Issue #159 Loop WP

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Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #159 of Loop WP!

Last week, I asked, “Does it really matter”? In fact…I asked a lot of questions.

This week is about WooCommerce in light of the latest Shopify Editions.

Let’s go! 👇

WooCommerce & Important Questions

💡 I discuss WooCommerce regularly (not just WordPress). My niche within WordPress is WooCommerce websites, and I love WooCommerce (even if you don’t think that by the end of this newsletter).

However, I’m also a Shopify Partner, and one of the most significant barriers I’ve encountered is eroding.

Shopify Horizons (aka Shopify Editions: Summer 2025) dropped last week with 150+ updates to Shopify.

Off the back of Shopify’s announcement and following on from all the questions I asked last week, I have questions for WooCommerce:

• Why does WooCommerce not make massive announcements like this with stunning dedicated websites?

• Do users really care about the open-source nature of WooCommerce?

• Do users really care about Shopify’s hidden costs?

• Do users really care that Shopify controls their store?

• Should WooCommerce stand alone from WordPress?

• Is WooCommerce better than Shopify?

• What about Shopify’s deal with ChatGPT?

• Do users want an easy-to-use e-commerce solution?

These are only some of the many questions I have about WooCommerce.

I want to look more closely at Shopify Horizons and what it could mean for the WooCommerce development community and plugin/theme owners. 👇

WooCommerce Before Horizons

It wouldn’t be fair not to quickly highlight the fantastic work WooCommerce has put in over the last six months:

• A modern rebrand that can stand firm on its own and alongside Shopify.

• A drive to modernise WooCommerce and keep up with the rapidly changing e-commerce. **

• WooCommerce is pushing for modernised emails, and I know they have more in the works for email (which is good to see as they are a dot on the Horizon compared to Shopify’s built-in offering.)

• WooCommerce brought performance gains in 9.7 and 9.9, which will be a huge release from that perspective.

• Checkout Block adoption has been low, and Woo is working to improve this. However, while the checkout experience in WooCommerce is the best it’s ever been, Shopify is still leading the way.

• Features like blueprints, which are exciting for website builders, are in the works, but Shopify has already taken this to another level.

• Even third parties like Rocket.net have developed a very welcome and innovative performance feature to boost WooCommerce.

• We currently rely on third-party developers such as Brendan O’Connell, who has a proof of concept AI Chat Agent for WooCommerce with n8n. In the future, that will change, but for now, Shopify is light years ahead with Sidekick.

** I think WooCommerce is quite far behind adapting to the rapid changes in e-commerce, and the latest Shopify Horizons shows that.

🧠 You should listen to this podcast from The WP Minute, where Matt chats with James Kemp (Core Product Manager at WooCommerce), who is more than aware of WooCommerce's challenges and what Woo is planning for the future.

🚨 Before going further, I want to preface that Shopify is not perfect, and WooCommerce has a much larger market share…or does it?

(This article from Barn2 Media sheds light on a much less dominant picture from WooCommerce.)

Shopify Horizons Changes Things

I won’t say “game-changer”, 🤮 but the latest announcements from Shopify will change things for me and do the same for many WooCommerce builders, Devs and users.

I won’t cover everything in Horizons, but highlight some areas where WooCommerce is being left in the dust.👇

Themes

My biggest issues with Shopify have been themes and the Shopify Editor, which all changed with a new, improved editor, a new way to work with themes, and the ability to build blocks and themes with AI.

✨ The AI tools are in the platform, so no external tools are needed, and there are no extra costs.

Sidekick

One of the most helpful innovations (it’s not perfect) got a significant upgrade. “Sidekick” (Shopify’s AI assistant) now uses multi-step reasoning and goes deeper to provide data-driven strategies based on an analysis of your business.

Checkout

Depending on the business and marketing needs, you might still need an app or two to extend the Shopify checkout. Still, an out-of-the-box offering that was already superior to WooCommerce went next-level.

A Gaping Hole in WooCommerce

Horizons shines a light on a massive hole in WooCommerce that covers:

• Global e-commerce - WooCommerce can’t currently compete with these native offerings.

• Native marketing - again, a non-starter for WooCommerce.

• B2B - Not just mentioning “min/max quantities”, which Woo is debating (and Shopify has just launched), WooCommerce cannot currently compete with what Shopify offers.

If you aren’t operating a global or multi-currency store and only deal with retail, you might not have a gaping hole, but this will be an issue for most modern businesses.

💡 WooCommerce is working to improve in these areas and already has some solutions, but are they developing quickly enough to keep up and plug the gaps?

Controversial Opinions?

🤔 I can’t say for sure, but I think it’s evident that Automattic’s lawsuits will impact WooCommerce and its development somewhat (I discuss this more at the bottom of Issue 152).

To remain competitive, I do think Woo should reconsider a hosted version of WooCommerce that is also decoupled from WordPress (after the failed attempt of Woo Express).

🖥️ WooCommerce will also need its own POS, instead of relying on third parties, and I know they are working on that.

Previously exclusive WooCommerce plugin companies (such as Barn2) are already diversifying and creating plugins for Shopify (Katie Keith has been documenting the process on X).

I think this trend will continue (especially with the newly improved Shopify Dev platform 🤩).

You can do pretty much anything with WooCommerce; it’s open-source, you own your store and your data, and it has many other strengths over Shopify, but are those strengths people care about? 🤔

That’s It For This Week 👋

I’m experimenting a little bit with the format of this newsletter over the coming weeks, and your feedback would be greatly appreciated, friend.

For starters, I’ve been providing more links around SEO, AI and Marketing to help plugin/theme developers and service providers keep up with the latest ways to market and sell their products.

We will be talking about that a little bit more next week.

See you next week! 😀

Weekly WordPress News & Tips

This week's excellent and insightful WordPress News & Tips:

• Stacked Cards - Tutorial Elementor Scrolling Effects (No Plugins, No Code!). (WP Roads)

• Plugin Revenue -Zero Clicks Does Not Mean Zero Sales for your products/services. (SparkToro)

• StoreUI.net - is looking for a new owner. (Rémi Corson)

• CMS Price Tag - WordPress Sites Cost Up to 44% Less Than Proprietary CMS Platforms, WP Engine Report Finds. (The Repository)

• Agentic Checkout - How Gemini 2.5 could take your customer from your sales. (Marc Baumann)

• Insane!! - Elementor’s market share is now over 12% of the web (cr. Nat Meltic). (Elementor)

• No JS - Building a CSS Carousel WordPress Block (Pascal Birchler)

• Lazy Load Blocks - Don’t let video embeds and newsletter signups delay the critical assets required for rendering your site (cr. Remkus de Vries)! (WP Elevator)

• Bricks Tutorial - Build Smart WordPress Popups That Work FOR YOU (Bricks, FluentCRM & Zero Coding). (WPTuts)

• Mixed Reception - Rebuilding trust in WordPress, PR move, court case-related or a genuine attempt? (WordPress)

• Speculative Loading - Or A Brief History of Landing a Performance Feature in WordPress Core. (Felix Arntz)

• Automatic Updates - A peek behind the curtain at my update process, it’s a workflow that suits how I run things. (Tim Nash)

• Want to Stay Relevant - Build a brand for WordPress: An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied). (Ahrefs)

• Sponsorship - WordPress needs documentation about accessibility. Help me work on it. (Rian Rietveld)

• Leading the Pack - Patchstack Becomes Top CVE Coordinator, Surpassing Microsoft in Reported Vulnerabilities. (The Repository)

If you have a question about this email or WordPress, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

👋 Until next time,