Shopify is one of the best e-commerce website builders on the market, but that doesn't mean it's the best platform for everyone. If you're looking for alternatives to Shopify, let's look at some of the top competitors to consider. BigCommerce, Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP are all popular alternatives ranked by recent software buyers. Wix and Squarespace are also great options for smaller businesses.
Wix offers indispensable features designed for smaller businesses, while Squarespace allows you to sell unlimited products with fantastic designs. Squarespace is a great choice if you're looking for design flexibility. It has some of the highest quality online store templates, and you can switch templates at any time and even work on several designs at once. You don't need to add custom code either.
Squarespace also has some great sales tools, making it a great choice for those who want a pretty face and powerful sales features. BigCommerce is another great option if you're looking to help your store grow. It offers more integrated sales tools than Shopify, and it won't charge an additional fee for purchases that aren't made with Shopify Payments. BigCommerce also won't force you to install additional third-party apps to add advanced features to your site, so the price you pay in advance covers all of those bases.
The only feature that Shopify offers on its cheapest plan and that BigCommerce doesn't offer on its cheapest plan is the recovery of abandoned carts. Volusion is another specialized e-commerce platform worth considering. It's hosted for you and has the tools to make it as easy and successful as possible to start selling online. However, its overall score of 3.2 out of 5 should tell you how limited the platform is compared to companies like BigCommerce and Shopify.
Volusion isn't the easiest creator to use either, so if you're looking for something easier to set up, you'll do better with Wix, Squarespace, or Square Online. Square Online is a great option if you already have a physical presence such as a restaurant, pet store, or clothing store. It offers great selling features on an easy to use platform, but it gives you less design freedom than other manufacturers. Shift4Shop, Sellfy, WooCommerce, and Ecwid are all affordable alternatives to Shopify that have completely free options with some limitations such as limited storage space, transaction fees or the lack of certain features.
When choosing an alternative to Shopify, think about how much control you want over your store's hosting and design options. If you want the platform to take care of everything then a hosted solution like Shopify or Squarespace could be the right choice. But if you're comfortable setting up your own hosting then a self-hosting solution like WooCommerce might be a better option.
