Talstok vs WooCommerce
WooCommerce is free software for your own WordPress site, and you pay for the hosting and plugins around it. Talstok costs from £20 a month, and we host and run it.
Which to choose
WooCommerce suits you if
you want to own and change everything, have someone to run the updates, or need subscriptions or bookings today.
Talstok suits you if
you would rather not run a website yourself, and sell at a counter as much as online.
Hosting and card fees
The plugin is free. Hosting is the first monthly bill, and with some hosts it rises after the first year.
| Set-up | First year | After the first year |
|---|---|---|
| Talstok, hosted for you | From £20 | From £20 |
| WooCommerce on SiteGround StartUp | £1.99 | £13.99 |
| WooCommerce on SiteGround GrowBig | £3.99 | £23.99 |
| WordPress.com Commerce, paid yearly | £36 | £36 |
| WooCommerce on Kinsta | $30 | $30 |
| WooCommerce on WP Engine | from $28 | Not shown |
| Payments | Online | In person |
|---|---|---|
| Talstok | 1.5% + 20p | Your machine |
| WooPayments | 1.5% + 25p | 1.4% + 20p |
| Stripe on WooCommerce | 1.5% + 20p | 1.4% + 10p on EEA cards |
Talstok costs from £20 a month for each shop that takes real money, billed monthly. Plans for each kind of shop, with add-ons on top, are being decided. The pricing page will say what each includes once they are. SiteGround’s StartUp plan renews at £13.99 a month after a first year at £1.99: about seven times as much. Kinsta’s prices “exclude tax and are in USD”; WordPress.com Commerce is £55 paid monthly. WP Engine’s $28 a month is a first-year price for new customers, billed yearly, and its page does not show the price after that. WooPayments adds 20% VAT to its fees unless a reverse charge applies, and a WisePad 3 reader is bought once, then costs £5 a month for each active reader. Stripe’s page gives its in-person rate as 1.4% + 10p for EEA cards and 2.9% + 10p for others, and does not name UK cards. Read on 5 October 2026: SiteGround, Kinsta, WP Engine, WordPress.com and WooPayments fees.
What a small shop really pays for WooCommerce
Software only, before card fees, for a shop selling online and at a counter, once the first-year hosting deal has ended.
| Line | Lean | Growing |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting: SiteGround StartUp, or GrowBig, at renewal | £13.99 | £23.99 |
| Theme: Storefront, or Flatsome $59 once, plus $17.63 to extend its support to a year, both over three years. | £0 | £1.61 |
| Subscriptions | £0 | £17.75 |
| Product Bundles | £0 | £5.08 |
| Points and Rewards | £0 | £11.42 |
| SEO: Yoast, or Yoast Premium | £0 | £9.90 |
| Backups and security: free plugins, or Jetpack Security | £0 | £15.95 |
| Reviews: built in | £0 | £0 |
| Email: Klaviyo, 1,500 contacts | £0 | £34.03 |
| Till: WooCommerce POS, or a WisePad 3 reader The reader is bought once, then costs £5 a month. | £0 | £5.00 |
| Domain | £1.00 | £1.00 |
| Total | £15 | about £126 |
Not counted: your own time, or a developer’s, to update WordPress, the theme and each plugin. Card fees on top, for a shop taking £10,000 a month by card (£6,000 online in 150 orders, £4,000 at the counter in 200 sales): about £223.50 a month with WooPayments (£268.20 if VAT is added to its fees). With Stripe it is about £196 if UK cards pay Stripe’s EEA rate in person, or about £256 if they pay its 2.9% + 10p. With Talstok, the same shop pays Stripe about £120 for its online sales, plus its card machine’s fee at the counter. The growing column buys subscriptions, loyalty and email marketing, which Talstok does not have.
Where WooCommerce is ahead
Your site, your code
You own the site, can host it anywhere and change anything. WooCommerce has over 7 million active installs on WordPress.org.
A plugin for most things
Subscriptions, bundles, points and rewards, and bookings are paid extensions you can add today.
A card reader at the counter
WooCommerce POS takes Tap to Pay on iPhone in the UK, and a WisePad 3 reader is bought once, then costs £5 a month for each active reader. Talstok does not connect to card readers.
A lower lean bill
About £15 a month with a domain once the first-year hosting deal ends, against Talstok’s price from £20 a month plus a domain of your own.
Where Talstok differs
Billed monthly, with no website for you to host or keep updated.
- Talstok hosts and updates it, and dates the main changes in the Ledger.
- The till, stock and online shop work from the same records, with no plugins to install.
- Online card payments go into your own Stripe account at Stripe’s rate. At the counter, your own card machine takes the card.
- Grades, buy prices and items kept one by one, for second-hand goods.
Questions
Is WooCommerce free?
The plugin is free. A shop pays for hosting, a domain and any paid extensions. In our research on 5 October 2026 that came to about £15 a month lean and about £126 for a growing shop, before card fees and before your own time for updates.
Why can WooCommerce hosting cost more after the first year?
Some hosts start with an introductory price. SiteGround’s StartUp plan was £1.99 a month for the first year, then £13.99, prepaid for 12 months and without VAT: about seven times as much. GrowBig went from £3.99 to £23.99. WP Engine’s $28 a month is also a first-year price. Kinsta and WordPress.com Commerce showed no lower first-year price.
Can WooCommerce run a till?
Yes. WooCommerce POS in the WooCommerce mobile app takes Tap to Pay on iPhone in the UK. A WisePad 3 card reader is bought once, then costs £5 a month for each active reader, read on 5 October 2026.
Can I move from WooCommerce to Talstok?
Products can be imported by pasting the text of a CSV file into Talstok’s import screen, in its own columns: handle, title, variant, stock code, price, stock, description, category and barcode. There is no direct import from WooCommerce.
Other comparisons
See it with your own products
A test shop is free. Nothing in it is real: no money moves, and it never emails a customer. You pay only once a shop takes real money.