WordPress vs Shopify for Indian SMEs — which should you pick?
WordPress wins for content-heavy, service, B2B and lead-gen sites with custom logic. Shopify wins for D2C ecommerce, multi-channel retail and brands scaling beyond ₹50L/month GMV. For Indian SMEs: WordPress costs ₹1.5–3L to build with ₹6K–15K/month maintenance; Shopify costs ₹1.8–5L to build with ₹2,300/month platform fees + apps.
Pick WordPress when: 80% of your value is content, SEO and lead capture (services, consulting, agencies, education, healthcare, real estate); you need custom logic Shopify can't easily do; you want full ownership without recurring SaaS fees; or your team will edit pages weekly. India build cost: ₹1.5–3L. Monthly maintenance: ₹6K–15K including hosting.
Pick Shopify when: ecommerce is your primary revenue driver; you need multi-channel selling (web + Instagram + WhatsApp + offline POS); you want best-in-class checkout, payments, shipping and apps without engineering; or you're scaling beyond ₹50L/month GMV. India build cost: ₹1.8–5L. Monthly: ₹2,300 (Shopify Basic) + ₹3K–15K in apps + Razorpay/payments fees.
Hybrid path most Indian D2C founders end up on: Shopify for the store, headless React or Webflow for the brand/marketing site, both rendered under one domain. Best of both — Shopify's checkout + a marketing site that ranks. Preevee ships this combo in 6–10 weeks for ₹4–8L.
Avoid: WooCommerce for anything north of 500 SKUs (performance breaks), Wix for serious SEO, and self-hosted Magento unless you have a dedicated dev team. For 95% of Indian SMEs in 2026, the answer is WordPress or Shopify — pick by primary revenue model.