4 Best Shopify Alternatives 2020 – Best eCommerce CMS and Features

Shopify is undoubtedly the most popular eCommerce platform being used worldwide. As consumers move from brick to click shopping, more business owners are moving towards online stores. Famed for its ease of use, Shopify powers more than 500,000 e-stores today. However, an increasing number of eCommerce entrepreneurs are turning to more flexible & cheaper Shopify alternatives.

Why Go for Shopify Alternatives?

There are aspects in Shopify that don’t appeal to sellers, such as:

Transaction fees – Shopify charges transactional fees on third party payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal.

Not SEO-Friendly – URL structure and SEO features are very basic which makes it hard to drive any organic traffic.

Geographical Restriction on Features – Few Shopify features are only workable in specific countries such as Shopify Payments.

In this article we take a look at the best sites like Shopify, e-store owners are using to power their businesses.

5 Best Free Shopify Themes 

Best Shopify Alternatives

After careful study, I list the 4 best Shopify alternatives that I consider ideal substitutes. The primary attributes that I considered were cost, flexibility, and ease of use.

1- BigCommerce

Overview

Based out of Austin (Texas, USA), BigCommerce was founded back in 2009. Over the years BigCommerce has emerged as one of the best Shopify alternatives now supporting over 155,000+ e-stores over its platform. BigCommerce claims it now generates over $10 billion in sales through its appealing themes, innovative apps, and simple to use UI.

Interface & CMS

The best aspects of BigCommerce are its similarities with Shopify. These include a similar interface, familiar CMS (Content Management System) and flexible features in comparison to Shopify. BigCommerce is a superb Shopify alternative, with dedicated analytics, inventory and marketing dashboards etc.

eCommerce Apps

I did notice that BigCommerce offers a wider range of free and paid apps. These include social media, email, cart recovery, back-end customization, and many more functions. The vast gallery of apps helps the sellers to run the functions as smooth as on Shopify.

BigCommerce also offers built-in marketing, SEO, and conversion optimization tools so you don’t have to install additional costly apps.

Infographics Source

Themes

Two areas where BigCommerce may not sound attractive are its very pricey themes. it does offer 12 free themes, which are brilliant don’t get me wrong, but buying a new premium theme will cost you close to $200.

Selling Restrictions

One restriction that I dislike in particular with BigCommerce are the sales volume limits on every package. Once an e-store crosses $50,000 in yearly sales on the standard plan, it will need an upgrade to the plus plan and so on.

Pricing

BigCommerce currently offers four subscription plans with 15 days free trial:

• Standard – $29.95 per month
• Plus – $79.95 per month
• Pro – 299.95 per month
• Enterprise – Negotiable, contact BigCommerce Support

Pricing is almost the same when compared to Shopify, it’s not exactly one of the cheapest Shopify alternatives, but something comparable. The cherry on top of the cake however is that there are NO additional transaction fees charged with the provided payment methods.

For more information do check out our exclusive Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison.

2- 3dCart

Overview

Established back in 2001, 3dCart is one of the oldest eCommerce cart platforms in operation. Today, 3dCart powers over 25,000 eCommerce stores in various industries. A direct Shopify alternative, 3dCart offers a wide selection of features with all its plans.

3dCart does offer a lot of features out of the box that you won get with a Shopify subscription. An attractive aspect of 3dCart is that the platform is brilliant for both small & large scale businesses.

100% Cloud-Based Storage

3DCart is a completely cloud-based solution, so there is no software to install on your PC. You also have to be completely carefree about your servers, 3dCart will manage & maintain your data on the cloud. 3dCart allows selling both digital services and tangible products, just like Shopify.

Themes

Furthermore, 3dCart provides 50+ free appealing themes to delight buyers, with paid themes also available priced between $100 and $200. You can choose themes based on catalog size, products, industry, and buyer ease.

Core Features & Apps

However, I absolutely loved the features that 3dCart has to offer as a Shopify alternative. While Shopify doesn’t include various marketing, optimization, and eStore management tools 3dCart offers them by default. Another one of 3dCart’s best features is the one-page checkout eStore to provide faster conversions.

Apart from that some brilliant features included with all subscriptions are:

• Multiple products images with zoom, and videos for product pages
• Gift certificates, coupons, and discounts feature
• Waiting lists and backorders for trending products
• Real time shipping quotes and tax calculator
• Abandon cart recovery tools
• Buyer Reviews and Feedback tools
• Blog & CMS
• Customer loyalty program

Dashboard & Panel

The dashboard is almost a replica of Shopify so you won’t feel confused at any point. Self-explanatory menus allow you to feel at home no matter which platform you were on previously. You can also migrate from a number eCommerce platforms that include BigCommerce, Shopify, Lemon Stand and several others.

The dashboard offers access to all the basics including inventory management, order management, products, eStore reports, marketing, content, and customer management.

Ease of Use

I was really delighted with the ease of importing and publishing products. A two-step process that I went through in 8 minutes with the right product description and title. The platform provides all important details, including the SEO tags for product pages.

Promotions Manager

There is also a dedicated Promotion Manager to add discounts, coupons, and offers quickly to your product pages. The top aspect here, you can create discounts for different products and also explore additional discount options later. The order management page is actually very good with single click order review & completion. In addition, 3dCart automatically creates free shipping labels and packing slips to print out.

3dCart Apps

3dCart provides its own small selection of amazing eCommerce apps, categorized and available with ratings that include:

• Order Management
• Shipping & Delivery
• Security
• Social Media Marketing & Communications
• Drop Shipping
• Channel Management
• Advertising and many more.

Payment Gateways

Also compatible with over 100 payment processors, 3dCart offers popular gateways including PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net and many more. 3dCart charges no transaction fees for operating over its platform, there is however a fee for using certain payment processing services.

Pricing & Subscriptions

There are 5 different pricing plans that 3dcart:

1 – Startup Store – $9.50/month
2 – Basic Store –  $14.50/month
3- Plus Store – $39.50/month
4 – Power Store – $64.50/month
5 – Pro Store – $114.50/month

3- Volusion

Overview

Designed back in 1999 by web designer Kevin Sproles, Volusion is now the weapon of choice for close to 200,000 eCommerce stores. The best thing about Volusion is its very affordable pricing plans categorized into Mini, Plus, Pro & Premium.

Features

Loaded with all the basics including a much better CMS compared to Shopify, in my opinion it is a great platform for beginners. Volusion offers great freedom to sellers with unrestricted features, most of which Shopify offers through paid apps. These include:

1. One page checkout
2. Social media sharing
3. Gift cards, daily deals, and discounts
4. Abandon Cart emails
5. Inventory & Returns management
6. Real time product reviews
7. Unlimited products
8. Tax management
9. Multiple payment processors
10. Mobile management of eStores (Mobile app)
11. Email marketing
12. Sell on Amazon, Facebook & eBay
13. SEO tools
14. Real time shipping quotes

Considering Shopify does not provide most of the above features within its subscription plans, Volusion is a good choice to go with if you don’t want to pay for apps & add-ons.

Themes & Hosting

Volusion not only provides themes and designing option for new eStore prospects but also allows hosting the website. So all you will ever need is the ideal domain name, then watch Volusion at work. So sellers can quickly build, design, and launch e-stores from one place.

Apps & eStore Plugins

Volusion also offers good integration capabilities, but with fewer apps & software compared to other platforms. The usual accounting, email, inventory and shipping apps can be easily connected to your eStore. But beware, not too many apps can be integrated with the service. One part where it does lack is integration with PLA’s and Pinterest, restricting sellers to fewer platforms to sell over.

Payment Processors

Volusion does offer over 30 payment processors for seller eStores. You can either go with the usual PayPal and Stripe services like Shopify or choose from several others. Unlike Shopify, Volusion also does NOT charge any transaction fee for sales.

You can browse through available payment processors on their official support page.

SEO Functionality

Volusion provides complete SEO tools that helps your website to rank higher on Google in the minimum time that helps the sellers to generate sales with free organic traffic. The SEO features include basic on-page and technical SEO functions such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, meta tags, meta description, alt-text, etc. Also, it provides the freedom to customize every aspect including Meta info, coupon text, promotions & discounts, etc.

Additional Charges for Bandwidth & Traffic

There are several issues that sellers do have to consider with Volusion. One of the most common is their charge on additional bandwidth. All subscriptions are limited by bandwidth and the number of products that can be hosted on the eStore. This means that when a lot of traffic lands on an e-store, the seller will pay extra or upgrade to an expensive subscription.

User Interface

Volusion does offer improved features and a better interface now, but, some usage complaints remain. Those using Volusion will have to contend with the complex coding required for the backend of the e-store. This usually adds the cost of hiring a developer to manage certain aspects of the eCommerce store.

Pricing

Similar to Shopify, Volusion also offers different pricing plans with unlimited product addition and no transaction fees. The plans are,

Personal – $26/month
Professional – $71/month
Startup – $161/month
Business –$269/month

Check out Volusion vs Shopify to get a detailed comparison of both ecommerce platforms to understand which one is better for your business.

4-  Zoey

Overview

Zoey is a brilliant Shopify alternative designed to offer intensive control to sellers. The user interface is more open and provides a larger variety of features compared to Shopify. The company claims that it offers both B2B and B2C capabilities over one platform through its leading-edge features.

Zoey offers many features under the hood that Shopify restricts, including:

• Analytics
• B2B and Wholesale Tools
• Design
• File Manager and Product Attachments
• Infrastructure
• International Sales Tools
• Marketing
• Operations
• Payment Gateways
• Product Tools
• Search Engine Optimization

You can also migrate your eStore from all popular platforms including Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, and Magento.

Drag & Drop Store Creator

One of the best aspects of Zoey is its amazing and very user friendly store creation wizard. The wizard allows drag and drop customization so you can practically change any element on the eStore without having to look at the code. This ensures you can edit images, videos, trust badges, bars, urgency features and several other elements simply by drag & drop.

Dashboard

The Zoey dashboard is exactly like Shopify’s, but with much more to do with your store. You will notice that even the menu is exactly the same as Shopify. Apart from the conventional tools, you will however notice a few extras in the Apps and Advanced sections.

Themes

When you subscribe to Zoey the best part is that you get a toolbox full of free stuff to manage your eStore. One of these free features includes a lineup of 16 FREE eStore theme templates. You can choose themes based on product, design, audience, or simply pick one for ease of access.

There is so vast customization that I haven’t seen one on other platforms, even Shopify. The cutting edge style editor makes customizing fonts, text, images, individual elements, sizes, and colors as easy has click & done. Have a look at all the brilliant free themes available with Zoey.

Customer Groups

One feature that I really loved on Zoey was its awesome customer groups feature. This superb feature allows you to create groups within your customers, from there you can customize:

1. Product Prices
2. Shipping rates
3. Discounts
4. Access Permissions to products & catalog categories

You can literally manage which products customer groups can view, and the prices they pay. Pricing can be customized based on customer groups and order volumes. You can also customize which customer group gets free shipping and which group pays higher. I will be keeping a close eye on this feature, stay tuned for updates.

Mobile Compatibility

All Zoey themes are built from mobile and up. This means when you make changes to your eStore it will automatically optimize the screen to fit the buyer’s device. Zoey eStores automatically scale elements including menus, bars, images, videos, buttons, and scrolling to match your device screens. The great aspect of Zoey mobile websites is that they are equally easy to manage and customize like a desktop website. Drag and drop feature, in collaboration with the style editor simply make me give them 10/10 for their ease of use & customization.

Apps & plug-Ins

Zoey doesn’t have thousands of apps and plug-ins like Shopify but as I noticed the necessary ones. There are a lot of free apps to use for most functions including accounting, inventory, orders, social, email, discounts, CRM, shipping and several others.

There are also apps available to integrate your eStore with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, HootSuite, Twitter, Rakuten and many other analytical or social platforms. I really like the diversity and innovation on the Zoey App Store. I will however mention that I haven’t trialed any of the apps yet so no conclusions for them.

Pricing & Subscriptions

Zoey offers all these amazing features and a box full of tools to manage your store, but the one aspect that gets you thinking is its pricing. This is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially not a beginner or small eStore retailer. While there is great ease of use, customization and under the hood tools to manage your eStore, it comes with quite a hefty price:

• Entry Package – $299 per month
  • B2B and B2C capabilities on one site
  • Authorization for 2 staff accounts
  • Create up to 5 Customer Groups
  • Publish up to 25,000 product SKUs (Stock Keeping Units)
  • Standard Email Ticket Support
  • Create Tiered Pricing for different customers
  • Categorize Payment/Shipping by Customer Group
  • Place Pricing by Customer Group
  • Create Unlimited Flexible Discount/Promo Pricing Campaigns
  • Place Access Restrictions, Offer Exclusive Products
  • Implement Advanced Registration/Approval
  • Provide API Access
  • Import Advanced Analytics (up to 50k page views)
• Power Package – $499 per month
  • All Feature of Entry Package Included
  • Authorize up to 5 staff accounts
  • Create up to 10 Customer Groups
  • Publish 50,000 product SKUs
  • Priority Email Ticket Support
  • Create Tiered Pricing by Customer Group
  • Place Quick Order Forms
  • Offer Multi-languages & Currency Converter
  • Perform Multi-language SEO
  • Include Product Attachments (Guides, User Manual, and White Papers etc.)
  • Access Google Shopping Feed in Dashboard
  • Import Advanced Analytics (for up to 75k page views)

Wrapping up

I hope you liked our first-ever countdown of best Shopify alternatives. If we missed something do leave us feedback so we can add it immediately for other readers. Do remember to share this blog with other entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, so they get an idea of different eCommerce platforms.

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