We Tracked 6.8 Million E-commerce Stores for 6 Months. Here's Who Survived.
Nearly a million e-commerce stores disappeared in 6 months. We tracked 6.8 million stores domain by domain. WooCommerce lost 1 in 5. Shopify lost 1 in 12.
Nearly a Million Stores Gone in 6 Months
We tracked 6.8 million e-commerce stores from August 2025 to January 2026. Same domains. Monthly snapshots. Six months later, 907,648 of them are gone.
Overall, 86.6% survived. But the gap between platforms is enormous.
| Aug '25 | Sep '25 | Oct '25 | Nov '25 | Dec '25 | Jan '26 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lightspeed - NL (8.4K) | 100% | 99.5% | 99.1% | 98.4% | 97.9% | 96.6% |
| Shopware - DE (24.9K) | 100% | 99.5% | 98.6% | 97.8% | 96.8% | 95.7% |
| JTL Shop - DE (12.4K) | 100% | 99.3% | 98.7% | 98.1% | 96.4% | 95.7% |
| BigCommerce (37.8K) | 100% | 99.3% | 98.4% | 97.3% | 96.3% | 94.5% |
| Magento (95.8K) | 100% | 98.8% | 97.6% | 95.8% | 94.4% | 93.6% |
| PrestaShop (192.8K) | 100% | 98.6% | 97.6% | 95.9% | 94.1% | 92.8% |
| Shopify (2.58M) | 100% | 98.9% | 97.4% | 95.5% | 94% | 91.7% |
| Squarespace (44.1K) | 100% | 98.6% | 95.7% | 93.4% | 92.1% | 90.7% |
| Wix (353.7K) | 100% | 98% | 96.3% | 94% | 92.1% | 89.7% |
| OpenCart (104.4K) | 100% | 97.6% | 95.4% | 92.4% | 89.6% | 87.1% |
| WooCommerce (2.54M) | 100% | 96% | 92.4% | 88% | 84.1% | 80.2% |
Shopify retained 91.7% of its stores. WooCommerce retained 80.2%. That's a difference of over half a million stores gone in 6 months.
E-commerce Platform Survival Rates
| % of stores still active after 6 months | |
|---|---|
| Lightspeed (NL) | 96.6 |
| Shopware (DE) | 95.7 |
| JTL Shop (DE) | 95.7 |
| BigCommerce | 94.5 |
| Magento | 93.6 |
| PrestaShop | 92.8 |
| Shopify | 91.7 |
| Squarespace | 90.7 |
| Wix eCommerce | 89.7 |
| OpenCart | 87.1 |
| WooCommerce | 80.2 |
WooCommerce loses 1 in 5 stores. Shopify loses 1 in 12. The gap is consistent month over month - WooCommerce doesn't catch up, it falls further behind.
European regional platforms (Lightspeed, Shopware, JTL Shop) consistently stay above 95%. Shopify tracks close to PrestaShop (92.8%) and Magento (93.6%) - all three in the 91-94% range.
How E-commerce Stores Die
Not all churn looks the same. We categorized every churned store by what happened to its domain:
WooCommerce - of 502,367 churned stores, 76% are complete domain disappearances. The domain simply stops resolving. 14% were reclassified - the domain still exists but is no longer a store (pivoted to a blog, portfolio, or different business). 10% show "store closed" or maintenance pages.
Shopify - churn is more evenly distributed. Domain disappearance accounts for a smaller share, with more stores showing maintenance pages or platform-generated "store unavailable" notices.
The difference is almost entirely in domain disappearance: 15.1% of all WooCommerce stores had their domain gone by January, compared to 6.0% for Shopify. Maintenance pages and platform switches are comparable between the two.
We also manually reviewed hundreds of dead stores to verify data quality. About a quarter were dropshipping or template sites - fake brand storefronts on .shop domains, mass-produced pages with identical descriptions in dozens of languages. The rest were legitimate local businesses from over 30 countries. More on our verification process in our analysis of WooCommerce false positives.
Top 10 Platforms by Survival Rate
Platforms with 1,000+ active stores in August 2025, ranked by 6-month survival:
| # | Platform | Country | Stores | 6-Month Survival |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ochanoko | Japan | 2,278 | 98.9% |
| 2 | Upgates | Czech Republic | 2,998 | 97.5% |
| 3 | Lightspeed eCom | Netherlands | 8,379 | 96.6% |
| 4 | Unas | Hungary | 7,656 | 96.5% |
| 5 | BASE | Japan | 18,773 | 96.4% |
| 6 | EC-CUBE | Japan | 12,303 | 96.2% |
| 7 | Shoprenter | Hungary | 4,737 | 96.1% |
| 8 | Shopware | Germany | 24,903 | 95.7% |
| 9 | ePages | Germany | 16,712 | 95.7% |
| 10 | JTL Shop | Germany | 12,410 | 95.7% |
Four of the top ten are Japanese. Four are German. All are regional platforms serving specific markets.
Shopify ranks 17th overall with 91.7% - but it's the highest-ranked platform with over 1 million stores. Every platform above it has under 200,000. See all 340+ platforms we track.
Key Takeaways
- WooCommerce loses 1 in 5 stores over 6 months. Shopify loses 1 in 12. The gap is consistent across every monthly snapshot.
- 76% of WooCommerce churn is domain disappearance. Not platform switches, not pivots. The domain stops resolving entirely.
- Regional platforms retain 95-99% of their stores. Japanese and Central European platforms dominate the top 10.
- About a quarter of dead stores were never real businesses - dropshipping templates, fake brand storefronts, mass-produced pages that disappeared as fast as they appeared.
Methodology
We take compatible monthly snapshots of every e-commerce store we track. Each snapshot records whether a domain is an active store, what platform it runs, and whether it's operational or under maintenance.
Our AI classifier verifies each store - not just platform detection, but actual e-commerce activity: product pages, checkout flows, shipping indicators. A domain running WooCommerce but operating as a blog is not counted as a store.
For this analysis, we took every domain that was an active store with a known platform in August 2025 and checked the same domains in January 2026. This is true cohort tracking - same domains, not aggregate counts.
Limitations:
- 6-month window. Long-term survival may differ.
- Platform detection. Heavily customized or headless storefronts may not be attributed to their correct platform.
- Domain disappearance. A domain absent from our January snapshot could mean it expired, its server went offline, or it was blocked. We can't distinguish between these cases.
- Margin. Based on cross-validation, survival rates carry a margin of approximately +/-1-2 percentage points.
Data and analysis by ShopRank. We scan 300M+ domains and track 8M+ verified e-commerce stores across 340+ platforms.