Best Shopify alternatives in 2026

Shopify is the default for a reason. It runs a catalog store, point of sale and a huge app ecosystem from one admin, and its checkout is familiar to buyers. People look elsewhere when the monthly bill stops matching what they use: a transaction fee because they bring their own payment provider, a few paid apps for things they assumed were built in, or a checkout they can't change much below the Plus plan.

There are two very different readers for this post, and I'd rather say so up front. One runs a store with many products and wants a different store. The other runs ads to one or a few offers, sells through a presell page and a checkout, and makes the margin on the upsells. I spent nine years as CTO of a direct-response company and built the second kind of stack, so I know which one ElasticFunnels is for. The store builders come first below because most people searching this want a store.

The best Shopify alternatives at a glance

Monthly prices on monthly billing unless marked, from each vendor's US pricing page on 29 September 2026 (Wix only publishes prices billed yearly). Card processing is charged on top everywhere.

Why sellers look beyond Shopify

Three reasons come straight from Shopify's own pricing page and documentation. They are the ones worth checking against your own numbers.

• A fee for bringing your own payment provider. Shopify's pricing page lists a third-party transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. Its help center says the fee applies on third-party and alternate gateways "even when Shopify Payments is activated". Businesses that Shopify Payments doesn't support have to use a third-party provider, so they pay it on every order.
• Upsells after the order come from apps. Post-purchase offers are built by apps on a checkout extension that Shopify's developer docs mark as beta, with access requested for live stores. Only one app can run them, a buyer can accept at most three offers, they don't show for Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay or buy-now-pay-later payments, and pixel-based analytics report only the first purchase.
• The checkout is limited below Plus. The pricing page lists checkout customization as limited on Basic, Grow and Advanced and fully customizable on Plus, which starts at $2,300 a month. Checkout UI extensions on the information, shipping and payment steps are Plus only.

App charges are added to your Shopify invoice, so the plan price is rarely the whole bill. Before you move, add up the plan, the apps and the fees for last month. If the total still looks fine, the cheapest move is usually to stay.

How we picked

No star ratings and no "we tested 40 platforms". We read each vendor's US pricing page, feature pages and help center on 29 September 2026, and compared:

1. The full monthly cost. Plan price, transaction fees on your own payment processor, card rates on the vendor's own payments, and the hosting or apps you would add.
2. What the plan caps. Products, annual sales, locations or seats, and what happens when you pass the cap.
3. The checkout. Which payment providers it connects, and whether order bumps and one-click upsells are built in or added.
4. Where you sell. Online only, in person, marketplaces and social channels.
5. Who it is built for. A catalog store, a website with a shop, or one offer sold through ads.

Where a vendor doesn't state something publicly, we say "not stated" instead of assuming it's missing.

Store builders: the six best Shopify alternatives for an online store

If you sell many products and people browse, search and filter before they buy, you want one of these.

1. BigCommerce: best like-for-like replacement

BigCommerce is the closest platform to Shopify in scope: a hosted store with a catalog, multiple storefronts, B2B tools and feeds to ad channels and marketplaces. Its plans were renamed this year to Core, Growth, Scale and Performance.

Best for: catalog stores that want to grow without running their own hosting.

• No transaction fee when you pay through one of its embedded providers, which include BigCommerce Payments, Stripe, PayPal/Braintree, Adyen and Klarna.
• Extra storefronts on the same account, up to 3, 5 or 8 by plan.
• Product feeds to ad channels through Feedonomics Surface, on every plan.

Pricing: Core $39, Growth $105 and Scale $399 a month ($29, $79 and $299 billed yearly); Performance from $1,499 a month, billed yearly. Card processing starts at 2.89% + $0.29. 15-day free trial, no card needed.

• Pros: Shopify-level features without a fee on its many embedded providers.
• Cons: plans are capped by annual sales ($30K a year on the entry plan, $100K on the next) with an automatic upgrade above the cap; a provider outside the embedded list pays 2%, 1% or 0.6%; sales above the monthly allowance of BigCommerce Scale carry an extra 0.9%.

Consider it if you like Shopify's model and want a different fee structure.

2. WooCommerce: best for full control

WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. You own the code and the hosting, which is its biggest strength and its biggest cost.

Best for: stores with a developer (or a patient owner) who want to change anything and avoid a platform's revenue share.

• Free software with "0% revenue share" and no platform fees.
• Any payment gateway or buy-now-pay-later provider, and several at once.
• Unlimited products and orders, and a built-in product CSV importer.

Pricing: the plugin is free. Woo's own estimates put hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each. WooPayments charges 2.9% + $0.30 on US cards.

• Pros: total control; no fee for using your own gateway.
• Cons: you run the hosting, updates and security; extensions add yearly costs one by one.

Consider it if you already run WordPress or have someone who will look after the site.

3. Wix: best for a store inside a website

Wix is a website builder with a store. It suits businesses whose website matters as much as the shop: services, bookings, content and products on one site.

Best for: small businesses that want one easy builder for the whole site.

• An AI site builder and a large template library.
• Scheduling and bookings alongside the store.
• Wix Payments at 2.9% + $0.30 on US cards.

Pricing: Wix shows reference US prices for plans paid yearly: Light $17, Core $29, Business $39 and Business Elite $159 a month. Light can't accept payments, so Core is the entry point for a store. Prices vary by country. No trial, but a 14-day money-back guarantee on the first upgrade.

• Pros: the easiest builder here; the whole website and the store in one place.
• Cons: monthly-billing prices aren't published; advanced ecommerce is on Business Elite.

Consider it if the shop is one part of a bigger website.

4. Squarespace: best for design-led brands

Squarespace is known for its templates. Its commerce plans add unlimited products, invoicing and automated tax, and a fee structure that rewards moving up a plan.

Best for: brands where the look of the site sells the product.

• Unlimited products on every plan.
• No store transaction fee from Core up.
• Automated tax in over 100 countries, and free invoicing.

Pricing: Basic $25, Core $39, Plus $65 and Advanced $139 a month ($19, $29, $49 and $99 billed yearly). Squarespace Payments card rates run from 2.9% + $0.30 down to 2.5% + $0.30 by plan. 14-day free trial, no free plan.

• Pros: strong design out of the box; predictable pricing from Core.
• Cons: Basic adds a 2% store transaction fee; the listed card rates need Squarespace Payments.

Consider it if the brand and the site design come first.

5. Square Online: best if you also sell in person

Square's online store comes with any Square plan, on the same system as its card readers and point of sale. Pickup, local delivery and shipping are built in.

Best for: shops, cafés and makers that sell across the counter and online.

• Online and in-person sales, stock and customers in one place.
• Pickup, local delivery and shipping.
• Selling on search and social.

Pricing: Square Free costs nothing a month, with an online card rate of 3.3% + 30¢. Plus is $49 and Premium $149 a month per location, with online cards at 2.9% + 30¢. 30-day free trial on Plus and Premium.

• Pros: a real free plan; the best fit for mixed online and in-person selling.
• Cons: the free plan has the highest online rate; paid plans are charged per location.

Consider it if you already take payments with Square in person.

6. Ecwid: best for adding a store to a site you have

Ecwid by Lightspeed adds a store to a website you already run, on any platform, and syncs it with social and marketplace channels.

Best for: small catalogs where the website already exists.

• Embeds in an existing website instead of replacing it.
• Instagram and Facebook selling from Venture up.
• No setup or transaction fees on any plan.

Pricing: Starter $5, Venture $35, Business $65 and Unlimited $149 a month ($29, $49 and $119 billed yearly for the top three), capped at 10, 100, 2,500 and unlimited products. No free plan and no trial on the pricing page.

• Pros: the cheapest way to start selling on an existing site; month-to-month plans.
• Cons: product caps per plan; abandoned-cart recovery starts on Business.

Consider it if you want a shop on the site you have, not a new site.

Store or funnel? For paid-traffic sellers

Everything above is built for a shopper who browses. A buyer who clicks an ad for one product doesn't browse. They read a presell page or watch a VSL (video sales letter), go to a checkout, and then see an upsell or two. That path is a sales funnel, and it is judged on different numbers: the conversion rate of the page the ad points at, the take rate on each upsell, and the approval rate at the checkout.

You can run a funnel on Shopify with a landing-page app, an upsell app and a testing app. Plenty of brands do. When I compare setups for someone buying traffic, the row I read first is what happens after the card is entered: which processor takes it, what happens to a decline, and whether the upsell can charge the same card in one click on every payment method. Those are the rows where a store and a funnel platform differ most.

7. ElasticFunnels: best for paid traffic to one or a few offers

ElasticFunnels is a funnel and checkout platform for people who buy traffic: vendors selling their own offers, affiliates promoting others', and brands doing both. It is not a catalog storefront. It has a product catalog with variants and inventory and a multi-product checkout, but it is built around funnels, with no point of sale or marketplace channels.

Best for: direct-response brands running Meta, Google or TikTok ads to a presell, VSL or quiz funnel, including supplement and other physical-product offers.

• Funnels with split tests under one URL. Presell, VSL, quiz, checkout and upsell pages as one funnel. Up to 5 variants of a page, a funnel branch or an order bump run behind the address your ad already uses, and you mark the winner on conversions.
• Upsells built in. Order bumps on the checkout, then one-click upsells and downsells charged to the saved card on Stripe, NMI and PayPal, with no app to add.
• Several merchant accounts. With several NMI MIDs (merchant accounts), orders are split between them by weight, filtered by card brand, product and amount, with daily and monthly caps and a load balancing report of sales, revenue and refunds per MID. See MID routing.
• Shopify can stay in the stack. Shop Pay and Shopify Checkout are supported, and orders can sync to Shopify so it keeps handling inventory and shipping.
• Attribution per ad. Each order is tied to its ad, UTM and variant, and the sale is sent server-side to Meta, Google Ads and TikTok.

Pricing: Starter $97, Growth $197 and Scale $497 a month, metered on visits and brands. Every feature is on every plan. A 0.5% fee applies only to orders through the EF-hosted checkout. 14-day free trial. See pricing.

• Pros: the funnel, upsells, testing and routing are built in rather than assembled from apps.
• Cons: not a catalog storefront; no POS or marketplace channels; no free plan; email campaigns run through an integration such as Klaviyo.

Consider it if your ads send buyers to one offer and the upsells carry the margin. The head-to-head is on Shopify vs ElasticFunnels, and funnels for ecommerce shows the setup.

A word on the routing, because it gets oversold. Extra merchant accounts are for capacity and for not having all your revenue stop when one account goes under review. They won't hide a chargeback problem, and anyone selling them to you for that reason is selling you trouble.

8. Checkout Champ: best DR checkout on top of a store

Checkout Champ is a direct-response checkout, funnel builder and CRM that plugs into Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce or Magento. In its own words it is "designed to enhance your existing store, NOT replace it".

Best for: larger brands that want to keep their store platform and replace the checkout and post-purchase flow.

• One-click upsells and order bumps, with A/B/C split tests.
• Subscription billing on your own merchant accounts.
• Gateway routing profiles (round robin, weighted or "intelligent") with monthly caps per gateway; its help center says routing handles the initial sale only and is for credit cards.

Pricing: Growth is $300 a month plus 1% of sales, aimed at stores with 50k+ in monthly sales; Enterprise lowers the percentage with scale. Add-ons such as 3DS (3-D Secure) and fraud tools are billed separately. No trial stated.

• Pros: keeps your store; strong post-purchase and billing tools.
• Cons: a percentage of gross sales on top of the monthly fee; not a store on its own.

Consider it if you want to keep Shopify and change only what happens at checkout. More in Checkout Champ vs ElasticFunnels.

Shopify alternatives compared

Shopify in the first row for reference. "Not stated" means the vendor's public pages don't say. Checked on 29 September 2026.

If you only read one column, read the third. A fee on your own gateway looks small on the pricing page and very large on a year of revenue.

How to switch from Shopify

First decide whether you are replacing Shopify or putting something in front of it. Many paid-traffic brands keep Shopify for inventory and shipping and move only the pages and checkout the ads point at.

1. Export products and customers. In the Shopify admin, Products and then Export gives a CSV of products, variants and prices; Customers and then Export gives customers, with tags if you tick them. Images aren't in the product file, but their URLs are, so an importer can fetch them while the old store is online.
2. Import them. WooCommerce has a built-in product CSV importer, and ElasticFunnels imports products from a CSV with its own columns. Other platforms have their own importers or migration apps; check the column format before you rely on it.
3. Rebuild the pages. Store themes don't move between platforms. For a funnel, rebuild the page the ads point at first; in ElasticFunnels you can paste its URL into the AI cloner and edit the copy it builds.
4. Set up payments and place a test order. Connect your processor, add bumps and upsells, then buy and refund one real order, upsell included.
5. Plan subscriptions separately. Ask both platforms how active subscriptions and saved cards can move before you promise customers anything.
6. Redirect old URLs, then move the domain. Map old product and collection URLs to their new addresses with 301 redirects so search traffic and old links still land, then point DNS at the new platform.
7. Move ads last. Send one ad set to the new funnel or store, compare it on sales, then move the rest.

Keep Shopify active until the new setup has taken real orders. The migration step people rush is the test order, and it's the one that finds the missing tax setting or the receipt email that never sends.

Which Shopify alternative is best?

• You run a growing catalog store: BigCommerce, or WooCommerce if you want to own the stack.
• The store is part of a bigger website: Wix for ease, Squarespace for design.
• You also sell in person: Square.
• You have a site and want to add a small shop: Ecwid.
• You run paid traffic to one or a few offers: ElasticFunnels, for funnels with split tests under one URL, built-in upsells and routing across merchant accounts.
• You want to keep Shopify and change only the checkout: Checkout Champ, or ElasticFunnels in front of Shopify with orders synced back.

Shopify is a very good store. The question is whether you need a store at all, or a path from an ad to an order with the upsells after it. Answer that first, and the list above gets much shorter.