Shopify Alternatives: 6 Platforms Compared for 2026

The best Shopify alternatives in 2026 are WooCommerce if you want full ownership and no platform fee, BigCommerce if you want a hosted platform with no extra fee for outside payment processors, Squarespace or Wix if you are a small brand that cares most about design and simplicity, and Adobe Commerce if you are a large business with a development team. For most growing e-commerce brands, though, Shopify is still the easiest platform to run, so switch only when a specific limit is costing you money.

This guide is for store owners deciding whether to leave Shopify or which platform to launch on. Every price below was checked on each vendor's own pricing page on October 27, 2026. You'll get a side-by-side comparison, a worked cost example, an honest look at the reasons people leave Shopify (several old ones no longer apply), and an SEO-safe migration checklist.

Is it worth switching from Shopify?

Often it isn't. Many of the classic reasons to leave Shopify have been fixed. Older articles, including the first version of this one, said Shopify limits products to 100 variants and won't let you edit robots.txt. Both are out of date:

• Variants. Shopify's changelog announced on October 15, 2025 that products can now have up to 2,048 variants, up from the long-standing limit of 100. Shopify's Help Center confirms each product can have up to three options and up to 2,048 variants.
• robots.txt. You can customize it through a robots.txt.liquid theme template. Shopify calls it an unsupported customization, but it is possible.

Switching platforms is expensive. You rebuild the theme, move products, customers and orders, replace apps, redirect every URL and retrain the team. A switch makes sense when one of these is true:

• You need to own the code and hosting, for example for complex B2B logic, custom checkout flows or strict data rules.
• You want to use a payment processor other than Shopify Payments and the third-party fee is a real line item.
• Your site is mostly content, such as a publisher or a brand with a large blog, and the store is secondary.
• You sell a handful of products or services and a simpler, cheaper builder covers everything you need.

If none of those apply, fixing your Shopify store usually beats moving it. Our guide to common Shopify SEO problems covers the limits you can work around.

Shopify alternatives compared

Here is how the main platforms compare on what they are, what the entry plan costs and what they charge when you use an outside payment processor. Prices are in USD, billed yearly unless noted, as listed on each vendor's pricing page on October 27, 2026.

A few details the summary table can't hold. Shopify's online card rates through Shopify Payments start at 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic, 2.7% + 30 cents on Grow, 2.5% + 30 cents on Advanced and 2.25% + 30 cents on Plus. BigCommerce says its card processing begins at 2.89% + 29 cents on all plans, and its Growth plan ($79/mo yearly, $105 monthly) covers up to $100K in trailing 12-month sales, after which the plan auto-upgrades. Squarespace's Core plan is $29/mo yearly ($39 monthly), with card rates from 2.9% + 30 cents. WooCommerce's own payment service, WooPayments, charges 2.9% + 30 cents for a standard US card, with no setup or monthly fee.

How popular is each platform?

Popularity matters because it decides how many themes, apps, developers and answers you can find. W3Techs tracks which content management systems run the websites it surveys. Its figures cover all websites, not only stores, which is why WordPress leads by a wide margin. WooCommerce runs on WordPress, but W3Techs does not list it separately on this report.

Two things stand out. Shopify is the most used dedicated commerce platform in the survey, ahead of Wix and Squarespace, which are general website builders. BigCommerce is far smaller by site count, which reflects its focus on mid-market and B2B brands rather than small stores. Site counts don't tell you which platform sells more or ranks better, so treat this as a measure of ecosystem size only.

What a store really pays on each platform

Plan prices are the smallest part of the bill. For most stores, card processing costs far more than the subscription. Here is an illustrative store with $20,000 in online sales a month from 400 orders, using each platform's own payment processing at its standard US online card rate and the cheapest plan that fits its sales.

Three lessons come out of this example:

• Card fees dominate. On every platform, about $700 of the bill is processing. Plan price differences are small next to that.
• Sales caps change the math. At $240,000 a year, this store is past BigCommerce's Core and Growth caps, so it lands on Scale at $299/mo. A smaller store would pay $29 or $79.
• WooCommerce is cheap to start but not free to run. The example uses Woo's lowest hosting estimate and no paid extensions. Woo lists extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, and most stores also pay for development and maintenance.

Fees for using another payment processor

If you want to keep PayPal Braintree, Stripe or another processor, the extra platform fee matters more than the plan price.

On Shopify, the fee drops on higher plans, to 0.2% on Plus. On BigCommerce, Embedded Payment Providers carry no fee on any plan. Squarespace's 2% on Basic is an online store transaction fee rather than a processor fee, and it disappears on Core and above.

The best Shopify alternatives, platform by platform

WooCommerce: best for control and content

WooCommerce is a free, open source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. You choose the host, own the code and database, and can change anything. Woo says it charges no platform fees and no revenue share. The trade-off is responsibility: you manage hosting, updates, security and backups, or pay someone to. It fits brands that publish a lot of content, need custom logic, or already run WordPress. For the SEO side of that choice, see our comparison of WordPress and Shopify for SEO. We build on both, through our WooCommerce web design and Shopify web design teams.

BigCommerce: best hosted option for big catalogs and B2B

BigCommerce is the closest like-for-like alternative: a hosted platform with plan prices that mirror Shopify's ($29, $79 and $299 a month billed yearly). Its main differences are sales-based plan caps, no fee for Embedded Payment Providers and an Enterprise-style Performance plan starting at $1,499 a month billed annually. Consider it if you sell to businesses or run a large catalog and want to avoid self-hosting.

Squarespace: best for small, design-led brands

Squarespace is a website builder known for polished templates. Plans run from $19 to $99 a month billed yearly, and the Basic plan adds a 2% online store transaction fee. It suits small catalogs, creators and service businesses that want a beautiful site with little setup. It has a smaller commerce app ecosystem than Shopify, so check that the features you need are built in.

Wix: best for drag-and-drop simplicity

Wix is a drag-and-drop builder with e-commerce on its paid plans. Its plan page states that prices and currency vary by location, and on the version we loaded the Core plan was the cheapest one listing Accept payments and Basic eCommerce. Check the price shown for your country at checkout. Wix fits small stores that value easy editing over deep commerce features.

Adobe Commerce: best for enterprises with developers

Adobe Commerce, formerly Magento Commerce, is an enterprise platform sold on custom quotes. Its free sibling, Magento Open Source, can be self-hosted. Adobe's documentation notes that with Adobe Commerce on-premises, you host and manage your own infrastructure, including servers. It is powerful and highly customizable, but it needs experienced developers to build and maintain. It makes sense for large, complex businesses, and rarely for brands below that scale.

Which platform fits your reason for leaving?

Start from the problem you want to solve, not from a list of platforms. This matrix pairs the most common reasons with the best-fitting option and the catch.

If you're unsure whether the problem is the platform or the setup, compare what the same fix would cost on Shopify. A slow theme, too many apps or a messy site structure follow you to any platform.

How to switch platforms without losing SEO

A platform change is the riskiest moment for organic traffic. URL structures differ: Shopify uses fixed paths such as /products/ and /collections/, so almost every URL changes when you move to or from it. Follow these steps in order.

1. Benchmark first. Export your top pages by clicks and revenue from Google Search Console and GA4, plus your current rankings, so you can compare after launch.
2. Crawl the old site. List every indexable URL, title, meta description, H1 and canonical. Our SEO checker helps spot-check key pages.
3. Map every URL. Pair each old URL with its closest new equivalent in a spreadsheet. Don't send everything to the homepage.
4. Carry over content and metadata. Keep product descriptions, collection copy, titles, structured data and image alt text unless you are deliberately improving them.
5. Build 301 redirects. Load the map into the new platform, then test them with the redirect checker before and after launch.
6. Launch, then verify. Submit the new XML sitemap, check robots.txt, and request indexing for top pages.
7. Monitor for 90 days. Watch Search Console for 404s and coverage drops, and fix gaps with the 404 redirect helper.

Our Shopify SEO migration guide and website migration checklist go deeper on each step.

Choosing your next step

Write down the one or two problems that make you want to leave Shopify, then check whether each is a platform limit or a setup issue. If it is a real platform limit, use the matrix above to shortlist two options, price them with your own sales and order count, and plan the migration around redirects from day one. If it is a setup issue, fix it where you are and save the rebuild.

If you want a second opinion on the decision, or help building on Shopify or WooCommerce, talk to our team. We'll tell you honestly whether a switch is worth it.