Self-Hosted Ecommerce: Own Your Stack Without Monthly Fees

Self hosted ecommerce means you own the code, the data, and the infrastructure. There's no revenue-sharing, no vendor lock-in, and no permission needed to customise your store. While SaaS platforms like Shopify charge monthly fees that scale with your revenue, a self-hosted stack gives you a fixed-cost foundation that you control completely — from the database to the deployment pipeline.

What self-hosted ecommerce actually means in 2026

At its core, self-hosted ecommerce means you install, configure, and run your own commerce software on servers you control. You own the source code. You own the database. You choose where it's deployed, how it's scaled, and when it's updated.

This is the opposite of SaaS platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, where you rent access to software someone else controls. With SaaS, you're a tenant. With self-hosted, you're the landlord.

The trade-off is straightforward: more responsibility in exchange for more control. You handle hosting, security patches, and infrastructure. In return, you get complete freedom over your technology choices, your data, and your costs. For developers and technical store owners, that trade-off is usually worth it.

The real cost breakdown

The cost structure of self-hosted ecommerce is fundamentally different from SaaS. Instead of paying a monthly subscription that increases as your store grows, you pay a flat rate for infrastructure. Here's what it actually costs:

Hosting: A VPS or managed WordPress host runs $25-100 per month depending on traffic. Services like Cloudways, RunCloud, or SpinupWP give you server management without the sysadmin overhead. For Next.js frontends, Vercel's free tier handles most stores comfortably.

Domain + SSL: Roughly $15 per year. SSL is free with Let's Encrypt or included with most hosting providers.

Compare this to Shopify, where the Basic plan starts at $39/mo, jumps to $105/mo for the standard plan, and charges additional transaction fees if you don't use Shopify Payments. On a self-hosted stack, a store doing $50,000/mo in revenue pays the same hosting fee as one doing $500/mo. For a deeper comparison, see our guide on why Shopify gets expensive.

WooCommerce: the WordPress-native path

WooCommerce powers over 40% of all ecommerce sites on the web. It's the most widely deployed self-hosted commerce platform by a significant margin, and for good reason: it sits on top of WordPress, which means you get a mature content management system, a massive plugin ecosystem, and a global community of developers.

For most store owners evaluating self-hosted options, WooCommerce is the natural starting point. It handles products, inventory, orders, tax calculation, shipping, and payments out of the box. The plugin ecosystem covers nearly every commerce use case — subscriptions, memberships, bookings, multi-currency, wholesale pricing, and more.

The weakness is well-known: WooCommerce's PHP-based frontend is slow without aggressive caching. Every page request triggers a full server-side render through WordPress, hitting the database multiple times. This creates a performance ceiling that no amount of caching plugins can fully solve. For a detailed look at how to overcome this, read our guide on what headless WooCommerce actually means.

Medusa: the Node.js-native headless option

Medusa is an open-source commerce platform built with Node.js and TypeScript, designed for headless architecture from the ground up. Unlike WooCommerce, which added API support after the fact, Medusa was built as an API-first backend with no traditional frontend at all.

For JavaScript developers who want to stay in a single language across the entire stack, Medusa is compelling. The codebase is modern, the documentation is solid, and the TypeScript types are first-class. However, the ecosystem is significantly smaller than WooCommerce's. You'll write more custom code, and finding pre-built solutions for niche requirements is harder.

Saleor: Python/GraphQL approach

Saleor takes a GraphQL-first approach with a Python/Django backend. It's fully open source and positions itself for enterprise use cases — multi-channel, multi-warehouse, multi-currency. The GraphQL API is comprehensive and well-designed.

The trade-off with Saleor is complexity. The learning curve is steeper than both WooCommerce and Medusa, and the Python backend means you need different expertise than a typical JavaScript team. For enterprise stores with dedicated engineering teams, Saleor is a strong option. For most small-to-mid-size stores, it's overkill.

Headless WooCommerce + Next.js: best of both worlds

The most powerful self-hosted architecture in 2026 combines WooCommerce as the commerce backend with Next.js as the storefront frontend. WooCommerce handles what it's best at — product management, order processing, payment integration, and tax calculation. Next.js handles what WordPress can't — fast, modern, interactive storefronts deployable to the edge.

This isn't a compromise. It's a genuine best-of-both-worlds setup. You keep WordPress's content management for blog posts and landing pages, WooCommerce's commerce engine for store operations, and you add a React-based frontend that loads in milliseconds instead of seconds.

The challenge with headless WooCommerce is the implementation. You need to build the entire storefront from scratch — product pages, category pages, cart, checkout, account management. That's months of development work. For a full breakdown, see our guide on migrating WooCommerce to headless.

Starter kits that skip months of setup

Building a headless WooCommerce storefront from scratch takes 3-6 months of dedicated development. You need to solve cart session persistence across server and client, build a multi-step checkout flow, handle real-time inventory synchronisation, implement payment processing, and wire up dozens of WooCommerce API endpoints.

Starter kits exist to eliminate this upfront investment. Instead of building the foundational infrastructure, you start with a working storefront and customise from there. WPBundle provides a complete WooCommerce + Next.js starter with pre-built cart, checkout, product pages, and account management — all the pieces that take months to build correctly.

The economics are simple: pay once for a starter kit and spend your development time on what makes your store unique — custom product pages, brand-specific UI, and marketing features. Don't spend it reinventing the cart.

Decision framework: SaaS vs self-hosted vs headless

Not every store needs a self-hosted setup. Here's a honest framework for choosing:

Choose SaaS (Shopify) if you want simplicity above all else, don't have technical skills on your team, and don't mind paying platform fees. Shopify is excellent for non-technical founders who need to launch quickly.

Choose self-hosted WooCommerce if you want full control, have WordPress experience, and want to avoid recurring platform fees. Traditional WooCommerce (with a PHP theme) is a proven path used by millions of stores.

Choose headless WooCommerce + Next.js if you want control and performance, have JavaScript/React skills on your team, and are building a store where speed and user experience are competitive advantages. This is the path for technical teams who refuse to compromise.

For more on why developers are making this shift, read why developers are leaving Shopify and the true cost of running on Shopify.

The bottom line

Self hosted ecommerce is more viable in 2026 than it has ever been. The tools are mature, the hosting is cheap, and the headless architecture solves the last remaining weakness — frontend performance. You no longer have to choose between ownership and speed.

For developers and technical store owners, the math is clear. A self-hosted WooCommerce backend costs $25-100 per month with zero platform fees. Add a Next.js frontend and you get performance that matches or beats any SaaS platform. Add a starter kit like WPBundle and you skip 3-6 months of boilerplate development.

The question isn't whether self-hosted ecommerce can compete with SaaS — it already does. The question is whether you want to own your stack or rent it. For a full cost analysis, check out our guide on headless WooCommerce costs. For more on the Next.js side, see Next.js ecommerce. And if you're actively looking for alternatives, start with ecommerce without Shopify.