The Real Cost of Turning a WooCommerce Store into a Mobile App in 2025

WooCommerce is one of the workhorses of modern ecommerce, powering millions of stores and sitting on top of the vast WordPress ecosystem of themes and plugins.

That flexibility is one of the main reasons why people choose it: you can layer subscriptions, bundles, upsells, loyalty programs, custom checkouts, and more on a theme that fits your brand.

Once you start looking at turning your WooCommerce store into an app, you’ll see pricing that’s all over the map.

Some tools promise “instant apps” for a few dozen dollars a month, while agencies quote five- or six-figure projects to rebuild your storefront.

The bigger problem isn’t just how far those price points are from each other, it’s how different the outcomes are.

At one end, you get lightweight apps that struggle with real-world themes, plugins, and custom checkouts.

At the other, you pay a premium to recreate the WooCommerce experience you already have, then take on the ongoing cost of keeping it all in sync.

This guide cuts through the noise with a WooCommerce-first look at the real cost of turning your site into an app.

Option 1: Custom Native Development

This is the traditional route: you pay an agency or in-house team to architect and build custom apps from scratch that talk to your WooCommerce backend.

The Upfront Cost: $50,000–$200,000+

Modern app development pricing guides typically put simple apps in the $5,000–$50,000 range, medium-complexity apps around $50,000–$120,000, and complex apps starting at $120,000 and easily exceeding $200,000, depending on features and integrations.

A serious WooCommerce app rarely lands in the “simple” category. You’re rarely just listing products; instead, you’re reproducing:

• Your full WooCommerce catalog and categories
• Variable products, attributes, and filters
• Coupons, taxes, and shipping logic
• Subscriptions, memberships, bundles, and other plugin-driven features

By the time an agency has recreated all of that, $50,000–$100,000+ for a robust WooCommerce app (iOS + Android) is very normal. From their vantage point, they’re effectively building you a second ecommerce frontend.

If you want more insights to ecommerce app costs, check out our breakdown.

The Timeline: 6–12 Months

Custom WooCommerce apps aren’t quick to ship.

Most modern app cost guides tie cost bands directly to timelines: simple apps taking 2–4 months, medium apps 4–8 months, and complex builds 9–18 months. Ecommerce apps typically fall into the medium-to-complex category.

When you add WooCommerce-specific API work, plugin integration, and the need to support both iOS and Android, you’re realistically looking at 4–9+ months of work before you have a production-ready app tied closely to your store.

During that time, your WooCommerce site continues to evolve, but your app is locked behind phases, backlogs, and sprints.

The Hidden Costs

This is where WooCommerce merchants really feel long-term pain:

• Maintenance & OS Updates: Every year, iOS and Android ship major updates. Guides like this app development cost overview highlight that the “true cost of ownership” includes post-launch updates, bug fixes, and compliance work that can add thousands (or tens of thousands) per year.
• Two Platforms, Two Codebases: With separate iOS and Android apps, every new WooCommerce feature you want to surface like wishlists, subscriptions, loyalty enhancements must be implemented and tested twice.
• Rebuilding WooCommerce Plugins: WooCommerce’s power comes from plugins and extensions: Subscriptions, Memberships, Smart Coupons, advanced shipping, specialist gateways, and more. When you go fully custom, those don’t simply “carry over.” Each one usually needs a dedicated integration, or a partial reimplementation of its logic inside the app.

That’s why a WooCommerce app project is rarely “one and done.” Once you own those codebases, you also own the long-term upkeep.

Option 2: DIY App Builders

DIY app builders typically promise to generate an app from your WooCommerce store in minutes. But once you’re a serious, mid-market merchant, you don’t stay on the cheapest tier for long.

Subscription Costs: $70 - $600+/month

Most SaaS-style builders don’t charge a mandatory setup fee at all. You typically just pay your first month plus the app-store accounts: about $99/year for the Apple Developer Program and a $25 one-time registration fee for Google Play. 

On the more “plugin/lifetime license” side, WooCommerce-specific builders are usually sold as one-time licenses in the low–mid hundreds of dollars per app

In practice, the plans aimed at growing brands tend to land in the low-to-mid three figures per month.

Popular ecommerce app builders offer WooCommerce and webstore plans that start around $70/month and climb into the $200–$600/month range for “growth” or “pro” tiers.

Sometimes they offer an extra percentage of in-app sales on top or optional multi-year “one-time” licenses running into the thousands.

Check out a more in-depth review of these tools in our guide to WooCommerce mobile app builders.

The Hidden "Time Tax"

The real cost of a DIY WooCommerce app isn’t the monthly fee, it’s the time you spend battling limitations and edge cases.

With a builder, you are:

• Configuring navigation, menus, product feeds, and categories.
• Tracking down why certain product variations or categories don’t appear correctly.
• Troubleshooting broken coupons, shipping rules, or tax calculations that work perfectly on your main WooCommerce site.
• Dealing with App Store and Google Play submissions and rejections yourself.

If your time is worth $100/hour, and you invest even 30–50 hours into setup, adjustments, and app store back-and-forth, that’s $3,000–$5,000 in hidden cost before factoring in ongoing tweaks as your store evolves.

Every theme change, checkout optimization, or new plugin can mean revisiting your builder setup.

Option 3: MobiLoud

MobiLoud exists specifically for this use case: WooCommerce merchants who want a serious app, without rebuilding their store from scratch.

Instead of trying to recreate WooCommerce in native code, we use your existing site as the engine for your iOS and Android apps.

That means:

• Your theme, layout, and brand carry into the app.
• All your WooCommerce plugins and extensions like subscriptions, memberships, coupons, advanced gateways, shipping rules work the same way they do on your website, because the app is powered by it.
• You keep managing everything from the WordPress/WooCommerce dashboard you already know.

Change a product, promotion, or checkout flow on your WooCommerce site and your apps reflect that automatically. No double maintenance, no second catalog, no separate CMS.

If you want a deeper dive into the process, we break it down in our guide on building a mobile app with WooCommerce.

The Cost Structure

MobiLoud is an ongoing service, not a one-and-done app build, and the investment is intentionally simple and predictable for serious mid-market ecommerce brands.

There are two parts:

• One-time Setup – $1,500: This covers the full build and configuration of your WooCommerce-powered apps, design tweaks to match your brand, and submission to both the App Store and Google Play. Because we build on top of the WooCommerce stack you already have rather than rewriting everything from scratch, this upfront cost stays far below a typical agency engagement.
  
  
• Ongoing Subscription – from $549/month: A recurring fee that includes hosting, infrastructure, QA, platform updates, support, and unlimited push notifications.

All in, your initial outlay (setup plus the first month) usually lands in the low four figures, and over the life of your app this structure tends to come in far below the cost of commissioning and maintaining bespoke native codebases.

Instead of pouring budget into rebuilding WooCommerce, you’re backing a managed platform that keeps your website and apps tightly aligned as your store evolves.

The "Done-For-You" Value

Crucially, MobiLoud is not another DIY builder:

• We build it: Our team handles app navigation, styling, onboarding, and WooCommerce-specific tweaks.
• We submit it: We take care of Apple App Store and Google Play submissions, metadata, and compliance.
• We maintain it: When iOS or Android ship updates, we handle compatibility changes and keep your apps running smoothly.

Summary Comparison Table

Here’s how the first year usually looks for a WooCommerce store:

Final Thoughts

When you zoom out, the real cost picture is pretty clear.

Commissioning a custom native WooCommerce app means committing $50,000+ just to get to launch, then signing up for an ongoing maintenance burden. You get power and flexibility, but you pay for it in capital, complexity, and time-to-market.

DIY builders can look inexpensive at first, but the real cost shows up in the time you spend managing them and in the compromises your best customers feel in the experience.

A strong app should convert mobile traffic and help you drive more repeat purchases and higher lifetime value from your core audience.

Entry-level plans may start at a few dozen dollars per month, yet every limitation, workaround, and broken integration chips away at your brand.

MobiLoud takes a different path.

Instead of rebuilding WooCommerce, we turn the store you’ve already proven into iOS and Android apps in a matter of weeks. You keep your existing theme, plugins, checkout flows, and growth experiments and we handle the heavy lifting.

The result is a fully featured ecommerce app at a fraction of custom development costs and without the DIY time tax.

You don’t need to rebuild WooCommerce in a separate codebase. You need a partner that can take the store you already know converts and make it instantly accessible from your customers’ home screens.

Ready to see what your WooCommerce store looks like as a top-tier app? Book a demo with MobiLoud today.