Shopify is one of the most friendly and popular site that hosts websites. With over 1,000 templates, and more app-friendly than most eCommerce sites, it offers novices a chance to display their products and create a niche in the retail market. But not everyone can afford the features and prices of Shopify. So here, we present to you some Shopify alternatives, just in case.
Fact
The Shopify platform hosts over 100,000 active online stores around the world, ranging from small budding entrepreneurs to big names like General Electric, Tesla Motors, Foo Fighters, Encyclopedia Britannica, Penny Arcade, Forbes, Maxim, and The Chive.
When it comes to launching online retail stores, the only name that sticks is Shopify. With its simple-to-use templates that don’t require any experience of coding, to SEO friendly options like editing metadata and site links, it’s less of a nightmare to set up shop.
Though Shopify is popular, the third-party apps that are integrated to the website are expensive. Plus, it charges a 1 – 2% transaction fee, which won’t be feasible if you receive limited orders. However, you may prefer to host your own store and design your interface. Keeping that in mind, we give you some sites that are pretty similar to Shopify.
Shopify Alternatives
Bigcommerce
- It currently has 55,000 online merchants.
- It offers a 15-day trial.
- It has three tiered plans – Silver for USD 29.95/month, Gold for USD 79.95/month, and Platinum for USD 199.95/month. It charges a 1.5% transaction fee for the Silver plan, which is waived for the other plans.
- It offers abandoned cart software to recover all the items that you lost during an impromptu shutdown of the PC.
- It has integrations with popular apps such as MailChimp, Xero, Google Analytics, eBay, and QuickBooks.
- It provides 24/7 email and chat support, but provides phone support only during business hours.
- It gives 300GB storage for the Silver plan, and offers unlimited storage for the Gold and Platinum plans.
Website: Bigcommerce
Volusion
- It offers a 14-day trial.
- It charges the lowest monthly rates for online merchants, with prices as low as USD 15/month.
- The pricing plans range from the Mini, starting at USD 15/month, Plus at USD 35/month, Pro at USD 75/month, and Premium at USD 135/month, respectively. The least charged plans let you display 100 products, with the Plus displaying 1,000 products, Pro displaying 10,000 products, and unlimited products for the Premium plan.
- It offers a storage of 1GB for the Mini, 3GB for the Plus, 10GB for the Pro, and 35GB for the Premium.
- Similar to Bigcommerce, it offers abandoned cart software, but only for the Plus plans and above.
- It has SmartMatch technology, which detects product combinations in stock, and displays them on the front page.
Website: Volusion
Highwire
- It has a 14-day trial.
- It was founded to cater to the needs of Amazon and eBay sellers who wished to start their own store.
- It offers 2 plans – a Starter plan with a 100 product limit and a monthly price of USD 14.95; and an Exclusive plan with 10,000 products, unlimited storage, at a price of USD 29.95/month.
- It supports multiple payment gateways, including Google Checkout and PayPal.
Website: Highwire
3dcart
- 3dcart has over 4,000 online merchants.
- It has an online building store that lets you customize the templates and get the design right in the first go.
- A maintenance fee of around USD 30.00 is also charged per year.
- It has a 15-day trial period.
- The plans start from the Mini at USD 19.99/month for 200 products, Starter at USD 35.99/month for 1,000 products, Professional at USD 65.99/month for 10,000 products, Professional Plus at USD 99.99/month for unlimited products, and finally the Power plan at USD 129.99/month for unlimited products.
- The best part about 3dcart is that, it charges no transaction fees for any of its plans.
Website: 3dcart
PinnacleCart
- It offers a 14-day trial to check their features.
- PinnacleCart has over 35,000 merchants.
- It has 4 plans, with the Start Up plan offered at USD 29.95/month, Small Biz at USD 59.95/month, Enterprise at USD 149.95/month, and the most popular Entrepreneur at USD 94.95/month.
- It’s definitely a cheaper alternative to Shopify, and doesn’t require any transaction fees or migratory fees if you wish to transfer your website to this domain.
- It has direct integration with QuickBooks, to directly print invoices and packing slips.
- The best part about PinnacleCart is the scalability of the website in all platforms.
Website: PinnacleCart
Magento
- Magento has over 35,000 merchants.
- It offers discounts for code creation.
- Magento gives out customized paid themes at an unbelievable price of USD 1.00.
- It has integrations with 5,000+ applications.
- This site offers multilingual support, a feature not offered by Shopify or any other eCommerce platform.
- It offers hosting on 3 distinct platforms – Magento Community Edition for developers who can create their own code or tech-savvy merchants; Magento Enterprise Edition for fast-growing businesses that handle large volumes of data, and is not for free; and Magento Go, a cloud-based application to support small businesses.
Website: Magento
Squarespace
- Squarespace is one of the closest competitors to Shopify, as it offers more custom designs and templates.
- It lets users create a website via a drag-and-drop interface.
- It has 3 plans – with the Personal plan offered at USD 8/month for a yearly plan and USD 10 on a monthly basis; Professional at USD 16/month for a yearly plan or USD 20 on a monthly basis, Business at USD 24/month or USD 30 on a monthly basis.
- Squarespace charges 2.9% of the purchase price, plus an additional 30 cents for the transaction.
- It only supports a single payment gateway – Stripe.
- It has 24/7 phone support for all its plans.
Website: Squarespace
PrestaShop
- It has over 2,000 custom-designed templates to choose from.
- You can either start it over the Cloud platform, or download it to get a customized control over it.
- It supports other payment gateways such as DirecPay, Syspay, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, Skrill, PayPal, PayPal Payments Pro (Direct), and EBANX Checkout.
- You can contact PrestaShop only during business hours of 9am – 6pm, or submit a contact form so that they can get back to you later.
- This is a great site for small- to mid-sized businesses.
Website: PrestaShop
OpenCart
- OpenCart is another cloud-based software like Magento.
- It needs a lot of extensions to function properly, which you can test for free. It has over 13,000 extensions that you can find in their Extensions Directory.
- It allows customer support via their official forums.
- It has a lot of other features, like the shipping weight calculator for estimating shipping prices for larger deliveries.
- The only downside is that, the security of your website can’t be guaranteed due to OpenCart being open-source.
Website: OpenCart
AmeriCommerce
- It has a 14-day trial, letting you host only 25 products.
- It has 5 plans, with the Steel plan offered at USD 24.95/month, Bronze at USD 39/month, Silver at USD 99/month, Gold at USD 149/month. and Platinum at USD 299/month.
- It lets you have storage options of 250MB, 1GB, 2GB, and 5GB respectively.
- It needs no set-up or transaction fees.
- It offers 25 free themes, as well as supports Google Analytics to better reach your target audience.
- It supports domestic payment gateways, such as Bank of America, Chase Paymentech, as well as Google Checkout and PayPal.
- It offers top-notch security, protected by Cisco-enabled firewalls.
Website: AmeriCommerce
These are some of the most popular sites like Shopify, for those who feel that Shopify overcharges them for their bandwidth. Despite the downsides, Shopify is still one of the best around, which is why it has managed to gather USD 122 million capital in just four years. Using the above information, you can choose to be cautious and choose one of the alternatives above, and make an informed decision.