Best Shopify Alternatives for Your Online Store
Shopify is software that helps you make your e-commerce website. With the help of this platform, you can manage, organize, and control various areas of your website like products, shipping, sell, order, and customer management through multiple channels.
Shopify is a cloud-based hosted solution, also called SaaS software as a service so you can use this platform without worrying about software maintenance.
Shopify is an excellent platform for e-commerce. Its robust features empower thousands and thousands of businesses in more than 175 countries.
However, it is not always true that if something is popular that will only be best for you. You probably know this fact and that is why you are here to search for alternatives to Shopify. Shopify does offer Shopify Lite as an option if you want to include a buy button on your existing website or blog but its premium service may be a bit expensive if you are just starting. This could be a reason that you are searching for alternatives.
We will introduce you to some alternatives to Shopify, whether you are looking for your existing Shopify store, or starting a fresh web shop, this article is for you.
Things You Should Consider on Your Next E-commerce Platform
Before jumping to alternatives, natives, let’s see the things and features you should consider for your next e-commerce platform. Make sure your next platform solves those problems without creating new ones. While every e-commerce platform has different features, here are some smart features that your next e-commerce platform should have to make your tasks easy.
Multiple payment options
Every customer prefers different options for payments, make sure the platform you choose does support multiple payment options. Even if you are not selling to international countries currently, do not get bothered to add this feature later. Consider platforms that offer payment gateways that can transact and settle in multiple currencies.
Customization opportunities
The style to operate your business may be different than other businesses. Plus, your business is unique and you want your customers to know it. This is where customization comes into the role. You need customization for your web design that is different from others. Choose a platform that can customize the themes and designs. That will help you to achieve your identity.
A catalog that can grow as you grow
With the business expansion in the future, you will probably need to scale everything including a large catalog, but what if the platform you are choosing caps at a certain catalog?
As a business owner, you need to predict everything that your business will need in the future. And research the different platforms that fill that demand.
Great Shopify Alternatives
Once you have determined what you want from your next e-commerce platform, it will become easy for you to filter various platforms available in the market.
The list is too large that we cannot name every single platform but we have curated some of the best e-commerce platforms that are popular for their extensive features.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is an excellent e-commerce platform that is flexible for all kinds of e-commerce businesses of all sizes to create and scale their online stores.
The best part of BigCommerce is that it is open-source means there is a huge scope of customization and a user does not have to worry about software maintenance as is SaaS.
Advantages
Powerful features are available for every plan
It supports more than 55 payment gateways option with zero additional transaction fees.
Does not require coding knowledge it’s drag and drop, page builder, and visual editor features are easy to use.
Powerful SEO capabilities, such as fully customizable URLs.
24/7 support is available and resolves issues quickly.
A large ecosystem of Agency and Technology Partners.
Cons
While BigCommerce has a wide range of paid themes, there are only a few free themes, compared to Shopify which offers nine themes.
Compared to Shopify, there’s a slight difficulty in learning because you get so many more out-of-the-box features.
WooCommerce
Woocommerce is a plugin of WordPress which was released in 2011, it is open-source it was created to turn WordPresss blogging website into an e-commerce website.
The plugin is a good alternative to Shopify if you are familiar with WordPress.
Advantages
It is free to use the plugin with any WordPress website.
It’s easy to incorporate with any existing WordPress site.
You can customize the codes as it is open-source.
You can use hundreds of free and paid extensions
Disadvantages
Even though the plugin is free but it takes charges for a few things such as costs of domain hosting, an SSL certificate, finding an email provider, and other features.
You may need a professional developer for your store if you don’t know HTML or CSS.
Adding core features to WooCommerce requires more plugins that lead to more complexity and lower site performance.
Magento
Magento is a popular e-commerce platform that was introduced first in 200, later it was acquired by adobe in 2018. Magento is created with open-source technology and it is suitable for all sizes of businesses either large or small.
If you’re a big fan of Adobe’s other products and have extensive developer skills, you might prefer Magento over Shopify.
Advantages
You can customize everything from the backend.
Magento has a large network of over 260,000 designers worldwide adding more functionality to the platform.
Enterprise businesses on Magento Commerce have the option of a cloud-hosted solution as part of the package hosted on AWS or a self-hosted solution.
You get access to a large partner ecosystem for third-party apps and extensions.
Disadvantages
Magento Open Source is strictly on-premise, so you either need to host it yourself or go to a third-party web hosting provider.
You are responsible for installing updates when Magento releases it.
You will always need a team of IT professionals for your website maintenance no matter which version you choose or how you host your website.
Magento has a large setup, which leads to high costs to complete the builds.
PinnacleCart
It was first started in 2003, PinnacleCart is a great alternative for Shopify if you want more control over your storefront and more SEO features.
It is specially designed for small-sized businesses with a strong focus on marketing.
Advantages
You have the option either to choose to host on pinnacle Cart or to manage it on your own.
SEO-friendly features, such as schema.org tags and custom URLs.
Countless products and categories on every plan.
Disadvantages
You will need to manage upgrades and updates on your won.
There’s a very limited partner network, as it only integrates with 64 apps.
A very limited number of themes available in PinnacleCart
While Shopify works perfectly for some and there may be some people who are still not satisfied with the platform, which is perfectly fine. The above alternatives may be the best alternatives for Shopify to scale your website.
