Top 5 Free Shopify Alternatives in 2023
Over the past few years, Shopify has become the king of e-commerce, empowering small businesses in over 175 countries.
The premise of Shopify is very simple: allow businesses to create their own e-commerce site, full of customizations and useful features.
Through the Shopify platform, business owners can also track the sales, shipping and popularity of their products.
However, Shopify is far from perfect.
Its payment system, for example, forces customers to use Shopify’s proprietary gateway.
Business owners who decide not to do so could be charged up to 2% for each transaction.
Additionally, Shopify doesn’t do a perfect job when it comes to large catalogs.
It limits users to just 100 SKUs (store units) per catalog, making it difficult for small businesses to expand.
Fortunately, many free alternatives to Shopify have emerged in recent years, completely changing the ecommerce landscape.
Top 5 Free Shopify Alternatives 2023 Features to Consider for a Shopify Alternative
1) WooCommerce
2) Magento
3) Prestashop
4) Opecart
5) PinnacleCart
Features to Consider for a Shopify Alternative
Shopify offers many useful features for business owners small and medium-sized enterprises.
After all, it became the market leader for a reason! In fact, Shopify is now extremely developed with different tools depending on the price level.
In particular, Shopify has three different subscription levels: Basic for €28/month, which includes 2 staff accounts and access to basic reports, Shopify for €78/month, which includes 5 staff accounts and access to professional reports, Advanced at €384/month, which includes 15 staff accounts and custom reports.
Almost inexplicably, however, the different price points do not include the catalog expansion.
It should be obvious that advanced accounts have larger catalogs than basic ones, yet Shopify doesn’t have this feature.
If, for example, you plan to expand your business abroad, having simple and accessible payment systems like PayPal could be right for you.
Different ecommerce builders have different payment gateways, so you should keep this in mind.
Finally, an important part of creating an e-commerce site is personalization.
Many Shopify alternatives offer more customization for a lower price.
Now let’s start looking at the 5 best alternatives to Shopify.
1) WooCommerce
First on our list is WooCommerce, a free WordPress plugin that turns regular sites into e-commerce platforms.
This is the perfect tool for creating e-commerce.
WooCommerce allows for complete customization (since it uses WordPress as its foundation), is easy to use, and is completely free!
Of course, businesses will have to pay for the site domain and SSL.
2) Magento
If you are a programming fanatic, then Magento is the right software for you.
Magento was acquired by Adobe in 2018, which should already make you understand its complexity.
Adobe software such as Photoshop, Premiere and Illustrator are famous for their precision and laboriousness.
Magento is open source software, which means that thousands of developers around the world continue to improve its features and scope.
Of course, business owners with little or no development experience will need to hire an IT expert to use Magento.
3) Prestashop
Prestashop is probably the most ambitious Shopify alternative on this list.
Its partnerships with Microsoft Azure, WebHostingHub and 1&1 guarantee usability very similar to Shopify: for example, it supports 25 different languages!
nfortunately, even though it’s open source, Prestashop has surprisingly few themes and templates, which is why it doesn’t rank higher on the list.
Here are the best titles to focus on e-commerce.
4) Opecart
If your e-commerce site is more business-oriented, Opecart is the solution for you.
This Shopify alternative is perfect for professional-looking sites and supports thousands of add-ons for further customization.
Opecart also supports many different payment gateways.
Opencart may not be as easy to use as Shopify, but it definitely has as much potential if not more!
5) PinnacleCart
PinnacleCart is the perfect middle ground between the first two Shopify alternatives: WooCommerce and Magento.
PinnacleCart allows for extensive SEO control but is very easy to use.
Unfortunately, PinnacleCart also has many pricing limitations for the free version.
