Omniterra vs WooCommerce: what a store really costs to run

Short answer

WooCommerce is open-source software that you install on your own WordPress site. The core costs nothing and takes no share of your sales. You pay for hosting and extensions, and you or a developer look after updates, security and plugin compatibility. Omniterra is a hosted platform: one monthly plan covers hosting, updates and security, with 0% commission on sales on every plan, including Free.

If you want full control over code and servers, or you already run a busy WordPress site, WooCommerce is a very good fit. If you want to sell without looking after a server, a hosted platform usually costs less time and a more predictable amount of money.

At a glance

The hosting and extension ranges are WooCommerce's own figures from its pricing page, which describes the core as free, with no monthly subscription and a 0% revenue share. The same page says hosting is $25–$350/month for most stores and extensions are $29–$299/year per extension.

Total cost of ownership

Hosting

With WooCommerce you pick the host. That is real freedom: you can move between providers, size the server to your traffic and keep everything under your own account. It also means you pay for it separately, and a slow or overloaded server is yours to fix. WooCommerce puts most stores at $25 to $350 per month for hosting alone.

On Omniterra, hosting, a custom domain with automatic SSL and real-time orders in the admin are part of every plan. There is no separate hosting bill.

Extensions

WooCommerce keeps the core lean and lets you add what you need. Paid extensions cost $29 to $299 per year each. For example, the official WooCommerce Subscriptions extension is $279 for one year. A store that adds four or five paid extensions for shipping, invoicing, marketing and payments can easily spend a few hundred dollars a year before the first sale.

On Omniterra, cash on delivery rules, courier tracking links, invoices, email campaigns, automations, product feeds for Meta, Google, TikTok and Pinterest, and a drag-and-drop theme editor are built in. External apps are there when you need them, within your plan's limit.

Maintenance and security

This is the cost that doesn't appear on any price list. WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and each plugin update on their own schedule. Someone has to apply the updates, check that the checkout still works, keep backups and react to security issues. If that someone is you, it is your time; if it is a developer, it is a monthly invoice.

On a hosted platform, that work is ours. You log in and sell.

Payment fees: WooPayments vs Stripe

WooPayments is WooCommerce's own payment option. For Romania, its fees page lists 1.40% + 1.00 lei per card transaction, plus 2.00% for cards issued outside Europe, plus 2.00% when currency conversion applies, and a 100 lei dispute fee. The page adds that 21% VAT applies to these fees, except for VAT-registered merchants with a valid VAT ID, where the reverse charge applies. WooCommerce also works with other gateways, so WooPayments is a choice, not a requirement.

On Omniterra, card payments go through your own Stripe account. Stripe's Romanian pricing page lists 1.5% + 1.00 lei for standard European cards. To be fair, the headline WooPayments rate is slightly lower. We take no percentage on top.

Worked example: 30,000 lei in monthly sales

Take a store with 150 orders a month at an average of 200 lei. 60% is cash on delivery and 40% is paid by card: 12,000 lei across 60 orders.

The card fee lines work out like this. WooPayments: 1.40% of 12,000 lei is 168 lei, plus 60 × 1.00 lei, so 228 lei (plus VAT if the reverse charge doesn't apply to you). Stripe: 1.5% is 180 lei, plus 60 × 1.00 lei, so 240 lei.

So the payment fees are close. The difference sits in the other rows. At the low end of WooCommerce's own hosting range, $25/month, plus two or three paid extensions, the fixed costs already come close to the price of a hosted plan, before anyone spends an hour on updates. For a larger store on better hosting with more extensions, the gap grows. Our guide to what an e-commerce platform really costs has a worksheet for your own numbers.

What matters for Romanian stores

• Cash on delivery with rules: enable it by rules, add a COD fee, track "refused at delivery" separately, and add optional fraud protection with a risk score and a phone blacklist. More in our cash on delivery best practices.
• Romanian couriers: record the AWB and courier (Sameday, FAN Courier, Cargus, DPD, GLS, Poșta Română) and send a tracking link.
• Invoices with VAT and CUI on B2B orders; e-Factura through an authorized provider such as SmartBill or Oblio, connected by webhooks.
• ANPC SAL link in the footer and default legal pages, including 14-day returns.

On WooCommerce, you can cover all of this too, usually with plugins, and each plugin is one more thing to keep updated.

Where WooCommerce is the better choice

• You want to own everything. Code, database and server are yours. You can host anywhere and change anything.
• Content comes first. If your traffic comes from a WordPress blog or magazine, adding a shop to the same site is natural.
• You need deep custom logic. With access to the code, a developer can build almost anything, and the WordPress ecosystem is huge.
• You already have a developer who maintains the site. Then the maintenance cost is already covered.

How to switch from WooCommerce

1. Create a free account.
2. Run the WooCommerce import: categories become collections, plus products, customers, orders, coupons, pages and blog posts.
3. The import creates 301 redirects from your old product, page and post URLs, so links and rankings follow you.
4. Point your domain; SSL is automatic.

The step-by-step guide is how to migrate from Shopify or WooCommerce without losing SEO. You can also compare our plans and limits, or read Omniterra vs Shopify.

WooCommerce is a trademark of its owner. Omniterra is not affiliated with it.