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E-Commerce Platforms & Shop Systems

WooCommerce

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Automattic Inc. · woocommerce.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The panel's verdict

WooCommerce is Automattic's free, open-source e-commerce platform for WordPress, and the bench's scores track that shape. Strongest is data ownership & exit at 8-9: open source, any host, 'customizations that stay yours', 0% revenue share, costs tied to infrastructure — exit carries nothing the vendor can meter. Pricing transparency follows at 7-9 (free core, hosting $25–$350/month, extensions $29–$299/year each, WooPayments ~2.5–2.9% + 30¢), with The Skeptic at 7 noting these are ranges, not computable line items, and VAT treatment unstated. Weakest are tax & German legal correctness, flat at 2 (2; the only tax evidence is a product named 'WooCommerce Tax'), and operations at 2-3 (returns, partial shipments, stock and ERP/accounting links all unevidenced). Catalogue & checkout reaches 4-5 on unlimited variants and a customisable checkout but is silent on invoice, direct debit, bundles and tiered pricing. Sovereignty holds at 3-4: US vendor, unknown data residency and subprocessors, WooCommerce Ireland Ltd. as controller for Woo services in Designated Countries, SCCs for transfers outside the EEA. No split between the judges was large enough to flag; the widest spreads are extensibility and pricing transparency.

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Speaks for it

  • Ownership is structural rather than promised — open-source core on any host, 'customizations that stay yours' — with data ownership & exit at 8-9
  • Annual cost largely computable from one public page: free core, hosting $25–$350/month, extensions $29–$299/year each, WooPayments ~2.5–2.9% + 30¢, 0% revenue share
  • Free core includes unlimited products, orders and APIs, with unlimited variants and a checkout customisable without forced upgrades
  • Hundreds of extensions and themes in a marketplace plus dedicated developer resources
  • Free choice and change of any payment gateway with no forced bundles, no third-party-payment fee, and a $0 localized-selling fee in unlimited markets

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Held against it

  • Tax & German legal correctness flat at 2 — no VAT determination, OSS, reverse charge or VAT-ID validation anywhere; the only trace is a product named 'WooCommerce Tax'
  • operations at 2-3 — returns, partial shipments, multi-warehouse stock, carrier labels and ERP/accounting interfaces are all unevidenced
  • sovereignty at 3-4 — US vendor, data residency and subprocessor exposure unknown, no subprocessor list confirmed on the vendor's own pages
  • Sheet is silent on German payment methods (invoice, direct debit), guest checkout, bundles, and tiered or customer-group pricing
  • Documented export/migration tooling and contractual data-return commitments appear nowhere; the only stated retention periods (30-day server logs, 30-day trash) concern Automattic's own hosted services

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Best for

  • You want to own your shop stack outright — self-hosted, open-source WordPress commerce with customizations that stay yours and no revenue share
  • You have developer capacity to extend via the marketplace and APIs and want a computable cost model — free core, $25–$350/month hosting, $29–$299/year per extension
  • You sell across markets and want gateway freedom — any processor with no third-party-payment penalty and a $0 localized-selling fee in unlimited markets
  • Exit portability is the deciding factor — you need a platform where leaving cannot be priced out by the vendor

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Avoid if

  • You run a German or EU shop and need evidenced VAT determination, OSS, reverse charge, VAT-ID validation or German checkout legal texts — the evidence offers only a product name
  • Your daily operations depend on returns, partial shipments, multi-warehouse stock or an ERP/accounting interface — ask the vendor: the public pages we read do not show it
  • You must verify a subprocessor list and data residency before procurement — both are unknown, with no subprocessor list confirmed on the vendor's own pages
  • You need customer-group or tiered pricing, bundles, or invoice and direct-debit payment methods out of the box

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The scores

Catalogue & checkout

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How this is scored

Products, variants, pricing rules and the path to payment — the part that either converts or does not.

0 — Flat product list with one price and no variants; checkout is a form and one payment method.

3 — Variants and categories with a standard checkout and two or three payment methods, but no bundles, no tiered pricing and no guest checkout worth the name.

5 — Full variant matrix, product bundles, tiered and customer-group pricing, guest checkout, and the payment methods a German shop needs including invoice and direct debit.

8 — Configurable products, per-channel pricing, promotions and vouchers with rules, a checkout that can be customised without a rebuild, and payment via the major providers plus buy-now-pay-later where offered.

10 — Merchandising and checkout are the product: rule-driven pricing and promotions, A/B-testable checkout, multi-currency and multi-language as standard, and conversion features (abandoned cart, one-page checkout) shipped rather than bolted on.

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The Merchant

Unlimited variants, a checkout customisable without forced upgrades, and free choice of multiple gateways are confirmed — the checkout-change-without-rebuild point matters to me. But the evidence says nothing about invoice, direct debit, buy-now-pay-later, bundles, tiered pricing, guest checkout or rule-driven promotions, and the payment methods a German shop needs are exactly what's missing. 2

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The B2B Seller

Unlimited variants and a checkout you can customise without forced upgrades are confirmed, with any payment gateway and no forced bundles — decent bones. But the evidence is silent on customer-group and tiered pricing, bundles and invoice/direct debit, the exact things a trade buyer needs, so it sits between the anchors at 3 and 5. 1 2

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The Developer

Unlimited variants, a checkout customisable without forced upgrades, free gateway choice and unlimited-market selling are confirmed, which clears the anchor-3 bar. But bundles, tiered and customer-group pricing, guest checkout and German payment methods (invoice, direct debit) appear nowhere in the evidence, so the anchor-5 list is only half-evidenced. 1 2

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The Operations Lead

Unlimited variants, a checkout customisable without forced upgrades, and any gateway with no forced bundles is real, but the evidence is silent on bundles, tiered pricing, promotions, multi-currency and the German payment methods like invoice and direct debit. So it clears variants-plus-checkout and not much more. 1 2

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The Data Protection Officer

Unlimited variants, a checkout customisable "without forced upgrades", and any payment gateway with no forced bundles are evidenced, which clears the basic anchor. But the evidence says nothing about bundles, tiered or customer-group pricing, guest checkout, or the invoice and direct-debit methods a German shop needs — and nothing at all about consent handling at a checkout that can be stuffed with third parties. 2 1

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The Skeptic

Unlimited variants, unlimited products/orders, a checkout you can customise 'without forced upgrades', and any payment gateway without forced bundles is real substance. But the evidence is silent on bundles, tiered or customer-group pricing, promotions rules, guest checkout, and any named payment method a German shop would need — silence is not capability. 2 1

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Extensibility & developer surface

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How this is scored

Themes, apps, APIs and headless — whether the shop can be shaped to the business, and at what cost in lock-in.

0 — Fixed templates, no app ecosystem, no API.

3 — Theme editing within limits and a small app store; a read-mostly API and no local development story.

5 — Custom themes with a template language, an app or plugin ecosystem, a documented REST API, and webhooks for the core order events.

8 — Full storefront API for headless builds, an extension framework with its own lifecycle, staging environments, version control for themes, and documented rate limits.

10 — A platform a team can own: headless-first APIs, open-source or source-available core, plugin architecture with a real dependency model, local development and CI supported, and upgrade paths that do not orphan customisations.

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The Merchant

Free open-source core on my own WordPress, hundreds of extensions and themes, a marketplace, developer resources and any-host flexibility mean the shop can be shaped to the business and the customisations stay mine. What keeps it below the top band is silence on a headless storefront API, staging environments and documented rate limits. 1 2

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The B2B Seller

Open-source core, unlimited APIs, dedicated developer resources, hundreds of extensions and themes, and 'customizations that stay yours' — a platform a team can genuinely shape. Nothing on headless storefront API, staging environments or theme version control, so it stays below the 8 anchor. 1 2

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The Developer

Open-source core runnable on any host, a marketplace of hundreds of extensions and themes, developer resources, and vendor statements that customisations stay yours and upgrades force nothing — that is the ownership model I want. It stops short of the top because the API surface is evidenced only as 'APIs: unlimited', with no documented REST or headless API, webhooks, theme version control or plugin dependency model in the evidence. 1 2

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The Operations Lead

Open-source core you can download free, hundreds of extensions in a marketplace, developer resources and unlimited APIs is a solid developer surface. But headless storefront API, staging, documented rate limits and a real dependency model are all unevidenced, so it stops short of a platform a team owns. 1 2

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The Data Protection Officer

A free, open-source core, hundreds of extensions and themes in a marketplace, developer resources and unlimited APIs are evidenced, and "customizations that stay yours" is the right instinct. Headless storefront API, staging environments, theme version control and documented rate limits appear nowhere, so it sits between the ecosystem anchor and the platform-ownership anchor. 1 2

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The Skeptic

Open-source core on WordPress, free download, any host, hundreds of extensions and themes with a marketplace, developer resources, and 'unlimited APIs' — this is a platform you can own, and customisations explicitly 'stay yours'. Held below 8 because headless storefront API, extension lifecycle, staging, and theme version control appear nowhere in the evidence. 1 2

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Order operations & back office

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How this is scored

What happens after checkout: order management, stock, returns, shipping, and the link to ERP or accounting.

0 — An order list and an email; stock is a number nobody trusts, returns are manual.

3 — Order statuses and basic stock, one shipping integration, and returns handled by hand.

5 — Order workflow with partial shipments, multi-warehouse stock, named carrier integrations with label printing, and a returns process in the system.

8 — Multi-channel order intake, automated fulfilment routing, supplier and dropshipping flows, and maintained interfaces to named ERP and accounting systems.

10 — The shop is the front of an operation: real-time stock across channels and warehouses, returns and refunds fully worked including partials, ERP integration the vendor maintains, and operational reporting a merchant runs the business from.

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The Merchant

After checkout the evidence offers a mobile app, an 'sell online and offline' marketing claim, and a shipping service named in a privacy policy — no order statuses, partial shipments, carrier label printing, returns process or ERP interface anywhere. Returns by hand is the ceiling the evidence supports, and even that isn't confirmed. 1 3

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The B2B Seller

Unlimited orders in core, a mobile app, omnichannel online-and-offline selling and a named shipping service are evidenced. Returns, partial shipments, trustworthy multi-warehouse stock and ERP or accounting interfaces are entirely absent from the evidence, which caps it at the basic-operations anchor. 1 2 3

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The Developer

A merchant mobile app, an online/offline selling claim, and a service named WooCommerce Shipping are all the evidence offers. Partial shipments, multi-warehouse stock, returns handling and any ERP or accounting interface are entirely unevidenced, so I cannot score above the basic order-handling anchor. 1 3

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The Operations Lead

What I get is a merchant mobile app, a service named 'WooCommerce Shipping', and 'sell online and offline' — but nothing on partial shipments, multi-warehouse stock, carrier labels, returns, partial refunds, or a single named ERP or accounting link. A shop with no evidenced partial refund has never had December; the silence caps this at the basic tier. 1 2 3

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The Data Protection Officer

Unlimited orders, a mobile app and online/offline omnichannel selling are claimed, and a "WooCommerce Shipping" service is at least named in the privacy policy's product list. Order workflow, stock reliability, returns and any ERP or accounting interface are entirely unevidenced — silence is information here. 1 2 3

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The Skeptic

After checkout the evidence thins to a mobile app, an 'sell online and offline' slogan, and a service merely named 'WooCommerce Shipping'. Order workflow, stock, returns, carrier labels, ERP or accounting links — all silent, and silence here means the back office is unevidenced. 1 3

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Data ownership & exit

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How this is scored

Whether the catalogue, customers and order history remain the merchant's: export completeness, hosting choice, and what leaving actually costs.

0 — Export is a partial CSV; order history and customer records cannot leave intact, and hosting is the vendor's alone.

3 — CSV export of products and customers, order history partial, no self-hosting, no documented migration path.

5 — Complete export of catalogue, customers and orders via API or dump, documented deletion, and a stated data-return commitment.

8 — Full-fidelity export including media and order documents, self-hosting or a choice of hosting partner, and no metering that prices a migration out of reach.

10 — Ownership is structural rather than promised: open-source or source-available platform the merchant can run anywhere, database-level access, documented migration in both directions, and contractual data return.

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The Merchant

Ownership is structural rather than promised: an open-source platform I run on my own WordPress on any host, with full control of my data and customisations that stay mine — my database is mine, so leaving costs nothing the vendor can meter. The only gap is that documented export and migration tooling isn't evidenced in the evidence itself. 1 2

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The B2B Seller

Ownership is structural rather than promised: open-source core, any host, 'full control: of your checkout, your data, your costs', so exit costs no licence and no lock-in. What is missing is documented export or migration detail in both directions and any contractual data-return commitment beyond a general retention principle in Automattic's privacy policy. 1 2 3

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The Developer

Open source, free to download, any host — the database sits in my own stack, and with zero revenue share, unlimited products/orders/APIs and costs tied to infrastructure there is no metering that can price an exit. Only the absence of documented export tooling or migration paths keeps this from a 10. 1 2

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The Operations Lead

Open source, free download, any host, unlimited products/orders/APIs and 'customizations that stay yours' make ownership structural rather than promised. Only the paperwork items — documented two-way migration and contractual data return — are missing from the evidence. 1 2

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The Data Protection Officer

Ownership is structural rather than promised: open-source core on the merchant's own WordPress, any host, customisations that stay yours, 0% revenue share and costs tied to infrastructure not sales volume — no metering prices an exit out of reach. What's missing is the paperwork I need for a complaint: export completeness, documented deletion that executes against order history, and contractual data return appear nowhere, and the only retention facts (30-day server logs, 30-day trash) concern Automattic's own hosted services, not the merchant's shop. 1 2 3

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The Skeptic

Exit is structural, not promised: open-source platform, 'any host', full control of your data, customisations that stay yours, 0% revenue share and costs tied to infrastructure rather than sales volume — so leaving cannot be priced out from the vendor side. Kept below 9-10 only because documented export/migration tooling and contractual data return never appear in the evidence. 1 2

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European sovereignty panel opinion

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How this is scored

Where customer and order data live, who the contracting entity is, and which subprocessors sit in the checkout path. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated or non-EU, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — CDN, analytics, payment routing, support tooling — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a self-hosted option that puts the shop entirely under the merchant's control.

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The Merchant

The pipeline marks every attribute unknown, but the evidence itself shows WooCommerce Ireland Ltd as the controller for Woo services in Designated Countries and SCCs as the transfer mechanism for data leaving the EEA. The vendor is US-based, the subprocessor list is absent, and hosting is whatever I choose — which is the 3 anchor, not more. 1 3

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The B2B Seller

The vendor is American, data residency is unknown and the subprocessor list is absent — the pipeline computes 0 — but WooCommerce Ireland Ltd. is the named controller for EU residents of Woo services and SCCs cover non-EEA transfers, which is exactly rubric level 3 territory. The ability to run the shop on any host, including one's own EU infrastructure, is real but not what the pipeline credits. 3 1

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The Developer

The vendor is US-based (Automattic Inc.), but WooCommerce Ireland Ltd is the named controller for EU Woo customers, with SCCs covering non-EEA transfers, and self-hosting on any host puts the core shop data wherever I choose. Against that, the pipeline finds data residency and every subprocessor unconfirmed and no subprocessor list is published, which the anchors treat as a serious gap. 1 3

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The Operations Lead

Only self-hosting on your own stack takes the checkout path out of that fog. 1 3

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The Data Protection Officer

The vendor is US-based (Automattic Inc., San Francisco) with an EU controller (WooCommerce Ireland Ltd) only for Designated Countries and SCCs carrying transfers out of the EEA. The subprocessor exposure is marked unknown — "not confirmed on the vendor's own pages" — so I cannot see who sits in the checkout path or where the CDN and analytics live; by the anchors, an absent subprocessor list caps this at the basic level. 3

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The Skeptic

The vendor is US (Automattic Inc., San Francisco is the controller outside Designated Countries) with an Irish controller — Aut O'Mattic A8C Ireland / WooCommerce Ireland Ltd. — for EU residents, and SCCs for extra-EEA transfers. But the pipeline finds every sovereignty attribute unknown: no named hosting, no subprocessor list confirmed on the vendor's pages, which is exactly the anchor-3 pattern of a non-EU vendor with an EU fig leaf and an absent subprocessor chain. 3

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Pricing transparency

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How this is scored

Whether a merchant can compute the real annual cost — licence, transaction fees, apps, hosting — from public pages alone. The category where the headline price is least often the invoice.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A monthly headline exists, but transaction fees, mandatory apps or hosting costs are unstated — the invoice is unknowable from the page.

5 — Tier prices public with billing period stated and transaction fees given, but at least one commonly needed piece (a required app, hosting, payment gateway rate) is unpriced.

8 — Every tier priced publicly including transaction or revenue-share rates, order or GMV limits, and the cost of the extensions most shops need; VAT treatment and minimum term stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given order volume and GMV including licence, transaction fees, hosting and typical extensions — and for open-source platforms, an honest statement that the licence is free and where the money actually goes.

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The Merchant

I can compute the invoice from public pages alone: free core, zero revenue share, WooPayments at 2.5–2.9% + 30¢, extensions priced $29–299/year, hosting $25–350/month, and an honest statement that licence is free and costs are tied to infrastructure, not sales volume. Only VAT treatment and a minimum term go unstated, and price judged against contribution here is superb. 2

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The B2B Seller

The licence is stated free and the money trail is honest: hosting $25–350/month, extensions $29–299/year each, WooPayments at ~2.5–2.9% + 30¢, zero revenue share, zero platform fees, costs tied to infrastructure not sales volume. Only VAT treatment of those dollar prices and contract terms are missing, which keeps annual cost derivable but not fully complete. 2

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The Developer

Free core with unlimited products, orders and APIs, 0% revenue share, no platform payment fee, WooPayments at 2.5-2.9% + 30 cents, hosting stated as $25-350/month and extensions at $29-299/year make the annual cost computable within stated bands. Only VAT treatment and minimum terms are unstated, and the hosting and extension figures are ranges rather than the cost of what a specific shop needs. 2

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The Operations Lead

I can compute the year from one page: $0 licence, $25–$350 hosting, $29–$299 per extension, 2.5–2.9% + 30¢ with WooPayments, 0% revenue share, no third-party penalty, unlimited orders, costs tied to infrastructure not sales. VAT treatment and minimum term are unstated and extension costs are ranges, so just shy of full computability. 2

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The Data Protection Officer

Free core, extensions at $29–$299/year, hosting $25–$350/month, published WooPayments rates (~2.5–2.9% + 30¢), 0% revenue share and no third-party-payment fee make the annual cost largely computable from one public page — and it honestly states the licence is free and where the money goes. VAT treatment and minimum term are unstated, and hosting is a wide range that "scales with traffic", so full computability stops just short. 2

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The Skeptic

The 'free' headline is honest about what it hides: the page itself states hosting $25–$350/month, extensions $29–$299/year each, WooPayments at ~2.5–2.9% + 30¢, 0% revenue share, no third-party payment fee and no subscription processing fee. Still short of 8 because those are ranges, not computable line items, and VAT treatment and minimum terms are nowhere stated — I can bracket the invoice, not compute it. 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 3 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Sources (13)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage woocommerce.com Checked 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing woocommerce.com Checked 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy automattic.com Checked 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Catalogue & checkout — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Catalogue & checkout — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Tax & German legal correctness — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Tax & German legal correctness — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Extensibility & developer surface — found from sitemap developer.woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Extensibility & developer surface — found from sitemap developer.woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Order operations & back office — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Order operations & back office — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Data ownership & exit — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Data ownership & exit — found from sitemap woocommerce.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →