WooCommerce or Shopify for a UAE / Saudi e-commerce store?

I run my own e-commerce brand (hanooon.com) on WooCommerce and I have built client stores on both. The honest answer to 'which should I use' depends almost entirely on your revenue stage and your appetite for engineering.

The quick decision

• Under AED 150,000 revenue per year — Shopify. The $30-100/month subscription is nothing against the time you save.
• AED 150,000 to 500,000 — either works; depends on your team.
• Above AED 500,000 — WooCommerce starts to pay for itself. Shopify's percentage-based transaction fees become a real cost; WooCommerce's one-off hosting is flat.
• Noon-first seller doing marketplace volume — build a thin WooCommerce as the brand front and let Noon handle the volume. Shopify fits here too but costs more.

Fees — the one that hurts

Shopify charges a monthly subscription (from $29 to $299) and a transaction fee on every sale (0.5% to 2% depending on plan, unless you use Shopify Payments which is not yet available in the UAE at the time of writing — meaning UAE sellers pay the extra fee).

WooCommerce is free as software. You pay for hosting (Hostinger shared starts at AED 150/year, cloud VPS from AED 200/month), payment gateway fees (2.9% + AED 1 on Stripe) and plugins (optional). No per-sale subscription markup.

At AED 500,000 revenue per year, Shopify's percentage fees add up to roughly AED 10,000-25,000 annually that WooCommerce would not charge. Below that revenue, the time saved on Shopify's convenience is worth more than the fees.

Payment gateways in the UAE and Saudi

• Shopify UAE — Stripe, 2Checkout, Checkout.com integrations work. Not Shopify Payments (not available in UAE yet).
• Shopify Saudi — similar; Mada card support via Checkout.com or Tap.
• WooCommerce UAE — full flexibility: Stripe, Telr, PayTabs, Network International, Noon Payments. Pick the lowest fee for your category.
• WooCommerce Saudi — Hyperpay, Moyasar, Tap, Tabby, Tamara (BNPL) all have official WooCommerce plugins.

Arabic RTL

Shopify Arabic support in 2026 is finally decent but still inherits the Latin typography by default — same complaint as a WordPress translation plugin. WooCommerce with a custom theme (or a good RTL-aware theme) handles Arabic typography independently. For a serious Arabic-first store, WooCommerce wins.

Scale — the long-term question

At 100 products, both are fine. At 1,000 products, Shopify's performance holds up better out of the box; WooCommerce needs a tuned host and sometimes a caching plugin. At 10,000 products, both need thought — Shopify charges you for app subscriptions that handle bulk editing and multi-currency; WooCommerce needs a developer to tune it.

What I use and why

Hanooon runs on WooCommerce with a custom theme I wrote. I own the code, I pay AED 150 per year for Hostinger shared, I pay Stripe standard rates. For a 100-product brand doing modest volume, this is cheaper than Shopify would be and I can edit anything about the site in PHP. If I were running at ten times the scale, I would still use WooCommerce for the same reasons.

What I recommend to clients

• You are starting with less than 20 products and want to be live in a weekend — Shopify.
• You are a UAE / Saudi brand with Arabic-first customers — WooCommerce with a custom theme.
• You are already running on Shopify and it works — do not migrate. Spend the budget on marketing instead.
• You are selling on Noon or Amazon and want a brand site — thin WooCommerce (or even a static Next.js site) with WhatsApp enquiry rather than full checkout. Let the marketplace handle the volume.

If you want a WooCommerce store built for the UAE or Saudi market, I quote them from AED 5,000 for 20 products. WhatsApp +971 56 985 8632 to brief.