9 Best Shopify Alternatives

Shopify was founded in 2004 is today a complete ecommerce platform that enables everyone to start an online business, grow and manage it.

Shopify has become one of the most popular platforms on the Internet when it comes to building online stores. Although it is one of the most popular ecommerce software platforms, it is not perfect for all use cases.

Shopify is a fantastic ecommerce software platform for creating online stores. But there are competitors and good Shopify alternatives out there worth taking a good look at.

Best Shopify alternatives in 2021

Here are the 9 best Shopify alternatives right now:

1. Bigcommerce

• Official website: www.bigcommerce.com
• Ecommerce platform for serious business owners.
• Used and trusted by big brands like Skullcandy.
• Is the best and most popular alternative to Shopify.

Why Use Bigcommerce Instead of Shopify

Bigcommerce is much more scalable than Shopify. Their main offering is Enterprise-level tools that allow you to compete with the big players in your market. Bigcommerce is the best Shopify Plus alternative out there.

Why Use Shopify Instead of Bigcommerce

If you have never sold anything online, Shopify is a great starting point. Once you start scaling, you may want to switch to Bigcommerce.

2. Wix

• Official website: www.wix.com
• Easy to learn and use drag and drop website builder.
• Build a beautiful website all on your own.
• No coding skills whatsoever needed.

Why Use Wix Instead of Shopify

Wix is a drag and drop website builder that is made with beginners in mind. If you have never built a website before, you will love the drag and drop interface.

It allows you to make a fully-featured website easily within minutes.

Why Use Shopify Instead of Wix

Although Wix allows you to build an eCommerce site, the functionality is a bit limited. Unlike Wix, Shopify is a platform that is designed to run online stores.

3. WooCommerce

• Official website: www.woocommerce.com
• Runs on WordPress making it doubly easy for you to manage your whole website and just the store.
• Have full control over your online store and run it on your own servers.

Why Use WooCommerce Instead of Shopify

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows you to build a full-blown online store on your WordPress site. The best part of running your online store on WooCommerce is that it puts you in complete control of your website.

Unlike platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify, with WooCommerce, you can edit anything you like and add as much custom functionality as you need.

Why Use Shopify Instead of WooCommerce

Shopify is a fully managed platform. It makes it super easy for you to run your online store. If you use WooCommerce or a similar ecommerce software, you need to manage your web server and everything else.

And if something breaks, you will need to hire a WooCommerce / WordPress developer. With Shopify, your online store will run on their servers and will be fully managed by their team.

4. Zyro

• Official website: www.zyro.com
• Zyro is a powerful website and online store builder tool that makes it easy for anyone to build a beautiful website or launch an online store.
• Comes with AI-driven marketing features, such as a Writing Tool, Logo Builder, Slogan Generator and Business Name Generator

Getting started with Zyro’s website builder is easy. First choose a theme from their huge template library and pick the one that stands out to you the most. Then you can customize everything, from images, text, and other website elements, plus you can use Zyro’s AI tools to generate designs, content, call-to-action buttons.

Why Use Zyro Instead of Shopify

Zyro’s online store builder main focus is on offering users a smooth and clean interface, packing easy-to-use tools for both customizing and designing your business or personal website, or online store.

Zyro can help you build and launch your online store within minutes. Don’t mistake Zyro for just a basic website builder, it can help you launch and grow a full-blown ecommerce business.

Why Use Shopify Instead of Zyro

Shopify is the world’s leading ecommerce platform that lets you start, grow, and manage your online store. If you are serious about selling online, Shopify is almost always the right ecommerce platform for you.

5. Volusion

• Official website: www.volusion.com
• Comes with tools for managing everything from payment processing to website design.
• Integrates with a lot of popular tools like MailChimp, Slack, and PayPal.

Why Use Volusion Instead of Shopify

Volusion is an all-in-one platform for building, managing, and scaling and ecommerce site. They offer tools to help you with everything including managing customers (with their own CRM), sending newsletters, and optimizing for SEO.

Why Use Shopify Instead of Volusion

If you don’t need a CRM for managing customers or if you simply want to test the waters, Shopify is a much better option as their platform is built for beginners.

6. Magento

• Official website: www.magento.com
• A free, open source ecommerce software you can install and run on your own servers.
• You have complete control over your website and can edit anything and everything you like.

Why Use Magento Instead of Shopify

If you want complete control over your website, then go with Magento. Magento is open-source software that you install on your own servers.

It allows you to build an ecommerce site as complex or as simple as you like. Whether you wish to compete with Amazon or just want to sell a few handcrafted goods, Magento can handle it.

Why Use Shopify Instead of Magento

Magento is very difficult to understand for beginners. It offers so much functionality that once you dive down the rabbit hole, you will end up wasting dozens of hours. If you are just starting out, stick with Shopify.

7. 3dcart

• Official website: www.3dcart.com
• 3dCart’s pricing starts at only $19, which is one of the lowest for an ecommerce platform.
• The platform is built for creating online stores that give you an edge in terms of SEO.

Why Use 3dCart Instead of Shopify

If you want to pay based on staff members and not based on how many products you sell, then go with 3dCart. All their plans allow unlimited products and unlimited orders. Their pricing grows with your team.

Why Use Shopify Instead of 3dCart

Shopify’s platform is much more suitable for beginners than 3dCart.

8. Squarespace

• Official website: www.squarespace.com
• Build your ecommerce site with a drag and drop interface.
• Easily customize the design of your ecommerce store without writing a single line of code.
• Save 10% off your first subscription by using the code PARTNER10.

Why Use Squarespace Instead of Shopify

Squarespace allows you to build and customize your site using a drag and drop interface, which makes it super easy for beginners.

Why Use Shopify Instead of Squarespace

Although Squarespace allows you to build online stores, their platform isn’t built for handling larger online stores. If you want to be able to easily scale your store and need more functionality, go with Shopify.

9. Webflow

What is Webflow?

Webflow hasn’t been around for as long as other options like WooCommerce and Shopify, but it’s grabbed a pretty large chunk of the overall market share already. With Webflow Ecommerce, you can build and design your online store, customize every little detail of your website, shopping cart, and checkout experiences.

Key features:

• Webflow’s visual “no-coding” builder lets you customize every little detail of your website, shopping cart and checkout experiences.
• The option to list an unlimited amount of items for sale through the inventory.
• Coupon codes and special offers or discounts for customers, which you can add with just a few clicks.
• Free plans or paid plans depending on what you’re looking for.

Pros:

• Webflow gives you complete design freedom, it’s a completely customizable ecommerce platform.
• The selling platform for Webflow is easy-to-use.
• Integration is easy and seamless, whether you know HTML or not – and whether you’re used to commerce selling platforms or not.
• Webflow supports a few more payment avenues than other forms of selling platform.

Cons:

• Webflow is primarily built for web designers launching websites, ecommerce capabilities were added later on.
• You’re better off figuring the options out on your own rather than relying on Webflow’s customer support or helpline to help you.
• Webflow has a serious lack of features for the money you pay when you move over to their paid options.
• Right now you can only use Stripe or PayPal as your payment provider, and there’s no POS.
• The Webflow pricing structure is a bit confusing.

Why use Webflow instead of Shopify?

Webflow is way more visual and customizable than Shopify, in short, it lets you build a much better looking and functioning online store than Shopify. But in terms of ecommerce and online selling features, Webflow falls behind Shopify.

What is Shopify

Shopify allows you to build an ecommerce site without writing a single line of code. They help manage everything for you including payment processing, generating invoices, managing your catalog and everything else you need to run a successful online store.

Shopify’s pricing plans range from $29 per month (Basic plan) to $299 per month (advanced plan).

Benefits of Shopify

Shopify is one of the easiest ways to build an online store for your business. Whether you sell just a few niche products like stuffed toys or a catalog of everything fashion, Shopify can handle it all.

Their platform allows easy management of your online store and even allows you to extend the functionality of your site with the extensions Shopify’s partners have to offer.

Here is a rundown of the main Shopify features:

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the pros of Shopify?

Shopify is the undisputed leader in the ecommerce space. It's fully hosted ecommerce software is easy to use and comes packed with features making it simple to start selling online. You get abandoned cart recovery, multi-channel retailing and POS integration, intuitive inventory system, great looking themes and a huge range of add-ons and integrations.

What are the cons of Shopify?

There is no free plan available (only a 14-day free trial). External payment gateways have additional transaction fees.

What are the best Shopify alternatives?

Bigcommerce is the best like-for-like fully hosted ecommerce software alternative to Shopify. If you are on a budget, then both Wix and Squarespace offer ecommerce functionality and features at much cheaper prices.

Best Shopify Alternatives: Summary

So who are the best and most serious Shopify competitors out there?

BigCommerce is another leading ecommerce platform (#2 after Shopify), providing all the must-have features and extreme scalability for online stores. It’s also the best Shopify Plus alternative.

If you simply want more control over your website, then go with a self-hosted online store solution such as WooCommerce or Magento. Both run on your servers but the former is much easier to learn than latter.

On the other hand, if you want to be able to customize the design of your website without knowing how to code, then go with Wix or Squarespace.

Both offer a drag and drop interface to help beginners build a professional-looking website within minutes.