Best Shopify Competitors & Alternatives ([2024])

• BigCommerce: Best for established businesses
• Squarespace: Best for visual designers
• Wix: Best for do-it-yourself (DIY) sellers
• Ecwid: Best for existing websites
• WooCommerce: Best for WordPress users
• Sellfy: Best for print-on-demand

Shopify offers intuitive features for e-commerce solutions, and the major ones include:

Staff accounts: Shopify offers users two to unlimited staff accounts based on the plans they choose. Staff accounts allow the admin flexibility to create accounts for users to access the control panel with certain limitations.

Product limit: Unlimited. This feature pertains to the number of products you can upload on the website.

Inventory locations: It allows you to manage 200 to 1,000 inventory locations to manage your products as per their location of storage and distribution.

Online credit card rates for Shopify payments: This fee applies to processing domestic or international credit cards. Shopify charges up to 2.9% for domestic credit cards and up to 3.9% for international transactions.

Shipping: Shopify allows several solutions to help you ship products via your e-commerce website.

Abandoned cart recovery: This feature helps you track customers who have abandoned their shopping carts without making the payment.

Pricing and Fees

The first thing to consider when choosing a Shopify alternative is price. While many of the platforms we’ve reviewed offer a free plan, they all have paid plans with varying price points. If you’re just getting started with your online store, you may want to start with a free plan to see how the platform works for you. But if you’re serious about growing your business, you’ll eventually need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Another consideration is fees. Does the platform charge a monthly fee and processing or transaction fees on each purchase? Do you have to use a separate payment gateway, or can you use the platform’s built-in payment processing? These are important questions to ask when evaluating pricing.

Hosting

Another important consideration is hosting. Some platforms, such as Shopify and Wix, include hosting as part of their monthly subscription fee. Others, such as Ecwid and WooCommerce, don’t include hosting but make it easy to set up your store on a hosting platform, such as WordPress.

If you’re not sure which option is right for you, consider how much control you want over your store’s hosting. If you want the platform to handle everything, a hosted solution such as Shopify or Squarespace might be the right choice. But if you’re comfortable setting up your own hosting, a self-hosted solution such as WooCommerce might be a better option.

Themes and Design Options

When you’re setting up your online store, you want it to look professional and branded. That means choosing a platform with a wide range of themes and design options. Some platforms, such as Shopify and Wix, offer hundreds of themes to choose from. Others, such as Ecwid and Squarespace, offer a smaller selection of themes but allow you to customize your store’s design more.

Think about how important design is to your business. If you want a wide selection of themes to choose from, then a customizable platform might be the right choice. And if you’re comfortable working with code and want more control over your store’s design, then a platform with open source or API might be the best option. With these types of platforms, you can often find platform-provided themes, hire a web designer, or even buy a premade theme from a marketplace such as Etsy.

Ease of Use

Another important consideration is ease of use. You want a platform that’s easy to set up and use, especially if you’re new to e-commerce. Even if you’re not new to e-commerce and you’re simply looking to migrate to a new platform, consider if there’s a migration service or a step-by-step guide to transferring to your new platform. The last thing you want is a platform that’s so complex that it takes weeks or months to learn.

To evaluate ease of use, take advantage of free trials and demos offered by various platforms. Consider how long it takes to set up a basic store, how easy it is to add products and categories, and how intuitive the platform’s interface is.

Security

When you run an online store, security is always a top concern. You want to make sure your customers’ data is safe and secure and that your store is protected from hackers. To evaluate security, look for a platform that offers features such as SSL encryption and PCI compliance. SSL encryption is important for protecting your customers’ data, while PCI compliance ensures that your store is secure from hackers.

You should also look for a platform that is regularly updated with the latest security patches. This helps to ensure that your store is always protected from the latest threats.

Payment Processing Options

We touched on payment gateways under our pricing and fees section, but it’s worth mentioning again. You’ll want to make sure that the platform you choose offers a wide range of payment processing options. This includes credit and debit cards, as well as popular payment providers such as PayPal, Stripe, or Apple Pay.

You should also consider whether the platform offers any additional features, such as the ability to set up subscription-based payments or recurring orders. These features can be very valuable for businesses that sell products or services on a recurring basis.

SEO Features

If you want your store to be successful, you need to make sure it’s visible to potential customers. That means optimizing your site for search engines such as Google. To evaluate a platform’s SEO features, look for features such as a built-in blog, customizable URLs, meta tags, and social sharing buttons. These features will help you to optimize your site for search engines and drive traffic to your store.

You should also consider whether the platform offers any additional features that can help with SEO, such as the ability to create custom pages or add structured data. These features can help you ‌ improve your site’s ranking in the search results and get more traffic to your store.

Customer Support

Finally, you should consider customer support when choosing an e-commerce platform. Things will inevitably go wrong from time to time, and you should be able to rely on your platform’s customer support team to help you resolve any issues.

To evaluate customer support, look for features such as 24/7 support, live chat, community support groups, email support, and a knowledge base. These features will help you to get the help you need when you need it. You should also consider the quality of the customer support team. Look for reviews from other users to see what their experiences have been like. Do their marketing promises live up to the hype?

Choosing the right e-commerce platform is essential for any online business. Several factors to consider include cost, ease of use, features, and customer support. To help you choose the right Shopify competitor for your business, we’ve evaluated the leading options based on twelve different characteristics.

Here are the categories we used to rank the providers that made the top of the list.

Pricing

Whether a Shopify alternative offered a free version was a key consideration. Additionally, we took a close look at the plans offered by each provider―both in regard to the cost of their plans and what upgrade each higher-tier plan offered. Those providers whose plans we considered to be in an easily affordable range fared better in our rankings. Pricing accounted for 20% of our weighted scoring.

Features

When it comes to features, we considered a couple of essentials for small e-commerce retailers: having a drag-and-drop interface and providing SSL certificates. However, we felt additional features were also needed to help retailers succeed, including offering inventory management, social media integration, email tools, and an application programming interface (API). We weighted these features at 40% of the total score.

Expert Score

We researched reviews from real users to gauge their opinions of each platform as part of our expert analysis. For this, we reviewed notable third-party review websites, focusing on four specific criteria: ease of use, stand-out features, popularity, and value for the money. This final analysis made up 40% of the total score.

Forbes Advisor recently named Shopify the best e-commerce platform because of its advanced feature set, which is designed for selling online. It helps businesses of all types to design, launch, and manage an online store. Users can get up to 13 free themes and 208 paid templates to choose from. It comes in four plans — Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and — with each customized as per your e-commerce needs. There are features including checkout features, shipping, order management and fulfillment, drop shipping, inventory management, marketing and promotions, and a PoS system—overall design elements to create an online store. You can also sell via social media channels or online marketplaces like Amazon.

In addition to Shopify, there are other online retail options available. These include:

• Amazon: Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world, and it offers a platform for businesses to sell their products. Amazon has a wide range of features, including a marketplace, fulfillment services, and marketing tools. Learn more about Shopify vs Amazon.
• eBay: is another popular online marketplace for businesses to sell their products. It offers a wide range of features, including auction-style listings, buyer protection, and payment options.
• Etsy: This is a popular platform for businesses that sell handmade or vintage items. With Etsy, you can customize your shop, manage orders and listings, and promote your shop with marketing tools. Get more information on Shopify vs. Etsy.
• Faire: A platform designed specifically for businesses that sell wholesale products. With Faire, businesses can manage orders, connect with buyers, and get access to financing.
• Walmart: A popular retail store that also offers an online platform for businesses to sell their products. Features include product listings, order management, and shipping options.

Though Shopify provides well-rounded, intuitive, and elaborate e-commerce solutions, many website builders are available for small and large to complex businesses. Moreover, the Shopify alternatives we’ve listed come with competitive plans and pricing, and we have chosen them based on their ease of use and features, including security, payment processing options, SEO, and customer support.

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