I tested the top ecommerce platforms to find the 7 best Shopify alternatives in 2025

I’ve spent more hours than I can count building, testing, and occasionally breaking ecommerce stores on just about every platform out there. While Shopify is usually the first name that pops into people's heads, and for good reason, I've learned it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes the costs start to creep up, or you find yourself hitting a wall trying to get your store to look exactly how you want it.

So, I decided to do a deep dive into the alternatives. I set up a bunch of test stores, kicked the tires on their features, and took a hard look at what it actually costs to run a business on each one. This isn't just about comparing feature lists and pricing tables; it's about finding a platform that can grow with you and help you support your customers the right way.

Here’s my honest breakdown of the 7 best Shopify alternatives I found for 2025.

Why look for Shopify alternatives in the first place?

Think of your ecommerce platform as the engine for your online store. It's the software that lets you build your storefront, manage all your products, take payments, and handle shipping. And while Shopify is a fantastic engine, it has its quirks. Over time, many business owners run into the same handful of issues that get them wondering what else is out there.

• Those sneaky transaction fees. If you decide not to use Shopify Payments, Shopify takes a cut of every single sale, which can be up to 2%. That might not sound like a lot, but trust me, it adds up quickly and can start eating into your profits.

• The endless app trap. Need to offer product subscriptions? Want to start a loyalty program? How about better SEO tools? For a lot of these features, you have to install a third-party app, and most of them come with their own monthly fee. This "app fatigue" can make your monthly bill a bit of a guessing game and turn your store’s backend into a tangled mess.

• Hitting the customization wall. Shopify’s themes are a great starting point, but if you want to create a truly unique look, you either have to learn their "Liquid" coding language or hire a developer. For anyone who isn't a tech whiz, this can feel incredibly limiting.

• The cost of getting bigger. As your sales grow, Shopify will start nudging you toward its more expensive plans. While these do unlock more features, the price jump can be pretty steep, especially when you start looking at Shopify Plus, which is built for much larger businesses.

How I picked the best Shopify alternatives

To make this list actually useful, I decided to ignore the marketing hype and focus on what really matters when you're in the trenches running a business. I wanted to find platforms that solve the common headaches people have with Shopify.

Here’s what I was looking for:

• Real value for money: I looked at the total cost, not just the monthly subscription sticker price. This includes transaction fees, how many features come built-in, and what you’ll have to spend on essential apps.

• Being easy to use: How simple is it for someone who isn't a web developer to build a store, add products, and manage the day-to-day stuff? A clean, intuitive dashboard is a huge win.

• Great built-in features: I gave extra points to platforms that include powerful tools like advanced SEO, multi-channel selling, and B2B features without making you pay for an app.

• Room to grow: Can the platform handle your business as it goes from a small side-hustle to a full-blown operation? Or will you be forced to go through the pain of migrating in a few years?

• Customer support readiness: How easily can you hook the platform up to a modern customer support system? A great store needs great support, and your platform should never get in the way of that.

A quick comparison of the top Shopify alternatives for 2025

Platform	Best for	Starting price (annual)	Transaction fees (3rd party)	AI support potential
BigCommerce	Scaling B2C & B2B businesses	$29/month	0%	High
Wix	Beginners & small businesses	$17/month	Varies by processor	High
Squarespace	Creatives & service-based businesses	$23/month	0% (on Commerce plans)	High
WooCommerce	Full control & WordPress users	Free (plus hosting costs)	Varies by processor	High
Adobe Commerce	Large enterprises with dev teams	Custom (starts ~$22k/year)	Varies by processor	High
Square Online	Retailers with physical stores (POS)	Free plan available	2.9% + 30¢	Medium
Shift4Shop	SEO-focused stores & US merchants	Free (with Shift4 Payments)	0%	High

The 7 best Shopify alternatives in 2025

After digging through all the options, here are the seven platforms that I think offer the best alternatives to Shopify right now. Each one has its own strengths, so the right choice for you really depends on what what your business needs.

1. BigCommerce

If Shopify is the popular kid in school, BigCommerce is its equally capable, slightly more serious rival. Its biggest advantage is that it charges zero transaction fees, no matter which payment processor you use. That feature alone can save a growing business thousands of dollars a year.

Pros:

• You keep more of your money thanks to zero transaction fees on any plan. You're free to choose whatever payment provider works best for you.

• It comes loaded with built-in features for SEO, multi-channel selling, and B2B commerce that you’d normally have to pay extra for on Shopify.

• It’s designed to handle growth, easily managing huge product catalogs without slowing down.

Cons:

• It can feel a little more intimidating for total beginners compared to Shopify's super-streamlined setup.

• There aren't as many free themes to choose from, so you might need to budget for a premium design.

Pricing: BigCommerce has three main plans, and you get a discount for paying annually.

• Standard: $29/month for all the essential ecommerce features.

• Plus: $79/month adds abandoned cart recovery and customer groups.

• Pro: $299/month gets you Google Shopping integration and faceted search.

Customer support considerations: BigCommerce stores often handle massive product catalogs, which means customers will have tons of specific questions about product details, shipping, and returns. This is where an AI agent from eesel AI can be a huge help. It can connect to your help center and product data to answer those repetitive questions on the spot, freeing up your human team for the trickier stuff.

2. Wix

Wix started out as a simple website builder, but it’s quietly become a seriously capable ecommerce platform. Its main draw is the incredibly intuitive drag-and-drop editor, which gives you complete creative control without having to touch a line of code. If you want your store to have a totally custom look, Wix is tough to beat.

Pros:

• It’s super user-friendly, with hundreds of beautiful templates to get you going.

• You get total design freedom to build a custom storefront without any tech skills.

• The starting plans are really affordable for new businesses.

Cons:

• It’s not really built for huge, high-volume stores and can start to lag with very large inventories.

• The backend tools for things like inventory management aren't as powerful as what Shopify or BigCommerce offer.

Pricing: Wix has several plans that include ecommerce. These prices are for annual billing.

• Light: $17/month for basic features, but you can't accept payments.

• Core: $29/month for basic ecommerce, letting you take payments and providing 50 GB of storage.

• Business: $39/month for standard features, 100 GB of storage, and some basic automations.

• Business Elite: $159/month for advanced tools, unlimited storage, and priority support.

Customer support considerations: Because Wix is so focused on design, your support team will probably spend a lot of time fielding pre-sales questions from curious visitors. An eesel AI chatbot on your site can act like a 24/7 sales assistant, answering questions about products and guiding people through your site, helping you turn more of those visitors into customers.

3. Squarespace

Squarespace is known for its absolutely stunning, design-forward templates. It’s the platform of choice for artists, designers, bloggers, and anyone whose brand is built on beautiful images and great content. It does a beautiful job of blending blogging, portfolios, and commerce into one elegant package.

Pros:

• Award-winning, mobile-friendly templates that look professional right out of the box.

• Excellent built-in tools for blogging and content marketing.

• A fantastic choice for selling services, digital products, and subscriptions.

Cons:

• Its app store is much smaller than Shopify's, so you have fewer third-party tools to choose from.

• You’re limited to just a few payment gateways, mainly Stripe and PayPal.

Pricing: To sell products, you'll need one of Squarespace's Commerce plans, which have 0% transaction fees. These prices are for annual billing.

• Business: $23/month, but this plan has a 3% transaction fee.

• Commerce Basic: $27/month gives you 0% transaction fees and more powerful selling tools.

• Commerce Advanced: $49/month adds subscriptions, abandoned cart recovery, and advanced shipping options.

Customer support considerations: Squarespace is perfect for creating beautiful content, but that content doesn't do much good if it doesn't answer your customers' questions. eesel AI can pull knowledge from all your different sources, your Squarespace help articles, internal Google Docs, and even old support tickets, to give customers instant and accurate answers.

4. WooCommerce

If you already have a WordPress site or you just want complete control over every single part of your store, WooCommerce is your answer. It's a free, open-source plugin that turns WordPress into a full-fledged ecommerce machine. You own your data, you control the design, and you’re never locked into someone else's system.

Pros:

• It’s endlessly customizable, with a huge world of themes and plugins to choose from.

• There are no monthly platform fees; you just have to pay for web hosting.

• You have 100% ownership of your store and all your data.

Cons:

• It definitely has a steeper learning curve and takes more technical work to set up and keep running.

• The trade-off for all that control is that you're responsible for your own hosting, security, and updates, which can feel like a full-time job.

Pricing: The WooCommerce plugin is free, but you'll need to budget for other costs:

• Hosting: Good managed WordPress hosting usually costs anywhere from $25 to $100+ a month.

• Domain Name: About $15 per year.

• Premium Extensions: While many are free, advanced features often require paid extensions, which can cost from $50 to $200+ each per year.

The total cost is flexible but can easily end up being the same as Shopify’s plans, or even more, if you need a lot of premium features.

Customer support considerations: With WooCommerce, you're building your whole tech stack yourself, including your support system. This is where a tool like eesel AI really shines because it doesn't care what platform you use. You can plug it directly into your helpdesk, whether it's Zendesk or Freshdesk, to get powerful, enterprise-level support automation without the enterprise price tag.

5. Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Adobe Commerce, which you might know by its old name, Magento, is the heavyweight champion of ecommerce. It’s an enterprise-level solution built for large businesses with complex needs, massive amounts of traffic, and a desire for deep customization. This is not for beginners; it's a beast of a tool that requires a team of developers to tame.

Pros:

• It offers unmatched power and flexibility for customization and scaling.

• It can handle millions of products and thousands of transactions per hour without breaking a sweat.

• It's packed with advanced features for B2B, international sales, and managing multiple storefronts from one dashboard.

Cons:

• It’s extremely expensive. Licensing and development costs often run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• You absolutely need significant technical expertise and a dedicated development team to run it.

Pricing: Adobe Commerce doesn't publish its prices. Everything is tailored to the business, but licenses typically start around $22,000 per year and go way up from there based on your sales volume. There is a free open-source version, but it's missing the advanced features and support of the paid platform.

Customer support considerations: Enterprise businesses have seriously complex support needs. eesel AI is built for this. It lets you create very specific rules, use custom actions to look up complex order data from your internal systems, and even run simulations on past support tickets to see how well it will perform before you ever let it talk to your high-value customers.

6. Square Online

If you run a physical shop and already use Square for your point-of-sale (POS) system, then choosing Square Online is a no-brainer. It’s designed to perfectly sync your in-person and online sales. Your inventory, orders, and customer data are all managed in one place, which makes it incredibly easy to expand your business online.

Pros:

• It has a flawless integration with the entire Square POS ecosystem.

• It offers a completely free plan that is surprisingly capable for just getting started.

• It’s very simple and fast to set up, especially if you’re already using Square.

Cons:

• The design and customization options are pretty basic compared to other platforms.

• Its SEO and marketing tools aren't as advanced, so it's less ideal for a business that is 100% online.

Pricing: Square Online’s pricing is nice and simple.

• Free: $0/month with a processing fee of 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.

• Plus: $29/month (billed annually) with more features and the ability to use a custom domain.

• Premium: $79/month (billed annually) with lower processing fees (2.6% + 30¢) and more advanced tools.

Customer support considerations: A common question for businesses that sell both online and in-store is whether an item is in stock at a local store. With eesel AI, you can set up custom actions that let your AI chatbot check inventory levels in real-time. This gives customers instant answers and bridges the gap between your online and physical stores.

7. Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop (you might remember it as 3dcart) is a powerhouse when it comes to search engine optimization. It comes packed with more robust built-in SEO tools than most other platforms offer. But its most compelling feature is a completely free, feature-rich plan for US merchants who use their in-house payment processor, Shift4 Payments.

Pros:

• Exceptional built-in SEO tools to help you rank higher on Google.

• An incredibly generous free plan for US businesses that includes enterprise-level features.

• It comes with a huge array of built-in features, so you don't need to rely as much on paid apps.

Cons:

• The user interface can feel a bit dated and isn't as intuitive as some of the more modern platforms.

• That amazing free plan is only available if you use their payment processor, which might not be the best fit for every business.

Pricing: Shift4Shop has a pretty unique pricing model.

• End-to-End Ecommerce Plan: Free for US merchants who process over $500/month through Shift4 Payments.

• Paid Plans: For international merchants or those who want to use a different payment provider, plans start at $29/month.

Customer support considerations: Great SEO drives a lot of traffic, and more traffic always means more support questions. Before you unleash an AI agent on your customers, you want to be sure it's ready. eesel AI lets you run simulations on thousands of your past support tickets. This gives you a clear and accurate forecast of how many questions you can automate and how well the AI will perform, so you can go live with confidence.

This video explores when Shopify might not be the right fit and details three of the best alternatives that could save you money.

How to choose the right Shopify alternatives for your business

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the options? Don't worry. Picking the right platform just comes down to being honest about your needs. Here’s a quick checklist to help you decide.

• 1. Figure out your real budget: Don't just look at the monthly price. Add up the potential costs of transaction fees, any apps you know you'll need, and a premium theme to get the true cost.

• 2. Be honest about your tech skills: How much time do you really want to spend tinkering with your website? If you're not a developer, user-friendly platforms like Wix and Squarespace are much safer bets than something like WooCommerce.

• 3. Plan for your future: Think about where you want your business to be in three years. Moving an online store to a new platform is a massive headache, so try to choose one that has room for you to grow.

• 4. Think about your customer support strategy: Your sales and your support tickets are going to grow together. A tool like eesel AI is a smart move because it plugs into your helpdesk and knowledge base, not your ecommerce platform. That means if you ever decide to switch from Wix to BigCommerce, your entire AI support system comes right along with you, no need to rebuild anything.

Finding the right Shopify alternatives deserves smarter support

Shopify is a great tool, but it’s clear there are plenty of powerful alternatives out there. Whether you need the raw power of BigCommerce, the design freedom of Wix, or the total control of WooCommerce, there’s a platform that’s a better fit for your business.

But remember, launching a great store is just the beginning. The brands that really succeed are the ones that provide amazing, scalable customer support. As you grow, you can't just keep hiring more people to answer the same questions over and over. You need a smarter way to work.

Ready to level up your ecommerce support, no matter which platform you choose? See how eesel AI can automate answers, connect to all your scattered knowledge, and make your customers happier. You can be live in minutes, not months.