Practical guides on building, running and growing an online store in South Africa — Shopify and WooCommerce, local payment gateways, couriers, VAT and POPIA. Written by the team behind 400+ South African stores built since 2014, and grouped by Shopify, WooCommerce, B2B and growth.
Strategy · South Africa·October 2026·9 min read Shopify or WooCommerce? The question is wrong. Almost every “which platform” article compares features. Features are not why stores fail. The right question is not which platform is better — it is which…
WooCommerce · South Africa·September 2026·10 min read WooCommerce VAT invoices that satisfy SARS WooCommerce’s default order confirmation is not a tax invoice. If you are VAT registered and sending customers that email as their invoice, you have a compliance problem…
WooCommerce · South Africa·September 2026·11 min read WooCommerce shipping in South Africa: setup, couriers and rates Shipping is where South African WooCommerce stores quietly lose margin. Flat rates that undercharge on heavy items, free shipping thresholds set by guesswork, and…
Strategy · Migration·October 2026·9 min read When is a platform migration actually worth it? Run the numbers first. Migrating platforms is exciting for about a week and expensive for about three months. Before you commit, it is worth knowing what…
WooCommerce · Marketing & Growth·September 2026·12 min read WooCommerce SEO: how to rank a South African store WooCommerce gives you more SEO control than any hosted platform. That is an advantage only if you use it. Most South African stores…
WooCommerce · South Africa·September 2026·10 min read What WooCommerce maintenance actually costs in South Africa Everyone budgets for building the store. Almost nobody budgets for keeping it running. Here is what WooCommerce maintenance genuinely costs a South African business per…
Shopify · Strategy·September 2026·8 min read Most SA store owners cannot tell you their real margin. Can you? Ask a store owner what they make on a sale and you usually get the retail price minus what they paid the…
WooCommerce · South Africa·September 2026·11 min read WooCommerce security for South African stores: the practical guide A hacked WooCommerce store is not usually a sophisticated attack. It is almost always an out-of-date plugin, a weak admin password, or a nulled…
WooCommerce · CRO & UX·September 2026·12 min read WooCommerce speed optimisation for South African stores Nearly every slow WooCommerce store we are asked to fix has the same three problems, in the same order, and none of them is WooCommerce.…
South Africa · Strategy·September 2026·8 min read Your average order value decides your cheapest payment gateway. We ran the numbers. Gateway fees look almost identical on the marketing pages. Run them across a year of real orders and the gap…
WooCommerce · South Africa·September 2026·11 min read WooCommerce payment gateways in South Africa: which to install and how Choosing a gateway is a fee decision. Installing it properly is an engineering decision. Most South African WooCommerce stores get the first…
Shopify vs WooCommerce for South African stores (2026) The honest head-to-head from a team that builds both — cost, payments, speed, control and support, scored for a South African store. No platform bias, because we make money either way. Get…
Best WooCommerce plugins for South African stores (2026) The lean, essential plugin stack that actually matters for an SA store — payments, shipping, SEO, speed and security — and the honest warning about running too many. From 400+ store builds.…
What does a WooCommerce store cost in South Africa? (2026) The software is free — but a WooCommerce store isn’t. Here’s the honest, full rand breakdown of what you’ll actually pay to build and run one, from a team that…
How to cancel your Shopify subscription (and what to do first) The exact steps to cancel or pause your Shopify store — plus the things to sort out first so you don’t lose your data, your domain or your Google…
Is Shopify legit? An honest South African review (2026) Straight answer, no marketing spin: is Shopify safe and legitimate for a South African store — and is it actually worth it here? From a Shopify Certified Partner that has built…
South Africa · Industry·September 2026·7 min read Where SA eCommerce growth is actually coming from (five charts from our 2026 report) Online retail crossed R150 billion and broke 10% of total retail for the first time. But the aggregate number…
South Africa · Strategy·August 2026·8 min read I built a break-even calculator for SA stores. Here is the uncomfortable thing it revealed. Almost every store owner we ask can tell us their revenue. Very few can tell us how many…
WooCommerce · South Africa·September 2026·14 min read WooCommerce hosting South Africa: the honest 2026 guide Your host is the single biggest performance decision you make on a WooCommerce store, and it is the one most people get wrong by about…
South Africa · Legal·August 2026·9 min read The POPIA privacy policy your South African online store actually needs Most SA store privacy policies are copied from a US template, mention the GDPR, and would not survive a single question from…