One in Seven Online Stores Closes Within a Year: Shoprank Research

The e‑commerce market is growing steadily, yet not all stores withstand competition and remain active. Some platforms for building e-commerce sites are growing their number of active stores, while others lose a significant share of users just a few months after launch.

In this piece, we look at which platforms have the highest store survival rates, why some stores close faster, and what owners should pay attention to.

Overall platform survival figures

From August 2025 to January 2026, approximately 1 million stores closed out of more than 6.8 million tracked. Overall, after six months 86.6% of stores remained active, but the numbers vary significantly depending on the platform.

Among the most popular platforms, WooCommerce loses roughly 1 in 5 stores, while Shopify retains the majority — only 1 in 12 closes. This gap means that over six months, more than half a million stores shut down on WooCommerce.

A clear trend is emerging: WooCommerce is gradually falling behind, while Shopify demonstrates more stable engagement with store owners. This split underscores that a platform's popularity does not always guarantee stability for the businesses running on it.

How store closures differ by type

The closure process looks different across platforms. In the case of WooCommerce, around 76% of stores disappeared entirely — meaning domains stopped working — another 14% converted into blogs or portfolio sites, and 10% displayed closure notices or maintenance messages.

For Shopify, closures look different: stores more often remain online with maintenance pages or a "store unavailable" message. 

Regional platforms from Europe and Asia show considerably stronger stability. For example, Lightspeed, Shopware, JTL Shop, Ochanoko, and Upgates retain 95–99% of stores over a six-month period.

In this context, Shopify also demonstrates solid stability at 91.7%, but it is the only platform with over a million stores to do so. Smaller regional platforms typically serve specific markets and have fewer small-scale or temporary stores, which helps boost their survival rate and makes them less risky for owners.

Why WooCommerce loses more stores

One reason for the high closure rate on WooCommerce is that the platform is frequently used for small local businesses or test projects. A significant share of the stores that close are dropshipping operations or mass-created template sites that disappear just as quickly as they launched.

At the same time, closures do occur among genuinely operating local businesses, but it is precisely the large proportion of temporary or "fake" stores that pulls WooCommerce's overall survival rate below that of Shopify, where the majority of stores operate consistently over a six-month period. 

Conclusions

The findings show that e-commerce platforms differ substantially in store survival rates. Shopify demonstrates more stable metrics, while WooCommerce has a higher closure rate, driven in large part by the volume of temporary projects.

Regional platforms, meanwhile, retain up to 95–99% of stores, reflecting their focus on more established businesses. For owners, this means that the choice of platform affects not only the launch experience but also the long-term stability of the store.