In 2004 Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Luke set up an online website for selling snowboards. You have tried a number of online store manufacturers but were not satisfied with the status quo. So they decided to develop a tool that would make their website run. They soon found that the tool was more powerful than the website's business. And that's how Shopify was born.

Eventually, Shopify became one of the largest ecommerce store manufacturers in the world. By 2009, the company had sales of $ 100 million and decided to launch its own API and app store. More than a decade later, Shopify now supports over 800,000 stores worldwide and is a $ 125 billion company.

While the company has seen remarkable growth in its business, it would be ignorant to say that the market needs have been met by the Shopify platform. Shopify's ecommerce platform works for a lot of businesses. However, this doesn't mean it will work for every business.

HERE'S WHY SHOPIFY ISN'T RIGHT FOR EVERY COMPANY:
Shopify's growth over the years shows that the company has taken several steps to meet the demands of the marketplace. However, the presence of several other companies and the problems merchants are still facing show some significant gaps in Shopify's offerings:
1. Setup Cost: Each price point offers a fixed set of features and functions. If you want anything beyond that, you have to buy the package below. For example - something as conventional as a gift card isn't available in the $ 29 per month bundle. To activate it, pay up to $ 299 per month.
2. Operating costs: The additional functions and features cost extra in your package. Even basic functions like transaction or credit card processing have an additional fee. To do this, you need to buy the app in order to activate the function in the Shopify App Store. Although some apps are free, the maximum value apps typically cost more than $ 39.99 per month.
3. Limited and Expensive Themes: The entire Shopify store has 73 themes in total, with prices going up to $ 180 per theme. This means that even after paying the hefty price tag, as a merchant, you may have an e-commerce platform that barely stands out from the crowd.

In short, while Shopify was launched with big intentions, the cost of using it outweighs the likely value it has to offer. This problem becomes even more noticeable when you look at the Shopify alternatives.

BEST ALTERNATIVES OF SHOPPING
While Shopify caters to the needs of a specific group of merchants, here are the alternatives that are suitable for merchants looking for bespoke, affordable, or customizable solutions:


1. Faster eSelling

Quick eSelling is one of the most affordable and easiest to implement ecommerce store builders among the Shopify alternatives. For the basic version, it can be made available in less than 10 minutes. The free variant has some useful features like a native Android app, a responsive website, and a catalog that can support up to 1000 products.


A transaction fee of 5% is charged for the free package, which does not apply immediately after the upgrade to a paid tariff. All paid plans have a fixed monthly fee and no setup costs. The list of standard features includes a wide variety of features such as customizable web store themes, SMS and email marketing, extensive payment gateway integration, detailed analytics reports, inventory management systems, social media plugins, discount coupon codes, and even live chat.
The Premium plan, which costs around 50% of the price of the Shopify plan, which is worth $ 299, has a dedicated account manager and company-level integrations.

Ideal for: Dealers looking for an affordable, easy-to-use, and quick-to-deploy solution.

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is popularly considered one of the most popular alternatives for Shopify. It is very convenient for website owners as it is a plugin for WordPress.


Unlike other tools in the list, WooCommerce was designed to make WordPress websites work as functional ecommerce platforms. And in that particular aspect, it does a great job.

However, if you're not already using an established, high-traffic WordPress site, running WooCommerce can get quite expensive. On average, a website owner would have to spend up to $ 1000 to set up a WooCommerce store with a moderate level of customization.

Even if you don't customize a lot, a WooCommerce store can cost up to $ 150 a month to run. This would cover your hosting, themes, shipping plugins, security, and SEO. You pay an additional 2.9% + 0.30 USD per transaction.

Ideal for: someone who has a successful WordPress website and now wants to convert it into an e-commerce shop.

3. Yo! Kart:

Yo! Kart is a popular self-hosted, multi-vendor platform for building online marketplaces. In contrast to Shopify, it is a stand-alone platform with a lifetime license and extensive e-commerce functions. The platform is fully customizable and scalable.


Yo! Kart packages start at $ 999, and each package includes 1 year of free technical support, free installation, and full source code. There are no monthly or annual recurring fees.

Since this is a comprehensive platform, you may need some technical training to understand the system.

Ideal for: Business owners who want to start e-commerce websites like Amazon or eBay, where multiple sellers sell under one roof.
4. PrestaShop


PrestaShop is built on the basic premise that creating an online ecommerce store should be an affordable task for any merchant. Because of this, it is available for free and with no additional monthly fees.


Features include e-commerce functions like CRM and email marketing, inventory management, multi-store management, and SEO management. You can get a simple ecommerce store up and running by paying the domain registration fee and hosting fees.

This seems like a great alternative as it's practically free. However, there is one important caveat: you can only provision or personalize your PrestaShop ecommerce store if you know how to code. The entire platform has been developed with people in mind who can program at a professional level. The cost of hiring a developer to add features to your business or change the theme can be very expensive.

In addition, some basic functions such as the management of promotions and ratings, data security and mobile access are not available on the platform.

Ideal for: Merchants who have access to programming talent and don't care about a simple e-commerce shop.

5. Wix

Wix became popular as an online website builder. It also offers interesting e-commerce features. For just $ 35 a year, you can purchase the Business Basic package, which includes a free year of domain usage, analytics reports, and 20GB of storage.


If you want more control over your ecommerce platform but aren't a professional programmer and aren't interested in hiring one, Wix can be a great alternative. The most expensive package costs around $ 80 a year. It has features like email marketing, SEO management, inventory management, data security, and promotion management.

The challenge is that most of the fees marketed by Wix are very affordable for the first year of operation. After a year, many of these features, such as the domain, become payable items. This way, your cost of running the e-commerce platform increases dramatically once the first year of operation is over.

Ideal for: Merchants who want more control over their website's design without the need for programming skills, and those who want the first year of operation to be largely affordable.

Conclusion:

Shopify can work for you if you're looking for a limited number of features. For lower prices, however, the alternatives for Shopify have great features. Quick eSelling is suitable for inexpensive and quickly deployable e-commerce websites that are equipped with native functions. WooCommerce is a viable option if you have a WordPress site and want to convert it into an ecommerce store. Yo! Kart specializes in building marketplaces for multiple providers.

PrestaShop can be handy and very budget friendly when you have access to coding talent. And Wix is ​​good when you want more control over what your business looks like without going into the programming aspects.