You’re shopping around for alternatives – we’ve got the solutions you need.
Whether you’ve tried and disliked Shopify, or simply fancy an alternative, then you’ve come to the right place. We’ve carried out extensive research into a whole scope of Shopify alternatives, whittling them down to just five.
In our research, we hand-tested each platform – including Shopify – and invited everyday users to try them too. We used those findings to score each platform out of five in key areas such as sales tools, design functions, value for money, and help and support. We also developed a customer score, which indicates how likely our participants are to recommend that platform.
Below, check out our colour-coded comparison table to see all of these scores – and which of the platforms outperformed or fell below Shopify, and in which areas. Then, read on for detailed reviews of one, informed by our research and testing, including real life examples of businesses using that platform.
The top Shopify alternatives comparison 2021
| Ecommerce platform | Sales features /5 | Design functions /5 | Value for money /5 | Help & support /5 | Customer score /5 | Overall rating /5 | Price plans |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 4.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 4.6 | 4.2 | £22 – £219/month |
| BigCommerce | 4.4 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 3.2 | 3.0 | 4.3 | £22 – £220/month |
| Wix | 4.3 | 3.5 | 4.2 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 4.3 | £13 – £22/month |
| Squarespace | 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.9 | 3.3 | 4.1 | 4.1 | £20 – £30/month |
| Square | 3.8 | 2.2 | 3.5 | 2.6 | 4.1 | 3.7 | £0 – £54/month |
| GoDaddy | 3.7 | 4.0 | 3.3 | 3.8 | 4.3 | 3.6 | £19.99/month |
Key
Green – better than Shopify
Amber – close enough
Red – you're better off with Shopify
Why choose a Shopify alternative?
Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms out there, but it’s not for everyone. As you can see from our comparison table above, it doesn’t offer the best value for money, and it could provide stronger design tools and help and support. Shopify’s multitude of features and relatively expensive price plans could also be overkill for building small online stores – to counter this, we’d recommend using Wix or Squarespace.
Unlike most of its rivals, Shopify imposes its own transaction fees on top of the regular credit card company fees, unless you use its payment processor, Shopify Payments. Shopify also relies on third-party apps for lots of its functionality (unlike BigCommerce), which can add unnecessary costs to your monthly bill. These are just a few reasons, but read on below as we examine each of the Shopify alternatives in more detail…
1. BigCommerce
Best Shopify alternative for medium-to-large businesses
| Platform | Sales features | Design functions | Value for money | Help and support | Customer score /5 | Overall rating | Price range /month | Free trial? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 4.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 4.6 | 4.2 | £22 – £219 | 14 days |
| BigCommerce | 4.4 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 3.2 | 3.0 | 4.3 | £22 – £220 | 15 days |
BigCommerce is the most natural Shopify alternative, suitable for small, medium, and large businesses alike. However, it betters Shopify in two key areas: transaction fees and in-built features.
Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce waives its own transaction fees on all of its supported payment processors (of which there are over 65, including Stripe, PayPal, WorldPay, and digital wallets like Apple Pay). Instead, you only pay the regular credit card company fees.
BigCommerce also offers everything you need to sell, ship, and advertise as an in-built feature. In contrast, Shopify charges an extra 2% per transaction on its Basic plan (£22 per month), going down to 1% on the Shopify plan (£58 per month).
With Shopify, you might need to install third-party apps to get some extra functionality, whether it’s in areas like email marketing or customer reviews. This can see your monthly costs quickly add up.
In summary, BigCommerce is slightly better value for money than Shopify and is arguably the best platform for large companies in general.
Pros:
- Provides far more in-built features than Shopify, which relies on apps
- Imposes zero transaction fees on all payment processors, unlike Shopify
- Offers fantastic multi-channel integration, helping you sell to multiple audiences
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer a mobile app to help you manage your store on the go, unlike Shopify
- Interface isn’t as user-friendly as Shopify’s
BigCommerce pricing
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | £22/month | Starting a small or medium-sized online store | Sell an unlimited number of products Multichannel selling Coupon creation Reporting tools |
| Plus | £59/month | Growing your online store | Abandoned cart recovery emails Customer loyalty programmes Store credit card payment details |
| Pro | £220/month | Scaling your business to new heights | Filter products through size and colour variants Dedicated SSL security Google reviews |
2. Wix
Best Shopify alternative for small businesses
| Platform | Sales features | Design functions | Value for money | Help and support | Customer score /5 | Overall rating | Price range /month | Free trial? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 4.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 4.6 | 4.2 | £22 – £219 | 14 days |
| Wix | 4.3 | 3.5 | 4.2 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 4.3 | £13 – £22 | 14 days |
Given its creative freedom and drag-and-drop design, Wix is the Shopify alternative for you if you know exactly how you want your storefront to look.
A quick note: Wix dropped points in the design functions category because it’s impossible to change templates once you go live, unlike with Shopify. Still, Wix offers a larger selection of templates than Shopify, with 71 of its 500+ templates coming with in-built ecommerce capabilities such as check out buttons.
Outscoring Shopify in our value for money research, Wix has far cheaper price plans and offers more comprehensive customer support, making it one of the very best ecommerce platforms for small businesses.
However, Wix doesn’t have the sales-specific tools to match Shopify. For instance, it only supports multi-channel selling via Instagram as an in-built feature. To remedy this, you can install the Ecwid app (£0 to £99 per month, depending on the size of your store) onto your Wix store to gain access to ecommerce features that rival the likes of Shopify and BigCommerce.
Pros:
- Much easier than Shopify to design your brand image the way you want
- Far cheaper price plans than Shopify
- Offers more comprehensive help and support than Shopify, to ensure you’re never stuck for long
Cons:
- Not ideal for building medium to large online stores, unlike Shopify
- The amount of creative freedom can feel daunting
- Relies on the Ecwid app in order to match Shopify in the sales tools department
Wix pricing
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Basic | £13/month | Small businesses looking to sell online | Unlimited bandwidth 20GB storage Free domain for one year Upload up to 5 hours of video Site Booster app (to help improve your site’s visibility on search engines) Visitor Analytics app £75 Google Ads voucher Sales analytics and reports |
| Business Unlimited | £16/month | Growing businesses | 35GB storage Upload up to 10 hours of video Professional logo Pro ecommerce features such as automated tax sales |
| Business VIP | £22/month | Medium to large businesses | 50GB storage Upload unlimited video hours Priority response on the Wix Answers page VIP support |
▶ Read more: Full Wix Review
3. Squarespace
Best Shopify alternative for creating a beautiful website
| Platform | Sales features | Design functions | Value for money | Help and support | Customer score /5 | Overall rating | Price range /month | Free trial? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 4.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 4.6 | 4.2 | £22 – £219 | 14 days |
| Squarespace | 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.9 | 3.3 | 4.1 | 4.1 | £20 – £30 | 14 days |
Squarespace is one of the finest Shopify alternatives for creative and cost- conscious users, offering the most professional-looking templates we’ve ever tested, with affordable price plans to boot.
In fact, Squarespace is the best value for money platform we tested, offering price plans ranging from £20 to £30 per month, with the ability to sell digital and service-based products, while offering multi-channel integration via Instagram. This is one of the many reasons why we rate Squarespace as the best platform for selling subscriptions.
In contrast to Shopify, though, you may find your business outgrowing Squarespace if you plan to scale quickly. In that case, we’d recommend opting for BigCommerce instead, or installing third-party services onto your Squarespace store, such as Zapier – which connects your apps to automate your repetitive tasks – to help bolster your ecommerce and finance capabilities.
Pros:
- Enables you to design an ecommerce store that really stands out
- The best value for money platform we tested
- Offers much sleeker templates than Shopify
Cons:
- Steeper learning curve than on Shopify
- Supports only two payment processors (Stripe and PayPal) compared to Shopify’s 100+ options
Squarespace pricing
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Commerce | £20/month | SMBs looking to sell online | Point of Sale app to help you sell in person Selling via Instagram ‘Limited availability’ labels 0% transaction fees |
| Advanced Commerce | £30/month | Medium-sized ecommerce businesses | Abandoned cart recovery emails Sell subscription products Advanced shipping features (including a real-time cost calculator) |
▶ Read more: Full Squarespace Review
4. Square
Best free Shopify alternative
| Platform | Sales features | Design functions | Value for money | Help and support | Customer score /5 | Overall rating | Price range /month | Free trial? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 4.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 4.6 | 4.2 | £22 – £219 | 14 days |
| Square | 3.8 | 2.2 | 3.5 | 2.6 | 4.1 | 3.7 | £0 – £54 | Free plan |
Offering a generous free plan, which comes with multi-channel integration and the ability to sell unlimited products, Square is one of the best free Shopify alternatives.
You should choose Square over Shopify if you want to use one of the best free ecommerce platforms, you don’t mind having a simple website, and you want to be able to build your online store within a couple of hours.
Other than that, Square is underwhelming compared to Shopify, especially when you look at the available payment processors. Square only supports one (Square) on the free plan, with PayPal available on the other plans, while Shopify supports over 100 on all plans.
Pros:
- Enables you to sell online for free (you only pay 1.9% per transaction)
- Quicker to build a website than on Shopify
- Represents good value for money with its combination of strong features and affordable plans
Cons:
- Very limited customisation compared to Shopify
- Large transactions when you don’t use Square’s payment processor
- Lacks the prompts and supports found on Shopify when designing your store
Square pricing
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get | Transaction fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | £0/month | Small stores selling for free | Sell unlimited products Instagram and Pinterest integration | 1.9% for European cards 2.9% for non-European cards |
| Professional | £9/month | Elevating your brand with a custom domain | Use your own domain name No Square branding or ads Free custom domain for one year | 1.9% for European cards 2.9% for non-European cards |
| Performance | £19/month | Growing your business | Have customer reviews on your site Recover lost sales with abandoned cart emails | 1.9% for European cards 2.9% for non-European cards |
| Premium | £54/month | Scaling your business with lower transaction fees | Save with lower card transaction fees | 1.75% for European cards 2.9% for non-European cards |
5. GoDaddy
Best Shopify alternative for quick and easy design
| Platform | Sales features | Design functions | Value for money | Help and support | Customer score /5 | Overall rating | Price range /month | Free trial? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 4.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 4.6 | 4.2 | £22 -– £219 | 14 days |
| GoDaddy | 3.7 | 4.0 | 3.3 | 3.8 | 4.3 | 3.6 | £19.99 | One month |
GoDaddy is one of those Shopify alternatives that uses speed and agility to paper over its creative cracks.
With GoDaddy’s ADI (artificial design intelligence) feature, you can have a website that’s ready to go live within minutes, once you’ve answered a few questions about how you want your site to look. Yes, it’s lightning quick, but you won’t be able to customise your site as much as you can on Wix or Squarespace.
GoDaddy does provide all the basics you need to start selling online, though, including multi-channel selling via eBay and Amazon.
Pros:
- No surprise fees, unlike Shopify’s transaction fees and third-party app costs
- Quickest and easiest ecommerce platform we tested
- Allows you to create up to five backups of your website
Cons:
- Very limited creative control due to the ADI feature
- Lacks the quality in its ecommerce features offered by Shopify
- Cannot sell digital products, unlike on Shopify
GoDaddy pricing
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ecommerce | £19.99/month | Selling online | Send up to 25,000 marketing emails per month Flexible shipping options Add discounts and promos 24/7 support |
How to choose a Shopify alternative
As you can see from our research results and comparison tables, there are some important areas to think about when choosing an alternative to Shopify.
You need to consider:
- The quality of sales tools
- Template and design flexibility
- Value for money
- The help and support options
- Ease of use
The right Shopify alternative for you depends on your budget and skill level, and the amount of time you have spare to build your website. For instance, Wix, Square, and GoDaddy are quick and easy to use, offering affordable price plans as well.
At the steeper end of the learning curve are BigCommerce and Squarespace. The former can help you create an ecommerce empire, while the latter gives you the tools and templates to create a web-designer-worthy website.
Expert verdict
We’ve shown you the best Shopify alternatives, backed up by our independent research and participant testing. You might already know which one you should pick, but let’s quickly recap what we’ve discussed.
The 5 best Shopify alternatives are:
- BigCommerce – best for medium-to-large businesses.
- Wix – best for small businesses.
- Squarespace – best for creating a beautiful website.
- Square – best free Shopify alternative.
- GoDaddy – best for quick and easy design.
BigCommerce is the best Shopify alternative for building medium or large online stores, while Wix is the better option for small businesses. Squarespace has the tools you need to create a stunning website, Square is the best free Shopify alternative, and GoDaddy is the quickest and easiest solution, thanks to its ADI tools.
