Mercado vs WooCommerce
Mercado
mercado.africa
WooCommerce
woocommerce.comSide by side
| Figure | Mercado | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $15,000/mo | $2.42/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 4 |
| Spec score · Ecommerce platforms | 8.9 (#34) | 9.5 (#1) |
| App marketplace | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Hosting model | hosted | self-hosted |
| Payments | Supported payment methods listed are Paystack, Flutterwave, Stripe, bank transfer, cash and mobile money. | The platform supports cards, bank transfers, checks, cash on delivery and gateways including WooPayments, Stripe, PayPal, Square and Amazon Pay. |
| Sales channels | Merchants can sell through a storefront, WhatsApp, POS terminal, and marketplace using the same catalog, prices, and inventory. | omnichannel |
| SDKs | The maker lists TypeScript, Python and Go SDKs plus a theme marketplace with a 70/30 creator-platform revenue split. | Official REST API libraries are documented for JavaScript, PHP, Python and Ruby. |
| System requirements | The maker describes browser, POS, mobile and third-party integration access but publishes no specific hardware or operating-system requirements. | Current server recommendations for WooCommerce 10.8 and later include WordPress 6.9+, PHP 8.3+, MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.6+, HTTPS and a 256 MB WordPress memory limit. |
| Transaction fee | The homepage states a fee of 1.4% + ₦50 per transaction and says the core free tier requires no card. | payment_only |
| What it does | Mercado presents itself as an African commerce operating system combining storefront, ledger, inventory and payments. | WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform and WordPress plugin for selling physical products, digital goods and services. |
Plans
Mercado
- Growth$15,000 a month
- Scale$75,000 a month
- EnterprisePrice not published
- StarterFree
- EnterprisePriced on request
WooCommerce
- WooCommerce coreFree
- WooCommerce mobile appFree
- Typical hosting$25 a month
- Extensions$29 a year
In their own words
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is free, self-hosted software for running an online store with omnichannel sales channels. Its core plan costs nothing, billed free with no monthly subscription. The plan lists unlimited products, unlimited orders, and unlimited APIs, allowing catalog and order volume without those stated caps. WooCommerce supports digital products as well as general online-store sales, includes abandoned-cart recovery, and provides an app marketplace. The listed transaction fee is payment-only. Because the hosting model is self-hosted, the store runs on hosting managed by the user rather than a hosted WooCommerce environment. WooCommerce is made by WooCommerce, founded in 2005 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA. The combination of omnichannel selling, digital-product support, recovery tools, and extensible apps gives store operators a broad core setup without a subscription charge. Hosting management remains part of choosing this model.