Shopify alternatives: where to go and how to move your store
Six platforms, one for each reason to leave, and an eight-step migration plan.
The short answer: WooCommerce if you want to stop paying a monthly plan and platform fees, BigCommerce if you want to stay hosted with a large catalog and no transaction fees, Wix for a small catalog and the easiest builder, Squarespace for a design-led brand, Ecwid if you already have a site and only need a store on it, PrestaShop if you sell mostly in Europe and want open-source software. One thing to know before you pick: Shopify exports your products, customers and orders as CSV files, but the product file has no images, customer passwords never transfer, and your theme runs nowhere else. We compared these six destinations and their published prices in 2026.
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored spot is always labeled on its card, and no affiliate link changes a rating.
Why merchants leave Shopify, and why it's hard
Shopify is still quick to launch, and plenty of merchants who leave admit the core platform runs fine. People go because of a bill that keeps growing, a pile of paid apps, and a lock-in they only notice when they try to get out. Six reasons, all checked in 2026.
A 2% fee for using your own payment processor
If you take payments through PayPal, Stripe or your bank instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus. That sits on top of what your processor already charges. At $10,000 a month in sales on Basic, that's $200 a month to Shopify, more than the plan itself.
Apps are the real bill
Reviews, subscriptions, email, product filters: almost every need is an app, usually billed monthly. Merchants who left say most of their problems came from apps, not from Shopify. And code an app injects into your theme often stays there after you uninstall it. Only App Embeds clean themselves up.
A theme that can't leave Shopify
Your theme is written in Liquid, Shopify's own template language. You can download it, but no other platform can run it. The design, the sections, every tweak your developer made: all of it gets rebuilt. On many migrations, that's a bigger line item than moving the data.
Fixed URLs and an incomplete export
Shopify forces its own paths (/products/, /collections/, /cart) and won't let you redirect them. The product CSV leaves out images, only includes SEO titles and descriptions you customized, and puts inventory in a separate export. Any product with more than 100 variants gets emailed to you instead of landing in the file.
Plan prices that climb fast
Basic is $39 a month ($29 a month billed yearly), Grow $105 ($79), Advanced $399 ($299), and Plus starts at $2,300 a month. Card rates with Shopify Payments drop as you move up (2.9% + 30¢ online on Basic, 2.5% on Advanced), so the plan that looks cheapest isn't always the one that costs least at your volume.
Support and billing complaints
Shopify sits at 1.3 out of 5 across more than 5,000 public reviews, 87% of them one star. The same complaints keep coming back: support that's hard to reach, and subscriptions billed for months on stores that weren't selling. The flip side is real too: leaving means you take on hosting, PCI compliance, cookie banners and integrations yourself. Weigh both before you cancel.
You're leaving because… go to…
The right Shopify alternative depends on what's pushing you out. Usually one line fits. Each card jumps to the full write-up below.
Free software, no fee added on top of your payment processor.
You want to stay hosted with a bigger catalogBigCommerceNo transaction fees with its built-in payment providers.
Your catalog is small and you want simpleWixSite, blog and store in one drag-and-drop builder.
Your brand lives on its visualsSquarespacePolished templates, 0% store fee from the Core plan.
You already have a site and just need checkoutEcwidA store you embed in an existing site, no transaction fees.
You sell mostly in Europe and want open sourcePrestaShopFree to self-host, or hosted at €29 a month excl. VAT.
Shopify alternatives, platform by platform
For each one: why move there, who it's for, its limit, how to migrate from Shopify, and what it costs. Prices are the ones each vendor published in 2026, in the currency it shows.
WooCommerce: own your store and drop the platform fees
Most controlWhy switch to WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin for WordPress. There's no monthly plan, and no extra fee when you use your own payment processor. If you're paying Shopify 2% today because you kept PayPal or Stripe, that line goes away. You own the code, the database and the choice of host.
Who it's for. Stores that already run WordPress or a content site that pulls traffic, and teams with someone (in-house or a freelancer) to look after the site.
Who it's not for. A solo founder who never wants to think about updates, backups or security. Merchants who made the move put it bluntly on the forums: the maintenance and dev costs are real.
Its limit. Free only at the start. WooCommerce itself puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month and each paid extension at $29 to $299 a year. With WooPayments, its own processor, expect roughly 2.5% to 2.9% plus 30¢ per transaction depending on the country.
How to migrate. This is the best-tooled move. A free export app on the Shopify side and an import plugin on the WordPress side carry over products, variants, customers and orders, and turn your collections into categories. They skip pages, blog posts, reviews and gift cards. For coupons, pages and the blog, a paid plugin (about $79 a year) fills the gap. Customer passwords don't transfer, so plan a password reset email for launch day.
- Software
- free, open source
- Hosting
- $25 to $350/month
- Platform fee
- none
- Limit
- you run maintenance
BigCommerce: the closest hosted swap, without the fee
Big catalogsWhy switch to BigCommerce. It's the alternative that feels most like Shopify: hosted, no server to manage, and the same entry price. The difference is fees. With its built-in payment providers, BigCommerce charges no transaction fee at all. It also has a strong reputation for large catalogs and B2B selling.
Who it's for. Stores that want to stay on a hosted platform with a big catalog or a share of wholesale orders.
Who it's not for. A small store hunting for the cheapest option. At the same size the price grid looks a lot like Shopify's, and some merchants on the forums call it expensive.
Its limit. Your plan upgrades itself as you grow. Core ($29 a month billed yearly, $39 monthly) covers up to $30K in sales over the trailing 12 months, then you're moved to Growth ($79 or $105). Past $100K, it's Scale ($299 or $399). Use an "open" payment provider that isn't built in and a 2%, 1% or 0.6% fee applies depending on the plan.
How to migrate. Use a migration service with a free demo, and check whether 301 redirects are included or sold as an add-on. Tip: work out the plan you'll be on 12 months from now with your real revenue, not the plan you start on.
- Core
- $29/mo yearly, $39 monthly
- Auto-upgrade
- past $30K in 12-month sales
- Fees
- none with built-in payments
- Limit
- price rises with revenue
Wix: the easiest home for a small catalog
EasiestWhy switch to Wix. Wix puts your site, blog, bookings and store in one drag-and-drop editor. For a maker, an artist or a local shop with a few dozen products, it's often simpler than Shopify, with no apps to stack just to publish content pages.
Who it's for. Small stores whose site does as much storytelling as selling.
Who it's not for. A catalog of several thousand SKUs, or a store that needs advanced pricing and inventory rules.
Its limit. Selling online needs at least the Core plan (Core, Business and Business Elite include ecommerce), from about $29 a month billed yearly. Wix says its prices and currency vary by location, so check the price shown for your country before you commit.
How to migrate. Products come in through a CSV import, but the design gets rebuilt in the Wix editor. For a small catalog, it's a chance to start clean. Re-upload images separately (the Shopify export doesn't include them) and set redirects from your old /products/ URLs.
- Minimum plan
- Core, about $29/mo yearly
- Best for
- small catalogs
- Migration
- CSV, design rebuilt
- Limit
- lighter ecommerce
Squarespace: a store for a design-led brand
DesignWhy switch to Squarespace. Squarespace is all about templates and layout. For a fashion label, a photographer or a home goods brand that sells a short catalog and leans on imagery, it looks good without a developer.
Who it's for. Brands with a tight product range that want an editorial site.
Who it's not for. A store that relies on lots of integrations or complex fulfillment. Its ecommerce is lighter than Shopify's.
Its limit. The Basic plan ($25 a month, $19 billed yearly) keeps a 2% fee on store sales. To sell without a platform fee you need Core ($39, or $29 yearly), Plus ($65 or $49) or Advanced ($139 or $99). Squarespace Payments card rates start at 2.9% + 30¢ and go down on higher plans.
How to migrate. Products come in by import, the design is rebuilt with Squarespace templates. Tip: don't pick Basic to save $10 a month if you sell regularly. Past about $500 a month in sales, the 2% costs more than the gap to Core.
- Core
- $39/mo, $29 yearly
- Store fee
- 2% on Basic, 0% from Core
- Best for
- visual brands
- Limit
- lighter ecommerce
Ecwid: add a store to the site you already have
No feesWhy switch to Ecwid. Ecwid doesn't ask you to rebuild your site. It's a store you drop into an existing website, a blog or a social page. And it charges no setup or transaction fees on any plan.
Who it's for. People who already like their site and only used Shopify for the cart and checkout.
Who it's not for. A business where the store is the whole site and needs a fully dedicated theme.
Its limit. Plans cap the number of products. Starter ($5 a month) stops at 10 products, Venture ($35, or $29 yearly) at 100, Business ($65, or $49 yearly) at 2,500, and only Unlimited ($149, or $119 yearly) lifts the cap.
How to migrate. Import your product CSV, then upload images. Count your products before you pick a plan: product 101 bumps you from Venture to Business.
- Venture
- $35/mo, $29 yearly
- Fees
- no transaction fees
- Best for
- an existing site
- Limit
- product cap per plan
PrestaShop: open source for stores selling in Europe
Open sourceWhy switch to PrestaShop. PrestaShop is open-source ecommerce software from a French publisher, widely used across Europe. There are two ways in. PrestaShop Classic is a free download you install with any host. PrestaShop Hosted is run by the publisher: €29 a month excl. VAT with no commitment, or €290 a year (about €24 a month), with a 14-day trial. PrestaShop prices it in euros.
Who it's for. Stores selling mostly into Europe that want a full-featured catalog (combinations, carriers, invoices) and a large pool of agencies and developers who know the software.
Who it's not for. A US-focused store that wants everything to work in one click with no technical help, especially on Classic.
Its limit. Add-on modules are often paid, and Classic needs a host, a domain and someone to run updates. Your real cost depends on the modules you add, not on the software.
How to migrate. Start from Shopify's CSV exports, or use a migration service that charges per entity with a free demo on a small batch. Check that the demo brings over images and variants before you pay. Your URLs change shape, so build your redirect plan before launch.
- Classic
- free, self-hosted
- Hosted
- €29/mo excl. VAT, or €290/yr
- Trial
- 14 days
- Limit
- paid modules
The 6 alternatives side by side
Our default pick: WooCommerce if someone can look after the site, BigCommerce if you want to stay hosted. The rest depends on your catalog and your brand. One row per platform: on the left, what it costs to get in; on the right, the fees taken from your sales and how you migrate.
| Entry cost | Fees on sales and migration | |
|---|---|---|
| ShopifyWhere you start | Basic $39 a month, $29 billed yearly | 2% third-party fee on Basic without Shopify Payments; CSV export without images |
| WooCommerceMost control | Free software, hosting $25 to $350 a month | No platform fee; free export and import, blog and reviews handled separately |
| BigCommerceBig catalogs | Core $29 a month yearly, $39 monthly | 0% with built-in payments; plan rises with revenue |
| WixSmall catalogs | Core from about $29 a month yearly | CSV import, design rebuilt |
| SquarespaceVisual brands | Core $39 a month, $29 yearly | 2% on Basic, 0% from Core; design rebuilt |
| EcwidExisting site | Starter $5 a month (10 products) | No transaction fees; CSV import, images re-uploaded |
| PrestaShopEurope, open source | Classic free; Hosted €29 a month excl. VAT | Paid modules; CSV import or migration service |
Entry prices as published by each vendor, before tax, subject to change. Always check against your real revenue and product count.
Moving off Shopify in eight steps
Order matters. Each step protects something: your catalog, your customers, your Google rankings, and your revenue during the switch.
List your apps and your URLs first
Day 1Make two lists. First, every Shopify app you have installed, what it does, what it costs, and its match on the new platform (plugin, module or built-in feature). Second, every URL on your store, which you can pull from the Shopify sitemap (your domain followed by /sitemap.xml).
The URL list becomes your redirect plan. The app list stops you from finding out after launch that reviews or subscriptions were running on an app.
- Time
- half a day
- Risk if rushed
- a missing feature
Clean up before you export
Saves moneyArchive or delete dead products, empty variants and customers who haven't ordered in years. Migration services price by entity, so every useless product you bring along costs money and clutters the new store.
Keep a full raw export before deleting anything. That's your backup.
- Gain
- cheaper migration
Export everything Shopify lets you take
Day 1Before you close, you can export products, inventory, customers, orders, gift cards and discount codes, financial data and your theme. The product export is a UTF-8 CSV. Three traps: images aren't in the file, inventory comes out in a separate export, and any product with more than 100 variants gets emailed to you.
SEO titles and descriptions only come out if you customized them. Store every file outside Shopify.
- Format
- CSV, UTF-8
- Missing
- images, passwords
Run a demo migration on a small batch
Before you payMigration services such as LitExtension sell a one-time purchase priced by the number of products, customers and orders, with free demos. Run one on a few products with variants, a few customers and a few orders, then check each item: images, variants, compare-at prices, categories.
Read what the plan includes too. At LitExtension, options such as SEO URLs and 301 redirects are paid extras on the automated plan and included in the all-in-one plan.
- Price
- one-time, per entity
- Risk if rushed
- lost images or variants
Import, then reconcile the counts
CriticalImport in this order: categories, products, images, customers, orders. Then compare the numbers: products, variants, customers, orders, and total sales for one sample month. A gap of ten products shows up in a spreadsheet, not on the storefront.
Shopify collections become categories on most platforms. Check that products sitting in several collections didn't get duplicated.
- Check
- counts before and after
Set up your 301 redirects
SEOA 301 redirect tells Google a page has moved for good. Without it, every old /products/ or /collections/ URL returns a 404 and you lose its rankings. Merchants on the Shopify forums describe exactly this after migrating without redirects.
Redirects live on the new platform, once your domain points to it: Shopify can't do it for you, and the .myshopify.com address can't be redirected. Start with your highest-traffic pages, then watch 404 errors in Google Search Console for the following weeks.
- Tool
- Google Search Console
- Risk if rushed
- lost rankings
Tell customers about their password
Customer account passwords never move from one hosted platform to another. Your customers keep their account and history but need a new password. Write a short email: the store moved behind the scenes, nothing changes for their orders, here's the link to set a new password.
Send it on launch day, not before. A link that points to the old store is useless.
- When
- launch day
Switch the domain, then cancel cleanly
Last dayPoint your domain to the new platform on a quiet day, check checkout with a real order, then turn on redirects. Keep Shopify on its cheapest plan for a few weeks while you check everything.
Before you cancel, uninstall paid apps one by one: some keep billing as long as they're installed. And take one last export of the orders that came in during the switch.
- Do
- uninstall paid apps
- Keep Shopify
- a few weeks
Is your tool missing from this page? Email us: hello@hackceleration.com
What makes a Shopify exit go wrong
On the forums, one line keeps coming up: a migration succeeds or fails on the quality of the partner and the prep work. The mistakes below are oversights, not hard technical problems, and each one costs more than the time it would have taken to avoid it.
Skipping redirects
The most expensive mistake. Product pages that ranked for years start returning 404s and your Google traffic drops within weeks. Build the 301 plan from the Shopify sitemap before launch, not after.
Assuming the export has your images
Shopify's product CSV doesn't include images. An import that "worked" can leave you with a store full of products and no photos. Make sure your migration tool pulls images, or download them separately.
Canceling with apps still installed
Merchants report being billed for months after they stopped selling. Uninstall each paid app, check your final invoice, then close the account, only after everything is exported.
Comparing plans without the fees
A cheap plan with a 2% fee can cost more than a pricier plan with none. Compare on your real revenue: plan, platform fee, card rate, apps or plugins. On BigCommerce, work out the plan your yearly sales will push you into.
Underestimating what you take back
Leaving a hosted platform for WooCommerce or self-hosted PrestaShop means you own hosting, updates, PCI compliance and cookie banners. If nobody can handle that, a hosted destination will save more than it costs.
Forgetting what ran around the store
Email, reviews, marketplace feeds and automation tools all need reconnecting. For email, our guide to ecommerce email marketing compares tools that work with each platform. To wire the new store to your other tools, see WooCommerce with Make and BigCommerce with Make. And to choose by size, see our rankings for small businesses and enterprise stores.
- List of Shopify apps and their match on the new platform
- Shopify sitemap saved, 301 redirect plan ready
- Products, inventory, customers, orders, gift cards and theme exported
- Images downloaded separately or pulled by the migration tool
- Demo migration checked on a small batch
- Counts reconciled after import (products, variants, customers, orders)
- Password reset email ready for customers
- A real order placed on the new store
- 404 errors tracked in Google Search Console
- Paid apps uninstalled before canceling
Shopify alternatives: frequently asked questions
Can I keep my Google rankings if I leave Shopify?
Yes, as long as you 301-redirect every old URL to its new address. Shopify uses paths like /products/ and /collections/ that other platforms don't always share, so the redirects are set on the new platform once your domain points there. Then watch 404s in Google Search Console. Our ranking of SEO tools for ecommerce helps you monitor the move.
Do customer passwords transfer when I migrate?
No. Passwords never move from one hosted platform to another, whatever migration tool you use. Customers keep their account and order history but must set a new password. Send them the link on launch day.
Will my product reviews and blog come with me?
Not with the free WooCommerce export, which skips pages, the blog, reviews and gift cards. A paid plugin, around $79 a year, adds pages, blog posts and coupons. Reviews usually live in the app that managed them, so export them from that app before you uninstall it.
Which Shopify alternative has no transaction fees?
WooCommerce and Ecwid take nothing from your sales. Squarespace is at 0% from the Core plan, and BigCommerce too with its built-in payment providers. Your processor's card fees still apply everywhere. Our guide to the best payment gateways for ecommerce compares those rates.
How much does a Shopify migration cost?
It depends on how many products, customers and orders you have. Services like LitExtension charge a one-time price per entity, with free demos so you can judge before you buy. Moving to WooCommerce, a free export and import cover the basics, plus a paid plugin for the blog and pages.
Should I cancel Shopify right away?
No. Export everything, uninstall paid apps, switch the domain and check your redirects first. Keep Shopify on its cheapest plan for a few weeks: you catch the last orders and can compare both stores side by side.
Can I stay on Shopify and avoid the 2% fee?
Yes, by turning on Shopify Payments: the third-party transaction fee only applies to payments taken by another processor. You then pay Shopify Payments card rates, from 2.9% + 30¢ online on Basic. If fees are your only reason to leave, run that math before you migrate.
What's the best Shopify alternative for a small business?
Wix if you want the simplest builder and sell a few dozen products, Squarespace if your brand is visual, Ecwid if you already have a site. WooCommerce if someone can maintain it. Our ranking of ecommerce platforms covers more options.
What happens to my email marketing if I leave Shopify?
If you use Shopify Email or an app tied to Shopify, reconnect your email tool to the new store and check that abandoned cart flows fire again. Our page on email marketing for Shopify lists tools that work on other platforms too.
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