Compared September 2026
WooCommerce is a self-hosted store plugin for WordPress.
WooCommerce is free software attached to a real bill: no licence fee and no cut, then hosting, updates, backups and your own hours. It sells downloadable products natively, so it will deliver an EPUB — as a file in a folder, with no spec check, no chapter sample, no reader, no send-to-Kindle and no watermark. Inkwharf is $0 to $19 a month with nothing to maintain. If you already run WordPress and like running it, Woo is cheaper and you should stay.
The plugin is free and that figure is honest: WooCommerce costs nothing to install and takes nothing from a sale. The bill is hosting, and the rest of the cost is not money — updates, backups, a checkout you are responsible for keeping patched, and the evening it goes down. $19 a month here buys the absence of all of that, plus the EPUB half of the job Woo has no opinion about. An author who already runs a WordPress site they enjoy running is genuinely better off on Woo, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
| Inkwharf | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Cut of each sale | Nothing, on every plan including free | None. It is your server |
| What you pay | $0 up to $500 of sales a month, then $19 | $0 for the plugin, plus hosting, plus your hours |
| Who holds the money | Your own Stripe account. We never hold a cent | Your own gateway — WooPayments is 2.9% + $0.30 on US cards |
| Who patches the checkout | We do | You do |
| Sales ceiling | $500/mo free, $2,500 on Plus, none on Pro | None, ever |
| EPUB validation | Spec-checked uploads, real chapter samples | None. A downloadable file is a downloadable file |
| Free sample | First chapters cut into a real EPUB the buyer can read | A second product you cut and upload yourself |
| Reading experience | In-browser reader and send-to-Kindle on every book | A download link, usually expiring |
| Piracy answer | DRM-free EPUB, watermarked to the buyer | Download limits and link expiry |
| Bitcoin | Your own wallet, 1% and no fixed fee | A plugin, and there are several |
| Extensibility | None | The largest plugin ecosystem in ecommerce |
| Data ownership | Export anything; the host is still ours | Your server, your database, no intermediary |
| Setup | Upload an EPUB, paste a Stripe key, publish | Hosting, WordPress, a theme, the plugin, a gateway |
A dot marks the side a row genuinely favours. Rows without one are a draw, and the ones marked against us are why the rest is worth reading.
The code runs on your server, the database is yours, and no plan, cap or change of terms can reach it. That is a stronger ownership claim than this product makes — a shop here lives on infrastructure you do not control, and a custom domain is the most that can be said about it.
Plans here are capped on monthly sales, and at some volume the cap is a conversation. Woo does not have one: fifty thousand dollars a month costs exactly what five hundred does, which is the hosting bill.
Memberships, serials, bundles, subscriptions, a licence key per download, a bookshop and a blog and a mailing list on one install. The plugin ecosystem is the largest in ecommerce, and nothing here is extensible at all.
A self-hosted store is a WordPress install, a PHP version, a plugin set that updates on its own schedule, backups you have to test, and a checkout whose security is your problem. None of that is billed and all of it is paid. The failure mode is a shop that is down at two in the morning while its owner is asleep.
Woo's downloadable product is format-blind by design — the same field takes a zip, a PSD or a novel. Here the upload is checked against the EPUB spec before it can be sold, the sample is real first chapters cut into a working EPUB, and the buyer gets an in-browser reader and send-to-Kindle without installing anything.
A Woo download link is served by your host, which is fine until the host is not. Every sale here lands on a permanent download page the buyer can recover themselves by email, three years later, without writing to you.
Woo's usual answer to a file being reposted is a download limit and an expiring link, both of which inconvenience the buyer and do nothing to the leak. Every copy sold here carries the buyer's name and a licence code, and never expires.
Every figure quoted for WooCommerce above, and the page it was read from, checked September 1, 2026. These pages are re-read against those claims rather than trusted — if one of them changes, this comparison is wrong until it is updated, and you should be able to tell that for yourself.