Shopify is the leading name in eCommerce for a reason. It covers every aspect of your digital storefront, from site hosting and SEO optimisation to inventory management, order and shipping workflows, and payment processing. Additionally, Shopify offers customisable, mobile-friendly design templates to help you build a successful online presence.

However, despite its comprehensive suite of tools and services, Shopify might be more than you need. Depending on your business’s focus, you may not require all the features that come standard with Shopify. Perhaps you’re just looking for a dynamic website or need to manage large-volume sales.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for hosting online stores. It’s designed for users with little to no coding experience, allowing you to create an online store from scratch. For instance, you can:

• Build a website
• Manage products and orders
• Process payments
• Calculate shipping rates

The primary advantage of a SaaS eCommerce platform like Shopify is that you don’t need to maintain the software itself, enabling you to focus on growing your business.

Shopify is suitable for both small businesses and larger enterprises, offering offers several pricing tiers, which can be a significant investment when scaling up it can quickly become expensive as higher plans are required to access advanced features.

3 Reasons to Consider a Shopify Alternative

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s explore some of Shopify’s cons that might prompt you to seek alternatives.

Pricing

Regardless of the plan you choose, you’ll incur extra transaction fees if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, which isn’t available in many countries. Additionally, you’ll have to pay credit card processing fees, which decrease slightly with more expensive plans but remain an extra cost.

Furthermore, most apps on Shopify’s marketplace come with additional fees, adding to the overall cost if you want extra functionalities like advanced order tracking or marketing features.

Third-Party Apps

While many successful stores are built on Shopify, they often rely on an ecosystem of apps chosen by the store owner. Although there are many great apps available, the cost can quickly add up, with paid store themes costing between $140 and $180, and monthly app fees ranging from a few dollars to $100.

Additionally, some apps can cause conflicts or slow down your store, and there’s always the risk of installing a problematic app that could harm your store or customers.

Steep Learning Curve

Shopify claims to be easy to use, but it still comes with a learning curve. There are numerous tutorials, guides, and experts available to help, indicating that it may not be as straightforward as advertised. If you’re looking for a simple way to start selling a few products online, Shopify might not be the best solution for you.

Here, I share a list of Shopify alternatives to help you decide which one is best for your business.

1. Volusion

Volusion is a compelling platform to consider, especially if you’re looking to keep costs low and don’t plan on selling hundreds of products.

One of Volusion’s main advantages is that you don’t need to spend extra on expensive add-ons and extensions. Many useful features are already built into the dashboard. Volusion doesn’t charge transaction fees and, depending on your plan, offers email marketing tools, affiliate programs, gift certificates, and newsletters.

However, Volusion initially did not support selling digital products, which can make the setup process tricky. Additionally, the selection of customisable free themes is limited, so you might need to invest in building a more professional-looking store.

Price:

• The cheapest plan starts at $35.00/month.

Pros:

• Mobile app
• Ability to process phone orders
• No coding required
• Many built-in features
• Video tutorials for setting up a store
• More than 30 payment gateways

Cons:

• Tricky setup for selling digital products
• Limited selection of free templates
• Poor marketing feature set
• Limited design features
• No add-on store available

2. WooCommerce

When searching for the best eCommerce platform, you’ve likely encountered the popular choices of WooCommerce and Shopify. Choosing between them can be challenging, so let’s examine the main differences.

WooCommerce is a plugin that transforms your WordPress site into an eCommerce store, offering greater flexibility for storefront customisation. However, it does require some knowledge of hosting, domain names, and basic web design.

One of WooCommerce’s key strengths is its versatility. It provides total freedom for store customisation, and as an open-source platform, new custom-built plugins are continually added to the marketplace.

However, the main challenge with WooCommerce is the setup and the learning curve, which can be daunting for those unfamiliar with WordPress.

Price: WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin are free, but you must consider the costs of domain hosting, plugins, extensions, and possibly web design services.

Pros:

• Extensive add-ons and useful extensions
• Fully customisable if you have coding experience
• A large community of WooCommerce users ready to assist
• Simple WordPress configuration
• Free WooCommerce plugin

Cons:

• Managing all the technical aspects and site security
• Requires a WordPress site to use WooCommerce
• Initial costs may be low, but additional plugins, themes, and hosting can add up
• Not ideal for beginners
• No direct technical support

3. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a highly popular alternative to Shopify, offering a hosted all-in-one solution that allows you to build an online shop without coding knowledge or advanced technical skills. It’s user-friendly for beginners and can also support the development of a large-scale online store.

Compared to Shopify, BigCommerce provides more advanced content-marketing features to help promote your products and increase conversion rates. Additionally, it includes a wide range of built-in features, reducing the need to spend extra on apps and extensions.

However, BigCommerce offers only seven free themes for customising your store. If you want more variety, you’ll need to invest in premium themes.

When you sign up with BigCommerce, you can access support via phone, live chat, email, or forum. However, user feedback suggests that phone and live chat support may not be very helpful.

Due to its limitations and time-consuming setup, BigCommerce might not be the best choice for selling digital products online with PayPal, for instance.

Price: Plans range from $29.00/month to $299.95/month, so costs can be steep.

Pros:

• No coding required
• Solid store management tools
• Built-in SEO and marketing tools
• No transaction fees
• Unlimited staff accounts with any plan
• Built-in product review functionality

Cons:

• Expensive premium themes
• Difficulties managing consumption tax rates for digital products
• Limits on annual sales
• Store themes tend to look very similar

4. Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop (formerly known as 3dcart) is a hosted all-in-one eCommerce platform that allows you to create and launch your online store from scratch. It offers a generous free plan for US-based users who are comfortable using only the native Shift4 payment gateway.

With Shift4Shop’s paid plans, you can connect to over 300 different payment providers and access features such as real-time shipping with leading partners. The platform includes a robust inventory system and a range of useful features, including SEO tools to help improve your search engine rankings. It is also generally more affordable than Shopify, with the basic plan offering more built-in features compared to Shopify’s higher-tier plans.

However, building a store with Shift4Shop may not be the easiest experience. The platform lacks drag-and-drop site-building functionality, which can be challenging for users with limited web experience. Additionally, product pages can appear more complex than necessary. You may also encounter occasional technical issues, and reports suggest that Shift4Shop’s technical support may not always be very responsive.

Price: Plans range from a free option (with the Shift4 payment gateway) to $299/month across four available plans.

Pros:

• No coding required
• Free plan plus three paid plans
• No transaction fees
• Access to 300+ payment gateways
• User-friendly for experienced users
• Built-in marketing tools
• Ability to create and manage discount/promo codes

Cons:

• Non-intuitive interface
• Lacks multilingual capabilities
• Reputation issues with the payment gateway
• Free templates are not very attractive
• Poor customer service
• Steep learning curve
• Revenue limits on paid plans

5. Prestashop

PrestaShop is a self-hosted, open-source platform for building an online store. It’s free to download and allows for extensive customisation and modification to suit your needs.

Being open-source, PrestaShop offers significant flexibility and control over your store’s configuration, making it an excellent choice for creating a unique online presence. However, there are a couple of important considerations before diving in:

1. Hosting Required: You’ll need to arrange your own hosting to use PrestaShop.
2. Technical Expertise Needed: Setting up and managing PrestaShop requires technical skills. If you’re not familiar with coding, you’ll likely need to hire a developer to assist with setup and ongoing maintenance.

Price: PrestaShop is completely free to use and does not charge a percentage of your sales.

Pros:

• No coding required to start
• Free self-hosted open-source platform
• High level of customisability
• Over 1,500 store templates available on the PrestaShop marketplace
• Strong user community
• Supports an unlimited number of products
• Built-in marketing tools
• Supports multiple languages and currencies

Cons:

• Challenging setup process
• Paid customer support: the least expensive plan is $250 per month for three hours of support
• Requires developer skills for setup and maintenance
• Fewer features compared to other open-source platforms
• Design may not be ideal for larger-scale stores
• Transaction fees may apply

6. Ecwid

When it comes to building an online store, there are typically two types of platforms:

• Web-Hosted Solutions: These platforms provide a complete eCommerce website setup.
• Self-Hosted Solutions: These offer more flexibility in designing your store but require technical knowledge.

But, Ecwid is different from both of these categories. It functions as a tool that allows you to turn an existing website into an online store.

For those who have struggled with migrating an online storefront to an existing site, Ecwid could be the ideal solution. It’s designed for business owners who want a straightforward way to add eCommerce features to their current website without starting from scratch.

Price: Ecwid offers a free plan along with three paid plans that provide additional features that starts at $21.00 per month.

Pros:

• Integrates smoothly with social networks
• Easy to add an Ecwid storefront to your existing website
• Adapts to your site’s theme
• Automatically detects and translates into over 51 languages
• Free plan available
• Comprehensive support options including phone, online chat, and email
• No transaction fees

Cons:

• Visual editor has limited customisation options
• Free plan allows only 10 products
• No SEO editing features in the free plan
• Cannot edit product URLs for SEO purposes
• Cannot create a complete storefront solely with Ecwid
• Requires an app to add Ecwid’s shopping cart to your website

7. PinnacleCart

PinnacleCart is a self-hosted eCommerce platform designed for sellers aiming to scale to an enterprise level.

It’s a strong candidate if you’re looking to launch an online store, thanks to its extensive built-in features and user-friendly dashboard. PinnacleCart supports multiple languages and currencies, making it versatile for international sales.

However, while PinnacleCart offers robust functionality, it may be better suited for users with some experience in online selling. Newcomers might find the setup process challenging and time-consuming, though no advanced skills are required.

Additionally, PinnacleCart has a somewhat unusual requirement: to add a product description, you must adhere to specific attribute guidelines.

Price: The standard plan starts at $79.95/month.

Pros:

• Supports multiple languages
• Integrates with over 25 payment gateways
• Offers HTML, CSS, and code editing tools
• Customisable themes
• Ideal for larger stores

Cons:

• Expensive relative to its features
• Steep learning curve
• No built-in POS system

8. Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Looking for a powerful eCommerce solution? Adobe Commerce might be your best bet. It’s a popular choice among large and rapidly growing businesses due to its extensive feature set, which covers everything from marketing to client analysis. The ability to add nearly any feature to your store is a major reason why so many large companies prefer Adobe Commerce.

However, be prepared for a higher level of setup complexity compared to other open-source solutions. Unless you’re an experienced web developer, you’ll likely need to hire professional help. This is why Adobe Commerce is favoured by large enterprises—they have the resources for professional web design and support.

Adobe Commerce does not position itself as anything other than enterprise-level software, so it’s not ideal for small businesses with limited resources.

Price: Contact sales for custom pricing

Pros:

• Highly flexible with an extensive feature list
• Numerous marketing tools
• Large user community
• Rich inventory management

Cons:

• Requires professional web development experience for setup
• Complex and not user-friendly for beginners
• Higher cost than many