What decides the platform for an Irish store?
Shopify suits a standard retail store that your team runs without a developer. WooCommerce suits a store inside a content-led WordPress site, or a catalogue with unusual pricing rules. A custom build suits what neither models: event places, memberships, trade accounts, or payments split across companies. Loco Digital builds on all three; our Shopify developer service in Dublin covers the Shopify side.
The three options for an Irish store
- Shopify: a hosted platform. You rent the software; Shopify hosts it, updates it and can take payments through Shopify Payments. Quick to launch and hard to break, but limited to what the platform and its apps already do.
- WooCommerce: an open-source store inside WordPress, free to install, hosted where you like and extended through plugins and code. Every plugin is one more thing to maintain.
- Custom or headless: the storefront, checkout or booking flow is written for you, usually on a proven commerce backend. The most work up front.
A common hybrid is a WordPress site the marketing team edits, with a custom engine behind it.
Shopify vs WooCommerce in Ireland
Shopify wins when the store is the business and the business is fairly standard: physical products, retail customers, one or two currencies, and a team that adds products and runs promotions without a developer. The monthly fee covers hosting, security patches and checkout uptime.
Field Queens, which makes GAA gloves and sportswear, is our Shopify example. Loco Digital redesigned the Field Queens Shopify store on the Mode theme in 2024 and produced its brand film and product photography with partners.
Read the Field Queens case study
WooCommerce wins when the store sits inside a content-led site, when the catalogue or pricing rules are unusual, or when the business already runs on WordPress. There is no platform fee, but someone competent has to own hosting, updates and plugins. An unmaintained WooCommerce site, with old plugins, no staging and no named owner, is the usual reason a store needs rescuing.
Eight questions that choose the platform
B2B, integrations, EU VAT and cost of ownership decide most builds.
Scroll the table sideways for the full detail
| Question | Shopify | WooCommerce | Custom or headless |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catalogue | Simple products, few variants | Large or unusual catalogues | Configurable products, quotes, made-to-order |
| B2B or B2C | B2C retail, B2B on every plan | Either, with trade-pricing plugins | Account pricing, approvals, credit terms |
| Integrations | Sage or Xero connectors | Same, plus anything with an API | ERP, warehouse, bespoke back office |
| EU VAT and OSS | Destination rates once OSS is registered | Plugin-driven, needs testing | Whatever finance specifies |
| Payments | Shopify Payments, PayPal | Stripe, Revolut, PayPal, bank transfer | Several merchants, entities or currencies |
| Content | Light: a blog and some pages | Heavy: editorial and SEO content | Anything, because you design it |
| Cost of ownership | Predictable monthly, scales with revenue | Lower fees, higher maintenance | Highest build cost, lowest running fees |
| Ownership | Your data only | Code, theme and data | Everything |
B2B or B2C
Trade customers bring prices that depend on who is logged in, orders that need approval and invoices on 30-day terms. Every Shopify plan now includes company accounts, net terms and up to three B2B catalogues; catalogues for a single company, deposits and partial payments need Plus (Shopify’s B2B features by plan, checked September 2026). WooCommerce covers the same ground with plugins. A custom build follows how your sales team already works.
Integrations: Sage, Xero, ERP and couriers
Decide what the store must talk to before you decide how it looks. An ERP or warehouse system means custom integration work on any platform. Irish carriers connect through label and rate apps on Shopify and plugins on WooCommerce, so confirm yours has a maintained integration before you commit.
EU VAT and the One Stop Shop
Cross-border B2C sales above €10,000 a year across the EU are charged VAT at the customer’s country rate. Shopify applies destination rates once your OSS registration is entered in its tax settings; WooCommerce does the same when configured and tested. Have finance sign off the VAT logic before launch.
Total cost of ownership
Compare the cost over five years. Shopify’s Irish plans run from €24 a month for Basic, billed yearly, to €289 a month for Advanced, excluding VAT, with Plus from €2,100 a month, before card fees and app subscriptions. WooCommerce has no licence fee but needs hosting, maintenance and someone accountable for updates. A custom build costs most to create and least to run per sale, so it pays off at higher volumes or when the workflow cannot be bought.
When does a custom or headless build make sense?
- What you sell is not a stock product: places at an event, a membership, a booking, a configured item or a quote.
- Money must reach more than one company, merchant account or currency from one site.
- Pricing depends on who the buyer is, and the rules are too specific for a plugin.
- The back office has no off-the-shelf connector.
- Content matters as much as the checkout, so a headless front end on a commerce backend serves both.
ERP HEADtoHEAD is the worked example. The Dublin and Birmingham events are run by separate companies, each with its own currency, VAT regime and Stripe account. We built a booking and payments plugin on WooCommerce and Stripe: every booking lands as a WooCommerce order Lumenia can report on, Dublin payments reach the Irish company’s Stripe account, and Birmingham’s will reach the UK company’s.
Booking is ecommerce too. The Trident Holiday Homes rebuild, delivered through our partner Altitude, is built around choosing a holiday home on a phone. Our ecommerce development page covers how we scope this work.
How do you migrate platforms without losing rankings?
Rankings live in URLs, product content and internal links, and a new platform changes all three.
- Crawl the old store first: every URL, its title, its canonical and its Search Console traffic. That list is the migration plan.
- Redirect one to one with permanent 301s from each old URL to its new one, never everything to the homepage.
- Move product content intact, with alt text, structured data and reviews, and rebuild the internal links from category pages to the products that matter.
- Launch with the sitemap and Search Console ready, keep performance at least as good as before, and check crawl errors daily for a month.
ESMA’s new site went live on 5 August 2026 with 338 redirects from its old website addresses in place.
What does an ecommerce build cost in Ireland?
The build, the integrations and the content cost far more than the platform subscription. The bands are in what a website costs in Ireland. Ecommerce projects at Loco start from €10,000, and the exact figure follows a short consult that ends in a costed plan.
