5 Best Shopify Alternatives and Competitors To Compare

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Shopify is unarguably one of the most popular ecommerce platforms, but it’s definitely not the only option. Other Shopify alternatives are worth considering, with similar features, subscriptions, and self-hosted solutions. 

I researched other similar eCommerce platforms with notable features, shipping functions., point-of-sales, drag and drops, template features, etc. 

Whatever ecommerce features you’re looking for, you will find the best Shopify alternatives in today’s post.

Without wasting more time, let’s dive in.

Top Shopify Competitors

Before we begin, it’s important to know that some of these Shopify alternatives have a free plan, which allows beginners to start an ecommerce shop without the high cost. 

For example, Weebly offers features like shopping carts, inventory management, in-store pickup, and automatic tax calculation in its free plan. If you’re a beginner, Weebly makes it easy to start an ecommerce business with minimal cost. 

WooCommerce is the best alternative to Shopify if you’re a WordPress user. 

You can easily create a blog with your WooCommerce shop, bringing more SEO advantages to drive organic traffic.

You can read my extensive intake here if you need a thorough review of Shopify to compare it with other alternative eCommerce solutions.

But if you are unsure between Shopify and WooCommerce, I have reviewed both platforms in this comparison post.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves; here are the top 5 cheaper alternatives to Shopify you should try.

1. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a comprehensive e-commerce platform that caters to small, medium, and large businesses. With built-in tools and scalability options, BigCommerce empowers entrepreneurs to create and manage their online stores effectively. 

Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce offers unlimited staff seats in all its plans. In contrast, Shopify capped staff seats to 2 in Basic, 5 in Shopify, and a maximum of 15 staff seats in the Advanced plan. 

Big-commerce lets you sell across channels and connect your store to Amazon, Walmart, and eBay while managing customers’ orders from your store. 

Aside from its standard plan, all BigCommerce plans have cart abandonment features. This lets you send customers an automated incomplete cart reminder notice, encouraging them to complete the checkout.

Considering the cost of additional stores if you max out on your plan limits, BigCommerce is relatively cheaper than Shopify. In the BigCommerce standard plan, additional storefront costs $30/m, Plus plan costs $50.

The additional stores in the Pro and Enterprise plan cost $100/m, respectively.

BigCommerce doesn’t offer a free plan, but its feature-rich offerings make it a worthy Shopify contender.

BigCommerce Top Features

• Advanced SEO capabilities for better search engine visibility.
• Flexible product catalog management.
• No additional transaction fee 
• Unlimited store staff accounts are included in all plans.
• Integration with multiple (over 100) payment gateways.
• Mobile-responsive themes for an optimized user experience.
• Abandoned cart recovery to minimize lost sales.
• Free sitewide SSL Certificate
• Sell and fulfill orders in multiple store locations, including in-store pickups.
• 24/7/365 phone, chat, and ticket support channels.
• Manage all your BigCommerce stores from one admin account.

BigCommerce Pros and Cons

BigCommerce Pricing

Like Shopify, BigCommerce offers two e-commerce solutions for entrepreneurs – Essentials and Enterprise pricing. The Essential plan is ideal for solo e-commerce business owners, individual and small businesses doing less than $400k in annual sales.

The BigComnerce Enterprise plan targets large-scale businesses exceeding $500 in yearly sales. You need to contact sales to get a quote.

Here are the price details for the Essential plans.

2. Weebly

Weebly is a beginner-friendly website builder that also offers e-commerce capabilities. Its’ target audience is beginning ecommerce store owners and individuals looking to build websites and online stores with possible minimal investments.

It provides an intuitive interface and a variety of attractive templates, making it suitable for small businesses and individuals. 

Weebly is one of the cheaper alternatives to Shopify if budget is among the reasons you’re searching. The base ecommerce plan starts at $13 for a monthly subscription and $10 if you subscribe to annual billing. 

Though not as robust and feature-rich as Shopify, it has all the essential ecommerce features to get you up and running in minutes. And allow you to sell and receive payments worldwide. 

Weebly and Shopify are both hosted platforms, so you don’t need to spend extra hosting your ecommerce store. All the tools and features are built into your Weebly store, so you can focus on selling and promoting your business. 

Weebly offers a free plan, although it has limitations and Weebly branding. It’s a quick and easy way for beginners to try ecommerce and learn how to build an online business. 

Weebly Top Features

• Drag-and-drop website builder for easy customization.
• Customize and automated checkout functionalities
• Mobile-responsive designs to ensure a seamless user experience.
• Inventory management for efficient product tracking.
• Accept Payment through PayPal.
• Transact with Square Gift Card
• Track and manage inventory like bulk product Import and export features.
• Create coupons to drive more sales and revenue.
• In-store pickup allows customers to order online and pick up items offline.
• Weebly is also a blogging platform.
• Use a custom domain name.
• Premade beautiful template design 
• Sell digital goods and products.
• Manage your Weebly store with mobile apps.
• Free SSL Certificate
• Automatically calculate shipping rates by carrier, location, weight, and quantity.
• Integrated payment processing for secure transactions.
• SEO-friendly tools to enhance online visibility.
• Chat, email, community, and phone support.

Weebly Pros and Cons

Weebly Pricing 

Aside from its forever-free plan, Weebly offers three standard prices. Each plan gives you access to different levels of support, features, and store capabilities.

Here is a summary of the Weebly Pricing. Check the pricing page for more information on available features and access levels.

3. Ecwid

Ecwid is an e-commerce solution easily integrated into existing websites, marketplaces, or social media platforms. 

If you need to sell across the web, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, mobile apps, and websites, Ecwid is a solid Shopify competitor. It also integrates with WhatsApp, so you can market to your contacts and generate more revenue.

The software allows merchants to sell everywhere possible – whether you’re a blogger, YouTuber, content creator, business owner, or vlogger, anyone can start an ecommerce store on Ecwid.

Lightspeed backs the platform, so it uses the Lightspeed Point-of-sale system and Vend, Clover, and Square to sync inventory and customer orders to your online store. 

In addition, you can sell and process payments via PayPal, Stripe, and Square from your Ecwid stores. 

It offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features suitable for small businesses, bloggers, and individuals. 

Ecwid offers a free plan with limitations on features and product listings.

Ecwid Top Features

• Seamless integration with websites, blogs, and social media platforms.
• Mobile-responsive design for optimal user experience on any device.
• Automated tax calculations.
• Sell digital goods and upload up to 25GB per file.
• Create coupon codes
• Mobile POS system.
• Optimize your store with essential eCommerce SEO tools.
• Square, Clover, and Vend POS system (available in the unlimited plan and US merchants only)
• Customize checkout page
• Drag and drop website builder.
• Multiple payment options to cater to diverse customer preferences.
• Create paid advertising – Pinterest, Google, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat. 
• No additional payment transaction fee.
• Accept recurring payments subscription. 
• Responsive ecommerce store templates.
• Inventory management for easy tracking and control.
• SEO optimization features to improve online visibility.

Ecwid Pros and Cons

Ecwid Pricing

You can use the free plan till you’re ready to upgrade. 

However, you can only upload a maximum of 5 products, but you have unlimited bandwidth. You can access marketing features like Facebook and Instagram advertising and selling on multiple stores and channels.

The free plan also allows you to create a free website and add a store with no transaction fees.

The standard plan comes in three plans, Venture, Business, and Unlimited. 

The Venture plan is ideal for beginners, while Business and Unlimited are ideal for businesses that want to grow an exciting business. For more Ecwid pricing information, check the page.

4. Squarespace

Squarespace, known for its visually appealing website builder, also offers e-commerce functionality. 

It provides an intuitive interface and beautifully designed templates, making it an attractive option for creative professionals and artists. 

One of the core features of Squarespace is its available templates. It offers a wide range of beautiful pre-built templates designed to provide your store with responsive design and stunning appearance. 

Squarespace offers a responsive single checkout option, making it easy for your customers to purchase effortlessly. 

For US merchants only, Squarespace offers its POS features allowing you to sell in physical stores and offline and synchronize all orders with your online store account.

You can sell via Facebook and Instagram by synchronizing product catalogs, tagging products, adding shops to your profile, or running paid advertising.  

While Squarespace doesn’t offer a free plan, its feature set and design capabilities make it a popular choice.

Squarespace Top Features

• Accept payment from multiple gateways and payment methods – credit cards, Apple Pay, Stripe, PayPal, etc. 
• Get details analytics into store performance, purchases, and units sold, and track orders, 
• Integrates with services and products on third-party platforms. 
• Inventory management through an easy-to-use interface and email notifications on stock availability.
• Generates recurring revenue through the subscription-based business model.
• Sell digital downloads and products via your Squarespace stores.  
• User-friendly drag-and-drop editor for easy website customization.
• Squarespace point of sale allows you to sell in person, IOS and Android apps.
• Sell through Facebook and Instagram shops, add product catalogs, and run paid ads.
• Stunning templates designed for various industries.
• Seamless integration with social media platforms.
• Mobile-responsive designs for optimal user experience.
• Reliable hosting and security measures.

If you’re struggling to decide between Squaresapce and Shopify, checkout my extensive comparison post.

Squarespace Pros and Cons

Squarespace Pricing

Three standard pricing are Business, Commerce Basic, and Commerce Advanced.

Each plan has one year of free domain name registrations and a customized checkout domain name experience.

You can have https://yourdomain.com/checkout/ as your checkout page to improve the user experience and maintain consistency across all website pages.

Below are the Squarespace ecommerce pricing plans.

5. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source platform and a very popular WordPress ecommerce software. It provides a robust e-commerce solution for WordPress users. 

With a vast range of extensions and customization options, WooCommerce allows users to transform their WordPress sites into feature-rich online stores. The best part is that WooCommerce offers a free plan as a WordPress plugin.

And you can try Woo Express for 14 days to decide if it is worth the investment. WooCommerce also provides enterprise-level commerce solutions for high-volume merchants, and it’s built for developers, too. 

WooCommerce powers over 3 million stores on the WordPress platform, making it one of the most widely used ecommerce software today. 

Among the top 1 million ecommerce sites, 23% used WooCommerce as their ecommerce solution. 

One of the core strengths of WooCommerce is community support. As a WordPress product, it enjoys developer support from the WordPress community. 

WooCommerce is also suitable for dropshipping, with its extensive extensions that work seamlessly with marketplaces like AliExpress and several dropshipping partners.

It has over 800 extensions and 70+ WooCommerce themes to extend store features and functions and customize design extensively. 

Whether a beginner, already selling, an ecommerce agency, or a developer, WooCommerce is one of the best Shopify alternatives that is feature-rich, easy to use, and allows flexibility.

WooCommerce Top Features

• Seamless integration with WordPress, leveraging the familiarity of the platform.
• Extensive range of extensions and plugins for enhanced functionality.
• Sell physical products, digital downloads, subscriptions, memberships, etc.
• Manage your stories on the go – IOS and Android apps.
• Use blocks to create content and add features to your stores.
• Flexibility in design and customization to align with brand aesthetics.
• Integration with other services, tools, and products.
• Translate your store into over 24 languages.
• Automated cart abandonment recovery emails.
• Real-time shipping and booking rate calculations.
• Automatic tax rate calculations.
• Use your custom domain with an SSL Certificate for added store protections.
• Take control of your hosting. 
• No-code site editing features with blocks.
• Advanced built-in reports and connection to Google Analytics.

WooCommerce Pros and Cons

WooCommerce Pricing

Two standard ecommerce plans are available for WooCommerce, Essential and Performance.

Each plan gives you access to ecommerce features you need to launch and grow your store. However, the Performance plan is ideal for establishing a merchant with more resource requirements.

Here is a summary of the price and features.

FAQ – Alternative ECommerce Platform to Shopify

Conclusion

While Shopify remains a popular choice for many small, medium, and Enterprise business owners, exploring alternatives is crucial to finding the best fit for your needs.

The eCommerce platforms mentioned in this article offer a range of features, target different audiences, and come with varying pricing and payment processing fees. 

Whether you’re a small business, artist, blogger, drop Shippers or large enterprise, Shopify alternatives provide opportunities to establish and grow your online store. 

Consider your requirements, budget, and long-term goals to select the best ecommerce platform for your business vision.