A small brand in Taiwan opening an online store has three basic routes: rent a shop on a hosted store platform such as SHOPLINE, CYBERBIZ or Shopify; open a counter on Shopee Mall; or build your own brand site with a WooCommerce shopping cart. Store platforms have everything wired up, with annual fees from roughly NT$28,000 to NT$88,000, and some also charge a percentage of sales. Shopee Mall comes with shoppers already in the building and takes a fee on every order. WooCommerce itself is free and takes no cut, and the site and customer data stay yours; the price is that someone has to look after the hosting, the plugin updates and whatever breaks.
If you sell a modest number of products, want a site that looks like your brand rather than a template, and would rather not hand over a share of revenue, WooCommerce usually comes out cheapest. The missing piece, someone to look after it, is what managed WordPress hosting with a hands-on AI assistant is for. Below, the six options are compared on fees, transaction charges, local payments and shipping, and whether you can take your site with you, followed by three small-brand scenarios: a fashion boutique, a handmade studio and a food brand.
Prices and terms were checked against each company's official site in October 2026 and exclude tax; Shopify prices are in US dollars, and plan names for Taiwanese platforms are translated. Where we write "see official site" or "by plan", the company either doesn't publish the figure or doesn't state it clearly, and we won't guess. Card processing fees charged by payment providers are extra in every case.
Store platforms, marketplaces and your own site
SHOPLINE, CYBERBIZ, Shopify and 91APP are store platforms. You pay a yearly or monthly fee to rent a system where themes, cart, payments, shipping and membership tools are already connected, and you start listing products the day you sign up. It is genuinely convenient, but your shop lives on their platform: when they change prices or rules, you follow. Shopee Mall is the brand and company section of Taiwan's biggest marketplace. Customers are already there searching and comparing prices, so you don't have to find traffic; in exchange, the platform decides how your storefront looks and how it works, and the buyers are Shopee's members.
WooCommerce is the most widely used e-commerce plugin for WordPress. Install it and you get products, a cart, checkout, order management and coupons, all running on hosting you rent yourself. Plenty of brands mix the two: Shopee catches new customers who are searching for a product, while the brand's own site carries the story, the membership and the repeat orders. So before comparing prices, decide what you are short of right now: traffic, or a shop that is actually yours.
Six ways to open a store: fees and terms
| Option | Fees | Extra transaction charges | Local payments and shipping | Can you take the site and data with you? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce + WP × Roamer AI Pro RoamerHost | NT$999 a month on average (billed annually at NT$11,988); hosting, WordPress and the AI assistant included | WooCommerce takes no cut; you only pay the payment provider | Install the ECPay or NewebPay WooCommerce plugin; you apply for the merchant account, Roamer AI installs and configures it | Yes, a standard WordPress site you can export in full |
| SHOPLINE | Entry plan from NT$40,000 a year, annual billing only; one-time setup fee of NT$5,000 | A 2% monthly "system traffic maintenance fee" on sales (1.5% on the top plan) | Built in: 7-Eleven and FamilyMart pickup including frozen, T-Cat, HCT, LINE Pay, Apple Pay and more | The site stays on the platform; switching means rebuilding the design |
| CYBERBIZ | Professional+ from NT$28,350 a year; Enterprise adds a one-time setup fee | No transaction commission stated for Advanced+ and Expert+; Professional+ see official site | Built in; the site lists full payment and logistics integration | The site stays on the platform |
| Shopify | Basic US$19 a month billed yearly (US$25 monthly); Grow US$49 a month billed yearly | Shopify Payments isn't offered in Taiwan; third-party gateways add 2% (Basic) or 1% (Grow) per sale | Local gateways and convenience-store pickup rely on third-party services or apps | Products export to CSV; the site stays on Shopify |
| 91APP | No public pricing; quoted by plan | By contract | Its own 91APP Payments, focused on linking stores and online shop | By contract |
| Shopee Mall | Charged per sale; mall sellers must apply | Commission by product category and campaign period, plus a 2.5% payment and system processing fee | Built in | Your storefront and customers stay on Shopee; there is no address of your own to take |
| WooCommerce on your own hosting | Hosting rented separately; backups, updates and troubleshooting are on you | No cut; only the payment provider's fees | Install and configure the plugins yourself | Yes |
Annual fees alone are misleading, because the order changes once revenue is in the picture. Take a brand selling NT$100,000 a month, or NT$1.2 million a year. On SHOPLINE's entry plan that's NT$40,000 in fees, NT$5,000 for setup and roughly NT$24,000 in the 2% maintenance fee, about NT$69,000 in the first year. Shopify Basic costs US$228 a year in subscription, but since a Taiwan store has to use a third-party gateway, the 2% transaction charge also comes to around NT$24,000. On Shopee Mall the 2.5% processing fee alone is NT$30,000, before category commission.
WooCommerce takes no platform cut, and WP × Roamer AI Pro is NT$11,988 a year with hosting and AI included. Apart from Shopee, every option also pays card processing to the payment provider, so you can set that aside when comparing.
Numbers aren't the whole story. A store platform's fee buys ready-made member tiers, store credit, live-stream ordering, point-of-sale and a consultant. Once you are selling several hundred thousand a month to tens of thousands of members, those tools can save more staff time than the fee costs. While revenue is small, though, fees and commission are your biggest fixed cost. For a full breakdown of what a website costs, see website costs in Taiwan for 2026.
Each platform on its own
SHOPLINE: a full feature set, and higher fees
SHOPLINE is a familiar name among Taiwanese brands, and its site says more than 700,000 merchants use it worldwide. All four plans are annual only, from NT$40,000 to NT$88,000, with a one-time setup fee of NT$5,000 and a monthly 2% fee on sales (1.5% on the top plan, point-of-sale excluded). Local integration is thorough: 7-Eleven and FamilyMart pickup including frozen, temperature-controlled delivery through T-Cat and HCT, LINE Pay, Apple Pay and JKOPAY. Depending on the plan you also get member tiers, store credit, Facebook and Instagram live-stream ordering and in-store point-of-sale. For a brand with steady sales, a membership program or physical shops, it saves a lot of work. For a brand selling a handful of orders a month, the fee is heavy.
Shopify: the natural pick for selling abroad
Shopify is a global platform with a Traditional Chinese interface and round-the-clock support listed on its Taiwan site. Basic is US$19 a month billed yearly and Grow is US$49. The catch for local sellers is payments: Taiwan isn't on the Shopify Payments country list, so merchants use a third-party gateway and Shopify adds a charge on each sale of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Its strengths are cross-border selling, multiple languages and currencies, a huge app ecosystem and themes you can edit in code. If most of your customers are overseas, it's an easy choice; if you sell only in Taiwan and need convenience-store pickup, check that the local payment and shipping apps you want are supported.
CYBERBIZ: local, with a lower entry fee
CYBERBIZ's Professional+ plan is NT$28,350 a year, Advanced+ NT$49,350, Expert+ NT$68,040, and Enterprise NT$43,000 a year plus a one-time setup fee of NT$53,550. Its pricing page states "no transaction commission" for Advanced and Expert; Professional+ isn't marked either way, so ask before signing. It offers industry packages for health food, fashion, beauty and pet products, plus point-of-sale and warehousing. If you want a Taiwan-based platform with a lower entry fee than SHOPLINE, it belongs on the shortlist.
91APP: built for multi-store retailers
91APP focuses on online-offline integration for mid-sized and large retailers, connecting the web shop, a branded app, store systems and member data, with its own 91APP Payments. Pricing isn't published; you talk to a consultant. A one-person brand usually doesn't need this scale.
Shopee Mall: customers first, brand later
People in Taiwan habitually search Shopee before they buy, and that is its biggest advantage. Under the Shopee Mall terms, orders placed from January 1, 2026 pay a commission based on product category and on whether a promotion is running (rates are published in the seller center), plus a 2.5% payment and system processing fee. The platform sets the storefront layout and the rules, and the customers are Shopee members who are hard to bring back to your own shop. It's a good way to find your first buyers and test which products sell; to build a brand and repeat business, you'll need your own site sooner or later.
WooCommerce: your site, your maintenance
WooCommerce is free and takes no share of sales; you pay only for hosting and the payment provider. Two of Taiwan's most common payment providers publish WooCommerce plugins. ECPay's plugin combines payments, shipping and e-invoices, supports cash-on-pickup at convenience stores and can handle outlying-island delivery. NewebPay's plugin supports credit cards, web ATM, convenience-store payment codes, LINE Pay and Apple Pay, plus convenience-store pickup. Its one real drawback is that someone has to look after it, which gets its own section below.
Payments, shipping and invoices in Taiwan
On a store platform you usually apply for payments and shipping inside the dashboard. With WooCommerce the order is: apply for a merchant account with ECPay or NewebPay in your own or your company's name, receive a merchant ID and keys once approved, then install the provider's plugin and enter them. The application has to be done by you; installing and configuring the plugin can be handed to an AI assistant or a developer. You can also launch with bank transfer and cash on delivery, which need no application, and add cards when approval comes through. Convenience-store pickup and e-invoices work the same way, and ECPay handles both in the same plugin. If you sell frozen or chilled food, check first that your courier has a ready-made integration; store platforms are often easier here, and SHOPLINE, for example, lists frozen pickup and temperature-controlled delivery.
Wherever you sell, online purchases in Taiwan fall under Article 19 of the Consumer Protection Act: buyers can return goods within seven days of receipt without giving a reason or paying any cost, with legal exceptions for perishable food, custom-made items and a few others. Check your return policy against the law before you publish it.
Can you take your data with you, and how much can you change?
Store platforms usually let you export product data; Shopify's help center, for example, explains how to export products to CSV. What you can't take is the design, platform-specific features, loyalty-point rules and the URL structure, so switching platforms means rebuilding the site and setting up 301 redirects for old addresses so search rankings don't collapse. On Shopee, the storefront and customers stay inside Shopee. WooCommerce is a standard WordPress site: export it and move to new hosting with products, orders and customer records intact.
Design follows the same pattern. Store platforms limit you to their themes and building blocks, Shopee storefronts allow the least customization, and WordPress has almost no limits: a magazine-style home page, size charts on product pages, a checkout that matches your brand colors. If you're on Wix or a similar builder and want a site of your own, the steps in moving from Wix to WordPress apply to store platforms too.
No commission on WooCommerce, but someone has to look after it
WooCommerce needs ongoing care. Checkout pages can't be cached, so hosting has to keep up; WordPress and the payment plugins update regularly, and checkout has to be tested afterwards; campaigns need new banners and new products need listing; and now and then plugins clash and the site goes blank, usually on a weekend. Many people choose a store platform simply to avoid all that.
That is the job WP × Roamer AI was built for. Your site runs on RoamerHost with WordPress preinstalled, SSL and automatic backups included, and a team based in Taiwan answering in Chinese. Roamer AI works inside your WordPress: it installs WooCommerce, sets up categories, lists products, configures shipping and free-shipping thresholds, changes layouts and swaps campaign images. It backs up before updating plugins, and reads the error log to bring the site back if it breaks. Paste product photos into the chat and it puts them on the site. It takes a snapshot before every change, asks you to enter a confirmation code for important operations, and rolls back when you say "undo". The public POP SOX demo started from a blank WordPress install and reached a six-page brand site with a working store in 8 messages: four products, two payment methods, shipping and free-shipping threshold, about 71 minutes of AI working time. The full process is in building a WooCommerce store with AI.
Fashion, handmade and food: three small brands
Several of the examples below come from our member showcase. They are sites members built with Roamer AI, and we describe only what is publicly visible on them.
Fashion boutiques struggle with variants: one jacket in three colors and four sizes is twelve stock units, and the range changes every season. Store platforms handle variants and inventory well, and if you have a physical shop that needs synced stock, SHOPLINE's omnichannel plan or CYBERBIZ's point-of-sale will save real work. WooCommerce handles size-by-color with variable products, and new arrivals can be listed by handing the AI your photos and size chart. K.A., a fashion boutique from our member showcase, takes a different order: the home page leads with the brand's attitude and three featured collections, the product page splits into men, women, kids and accessories, and the site points visitors to a styling consultant, in-store fitting and an online inquiry form. Building the image and inquiries first and switching on online sales later is a practical order for a shop whose customers like to try things on.
Handmade brands sell small quantities, and many orders need a conversation first, which suits a site of your own. A handmade owl-doll studio in our showcase has a cart in its main menu and three dolls you can add straight to it, while custom designs, gift boxes, corporate gifts and repairs live on a services page with a contact form. MORI HEAL WOODCRAFT sells DIY kits, an incense holder and two woodworking workshops in the same shop, so classes and products go through one cart, and its footer links to a privacy policy, terms of service and a returns and cancellation policy. Mixing classes with physical goods has no restrictions on WooCommerce, and the yearly cost is a fraction of a store platform's entry fee.
Food brands should start with delivery. Shelf-stable tea, cookies or dried fruit work fine on WooCommerce with ECPay convenience-store pickup; frozen cakes or fresh produce are easier on a platform with built-in frozen pickup and temperature-controlled delivery. Product pages also need clear labeling, shelf life and the return exceptions. Our public Qingyu Tea demo is a tea brand built from a blank site to taking orders; while testing the cart, the AI noticed that orders above the free-shipping threshold still defaulted to paid delivery, and fixed it.
You can also build the shop before you're ready to take money. OceanSafe, a reef-friendly sunscreen brand, shows single and twin-pack prices, an add-to-cart button and a checkout page, but its footer says plainly that it is a brand showcase not yet open for payment, and its shipping and returns page says details will be announced before sales begin. The brand story, ingredient details and sun-care articles go live first; once a payment account is approved, configuring the plugin opens the shop.
How to choose
If you're a small brand with a few dozen products, want a site that clearly belongs to you, don't want to pay a share of revenue and have no developer: choose WooCommerce with WP × Roamer AI, the way to build a website with AI. The Pro plan averages NT$999 a month billed annually, and listing products, changing layouts and updating plugins are things you just tell Roamer AI. If your sales are steady and you need member tiers, live-stream ordering or point-of-sale: choose SHOPLINE or CYBERBIZ. If most customers are overseas and you need multiple currencies: choose Shopify. If you run several physical stores and want a branded app: talk to 91APP. If you're still looking for your first buyers and have a price advantage: start on Shopee Mall, then build your own site once you have a following. If you already know WordPress and are happy to manage hosting and updates yourself, the WordPress Basic plan averages NT$299 a month billed annually and you can install WooCommerce on your own.
The quickest way to decide is to look at real shops. The POP SOX and Qingyu Tea demo sites are still online, so you can browse and add items to the cart. If it looks like a fit, AI website builder service plans and pricing are on the service page, and a new site is ready about 60 seconds after payment. For the bigger picture, start with the complete 2026 guide to building a website with AI.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Do I need a store platform like SHOPLINE to sell online?
No. Store platforms bundle payments, shipping and membership tools, which suits brands with steady sales that need marketing features. With a modest product range and a brand site of your own, WooCommerce can still take cards, offer convenience-store pickup and issue e-invoices, without a platform taking a share of revenue.
Q: What are WooCommerce's pros and cons?
The pros: it's free, takes no commission, gives you complete design freedom, and the site and customer data are yours to move to any host; ECPay and NewebPay both offer plugins. The cons: someone has to maintain it. Hosting must handle checkout traffic, plugins need regular updates, checkout must be retested afterwards, and someone has to fix things when they break. Managed hosting with an AI assistant is a way to hand that work off.
Q: How do SHOPLINE and Shopify compare?
For selling only in Taiwan, SHOPLINE's local integration is more complete, with convenience-store pickup, frozen pickup and LINE Pay built in, but fees start at NT$40,000 a year plus a setup fee and a monthly fee on sales. Shopify's subscription is much cheaper and it excels at cross-border selling and apps, but Shopify Payments isn't offered in Taiwan, so third-party gateways add 0.6% to 2% per sale, and local shipping relies on apps.
Q: If I leave a store platform for my own site, can I bring my products?
Usually, yes. Most platforms export products to CSV, and WooCommerce has a built-in CSV importer, so with the columns tidied up you can import everything at once and have the AI check categories, prices and images. Design and platform-only features don't carry over and must be rebuilt, and old URLs need 301 redirects. Whether member data can move depends on the old platform's rules and on what customers were told when they signed up.
Sources
- Store platform pricing (checked October 2026): SHOPLINE plans and pricing, CYBERBIZ plans, Shopify Taiwan pricing, 91APP consultation
- Shopify Help Center: Shopify Payments supported countries, Exporting products
- Shopee Taiwan: Shopee Mall terms of service (commission and processing fees)
- WordPress.org: WooCommerce, ECPay Ecommerce for WooCommerce, Newebpay Payment
- Laws and Regulations Database of the Republic of China (Taiwan): Consumer Protection Act, Article 19
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