What Shopify is, and why Australians use it
Shopify is an all-in-one hosted platform for building an online store. You pay a monthly fee and Shopify handles the hosting, security and updates, giving you templates, a checkout, and an app store to extend functionality. It is popular in Australia because you can get a store live quickly without managing servers yourself.
Shopify costs in Australia
Shopify pricing has a few moving parts, and the figures change over time [VERIFY current fee], but the structure is consistent:
A monthly subscription, with tiers from a basic plan up to advanced plans as you scale.
Transaction fees, unless you use Shopify Payments, in which case you pay card processing rates instead.
App costs, since many stores add paid apps for reviews, subscriptions, shipping or marketing.
Theme costs, if you buy a premium theme rather than using a free one.
Budget for the subscription plus payment processing plus a few apps — that is the realistic monthly cost, not just the headline plan price.
GST and selling online in Australia
If your business is registered for GST, you generally need to charge 10% GST on taxable sales to Australian customers and show GST-inclusive pricing. Shopify lets you set your store currency to AUD and configure tax settings for Australia. Get your tax setup right from the start — retrofitting it later is painful. If you are unsure about your GST obligations or the registration threshold [VERIFY current fee/threshold], check with the ATO or your accountant.
Payments and shipping for Australian stores
Australian shoppers expect familiar options at checkout:
Payments — cards via Shopify Payments or Stripe, plus buy-now-pay-later such as Afterpay, and often PayPal.
Shipping — realistic domestic rates, commonly integrated with Australia Post, and clear delivery timeframes.
Offering the payment and delivery methods Australians actually use reduces abandoned carts.
Shopify vs WooCommerce — the honest comparison
Both are strong; they suit different businesses:
Shopify is faster to launch and fully managed, with predictable monthly costs and less technical overhead. The trade-off is ongoing platform and transaction fees and less control over the underlying code.
WooCommerce (built on WordPress) gives you full ownership and control, no platform transaction fees, and deep customisation — at the cost of managing your own hosting, security and maintenance.
At WebGlobals we build WooCommerce stores for businesses that want ownership, flexibility and lower ongoing platform fees, and we are happy to talk through which fits your situation honestly.
