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Shopify and Its 4 Alternatives: eCommerce Store Builders

by Noyal Sharook
Shopify alternatives image

Shopify is currently the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. It allows users to create online shopping stores to sell products by providing all the necessary tools. It boasts over one million online stores and mainly focuses on small and medium-sized businesses. 

You can access the admin panel with a monthly subscription fee, and there you can store data, add your products, and process orders. It is a cloud-based shopping cart solution with the best customizable options and user interface. 

To get started, choose a theme from the free premium themes of Shopify. Each theme allows you to customize it as per your needs. If needed, you can install apps from Shopify App Store for more features and functionalities. 

Selling on Shopify: Pros and Cons

In Shopify, you have a built-in payment gateway and don’t have to connect with any third-party apps to accept payments. This improves security and quality. However, if you require another payment gateway, you can choose from the 100+ integrated payment processors. 

All their plans consist of quality web hosting with unlimited bandwidth and specific tools that will help you improve marketing and SEO. Shopify also offers 24/7 customer support. 

Here are Shopify’s plans and prices:

  • Basic Shopify — $29/month
  • Shopify — $79/month
  • Advanced Shopify — $299/month

As with any SaaS platform, Shopify also has limitations that prompt people to look for alternatives. For example, if you do not use Shopify’s own payment gateway, you are charged extra money in transaction fees. Also, Shopify’s catalog only has three options for each product to be displayed which becomes limiting for many.

Pros of Shopify

  • Easy to use
  • Low cost for startups
  • Free premium-level themes
  • East to start dropshipping
  • Extensive inbuild features

Cons of Shopify

  • Functionalities are limited after a certain point
  • Add-ons are costly
  • Transaction fees depend on the pricing plan
  • Issues with high-level customer support
  • SEO is limited

Overall, Shopify is a great eCommerce builder with many tools to help you grow the business. If you are considering Shopify, you can go for their 14-day free trial before choosing your plan. During the trial, test out all aspects of the platform.

You can check if Shopify can handle all your business operations. Create marketing campaigns, add max number of products, modify the available options, change the storefront design and be sure you can handle it yourself. Look for the advanced features you may require for your business.

Read More: Shopify Clone Script

If the features are not quite enough, move on to alternatives:

4 Unique Shopify Alternatives

As we know, tons of eCommerce platforms and website builders are available on the market. It always takes some work to choose the best one from it. Everything comes down to what you need on your website.

In this article, I bring four website builders to help you decide the best for your small or medium businesses. These platforms are not exactly similar to Shopify and provide unique features, making them fitting alternatives for you to explore.

The 4 Shopify alternatives are:

  • BigCommerce
  • Weebly
  • Wix
  • Squarespace

You don’t need any technical or coding knowledge to use these eCommerce platforms. They are all plug-and-play. So the complicated part is choosing the right one.

While choosing a business website builder for your business, you can consider the following things: 

  1. Determine your budget
  2. Consider your needs and preferences
  3. Consider the themes
  4. Check the easiness to use
  5. Look at the SEO features
  6. Check the available resources and support
  7. Research the company’s reputation and customer service

Once you have these points in mind, we can explore the Shopify alternatives in detail.

BigCommerce

Shopify alternatives bigcommerce

With BigCommerce, you can build your eCommerce site effortlessly with many themes and customization options. It has additional B2B features like bulk pricing rates, custom price lists, and customer groups. 

BigCommerce lets you sell on various channels like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Amazon, and eBay. You are not confined to the website alone and your reach can be multiplied.

BigCommerce is not an ideal solution for beginners due to its complexity. The platform has many features that need getting used. However, If you are looking for an eCommerce builder that lets you have additional apps or extensions without hassle, BigCommerce is the right choice.

Here are the different pricing plans of BigCommerce:

  • Standard — $29.95/month
  • Plus — $79.95/month
  • Pro — $249.95/month

The rates are almost the same as Shopify. So if you decide between Shopify and BigCommerce, you must clearly understand what is essential for your business to grow.

Pros of BigCommerce

  • Flexible to add product variants
  • Scalability
  • No transaction fees
  • Solid SEO features
  • Multiple sales channels

Cons of BigCommerce

  • Inventory management is difficult 
  • Extra fees for successful customers
  • No lite version
  • Expensive themes

Weebly

Shopify alternatives weebly

Weebly is a drag-and-drop website builder that allows you to launch your site without tremendous effort or coding. It has brilliant features and tools for SEO, marketing, analytics, payment, email, and more.

The standard Weebly plan is affordable yet comprehensive enough to host a business starting out. It gives you unlimited bandwidth along with premium support. You can accept payments through the best payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe or Square.

Here are Weebly’s plans and prices:

  • Pro — $12/month
  • Business — $25/month
  • Business Plus — $38/month

Weebly offers an excellent visual interface for its users, and they can build their website without any coding knowledge. You only need to drag and drop, resize the images or edit texts.

Pros of Weebly

  • Good Templates
  • Easy to use
  • Drag and drop interface
  • Page analytics
  • Built-in SEO tool

Cons of Weebly

  • Not fit for bloggers
  • Expensive customer support
  • Poor backup system
  • Issues with editing images

Wix

Shopify alternatives wix

Wix scored highly for value for money and ease of use. It comes with many attractive templates for you to build an eCommerce store. It is easy for the store manager to track orders, inventory, and product pages. You can even add blogs or design logos within the platform. All online payments from the Wix stores are 100% commission-free. However, like Weebly, Wix also doesn’t support multiple channels like Facebook, Youtube and Instagram

Wix has made specific plans for eCommerce websites with unlimited bandwidth and 100+ free plugins. 

Here’s the Wix plans and prices:

  • Business Basic — $13/month
  • Business Unlimited — $27/month
  • Business VIP — $49/month
  • Enterprise — $500/month

Pros of Wix

  • Good Site Speed
  • Massive template collection
  • Drag and drop interface
  • Easy to market
  • Lots of features
  • 24/7 support services

Cons of Wix

  • Templates are not interchangeable
  • Free plan forces Wix branding
  • Tracking and Analytics are paid
  • Not transferable site

Read more: Wix Clone Software

Squarespace

Shopify alternatives squarespace

Squarespace is another all-in-one website builder platform where anyone can build visually appealing eCommerce stores regardless of their technical ability. Squarespace also has a mobile app that allows you to manage and edit your website. It has built-in SEO tools, blogging tools, analytics, and anything you need to make a decent online store. Multichannel selling is currently available through Instagram.

Here are the Squarespace plans and prices:

  • Personal — $12/month
  • Business — $18/month
  • Basic Commerce — $26/month
  • Advanced Commerce — $40/month

Pros of Squarespace

  • Best templates and design
  • Blogging feature
  • Mobile apps are available
  • Social media integration

Cons of Squarespace

  • Lacks of payment gateways
  • No App Market
  • Only one-sub navigation
  • Low page speed

Conclusion: Selecting the Right Shopify Alternative

While selecting an alternative to Shopify, you must thoroughly understand what Shopify lack, what features you need, and how the new platform will help you. You want to avoid moving to a new platform that lacks certain core aspects you need to run your business. 

You should also take a close look at the payment option of the new platform and check whether it allows more payment options. Ideally, they should allow customers to pay at their convenience. For example, some customers prefer to use Visa cards to boost their points. Again, some people resort to PayPal because it allows transactions without manually entering the card number.

Therefore, the platform should refrain from enforcing the rule to use their payment gateway or charge extra fees for other payment methods. You should therefore choose a platform that allows multiple payment options and allows performance in foreign currencies.

For example, BigCommerce has over fifty-five payment options and many more features that support immense growth.

The online store-building platform you choose should be easily customizable. Customizing the website design to convey its uniqueness and ensure the best customer experience is essential. Website design and graphics create a huge visual impact on customers. This is something that needs your special attention.

An alternative should also allow the website to be tailored to specific customers or to follow a particular business model. This feature is a priority and should be part of the platform. 

Finally, it’s an added plus if the platform allows large catalogs. In Shopify, if you have a small catalog, you won’t have any problems. However, in the case of websites with more extensive or unique catalog systems, you may face complexities.

When you select the new platform, you should consider all these issues in advance. Further, as your business grows, you will need to resort to advanced technologies for managing online platforms. You might need more than Shopify or any of these SaaS platforms to handle your business’s rapid growth and diversification. This is especially true if you want to create advanced features like Marketplace. If you are considering making an eCommerce marketplace platform like Amazon or eBay, why give our turn-key solution iScripts MultiCart a try!

Check out iScripts MultiCart

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