Choose Shopify if you want hosting, security and payment plumbing handled and are content with a monthly fee plus per-transaction charges. Choose WooCommerce if you want to own the stack, run local payment gateways freely, and pay for hosting rather than a subscription. For most Pakistani stores the deciding question turns out to be payments rather than price.
Payments decide it more often than cost
Cash on delivery still carries the majority of online orders in Pakistan, and it is not really a payment method so much as a workflow: order confirmation by phone, a status for cash collected, and reporting that distinguishes a delivered order from a paid one. Both platforms can be made to do it; WooCommerce does it with less resistance because you can change the checkout freely.
Digital collection is normally JazzCash and Easypaisa, or a gateway such as PayFast or Safepay for cards and bank transfers. Availability and integration quality for these differ between the two platforms, and it is worth confirming the specific gateway you intend to use before committing rather than after.
The costs, as published
Shopify plans start around twenty-nine dollars a month before apps, with per-transaction fees on top unless you use its own payment processing. Published comparisons put a production-ready WooCommerce store at roughly twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a month at low volume, rising substantially with traffic, and the licence itself is free.
The figures are close enough at small scale that cost should not decide it. They diverge as you grow, and they diverge in opposite directions: Shopify's transaction fees scale with your success, while WooCommerce's hosting scales with your traffic.
What each one asks of you
Shopify asks for very little: content and products, and it handles updates, security and uptime. WooCommerce asks for updates, backups and security patching, which in practice means a support arrangement with somebody. Budgeting for WooCommerce without budgeting for its maintenance is the commonest way that decision goes wrong.
Selling abroad changes the answer
An international processor is a separate requirement with its own constraints, and it frequently decides the platform on its own. It belongs in the first conversation rather than the last.
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