Comparison
pcreative Commerce vs Shopify
The hosted standard. You rent a store, they run everything, and you never touch a server.
How Shopify makes money
A monthly fee, plus a percentage of every sale if you do not use their own payment gateway. Payments are the business; the software is how they get you there.
You are not paying for software. You are paying a toll on your own sales.
The monthly fee is the part you see. The part that grows with you is the cut of each sale — and the only ways to avoid it are their own gateway, on their terms and with their rules about what you are allowed to sell, or manual payments outside the card. On a self-hosted store the payment is between you, your bank and your customer. Nobody takes a slice, and nobody can decide your sector is too risky on a Tuesday morning.
- Built in
Moving in from Shopify or WooCommerce
Everyone imports a CSV. Here you connect the shop with read-only keys and it fetches the lot on its own — catalogue, customers, SEO titles, coupons, reviews, blog posts and the order history a CSV cannot carry. Orders come in as history: they move no stock, charge nothing and send no email. And you also get one permanent redirect per old URL, in nginx, Apache, JSON and CSV, downloadable before you import anything, because you need it before you touch the DNS.
- Built in
Barcode stock control
Goods in, goods out, full stocktake with differences, and binding a new barcode to a product without losing the scan.
- Built in
No commission per sale
Shopify charges a monthly fee and, if you take cards through another gateway, a cut of every sale: 2 % on Basic, 1 % on Grow, 0.6 % on Advanced and 0.2 % on Plus. Manual payments are exempt. WooCommerce and PrestaShop do not charge commission either — this one is about Shopify.
- Built in
Several stores from one panel
Where Shopify beats us.
You already know most of this, and a comparison that pretended otherwise would not be worth reading.
You can be selling this afternoon without knowing what a server is.
A huge, long-established extension marketplace.
Point of sale, subscriptions and managed hosting that genuinely work.
If it breaks at 3am, it is their problem and not yours.
Do not choose us if…
If you do not want to run a server and would rather pay a percentage in exchange for never thinking about infrastructure, Shopify is the honest answer and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Feature by feature.
The same table as everywhere else on this site, narrowed to Shopify — last section included.
What we do differently
What comes in the box, with the proof underneath. Where someone else has it too, the table says so.
| Feature | Shopify | pcreative |
|---|---|---|
| Sells through ChatGPT and Claude, checkout stays yoursYour catalogue speaks the agents' protocol: they search it and recommend with real price and stock, and the buy link always points at your site. | Built in | Built in |
| Themes in the stack of your choiceA theme is a website that talks to the store over HTTP. Nine stacks supported. Shopify and WooCommerce allow it too, as a separate headless storefront; here it is simply how a theme is made. | Built in | Built in |
Where we are simply better
Others can do it too, often with plugins or paid add-ons. Here it comes in the box.
| Feature | Shopify | pcreative |
|---|---|---|
| Moving in from Shopify or WooCommerceEveryone imports a CSV. Here you connect the shop with read-only keys and it fetches the lot on its own — catalogue, customers, SEO titles, coupons, reviews, blog posts and the order history a CSV cannot carry. Orders come in as history: they move no stock, charge nothing and send no email. And you also get one permanent redirect per old URL, in nginx, Apache, JSON and CSV, downloadable before you import anything, because you need it before you touch the DNS. | Partial, or needs an add-on | Built in |
| Barcode stock controlGoods in, goods out, full stocktake with differences, and binding a new barcode to a product without losing the scan. | Partial, or needs an add-on | Built in |
| Abandoned cart recoveryDetection, email and recovery rate are there; the automatic trigger is not — today it is sent by hand. | Built in | Partial, or needs an add-on |
| No commission per saleShopify charges a monthly fee and, if you take cards through another gateway, a cut of every sale: 2 % on Basic, 1 % on Grow, 0.6 % on Advanced and 0.2 % on Plus. Manual payments are exempt. WooCommerce and PrestaShop do not charge commission either — this one is about Shopify. | Not available | Built in |
Where we hold our own
Table stakes. Nothing here is a reason to switch on its own.
| Feature | Shopify | pcreative |
|---|---|---|
| Admin panel | Built in | Built in |
| Theme catalogue | Built in | Built in |
| Customise a theme without codeThe form is generated from what each theme declares, so it works the same whichever stack the theme is written in. Your settings live apart from the theme: updating it never overwrites them. | Built in | Built in |
| Visual page editorDrag and drop over the real storefront, with desktop/tablet/mobile preview — home page only for now. | Built in | Partial, or needs an add-on |
| Card-free payments out of the boxFive card gateways (Stripe, Adyen, Mollie, MONEI, PayPal), plus bank transfer, cash on delivery and Bizum out of the box. | Built in | Built in |
| Product cost and marginCost per variant, margin worked out on the product page, and cost changed in bulk across variants. | Built in | Built in |
| Plugin APIA published list rather than open hooks: 10 events, 7 filters, 5 panel slots. What is on the list is a promise; removing it takes a major version. | Built in | Built in |
| Blog and content | Built in | Built in |
| Several stores from one panel | Partial, or needs an add-on | Built in |
| Multi-currency | Built in | Partial, or needs an add-on |
| Multi-language storefrontTwo languages, Spanish and English: thirteen storefront sections translated, catalogue translated from the panel with your AI, and the main language keeps clean URLs. Shopify and PrestaShop handle dozens. | Built in | Partial, or needs an add-on |
What we do not have yet
Ordered by how much it hurts. You are going to find this out on day one anyway — better here than after you have paid.
| Feature | Shopify | pcreative |
|---|---|---|
| Five-minute install on shared hostingThis needs a server with Docker. One command brings up the whole thing and a six-step wizard finishes the job — but it is not uploading a folder by FTP, and it never will be. | Built in | Not available |
| Extension marketplaceThere is a market for themes and extensions by other authors, with human review, licences and updates that reach buyers on their own. What is missing is installing from it with one click inside the panel. | Built in | Partial, or needs an add-on |
| Subscriptions and point of sale | Built in | Not available |
| Managed hosting | Built in | Not available |
4 things we do differently from Shopify.
Each one is in the code today, and the documentation will tell you if this page is exaggerating.