Oversized and freight-quoted items
Where No Extension Fits
B2B and Wholesale
The single most common reason our clients end up self-hosted.
- Customer-specific and tiered pricing
- Quote-to-order with approval
- Bulk order forms and reorder from history
- Trade account applications and net terms
Multi-Vendor and Multi-Location
When one storefront has to represent more than one seller or more than one warehouse.
- Vendor onboarding and dashboards
- Commission rules and payouts
- Ship-from-nearest-location logic
- Per-location stock that stays in sync
Systems That Have to Agree
Built with retry and failure alerts, because a silent sync error becomes an inventory problem.
- ERP or inventory system as source of truth
- CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce)
- Accounting and order export
- Email platform with real purchase data
How a Build Runs
Principal-Led, Start to Finish
The person who diagnoses the problem is the person who builds the fix — James Price, start to finish. No account manager relaying messages, no junior handed the file after you sign. Here is what you get at each step.
1
The Offer and the Data Model, Before Any Design
Your pricing rules, written down
Every tier, quantity break, kit and freight rule on paper before a template exists. This is where most WooCommerce builds go wrong, and it is the cheapest place to fix them. You receive the written spec.
Tracking fixed on the current store first
We don't open a design file until measurement works. GA4 ecommerce events and conversion tracking go live on what you have now, so the new store launches against a real baseline.
2
Templates Designed Against Real SKUs
Product, category and cart
Designed with your actual products in them, including the ugly ones — the item with fourteen variants and the one with no photo. Placeholder content hides the problems you will live with.
A checkout field list you approve
Every field has to justify itself against the order it might cost you. You sign off on the list before we build it, so nobody adds a required dropdown three weeks later.
3
Build, Harden, Integrate
Set up for the traffic you expect
High-Performance Order Storage enabled, Redis object caching configured, a CDN in front of assets, and a staging environment that matches production rather than approximating it.
Integrations that tell you when they break
Gateway, shipping, ERP and accounting connections built with retries and failure alerts. A sync that fails quietly turns into oversold stock before anyone notices.
4
Catalog & Redirect Map
Products, variants and content moved across, plus a redirect for every indexed URL, checked against Search Console before we cut over.
5
Live Test Orders
Real orders pushed through every gateway, shipping method and tax scenario, on real phones, then refunded. Not a checklist someone ticked in a browser tab.
6
Launch, Then Watch
We read checkout drop-off step by step in the first weeks and change what the data says to change, not what looks tidy. If your new website doesn't outperform your current one, we work for free until it does.
What It Costs
The Build, and What Keeps Costing
Ranges, not a menu. Where a project lands depends on catalog complexity and how many systems have to stay in agreement.
The Real Cost of Running It Yourself
Costs that never go away
- Hosting: $20-100/month, more once you need object caching
- A domain, around $15/year, and TLS on your own server
- Any paid extensions your build needs, renewed annually
- Updates, backups, monitoring and PCI scope — our maintenance starts at $149/month, or it is your time
- Your gateway's published processing rate on every order
Costs you genuinely don't have
- No monthly platform subscription
- No platform surcharge for using an outside payment gateway
- No per-seat charge for staff logins
- No app subscription for anything we build into the theme
Self-hosting moves cost from a subscription line to an operations line. It is cheaper when someone owns the operations, and more expensive when nobody does. Decide who that is before you decide the platform.
What a Build Costs With Us
Starter Store
$6,000 - $9,000
- Up to 50 products, one price each
- Custom theme, not a marketplace theme
- One gateway, standard shipping rules
- GA4 ecommerce tracking, verified
- Redirect map if you are moving platforms
Straightforward catalog, standard checkout.
Professional Store
$10,000 - $15,000
- Large or heavily variable catalog
- Custom pricing or shipping logic
- One business-system integration
- Custom plugin work where extensions fall short
- Object cache, CDN and HPOS configured
For stores where the checkout has to bend.
B2B & Multi-Vendor
$15,000+
- Customer tiers, quote-to-order, net terms
- Multi-vendor or multi-location inventory
- Several systems kept in sync, with alerting
- Reporting built around how you run the business
- Load and failure testing before launch
For catalogs with real business logic in them.
Before You Ask Us for a Number
Bring three things: roughly how many SKUs you have, how your prices actually work, and the list of systems that need to stay in sync. That is enough to scope a build honestly. If the answer is that you should be on a hosted platform, we will say so.
Own it
Code, database and customer list live on your hosting.
Bend it
Pricing rules and checkout are code, not a settings screen.
Leave it
Moving off later is an export, not a rebuild from zero.
Starting at $6,000
Design, build and migration. Hosting and maintenance are ongoing and separate — from $149/month if we run them.
Get a Scoped QuoteQuestions Worth Asking Before You Commit
The ones that decide whether self-hosting is right for you
Should I choose WooCommerce or a hosted platform like Shopify?
Choose self-hosted when the store has to bend to your business: contract or tiered pricing, quote-to-order, kits and configured products, freight-quoted shipping, or an ERP that owns inventory. Choose hosted when you sell a straightforward catalog and nobody on your side wants to own hosting, patching and PCI scope. We build on both, so we have no reason to talk you into the wrong one.
Is WooCommerce actually free?
The plugin is. The store is not. WooCommerce core costs nothing to download, then you pay for hosting (roughly $20-100/month depending on traffic), a domain (about $15/year), any paid extensions your build needs, and the development itself. What you avoid is a platform subscription, not the cost of running a store. Treat any comparison that shows a $0 column as marketing rather than math.
Doesn't the maintenance burden cancel out the savings?
That is the real trade, and it is the part most comparisons skip. A self-hosted store is your responsibility: WordPress core, the PHP version, plugin and theme updates, offsite backups, malware scanning, and PCI scope on your own hosting. Neglect it for a year and you get an outage or a card-skimming script, not a saving. Either we run it — maintenance starts at $149/month — or we hand over the runbook and you own it. The expensive option is deciding not to decide.
Can WooCommerce handle a large catalog and traffic spikes?
Yes, but not on a default install. Stock WooCommerce slows down as variable products and filtered queries pile up, because product data lives in WordPress' post tables. We plan around it: Redis object caching, a CDN in front of static assets, High-Performance Order Storage enabled so orders sit in their own tables, and query monitoring so we can see which page is doing the damage. The ceiling is a hosting and architecture decision, not a platform limit.
Can you migrate my store from Shopify to WooCommerce?
Yes. The part that decides whether it goes well is the URL map, not the product import. Shopify's /products/ and /collections/ paths do not match a WordPress structure, so we build a redirect for every indexed URL and check it against Search Console before cutover. Products, variants, customers and order history come across; subscriptions and app-specific data are scoped separately because they usually do not. We quote the timeline after we have seen your catalog and your app list — anyone quoting it before has not looked.
Who actually does the work?
James Price. The person who diagnoses the problem is the person who builds the fix — no account manager relaying messages, no junior handed the file after you sign. 8+ years in conversion optimization and web design, CXL Institute certified in conversion optimization. Named contractors come in for specific pieces such as photography, and you will know who they are.
Tell Us How Your Prices Actually Work
That one answer usually decides the platform. If WooCommerce is the wrong call for you, we will say so on the first conversation rather than after the invoice.
If your new website doesn't outperform your current one, we work for free until it does.
