Gelato vs WooCommerce Comparison 2026
Both cover digital products & storefronts. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Print on demand with local production
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Gelato | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Pricing model | Free | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Usage-based | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Gelato
Print on demand with local production
Gelato routes each order to whichever of its partner printers sits nearest the buyer, so a shirt ordered in Berlin is made in Germany rather than shipped from Ohio. Delivery is faster and the carbon story is better. Its catalogue is narrower than Printful's, and the subscription that carries the real discounts is a separate cost.
Only on this side
- Covers merch & print on demand
WooCommerce
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
WooCommerce turns a WordPress site into a shop and states plainly that it charges no platform fee and takes no share of sales. The software is free and open source; the money goes on hosting and on whichever extensions a shop actually needs. That makes the total cost a range rather than a number, and the range depends on traffic more than on features. Running it means owning the hosting, the updates and the security, which is the trade against a platform that does all three and bills monthly.
Our note
This wins on arithmetic once sales are large enough that a percentage hurts, and loses on every hour you spend patching it. Price your hosting honestly before comparing, because the $25 end of that range will not carry a shop that is actually busy.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.