Best Shopify Alternatives for eCommerce Stores in 2021
Ecommerce systems are considered one of the best platforms for small businesses, especially WordPress agencies. Scalability is an important factor to consider when choosing a platform. As your business expands, so will your needs, and the platform you pick should be able to keep up.
Shopify is an excellent choice for setting up a dropshipping store or simply establishing an online presence for your brick-and-mortar business. It does, however, have certain restrictions. The lack of features such as those that allow you to update inventory inventories and the inadequate blogging platform (particularly for those who have been spoiled by WordPress) may lead you to seek other Shopify options.
Many consumers have expressed dissatisfaction with the classification of items. As your product line grows, you’ll find that this is an extremely tough challenge to solve. The term “collections” is used instead of “categories” by the firm. These “collections” also don’t allow you to construct a hierarchy.
Fortunately, several platforms provide equal or even superior capabilities, as well as far lower costs when compared to the commercial value they provide. Who doesn’t like a little more cash at the end of the month?
So why not start with the one that meets your requirements? Here are some of the finest Shopify alternatives to consider.
-The Most Popular Shopify Alternatives
Let’s take a closer look at the best Shopify alternatives and what they have to offer.
1. WooCommerce (WooCommerce)
WooCommerce is the result of even the slightest amount of eCommerce application study. It’s one of the finest Shopify options for many companies. It’s entirely free to use, open-source, and, best of all, highly regarded for measuring visitor satisfaction. Some users even argue that it is superior to Shopify in many ways.
Scalability is a little more difficult; to obtain the advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to the more costly version. Aside from that, WooCommerce provides everything you could need. In a matter of minutes, you can create a website with an expensive cart.
It’s also responsive, making it simple to create mobile-friendly websites. All you have to do now is pay for the hosting. And, unlike Shopify, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee to use their sophisticated features: you may acquire them for a one-time fee. However, you should be aware that WooCommerce’s debugging capabilities are limited.
When used in conjunction with dependable eCommerce hosting, you can dramatically increase the performance of your WooCommerce website.
If you want to upsell after a transaction, you may make it so that consumers can add more items or suggestions with a single click on your website.
2. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a wonderful choice if you want a basic, no-frills experience with the flexibility of utilizing a drag-and-drop editor to build up your website. It’s one of the finest Shopify alternatives, and it provides eCommerce shop owners with a full-cycle solution.
BigCommerce features several beautiful themes, but just seven are available for free across all sectors. The premium ones will cost you money, but they are far superior to Shopify in terms of customization. It also has several sophisticated capabilities that can help you enhance your content marketing and advertise your goods in a variety of ways. It also comes with several features to help you increase your conversion rate.
The best thing is that their built-in shop has a lot of features, so you won’t have to pay as much as you would on Shopify. It also allows you to manage your business across several platforms, such as Amazon, Pinterest, eBay, and Facebook. When you compare BigCommerce’s load times to those of other sites, you’ll notice that they’re a little slower.
The costs range from approximately $29.95/mo to $299.95/mo, so you’ll have to make a decision based on your budget. Your costs will vary based on the number of items you sell and the amount of money you make.
3. 3DCart
For eCommerce shop owners, 3DCart is a solid hosted platform. 3DCart is one of the most popular Shopify alternatives for a variety of reasons. The rates start at $19 per month and go all the way up to $229 per month. You’ll get a variety of SEO tools, emails to follow up on abandoned carts, and customized goods in exchange. A WordPress design agency can create a website that is highly flexible, easy to use and built on an easy-to-understand UI and UX interface.
However, the service is a touch slow, and the themes aren’t that varied. Furthermore, there aren’t many glowing testimonials regarding their customer service.
4. Volusion
One of the most popular Shopify alternatives is Volusion. This cloud-based shopping cart is used by over 200,000 organizations and is particularly popular among small enterprises and corporations wanting to expand. Your consumers will appreciate the ease of Volusion’s one-click checkout functionality. You may also use the platform to access a variety of plugins and features that you can use in your online business. It’s ideal for transportation companies. You must, however, understand how to keep your delivery expenses minimal.
Keep in mind that the bandwidth is metered, so if you are over the limit, you may be charged about $7 per GB by the business. The monthly fees typically range from $15 to $35 and offer you access to a variety of extra services such as other categories, subcategories, and gift cards.
While the majority of the work is done through a graphical user interface (GUI), you will need some basic coding abilities to get your store up and running. Furthermore, the product’s functionality is limited. The bandwidth restriction, which forces you to spend more as your business develops, maybe the true limiting issue.
5. Squarespace
Squarespace is a good option if you don’t have a lot of computer expertise and want to keep your product selection modest. The platform includes a powerful website builder as well as a large selection of templates and themes. With that and a little tweaking, you can get some remarkable results and have an e-store that seems like it cost a fortune to build.
Unlimited pages, galleries, blogs, bandwidth, storage, contributors, checkout, free domain, and SSL security are all included for $26 per month. Add in a $100 Google Adwords credit, orders, tax, discounts, customer accounts, ShipStation label printing, and Xero integrated bookkeeping. You’ll also receive abandoned cart auto-recovery, real-time carrier delivery, automated discounts, and gift cards for $40 each month (pretty expensive for such essential features).
Squarespace, on the other hand, is limited to PayPal and Stripe. Both processors impose additional transaction fees, even though one does not. The suite is also a little slower to load than Shopify, and its mobile load speeds are the slowest of the competitors on the list.
MailChimp, Google AdWords, share buttons, and Amazon affiliate tracking are the only marketing options available.
6. Prestashop
For enterprises on a tight budget, Prestashop is a great option. You might claim it’s free, but given that you’ll need to pay for web hosting and a name, it’s not quite as good as Magento. Prestashop has a hosted version thanks to agreements with 1&1, WebHostingHub, TMD, Microsoft Azure, and others.
Prestashop’s theme and template library aren’t as extensive as Shopify’s, but its usability is as excellent as you’d expect from a free platform. It also has no additional transaction costs, supports 25 languages and different currencies, offers worldwide sales, has an infinite number of items and characteristics, and provides information on abandoned carts.
It will be difficult to expand your business as it develops because you only receive one pre-installed theme, but you can also add a third-party theme. Although the number of free modules is limited, the premium modules allow you to significantly improve your site. You may establish a professional online shop with minimum initial expenditure if you hire a developer or take the time to read through the various guidelines and tutorials available for PrestaShop users.
7. Square Online
Square Online is a Square eCommerce website builder. Square, which began as a payment processor, purchased Weebly a few years ago. Square Online is a quick and easy method for company owners to add eCommerce capabilities to their website if they currently use Square to accept payments.
It’s fine if you don’t know how to code. Square Online provides a fantastic onboarding process. Customers are guided through the whole store setup process through a series of prompts. You can have a professional-looking store up and operate in a matter of hours.
For individuals on a budget, Square Online may be the ideal Shopify alternative because it provides a fully free option for creating and maintaining an online business. The free edition, however, does not have all of Square’s features. However, you just pay the processing costs on each transaction, so it does the job. You may also utilize Checkout Pages if you don’t want to create a full online store and also you can hire a WordPress expert for this. These are also excellent methods to include checkout functionality into an existing website.
