Shopify alternatives

Very few merchants leave Shopify because the platform cannot do the job. They leave over cost, and the cost is rarely the plan price: it is app subscriptions stacking up, and — in countries where Shopify Payments is unavailable — the 0.6% to 2% fee on every order through a third-party gateway.

BigCommerce is the closest like-for-like: no extra gateway fee, more built in on lower tiers, and a much smaller app ecosystem to fall back on. WooCommerce removes the subscription entirely in exchange for hosting, updates and security becoming your problem; it is the cheapest option only if someone will maintain it.

If the catalogue is small and the site matters more than the store, you may be over-buying. Squarespace and Wix are website builders with commerce attached, and both cost less for a handful of products — though both run out of room on large catalogues and complex shipping rules.