Best online shop builder? Compare the four routes.

There is no single best one: the right choice depends on how you will sell and who will build and run the store. Hosted builders such as Shopify, Wix and Squarespace suit owners who want the platform to run the hosting for a monthly plan. WooCommerce suits a business that wants the store shaped around its products, with no platform commission, owned outright on hosting it chooses.

DIGITALON builds custom stores on WordPress and WooCommerce only; we do not build on Shopify, Wix or Squarespace.

In upfront cash, usually yes: a DIY shop needs the platform plan or hosting, a theme, any paid extensions and your own time. A WooCommerce store built by DIGITALON is a one-off build price: $4,990 for Basic (6 pages), $5,990 for Standard (10 pages) or $7,990 for Premium (20 pages), with hosting, your domain and payment fees separate.

What doing it yourself costs instead is hours of setup, learning and testing. Our guide to a DIY builder or a web developer weighs that time and the cost over several years.

Yes to GST, no to a platform fee. Our build prices are one-off amounts in Australian dollars that include GST, itemised on your invoice, and WooCommerce itself has no monthly subscription. You still budget for hosting, your domain, your payment provider's transaction fees, any optional extension renewals and maintenance if you want it.

The one that covers what the store needs on launch day. Basic suits a straightforward shop with card and PayPal payments and flat-rate or free shipping. Standard adds SEO, customer accounts, product filters, coupons and advanced shipping rules. Premium adds AI search optimisation (GEO), Apple Pay, Google Pay and Afterpay, live product search, order tracking and CRM integration.

Features can be added later, quoted when you need them, so a shop you are still testing does not need the largest package. Every inclusion is compared on our eCommerce pricing page.

For the everyday work of an online shop, yes. Products with variations and stock, coupons, customer accounts, shipping zones and tax are built into WooCommerce, card and wallet payments connect through providers such as Stripe and PayPal, and extensions add subscriptions, bookings, wholesale pricing or accounting connections.

Anything outside your package is scoped and quoted before we build it. The trade-off is upkeep: WooCommerce runs on your hosting, so its updates are yours or your maintenance provider's.

No. WooCommerce takes no commission, so your payment provider's fee is the only deduction, whereas Shopify adds its own transaction fee unless you use its payment system. Every package we build includes Stripe and PayPal, so Visa, Mastercard and American Express work from launch, and Premium adds Apple Pay, Google Pay and Afterpay.

A basic store we build usually takes two to three weeks. A DIY shop can open sooner or later than that, depending on your spare hours and how much you need to learn. On either route, product photos and descriptions, shipping decisions and feedback set much of the pace, and integrations or large product imports add time that we confirm with the quote.

Yes, once we have assessed the shop and quoted the move. Products, categories, customers and order history can be carried across, addresses that already rank are kept or redirected, and the old shop stays live until the new one has been tested. Migration is priced to what needs moving and is never assumed to be part of a package.

Still deciding whether to move at all? Platform fees, lock-in and ownership over the years are compared on a separate page.

Not on its own. Search engines read page titles, category structure, product information and speed, and a shop on any of these platforms can get those right or wrong. Our Standard and Premium packages include keyword and category research with on-page SEO, and Premium adds AI search optimisation (GEO).

Ongoing SEO after launch is a separate service, and no one can promise a Google position or an AI citation.

On a hosted builder, the platform maintains its own software as part of the plan. On WooCommerce, you or your maintenance provider keep WordPress, WooCommerce and plugins updated, which is the trade for owning the store outright.

You receive the administrator login, and Standard and Premium include one-to-one training on your own store. If you would rather hand it over, our maintenance packages and managed WordPress hosting cover updates, backups, security and support.