WooCommerce is a free plugin. That's the whole pitch, and it's technically true. What it doesn't mention is that a working store on top of it usually needs managed WordPress hosting, an SSL and security layer, a caching plugin tuned correctly for a store (not a blog), and β realistically β five to ten paid plugins just to cover tax rules, shipping rates, and payment gateways that come built in everywhere else.
None of that is optional once you're actually taking orders. It's just costs that show up after the "free" decision has already been made.
You Are the Sysadmin Now, Whether You Signed Up for It or Not
A self-hosted store means you own every layer of it. When WordPress core updates and one of your plugins hasn't caught up yet, checkout can break with no warning and no support line to call β you're debugging a PHP fatal error on a live site while orders are actively failing. When a security patch drops for a popular plugin, you're the one who has to know it happened and apply it before something scans for the vulnerability first.
This is genuinely a full job. Plenty of businesses end up paying a freelance WordPress developer a monthly retainer just to keep the lights on β not to build anything new, just to stop the existing site from breaking.
"Free" software is not the same thing as a store that runs itself.
The One Thing WooCommerce Actually Gets Right
To its credit, WooCommerce's REST API is refreshingly self-service β no developer required to switch it on. From WooCommerce β Settings β Advanced β REST API, any store owner can generate a Consumer Key and Consumer Secret in about thirty seconds. Getting your data out was never the hard part of this platform. Running it day to day was.
How Mika Store Handles This
Mika Store and Mika Sell connect to that same self-service REST API β no plugin to install, no developer to hire. Paste your store URL and the Consumer Key/Secret pair WooCommerce already generated for you, and Mika pulls every published product straight from your live store.
Variable products β the ones with Size, Colour, or any other option set β come across as real sellable variants with their own price and stock, not flattened into disconnected duplicate listings. Categories come with you too, nested the same way they were on WooCommerce.
You get a preview before anything commits: how many products, how many variants, how many categories, and any row that needs a look. Approve it and it's done β no server to patch, no plugin update to lose sleep over ever again.
The best part of leaving a self-hosted store is the maintenance you stop doing the day you switch β not just the data you bring with you.