Orbit Commerce vs WooCommerce.
WooCommerce's headline price is £0 — and almost no working store runs at it. Hosting, extensions, page builders and the maintenance hours add up to a very different number. Here's the honest total cost of each, in pounds, and whose job it is when something breaks.
| Orbit Commerce | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Software cost | Plans from £25/mo (£19/mo billed yearly), everything hosted | Free, open-source plugin — you supply and run everything around it |
| Hosting | Included | £5–£30/mo budget shared; £25–£60/mo proper managed WooCommerce hosting |
| Updates, security & backups | Handled by the platform | Your responsibility (or a £50–£200+/mo maintenance retainer) |
| Subscriptions / recurring billing | Included (Team and up) | Official extension, ~£200/yr |
| Gift cards | Included on every plan | Official extension, ~£58/yr |
| UK online card rate | 2% + 25p, dropping to 1.5% + 25p on Pro | WooPayments 1.5% + 25p (international cards +2%) |
| Page building | Drag-and-drop page builder included | Block editor; most stores add Elementor (Pro from ~$59/yr) |
| Code ownership & lock-in | Hosted platform — export your data any time | Full ownership of code and data; move hosts freely |
| Support | Email + live chat on every plan | Community forums for core; per-product support for paid extensions |
The true cost of “free”.
Free software, real running costs. Where a WooCommerce budget actually goes.
A working WooCommerce store stacks up like this: hosting good enough to be quick (managed WooCommerce hosting runs £25–£60 a month — the £3/month tier is why some Woo stores feel slow), a domain, and extensions for anything beyond the basics. The official Subscriptions extension is about £200 a year, Bookings around £180, Memberships around £145 — all annual subscriptions, renewing every year.
Then there's the part no pricing table shows: a typical store runs 15–30 plugins from different vendors, and every update cycle can break something — checkout included. UK maintenance retainers for a small store run £50–£200 a month; ad-hoc WordPress help costs £40–£120 an hour. If you enjoy that work and you're good at it, this cost is zero and WooCommerce gets genuinely cheap. If you don't, it's the biggest line on the bill.
On card rates the two are close: WooPayments charges 1.5% + 25p on UK cards (international cards +2%), Orbit ranges from 2% + 25p on Solo down to the same 1.5% + 25p on Pro. Payments won't decide this comparison either way — the £100+ a month of hosting, extensions and maintenance around them will.
A worked example: £5,000/month in sales, subscriptions, maintenance paid for
WooCommerce
- Managed hosting — ~£25/mo
- Subscriptions extension — ~£17/mo
- Maintenance retainer (low end) — ~£75/mo
- Card fees (WooPayments 1.5% + 25p, ~200 orders) — ~£125/mo
≈ £242/month
≈ £167/month if you do all maintenance yourself
Orbit (Team, annual)
- Plan — £44/mo (hosting, updates, security included)
- Subscriptions & dunning — included
- Maintenance — none to do
- Card fees (1.7% + 25p, ~200 orders) — ~£135/mo
≈ £179/month
Illustrative, using published prices at the time of checking. The honest summary: if your own time is free and you like the work, WooCommerce can match or beat this. If it isn't, it can't.
Flexibility versus someone else’s problem.
WooCommerce's best argument deserves a straight answer.
WooCommerce's pitch is ownership: your code, your server, no platform rent. What that means in practice is that you become the platform team. WordPress core, WooCommerce, PHP versions, theme and plugin updates, security hardening, performance tuning — all yours, forever, including the morning a plugin update breaks checkout. The flexibility is real; so is the fact that you're the one on call for it.
The usual argument for accepting that burden is custom behaviour — and it's a weaker argument than it used to be. Orbit's page builder covers the design work without a builder plugin, and where a store needs something genuinely bespoke — a custom storefront component, a workflow, an integration — Orbit's in-house development team builds it on the platform, by the same people who build Orbit itself. You own the bespoke code; the platform stays patched, tuned and backed up without you. Custom, without the 2am part.
Who should pick which.
Different businesses, different right answers. Here's our honest take.
Choose Orbit Commerce if…
- You want one predictable monthly cost that includes hosting, updates, security, and the features most stores end up buying as extensions.
- Nobody on the team wants to be the WordPress maintainer — no plugin conflicts, no update anxiety, no 2am checkout breakage.
- You want subscriptions, gift cards and cart recovery working out of the box rather than as £60–£200/yr add-ons.
- You want real support from the people who run the platform — email and live chat on every plan.
WooCommerce still makes sense if…
- Your site is content-first WordPress and the shop is a small part of it.
- You already employ WordPress developers and the maintenance cost is genuinely covered in-house.
- You need self-hosting for its own sake — a policy or infrastructure requirement, not a preference.
- You’ve priced your own time honestly and the numbers still work. For most growing stores, they stop working — which is when people switch.
Questions, answered.
Straight answers from the team building it. If we don't know, we'll tell you.
WooCommerce pricing and features checked 10 June 2026 against woocommerce.com (WooPayments fees & extension pricing) and other published sources, and reviewed regularly. WooCommerce is a trademark of its respective owner; all figures exclude VAT unless stated. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
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