A managed platform with operations built in.
Vendor's bet: most stores want their platform to be a tool, not a project. We host and maintain it, and catalogue, search, local payments, stock, and ERP sync are designed together.
Vendor vs WooCommerce — an honest comparison.
WooCommerce is free, flexible, and the right answer for a lot of stores. Here's where it stops fitting a growing store, and when it's still the better choice.
Free is the licence, not the store.
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin you host and run yourself; Vendor is a platform we run for you. The difference that matters isn't the licence. It's who maintains the store, how it behaves as your catalogue grows, and what it takes to sell in your market. Alfi, for one, moved from WooCommerce to Vendor.
Free, flexible, and yours to run.
WooCommerce's bet: commerce should be open source, extended with plugins, and free at its core. You assemble the stack and run it yourself, with the flexibility and the maintenance that come with it.
Vendor and WooCommerce, feature by feature.
Payments & markets
Built-in payments in North Macedonia
- Vendor
- cPay, Halkbank, NLB, Iute
- WooCommerce
- WooPayments not available
Yes
No
Built-in payments in Serbia
- Vendor
- Not yet
- WooCommerce
- WooPayments not available
No
No
Multi-language
- Vendor
- One catalogue, many languages
- WooCommerce
- Single language by default; needs a plugin
Yes
Partly
Multi-currency
- Vendor
- Coming soon
- WooCommerce
- Single currency by default; needs a plugin
Not rated
Partly
Catalogue & search
Product search
- Vendor
- OpenSearch, Cyrillic and Latin aware
- WooCommerce
- Core searches title, excerpt & content
Yes
Partly
Search by SKU & attributes
- Vendor
- In the product index
- WooCommerce
- Not in core search
Yes
No
Operations
ERP integration
- Vendor
- Built in: Vendor ERP, Colpeo, Infobiro + configurable connector
- WooCommerce
- No ERP category; third-party only
Yes
No
Stock across locations
- Vendor
- Per-location allocation
- WooCommerce
- Plugin
Yes
Partly
Hosting, updates & security patches
- Vendor
- Handled by us
- WooCommerce
- Your responsibility
Yes
No
Built-in importer from WooCommerce
- Vendor
- Catalog, prices, stock, customers
- WooCommerce
Yes
Not rated
Flexibility
Source-level customisation
- Vendor
- API + configuration
- WooCommerce
- Edit anything
Partly
Yes
Checkout customisation
- Vendor
- Custom checkout fields + rules
- WooCommerce
- Full; you own the code
Yes
Yes
Plugin ecosystem
- Vendor
- Features built in
- WooCommerce
- Thousands of plugins
No
Yes
When to choose each.
Choose Vendor when…
- You'd rather not host, patch, and update your store yourself.
- Your catalogue has grown past what WooCommerce's core search handles well.
- Your stock and prices live in an ERP.
- You sell in North Macedonia and want local payments built in.
- You sell, or plan to sell, in more than one language.
Choose WooCommerce when…
- You're just starting out with a small catalogue.
- You have an in-house WordPress developer and full control matters most.
- You need source-level access for niche customisations.
- You already run a larger WordPress setup, like courses or memberships.
- Open source and self-hosting are hard requirements.
Common comparison questions.
Not in core. WordPress core search looks at three fields only: title, excerpt, and content, so SKUs, attributes, and custom fields aren't searched without an extra search plugin or service. Vendor search runs on OpenSearch, with variation SKUs and attributes in the product index.
WooCommerce's server requirements give no scaling guidance by catalogue size. Its own issue tracker includes a report of about 5,000 products with 30–50 attributes each producing roughly 20-second load times on category pages, reproduced across several hosts; the issue is closed. According to Store Leads, 30% of WooCommerce stores sell 1–9 products and over half sell fewer than 50.
Patchstack's State of WordPress Security 2026 counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in 2025, up 42% on the year before, with 91% in plugins and 46% unpatched when they were disclosed. It also found paid plugins three times more likely to be actively exploited than free ones. On Vendor, hosting, updates, and security patches are handled by us.
Yes. Our WooCommerce importer brings over products and variations, attributes, categories, brands, images, tax rates, prices, stock, and customer accounts. Customers set a new password on their first sign-in, and past orders aren't part of the standard import.
Yes. WordPress can keep running your blog on its own subdomain, linked from your Vendor storefront, or you can build content pages on Vendor.
Every WooCommerce fact here comes from WooCommerce's own documentation or a named third party, listed under Sources. Where WooCommerce is the better choice, we say so. If something is out of date, tell us and we'll correct it.
Competitor facts on this page were checked against each platform's own public documentation, and the named third-party sources below, on 16 September 2026. Plans and features change; if something here is out of date, tell us and we'll correct it.
Sources: WooPayments country availability · WooCommerce shop currency · WooCommerce extensions marketplace · WordPress core search columns · WooCommerce server requirements · WooCommerce issue #20262 · Store Leads WooCommerce report · Patchstack, State of WordPress Security 2026
Want a side-by-side for your operation?
Tell us which plugins you rely on and how big your catalogue is, and we'll map it against what's built into Vendor.
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Launch a store yourself, or talk to us about connecting ecommerce to the systems you already run.
Vendor Standard
Everything you need to launch, manage and grow an online store. From €39/month.
Explore CommerceVendor Pro
Larger catalogs, advanced pricing, complex operations and deeper integrations.
Explore Scale