Even though Shopify is considered by many to be one of the best eCommerce platforms available today, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a perfect solution for everyone. Today’s customers live in a fast-paced digital world where businesses have to accommodate and remodel themselves to changing social and economic dynamics. What you need is a platform that can adapt and transform itself with these changes.
As the digital sales landscape continues to evolve and expand, an ever-growing number of software developers are making forays into the online market, offering excellent eCommerce features on top of existing standard functionalities; open-source technologies for easy customizations; and affordable plan pricing. Keep reading to find out who Shopify’s competitors are and whether or not any of them are better alternatives for your business.
What to Look for When Comparing eCommerce Platforms
While there isn’t one all-encompassing strategy for choosing the best eCommerce platform, there are a few factors that should be kept in mind while deciding on the final contenders.
- Business scale
- Preference for open-source vs. hosted solutions
- Pricing models and payment processing
- Customer service
- Plug-ins and apps library
The above is not an all-inclusive list of what you should look out for, however, they are major features that should apply to every online store system. Before looking at Shopify’s competitors, let’s take a quick look at what Shopify offers.
Shopify
| Basic Shopify | Shopify | Advanced Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| $29 / Month | $79 / Month | $299 / Month |
Shopify’s vast success can be attributed to its focus on streamlining the process of putting together an eCommerce store even for people with little to no programming skills. Its motto is that your aim should be strengthening and selling your inventory, leaving the management of eCommerce to Shopify. It’s a hosted platform, which means you don’t have to worry about managing payment card industry (PCI) compliance and network security. Shopify is also expanding its point of sale (POS) system to physical stores and adding social media marketplace capabilities by collaborating with Facebook, Pinterest, eBay, etc.
Shopify offers services with virtually zero transaction fees except for a 2.6% + $0.30 fee on all in-store transactions with credit cards. If you opt-out of Shopify Payments, prepare to shell out an extra fee of 1%. These recurring fees can accumulate over longer periods, so watch out for them. It might seem a bit excessive but this payment framework is for handling and supporting the platform and keeping it running 24/7.
Shopify’s Top Competitors
BigCommerce
| Standard | Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| $29.95 / Month | $79.95 / Month | $299.95 / Month |
BigCommerce offers an itinerary of features similar to Shopify’s mid-tier and top-tier plans. It’s a fully-hosted SaaS solution founded in 2009 and has grown into a global brand. It offers super flexibility with small tasks such as switching your site theme while being very niche-specific when it comes to customization of its features.
BigCommerce provides its remarkable out-of-the-box capability with prominent features focusing on B2B eCommerce, making it a perfect choice for industry and wholesale businesses. Recently, it has also developed a WordPress plugin to enable sellers to address eCommerce business with a content-first philosophy. The goal is that sellers can build and operate their websites using any content management system (CMS) system of their choice and then take advantage of BigCommerce for the checkout process.
WooCommerce for WordPress
| WooCommerce Plug-in | Addons |
|---|---|
| Free | Free to $299 |
WooCommerce is the best of the bunch when it comes to finding a perfect online store on a near-perfect website platform, with popularity keeping even Shopify in check. WooCommerce is basically an eCommerce plug-in for the WordPress site’s CMS. This open-source plug-in can seamlessly integrate into any WordPress site to incorporate eCommerce functionality. There are no registration fees to start using WooCommerce and there are no transaction fees except for a 2.9% + $0.30 fee on all in-store transactions with credit cards.
One of the best perks of being open-source software is that you can modify and customize the WooCommerce source code as per your needs. Better yet, with a firm grasp of web development, you can get absolute control over your store’s performance, in contrast to Shopify, which is a much more restrictive platform. Having said that, you have to take care of hosting expenses, PCI enforcement, and network security on your own, which in comparison are included in Shopify’s monthly fee.
WooCommerce also takes advantage of a broad and diverse developer fellowship that supports, maintains, and updates WooCommerce extensions to increase functionality.
Assuming that you already run a content-first site powered by WordPress, WooCommerce certainly deserves a hefty consideration provided that you have in-house developers. If you have a different strategy, you might want to take into consideration other platforms.
Squarespace
| Business | Basic Commerce | Advanced Commerce |
|---|---|---|
| $18 / Month | $26 / Month | $40 / Month |
Squarespace has features strikingly comparable to Shopify as they both focus on offering a user-friendly interface and streamlined initial setup, irrespective of whether or not you’ve got technical skills. It’s a hosted solution with an intuitive user interface (UI) that gives you the freedom to install custom themes and create a branded image website as easily as dragging and dropping elements to build web pages. Even a novice, with no prior knowledge of web development, can make a decent website.
When launched, Squarespace was an easy-to-use alternative for website development and later added online eCommerce functionality with its prominent features like product catalog management, online marketing tools, and web traffic analytics. Squarespace offers a rare combination of content management and shopping cart software.
To begin, you can opt for a free trial and then choose a monthly plan as per your business requirements.
Volusion
| Personal | Professional | Business |
|---|---|---|
| $29 / Month | $79 / Month | $299 / Month |
Founded in 1999, Volusion is a long-time player within the eCommerce landscape. Since then, Volusion has been at the helm of small and medium-size business (SMB) market innovation. It’s extremely user-friendly and doesn’t need prior knowledge of website development to build your online store. Volusion also doesn’t have as many users as other major platforms, nor a large developer community, but it still provides a reliable solution for eCommerce. As a hosted solution, it handles platform maintenance and secure payment checkouts. Volusion’s credit card processing fees start as low as 2.15% with in-app payments.
Merchants can get started with a free trial and then upgrade to a paid plan later on.
PrestaShop
| PrestaShop | PrestaShop Addons |
|---|---|
| Free | Free to $820 |
Prestashop is yet another fairly popular open-source eCommerce platform with an engaged developer community following. In contrast to WooCommerce, you don’t need to be necessarily running WordPress to be able to use it. On a different note, merchants will have to set up website hosting, PCI compliance, and network security on their own similar to WooCommerce. However, being an open-source platform, merchants will have unlimited access to Prestashop’s code to customize the storefront to their business-specific requirements.
A word of caution though, consider Prestashop only if you have the resources and need for open-source customization for your unique selling requirements.
Magento
| Magento Community Edition | Magento Enterprise Edition |
|---|---|
| Free | $22,000 and up |
Magento was the undisputed champion in the Internet commerce landscape before both Shopify and BigCommerce rolled out. Magento is an open-source forum with a decorated history in the eCommerce arena. A little while ago Magento Inc. released Magento 2 as its primary platform, replacing Magento.
If you need an open-source substitute, Magento can offer an exciting list of features. Most worthwhile of them is seamless compatibility with the Adobe Experience Cloud for easier analysis and content management. Magento has even more exclusive B2B features for sellers. It offers superior customizability and is supported by a dedicated developer following. Sellers will have to take care of website hosting costs, PCI compliance, and network security. If your store is niche-centric or content-first, Magento 2 is exactly what you need.
Wix
| Business Basic | Business Unlimited | Business VIP | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| $23 / Month | $27 / Month | $49 / Month | $500 / Month |
Wix is a free professional website builder with the ability to add online storefronts for an additional cost. Be aware though, Wix is a website builder before anything else. On the contrary, Shopify is designed purely to help businesses set up their online eCommerce stores.
Wix has an astonishingly simple editing interface, thanks to its drag-and-drop capability, modifying it as per your requirements easily across its library of 750+ templates. It boasts a huge addons list and vast app library that you can integrate into your online store to take care of business aspects like international shipping, in-app transactions, and cart-abandonment emails.
Another really convincing reason to choose Wix is its super affordable eCommerce plans with no hidden costs. For as little as $23 a month, you have everything you need to sell online.
3dcart
| Startup Store | Basic Store | Plus Store | Power Store | Pro Store |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $19 / Month | $29 / Month | $79 / Month | $129 / Month | $229 / Month |
3dcart was established back in 1997 as an industry-leading and sturdy eCommerce software platform. 3dcart has a robust inventory management system, quite a few handy online sales and SEO prompts, a comprehensive app library, and it’s affordable as compared to Shopify. There is, however, one catch: it’s quite hard to get used to.
While 3dcart might feel like it’s finicky to use, it has some powerful sales features. Additionally, 3Dcart can accommodate near unlimited item listings thanks to large backend storage made available along with stable integration with prominent shipping carriers. 3dcart has strong search engine optimization (SEO) features embedded throughout the sitemap that proactively analyze your site performance and guide you to make your website rank better on search engines.
Moreover, 3dcart has over 50 freely available templates, making it a competitive option to other eCommerce platforms. With 3Dcart, you get an extensive inventory of themes and templates, it’s relatively affordable, and you get access to a library of over 300 apps to build your site’s performance and functionality upon, all within subscription plans starting at $19 a month. All in all, the platform is for digital-savvy users who aren’t afraid to get involved in tech mumbo jumbo and want an efficient and cost-effective backend.
Is Shopify Better Than Its Competitors?
Deciding on the right eCommerce platform is no simple task. There are so many factors worth considering that it’s difficult to settle on one platform over another. It’s important to analyze your business needs and cross-check them with your intended budget. With so many options at hand, you should be able to reach a decision that’s a right fit for your online business.
It basically boils down to analyzing and determining what particular features suit your business. The best part is the vast majority of competitors aren’t even inferior when compared to Shopify. They’re just distinctive in their features and business models, which in the end is beneficial for you as a customer.
While Shopify is overall straightforward to navigate; is more accessible than many of its competitors; and has a massive loyal user base which itself is a pretty decent market advantage, there will always be a subset of users that need something unconventional or a brand new feature that has yet to be rolled out to the rest of the market. In the end, a dependable eCommerce solution is the one that suits your business model, pricing requirements, and product line. With unbridled and ferocious competition in the market, it pays to look at the Shopify’s competitors.
