WooCommerce maintenance cost: why a store costs more, and what the extra should buy

A WooCommerce store costs more to maintain than a brochure site for three reasons. More can break: a store adds a checkout, payment gateways, extensions and a database that changes with every order. A break costs money by the hour, because a store that cannot take payment earns nothing until it is repaired. And a responsible update takes longer: WooCommerce's own guide asks for a backup, a test on a staging copy and a test order afterward.

This page quotes no company's price list and ranks nobody. What every WordPress site pays for, and the three ways to pay for it, are in WordPress maintenance cost. This page covers only what a store adds, and what the extra money should buy.

What is different about a store

Seven things, each set out in WooCommerce's own documentation. They are where the extra hours go. The routine itself, week by week, is in how to maintain a WooCommerce store.

An update can change the database

On most plugins, an update replaces files. WooCommerce's update guide says some of its updates also need a database update afterward, started from a notice with the button "Update WooCommerce Database", and that a backup should be in place before it is selected. Since WooCommerce 9.9 that database update starts by itself in the background, according to the release's own notes, so the backup has to be in place before the plugin is updated at all. The database is where the guide says products, orders and settings are kept. So a WooCommerce update can be two changes, and the second is made to the data the store runs on.

Extensions state what they work with

Payments, shipping, tax and subscriptions are each a plugin, often from a different developer. The update guide puts extensions, the theme and the payment gateways in the same session as WooCommerce, because whether the store works depends on the whole set. Each one states what it works with, and someone has to read that before the round.

• The WooCommerce version. Under WooCommerce, then Extensions, then My subscriptions, each item shows a "Tested up to WooCommerce version". Where that is older than the version you are moving to, the guide says to look for an update, read the release notes or contact the developer first.
• Order storage. WooCommerce keeps orders in database tables of their own on stores first installed with version 8.2 or later, and older stores can switch. Each extension declares whether it supports this. WooCommerce warns on the Plugins screen about one that does not, and will not let a store switch while one is active.
• The block checkout. The Cart and Checkout blocks are the default for stores started after version 8.3. WooCommerce's documentation says a payment gateway that is not compatible with them may not appear as a payment option.

Paid extensions also carry licenses. WooCommerce's marketplace sells each one as a subscription, most often billed yearly. When it expires, the extension stays installed and stops receiving new versions, security patches and compatibility updates included. One key covers one live site and one staging site.

Hold the licenses in your own account. WooCommerce's guidance for agencies notes that a client who buys directly owns everything from the start, with nothing to transfer later.

Templates copied into the theme go stale

A classic theme can replace one of WooCommerce's templates with its own copy, kept in a woocommerce folder inside the theme. Templates draw the store's pages and its emails. WooCommerce's documentation says its own templates update with new releases and the copies do not.

The status report under WooCommerce, then Status, notes the copies that are outdated. No button fixes them: WooCommerce says a one-click update is impossible because every theme is coded differently. Its method is to save the old file, copy the current one into the theme and make the changes again, and its own page calls that time-consuming. A theme's author usually does it for the theme's copies. A copy made for your store is yours to keep up.

Payment gateways are separate software, with accounts of their own

A gateway is a plugin with its own releases. Behind it is an account at a payment provider, and a connection between the two.

WooCommerce's documentation for its Stripe extension shows the parts. The extension sends requests to the provider, and the provider reports back to the store through webhooks. Live mode and test mode are connected separately. Two things follow.

• A test on staging does not prove the live connection. A payment in test mode shows that the code works, not that the live account and its webhooks are in order. WooCommerce's update guide asks for a test order on the live store as well.
• A broken connection can look like unpaid orders. WooCommerce's email troubleshooting guide says orders left in "Pending payment" after the money was received may mean the gateway is having trouble communicating with the site.

The account stays with the store's owner. WooCommerce's own support helps with the extension on the site, and sends questions about verification, payouts and compliance to the provider. Expect the same line in a maintenance quote.

Orders have to survive a restore

A brochure site restored to last night's backup loses nothing a visitor would notice. A store does. The database holds the orders, and WooCommerce reduces stock when an order is paid. A restore puts the database back as it was when the backup was made. The orders placed since are gone from the store, the stock counts go back with them, and the payments are still taken at the provider.

WordPress's general advice is a weekly backup for a small site and a daily one for a busy site. For a store, the measure is how many orders arrive between two backups. There are two ways to shrink that number.

• Back up the database more often. The gap is whatever was ordered since the last backup.
• Use a backup that records each order as it is placed. Jetpack VaultPress Backup, which WooCommerce's update guide gives as one option, documents this design: an order is not lost when the site is restored to a point before it was placed.

Either way, a restore on a store is a last resort. The checkout-down runbook leaves it until the end.

Customer data is in every copy

A store holds a name, an address and a history of purchases for each customer. WooCommerce's Accounts and Privacy settings decide how long they are kept, and WooCommerce says to make sure the periods comply with the laws that apply to you. Card numbers are separate: WooCommerce says it never stores card details. Its page on the card industry's security standard says the standard still applies to a site that serves a checkout page, and that compliance is the store owner's responsibility.

The cost is in the copies. A staging site is a copy of the live store, customers included. So is every backup. More backups and a staging copy mean more copies of personal data, and someone has to decide where they are kept, who can open them and when they are deleted. A copy can also write to customers: WooCommerce's guide to test orders says a test order triggers order emails like any other.

Nothing here is legal advice. Which rules apply to your store is a question for your payment processor and your own counsel.

Scheduled actions and email run out of sight

WooCommerce hands background work to a queue called Action Scheduler. Its documentation lists order notifications, payment processing, subscription payments and webhooks among the tasks. By default the queue is started by WP-Cron, which runs only when someone requests a page, so on a quiet store tasks run late. Failed actions are listed under WooCommerce, then Status, then Scheduled Actions, for whoever opens that screen.

Two more things fail quietly.

• Webhooks. A store can report each order to another system through a webhook. WooCommerce disables a webhook after more than five consecutive delivery failures.
• Email. WooCommerce sends mail through WordPress's own mail function, so delivery depends on the host. It logs every transactional email it attempts, with the outcome, under WooCommerce, then Status, then Logs.

None of this shows on the front of the store. Each is a screen that someone has to open on a schedule.

What moves the cost

These change the hours, whoever does the work. Count each one before you compare quotes.

What it costs when nobody does this

No published figure can tell you, because the answer is your store's own revenue. Two calculators work it out from your figures. Both run in your browser, and nothing you type is sent.

• Orders that were started and never paid. The WooCommerce failed orders calculator multiplies the orders left in "Pending payment" or marked "Failed" by your average order value. Some failure is normal. Run it for the week before an update and the week after: a share that rises after a change is the fault a test order would have caught on the day.
• Hours the store could not sell. The downtime cost calculator divides what the store brings in over a month by the hours in which it earns, and multiplies by the hours it was down. Count from the fault to the repair. On a store the first stretch is the long one, because a checkout that fails looks normal from the home page.

A restore has a cost of its own. Count the orders between the backup and the restore: each is a customer who paid for an order the store no longer holds.

What the extra money should buy

A quote for a store should be higher than one for a brochure site by the price of this work:

• A staging copy, refreshed before each round, where updates go first.
• A test order through each payment method after every update, with the test orders deleted afterward.
• Database backups frequent enough that you can afford the gap, and a stated way of keeping the orders placed after the last one.
• Someone who reads the compatibility and release notes before the round, watches WooCommerce's advisories, and puts a security release on ahead of schedule, as WooCommerce's guide advises.
• Someone who opens the failed orders, the scheduled actions and the logs between updates.
• Template overrides and custom code kept current, or named as separate work.

If a quote for a store is no higher than one for a brochure site, ask which of these it leaves out.

WP Ministry's care plans draw the line between two tiers. Business tests updates on a staging copy first and includes 3 hours a month of fixes and edits. Store is for WooCommerce: it raises the allowance to 5 hours a month and adds a checkout and payment test after every update and more frequent backups for order data. The checkout test runs after updates. It is not constant monitoring of your payment provider. Both are described under WordPress maintenance.

What to ask anyone quoting for store maintenance

Send these in writing, and ask for a number or a yes for each.

• Do you place a test order after every update? Through which payment methods, and on staging, on the live store or on both? What happens to the test orders? WooCommerce gives a test order no special status, so one left behind can be shipped or counted in the reports.
• How often is the database backed up, and what happens to the orders placed after the last backup if you restore? A good answer gives the gap in hours and says how those orders are kept.
• Who watches the checkout between updates? WooCommerce sends a "Failed order" notice when an order is marked failed, by default to the site administrator's address. A checkout that stops before an order exists marks nothing. Ask who reads those notices, the scheduled actions and the logs, and how often.
• What counts as an emergency, and what does it cost? Ask for the definition in writing, the days and hours in which a person answers, and whether the repair is in the fee, comes out of an allowance or is billed on top.
• Who holds the extension licenses and the payment accounts, and are renewals in the fee?
• Are template overrides and custom code covered? If not, ask how that work is quoted.
• Where are the staging copy and the backups kept, who can open them, and when are they deleted?
• If the store sells subscriptions: how do you stop a copy of the store from charging customers?

How to choose a WordPress maintenance service has the questions that apply to any site, and what WordPress maintenance includes goes through the ordinary lines of a plan.

How to work out your own figure