- WooCommerce is free, but a Gulf-ready store typically costs SAR 400–700 a month in hosting, a theme and plugins.
- There's no platform fee on sales. That makes it cheaper than Shopify Basic for Saudi stores once card sales pass about SAR 16,400–31,400 a month.
- Moyasar, Tap, PayTabs, HyperPay and Paylink plugins add mada, Apple Pay and STC Pay. In the UAE, Telr, Network International and Ziina all connect.
- Cash on delivery is built in. Courier plugins from Aramex and SMSA, or aggregators like Torod and OTO, handle labels and COD collection.
- ZATCA e-invoicing needs a plugin. Saudi VAT-registered businesses above SAR 187,500 in yearly sales must be integrated by 1 February 2027.
Yes, WooCommerce works for selling in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Thousands of Gulf brands already run on it.
The software is free. What you pay for is hosting, a theme and a handful of plugins that add mada, cash on delivery, local couriers and ZATCA e-invoicing. Most stores spend about SAR 400–700 a month on that.
In return, you get full control and no cut taken from your sales.
Below, I'll show you the exact plugin stack a Gulf store needs, what it costs in year one and how it compares with Salla, Zid and Shopify.
What is WooCommerce, and how does it work in the Gulf?
WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress website into an online store. You rent the hosting, install the software and own everything on it: code, products, customer data.
That's the big difference from Salla, Zid or Shopify. Those are hosted platforms that run the servers for you and bundle local features into a monthly plan.
On WooCommerce, every Gulf feature is a plugin you choose:
- Payments: a local gateway for mada, Apple Pay and STC Pay, plus Tabby or Tamara.
- Shipping: a courier or aggregator plugin that prints labels and tracks cash on delivery.
- E-invoicing: a ZATCA plugin if you're a Saudi VAT-registered business.
- Arabic: an RTL-ready theme and a translation plugin.
That flexibility is why WooCommerce has more live stores in Saudi Arabia than Shopify, which has 4,434 (Store Leads).
New to platforms? Our guide to the best ecommerce platforms in the Middle East puts WooCommerce in context.
What does WooCommerce cost in Saudi Arabia?
Budget about SAR 400–700 a month once your store is live. That's SAR 4,800–8,400 a year, before payment fees.
Here's where the money goes:
- Hosting. Managed WordPress hosting with daily backups and enough power for sale days.
- A theme. A premium RTL-ready theme, usually a one-off or yearly licence.
- Plugins. Many gateway and courier plugins are free. Premium translation, ZATCA and speed plugins carry yearly fees.
- Upkeep. A developer's time for updates, security fixes and small changes.
Then add one-off setup, which most sellers hand to a freelancer or agency. That's the part that stretches launch to 2–6 weeks.
Year one compared with Salla, Zid and Shopify
WooCommerce costs more than Salla or Zid at the start. The picture changes as you sell more, because it never takes a share of your sales.
For example, picture a Saudi store selling SAR 50,000 a month by card and Apple Pay, on yearly billing:
Salla and Zid stay cheapest for a Saudi-only store. But WooCommerce beats Shopify here, because Shopify charges up to 2% on top of every Saudi card order.
Here's the break-even maths. Shopify Basic costs SAR 855 a year plus 2% of card sales. WooCommerce costs a flat SAR 4,800–8,400 a year.
Every SAR 1,000 of monthly card sales adds SAR 240 a year in Shopify fees. So WooCommerce gets cheaper than Basic once you sell about SAR 16,400–31,400 a month by card.
Most Shopify stores that size move to Grow, which costs SAR 2,430 a year and halves the fee to 1%. Against Grow, WooCommerce wins from about SAR 20,000–50,000 a month.
Shopify stores also pay for a ZATCA invoicing app, so in practice WooCommerce pulls ahead a little sooner.
The Gulf plugin stack: what you need
A Gulf-ready WooCommerce store needs about six plugins on top of the core. Here's a proven starting stack:
| Job | Saudi Arabia | UAE |
|---|---|---|
| Card, mada and Apple Pay | Moyasar, Tap, PayTabs, HyperPay or Paylink | Telr, Network International, Tap, Ziina or Stripe |
| Instalments (BNPL) | Tabby and Tamara plugins | Tabby and Tamara plugins |
| Cash on delivery | Built into WooCommerce | Built into WooCommerce |
| Shipping and COD collection | Torod, OTO, Aramex, SMSA or Aymakan | Aramex, plus local courier plugins |
| E-invoicing | A ZATCA Phase 2 plugin | Not needed yet |
| Arabic and RTL | RTL theme plus WPML, Polylang or TranslatePress | RTL theme plus WPML, Polylang or TranslatePress |
Start with payments, because gateway approval takes the longest.
How do you take mada and Apple Pay on WooCommerce?
Install a local payment gateway plugin. WooCommerce's own WooPayments isn't available in Saudi Arabia, so every Saudi store uses a third-party gateway.
The Saudi shortlist:
- Moyasar. A Riyadh gateway with a free WordPress.org plugin covering mada, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Apple Pay, STC Pay and Samsung Pay. It accepts freelance licences as well as CRs.
- Tap. Covers mada, Apple Pay and cards in Saudi Arabia, plus KNET and Benefit for Kuwait and Bahrain.
- PayTabs. Its Paymes plan publishes a 1% mada rate, which is rare in a market of quote-only pricing.
- HyperPay and Paylink. Both Saudi-focused and popular with local developers.
All of them ask for a Saudi CR or freelance licence, a Saudi bank account and a live site with a refund policy. That's because SAMA, the Saudi Central Bank, requires Saudi stores to process mada inside the Kingdom.
Here's the good news. Unlike Shopify, WooCommerce adds no platform fee on top of the gateway. You pay the gateway's rate and nothing else.
Compare gateway rates for your own sales mix:
Payment gateway fee comparator
Estimated monthly cost of gateways that publish their rates
Where is your business registered?
These gateways onboard Saudi entities (CR or, for some, a freelance licence) and settle in SAR.
Average ticket: SAR 200.00
Apple Pay is priced as the card inside it. Exception: Amazon Payment Services charges Apple Pay at its card rate, even for mada.
Store platform
Shopify plan
Shopify adds a 2.0% transaction fee to every order paid through a third-party gateway.
Cheapest published option: PayTabs Paymes
effective rate: 4.07%
Shopify's fee here is SAR 1,000. On Grow it would be SAR 500 (before the plan price difference).
Estimated monthly cost
- Processing (% + fixed)
- Monthly fee
- Shopify transaction fee
- VAT on gateway fees (15%)
#1PayTabs PaymesCheapest
SAR 2,034 · 4.07%
Paymes SuperApp pricing ("testing phase"). International cards assumed at the credit rate.
#2Telr KSA
SAR 2,172 – SAR 2,448 · 4.34%–4.90%
Published as a range: cards 2.6-3% + SAR 1, SAR 99-259/month. Bar shows low to high.
#3Amazon Payment Services
SAR 2,651 · 5.30%
Standard Plan. Apple Pay billed at card rate. International card rates may differ.
Quote-based gateways
These do not publish rates, so we can't rank them. Ask each for a written rate card split by method.
- Tap Payments — Native Shopify checkout app; mada, Apple Pay, Jaywan (UAE), KNET.
- HyperPay — Riyadh-based, Shopify app. Only third-party estimates exist.
- Moyasar — Saudi entities only (CR or freelance licence); STC Pay supported.
- Checkout.com — Enterprise acquirer, flat-rate or interchange++. mada for KSA entities only.
- Geidea — Rates negotiated per merchant. Shopify app with Tabby and Tamara.
Shopify adds a 2.0% transaction fee to every order paid through a third-party gateway.
Estimates based on published fees as of October 2026; confirm with the provider. Excludes refunds, chargebacks, FX, payout and setup fees. Shopify plan subscriptions not included.
Want the full shortlist with onboarding times? See our Saudi payment gateway directory.
Cash on delivery on WooCommerce
COD is built into WooCommerce. Switch on "Cash on delivery" under Payments and it appears at checkout.
You'll want more control than that, though. New Gulf brands still see plenty of COD orders, and each refused parcel costs you two-way shipping.
Three settings protect your margin:
- A COD fee. Add a small charge, or offer free shipping on prepaid orders, to nudge shoppers towards mada and Apple Pay.
- Limits. Restrict COD by city, cart value or product, using a plugin or a short code snippet.
- Order checks. Confirm COD orders by WhatsApp or SMS before you ship.
Your courier collects the cash and pays it back to you. Through OTO, Saudi couriers charge about SAR 3–14 per COD parcel.
Our cash on delivery guide covers refusal rates and how to cut them.
Shipping plugins: Torod, OTO, Aramex and SMSA
Pick between a direct courier plugin and a shipping aggregator. Both print labels, push tracking to your customers and collect COD.
- Aggregators (Torod, OTO). One contract gives you several couriers at negotiated rates. Torod's official WooCommerce plugin books shipments with multiple companies and pays out COD weekly.
- Direct plugins (Aramex, SMSA, Aymakan). Aramex's official eCommCore plugin and SMSA's own plugin create shipments and sync tracking straight from your orders.
Most new stores start with an aggregator. You can compare couriers on real orders before signing directly with one.
Through OTO, a domestic Saudi parcel costs about SAR 10 to a locker and up to about SAR 22 with SMSA. See our guide to shipping aggregators in Saudi Arabia for a side-by-side.
ZATCA e-invoicing on WooCommerce
WooCommerce doesn't create ZATCA-compliant invoices on its own. Saudi VAT-registered sellers add a plugin that does.
ZATCA, the Saudi tax authority, runs e-invoicing in two phases. Phase 1 needs electronic invoices with a QR code. Phase 2 connects your invoicing system to ZATCA's Fatoora platform, so each invoice is reported automatically.
Phase 2 now reaches small businesses. The latest wave covers residents with VAT-subject revenue above SAR 187,500. Their deadline is 1 February 2027.
Several WooCommerce plugins handle Phase 2, including ZATCA E-Invoice for WooCommerce on WordPress.org and Simple Fatoora. Look for three things:
- XML invoices in ZATCA's UBL 2.1 format, signed and stamped.
- Automatic reporting of each B2C invoice within 24 hours.
- Testing on ZATCA's simulation portal before you go live.
Check your wave and the full rules in our ZATCA e-invoicing guide.
Hosting, speed and your customers' data
Your host decides how fast your store loads in Riyadh and Dubai. Choose managed WordPress hosting with servers close to the Gulf, a CDN and daily backups.
Plan for peaks too. White Friday and Ramadan bring sudden traffic, so ask your host how it handles spikes and test your checkout under load a few weeks before.
Data matters as well. Saudi Arabia's data protection law (PDPL) covers any store that handles data about people living in the Kingdom.
If your servers sit outside Saudi Arabia, that counts as a cross-border transfer. Put a lawful transfer mechanism in place, such as SDAIA's standard contractual clauses with your host. Our Saudi data protection guide walks through it.
Arabic and RTL on WooCommerce
WordPress supports right-to-left (RTL) layouts natively, and the dashboard is available in Arabic. The work is in your theme and translations.
- Theme. Pick a theme that's tested in RTL, so menus, sliders and checkout fields mirror properly.
- Translation. WPML, Polylang or TranslatePress let you run Arabic and English versions with separate URLs for Google.
- Details. Translate emails, invoices and courier SMS too, not just product pages.
Write your Arabic copy with a native speaker rather than machine translation. Shoppers notice the difference straight away.
How to set up a WooCommerce store for the Gulf
Most sellers go from idea to first order in six steps:
- 1
Get your paperwork ready
A Saudi CR or freelance licence, or a UAE trade licence, plus a local bank account in the same name. Gateways check that the names match.
- 2
Choose hosting and an RTL theme
Managed WordPress hosting with servers near the Gulf, then a theme you've tested in Arabic.
- 3
Apply to a payment gateway
Start this early. Approval takes days, and you need a live site with policies to apply.
- 4
Add COD, couriers and BNPL
Switch on cash on delivery, connect a courier or aggregator, and install Tabby or Tamara.
- 5
Install ZATCA e-invoicing
If you're VAT-registered in Saudi Arabia, connect a Phase 2 plugin and test it on the simulation portal.
- 6
Test, then launch
Place real orders with mada, Apple Pay and COD. Check the invoice, the label and a refund.
WooCommerce vs Salla, Zid and Shopify: who should choose it?
WooCommerce is the right pick when control matters more than convenience. For a first Saudi store with no developer, Salla or Zid will get you selling faster.
- No platform fee on sales, ever
- Full control of design, code and data
- Best-in-class blogging and SEO through WordPress
- Huge plugin choice for custom needs like B2B pricing
- Easy to migrate away from later
- You handle hosting, updates, security and backups
- Every local feature is a separate plugin to maintain
- Higher fixed cost than Salla or Zid at the start
- Launch takes weeks, not days
- Support comes from freelancers, not a 24/7 helpdesk
Here's the quick rule:
- Choose WooCommerce if you already run WordPress, publish a lot of content or need custom logic, and you have a developer.
- Choose Salla or Zid if you sell mainly in Saudi Arabia and want mada, COD, couriers and ZATCA built in.
- Choose Shopify if you're a UAE brand or sell across many countries. Our Shopify vs Salla vs Zid comparison goes deeper.
Notes for UAE-based sellers
The UAE setup is simpler for now. Large businesses must start e-invoicing on 1 Jan 2027. Everyone else follows on 1 Jul 2027, so plan for an accredited e-invoicing provider before then.
- Network International offers a free WooCommerce plugin for its N-Genius Online gateway. Rates come by quote.
- For smaller volumes, Telr, Ziina and Stripe all publish self-serve pricing and connect to WooCommerce.
- Selling into Saudi Arabia from a UAE company? Saudi mada cards are charged as Visa or Mastercard, so expect a few more declines.
Compare options in our UAE payment gateway directory.
Notes for foreign and Chinese brands
WooCommerce doesn't care where your company is registered. That makes it a flexible way to test the Gulf.
- Without a Saudi entity, you can't open a Saudi gateway for domestic mada. A UAE company or a local partner solves this.
- Host near the Gulf, not only at home, so pages load fast for Saudi shoppers.
- Show prices in SAR and write Arabic product pages. Shoppers trust a store that looks local.
Notes for brands already on WordPress
If your blog or brand site already runs on WordPress, WooCommerce is the natural next step. Your content, rankings and design stay where they are.
- Audit your existing plugins first. Conflicts are the most common cause of checkout bugs.
- Upgrade your hosting before launch, because a shop puts more load on the server than a blog.
- Keep product URLs clean and in both languages, so the shop inherits your SEO strength.
Prefer to browse first? Our ecommerce software providers directory lists developers and agencies, and the platforms hub has every platform guide.
Frequently asked questions
Usually yes once you're selling steadily. Shopify adds a 0.6–2% fee on Saudi card orders because Shopify Payments isn't available there, while WooCommerce takes nothing. A Saudi consultant's full year-one model at SAR 50,000 a month, including payment fees, apps and setup, puts WooCommerce at about SAR 26,200. Shopify Basic comes to about SAR 35,200, and Salla or Zid to about SAR 19,000.
Sources & further reading
- Moyasar payment plugin for WooCommerce — WordPress.org
- WooCommerce stores in Saudi Arabia — Store Leads
- Best ecommerce platform Saudi Arabia 2026 — Husain Alhaboubi
- E-invoicing roll-out phases — ZATCA
- ZATCA E-Invoice for WooCommerce — WordPress.org
- Cheapest domestic shipping companies in Saudi Arabia — OTO
- Shopify pricing (Saudi Arabia) — Shopify
This guide is for general information only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules and fees change — always confirm with the official source or a licensed advisor.
Maya is MiddleEastEcom's lead guide and editor. She researches GCC marketplaces, payments and regulations and turns them into practical playbooks for sellers.
Meet Maya
