WooCommerce vs Shopify for Malaysia and Singapore Sellers: The 3-Year Fee Model (FPX, PayNow, Currency)

Over three years, a WooCommerce store built once and maintained on a yearly care plan usually costs less than Shopify for sellers in Malaysia and Singapore, and the gap is widest in Malaysia because Shopify Payments is not available there, so every order carries Shopify's third-party transaction fee on top of the gateway's own charge. Singapore is closer to a tie; the deciding line is how many of your customers pay by PayNow.

The fee model: why "US$25 a month" is not the price

The subscription is the smallest of the three numbers you pay a platform. The other two are payment processing (what the gateway takes on every order) and the platform's own cut on transactions it did not process itself. Shopify charges the third; WooCommerce does not. Which of the three dominates depends on how much you sell, not on how much the plan costs.

Every figure below was read from the official pricing pages on 3 September 2026 and is quoted as shown; check the same pages before you sign, because gateway rates change without notice. Where a number is not published, we say so and use a stated assumption instead of a guess. The general build-cost picture for both platforms is in our ecommerce website cost guide; this article is only about the three-year fee model.

The three costs, in the order they matter for a growing store:

1. Platform transaction fee. Shopify's pricing pages for Malaysia and Singapore both list a third-party transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, charged when you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments. WooCommerce has no equivalent line.
2. Gateway processing. Paid to Stripe, HitPay, toyyibPay, Billplz or whichever gateway you connect, on both platforms.
3. Subscription or build plus maintenance. Shopify: monthly, forever. WooCommerce: a one-off build plus a yearly care plan that covers hosting, domain, SSL and updates.

Shopify Payments: available in Singapore, not in Malaysia

This is the single fact that decides the Malaysian comparison. Shopify's supported-countries list for Shopify Payments includes Singapore and does not include Malaysia (checked 3 September 2026). A Malaysian Shopify store therefore has to use a third-party provider, and the 2% Basic-plan fee applies to every order on top of that provider's own rate.

The same split exists on the WooCommerce side, with a different consequence. WooPayments, the Stripe-backed gateway built by WooCommerce, lists Singapore among its supported countries but not Malaysia. In Malaysia a WooCommerce store connects a local gateway directly (toyyibPay, Billplz, senangPay, iPay88, or Stripe Malaysia), and because WooCommerce takes no cut, the absence of WooPayments costs nothing.

Shopify's Malaysian pricing page also lists plans in US dollars (Basic US$25 a month, or US$19 a month billed yearly), while the Singapore page lists Singapore dollars (Basic S$39 a month, or S$29 a month billed yearly). A Malaysian seller is paying a USD subscription with a MYR bank account for as long as the store exists.

FPX in Malaysia and PayNow in Singapore: the gateway rates

Local bank-transfer methods are where the two countries diverge most, and they are also where Shopify's model bites hardest, because a low-percentage method makes a 2% platform fee proportionally larger. The figures below are from each gateway's official pricing page on 3 September 2026.

Two practical points. Stripe's documentation for FPX and PayNow states that neither method supports chargeback disputes because the customer authenticates with their bank, which is why we route as many orders as possible through them; a card dispute in Malaysia costs RM90 at Stripe before you have argued your case. And the Shopify Singapore pricing page does not itemise PayNow under Shopify Payments; check in your own Shopify admin whether PayNow is offered for your store, because if it is not and you add HitPay for PayNow, the 2% third-party fee applies to those orders.

Three-year cost, Malaysia: a worked example

Assume a store doing 100 orders a month at an average order of RM150, so RM15,000 a month and RM540,000 over 36 months, with 70% of customers paying by FPX and 30% by local card. Assume RM4.20 to the US dollar for the Shopify subscription and no paid theme or apps on either side. Those are assumptions, not data; change them to your numbers and the arithmetic still holds.

The subscription is cheaper on Shopify by about RM3,800 over three years. The 2% platform fee wipes that out four times over, and it scales with revenue: at RM30,000 a month the fee line alone is RM21,600. If your Shopify gateway charges more than toyyibPay's rates (many do; iPay88 and senangPay both quote annual fees), the gap widens further. Read the Malaysia e-commerce website package at RM4,888 for what the build line includes: unlimited products, eight content pages, two gateways (FPX, card and eWallet) and 20 product descriptions.

Three-year cost, Singapore: a closer contest

Assume 100 orders a month at an average of S$80, so S$288,000 over 36 months, half by PayNow and half by domestic card. Assume no paid theme or apps, and that PayNow on the Shopify store goes through HitPay with the 2% third-party fee applied to those orders (remove that line if Shopify Payments offers PayNow in your admin).

Near enough a tie on these assumptions, which is why Singapore sellers should not choose on subscription price. Three things move the answer. If most of your customers pay by card and Shopify Payments handles PayNow for your store, Shopify edges ahead in fees. If most pay by PayNow through a third-party gateway, WooCommerce pulls ahead by the 2% line. And if you sell above S$8,000 a month, every percentage point is worth more than the whole subscription difference. The Singapore e-commerce package at S$2,988 includes PayNow, card and Stripe set-up, so the numbers in the left column are the ones you would actually pay.

Currency: selling to the other side of the Causeway

Both platforms can present prices in a second currency; the cost sits in the gateway, not the platform. Stripe's Malaysian and Singapore pricing pages both add 2% for currency conversion and a surcharge for international cards (1% in Malaysia, 0.5% in Singapore). WooPayments adds 1.5% for international cards and 2% for conversion. A Johor Bahru seller taking S$ from Singapore customers, or a Singapore seller taking RM, should model those surcharges before deciding to sell cross-border at all.

There is a second currency issue specific to Shopify in Malaysia: the plan itself is billed in US dollars, so a RM4.20 assumption that moves to RM4.60 raises the subscription by nearly 10% with no change on Shopify's side. A WooCommerce build and care plan are priced in ringgit or Singapore dollars and stay there.

Ownership and exit: what happens in year four

Shopify is a rental: stop paying and the store closes, and the theme, apps and checkout do not travel with you, though product and customer exports do. A WooCommerce store on your own hosting is yours, with the domain, hosting and WordPress admin in your name at launch; if you stop the care plan you still own the site and can move it. The trade-offs are laid out in our website rental versus ownership comparison, and they apply to platforms exactly as they apply to agencies that rent you a site.

Ownership is also why the WooCommerce column in both tables front-loads its cost. You pay for the build once. The care plan (RM599 or S$488 a year on Basic) covers hosting, domain, SSL, monthly plugin updates, weekly backups, security and uptime monitoring, and two content edits a month; higher tiers add product uploads and a monthly enquiry-channel test. Shopify's subscription bundles the hosting and updates too, which is genuinely convenient, and is the honest reason many first-time sellers choose it.

When Shopify is the right call anyway

Shopify wins when the seller has no one to run a WordPress store, when the catalogue changes daily and the team lives in the admin, when point-of-sale in a physical shop matters (Shopify's Singapore page lists in-person rates from 3% + S$0.50 on Basic), or when the business plans to grow onto Grow or Advanced where the third-party fee drops to 1% and 0.6%. In Singapore with Shopify Payments active and a card-heavy customer base, Shopify's fees are competitive and the subscription is modest.

WooCommerce wins when FPX or PayNow is the main payment method, when revenue is high enough for the 2% line to matter, when you want the store, content and SEO structure to be yours outright, and when you already run a WordPress site and want the shop on the same domain. In Malaysia, the absence of Shopify Payments makes WooCommerce the default answer for any store expecting more than a few thousand ringgit a month.

How to decide in ten minutes

Write down three numbers: monthly revenue, average order value, and the share of orders paid by FPX or PayNow. Put them into the two tables above with your own gateway's rates from its official pricing page. If the WooCommerce total is lower by more than the cost of one care-plan year, build and own. If it is within that margin, choose on operations rather than fees: who will run the store, and where the team wants to work.

If you want the WooCommerce column priced for your store, the Malaysia e-commerce website page and the Singapore e-commerce website page list every inclusion in the RM4,888 and S$2,988 builds, and we will run your numbers through the same three-year model before you commit to either platform.

Frequently asked questions