Hunting for free or low-cost Shopify alternatives for your small and medium business (SMB) or startup? Shopify may be a good choice, but what if it isn’t the right fit for your unique needs? Perhaps you’re on a tight budget, you need more design flexibility, or you want an all-in-one platform that scales with you. We’ve got you, and you don’t have to settle.
These 10 Shopify alternatives are building and scaling commerce businesses of all sizes — without spending top dollar. Let’s dig in.
What you’ll learn:
Features to look for in a commerce platform
According to the latest Small and Medium Business Trends Report, 76% of SMBs are investing more in technology because the right platform is important for long-term success. Here are the commerce platform features you should prioritize for your business:
Built-in sales and marketing: Your ideal platform should offer marketing tools for search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, marketing analytics, and social media marketing.
Unified storefront experience: To centralize products, customer data, and commerce sales in one place, creating a consistent experience whether online or in-store.
Comprehensive ecommerce solutions: From setting up an online store to using an order management system (OMS) — go for a tool that supports all your ecommerce logistics.
Reporting and analytics: Performance dashboards offer insights into sales and revenue, customer behavior, and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
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Why consider Shopify alternatives?
While Shopify is a household name, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on your business model, budget, and long-term objectives, you may find other solutions more suitable. Shopify users may end up paying $500 for design templates and basic features, which can be challenging as a business grows. That’s why customers who switch from Shopify see a 27% increase in return on investment (ROI) and a 30% productivity boost.
Here are a few more reasons SMBs are looking for Shopify alternatives:
- Customization: While Shopify themes are a good starting point, advanced design and functionality changes often require custom coding or expensive apps.
- Scalability: As your business scales, Shopify’s standard plans become restrictive, forcing you to upgrade to the more expensive Shopify Plus plan for additional features.
- Support: While Shopify offers support, getting technical help can be a challenge. You may have to rely on developers or community forums for solutions.
Top 10 Shopify alternatives for startups and SMBs
We’ve selected the top Shopify alternatives with an average star rating of 4.2 or above on the software comparison website G2. To help you plan for the future, we’ve rated each platform’s scalability on a 1-10 scale, so you can see which options can grow with your business.
1. Starter Suite
Starter Suite is an all-in-one customer relationship management (CRM) solution built for small commerce businesses. It offers a simple way to create a digital storefront, manage products, and accept payments — even with limited technical expertise. In addition to features for commerce, it unifies important features across marketing, sales, service, and productivity. This way, you can run your store, enhance customer experience, and track your sales from a single dashboard.
Starter Suite is designed to get your data ready for AI, and grow with your business. And, as your business expands, it can seamlessly handle more orders and global commerce — without having to completely overhaul your systems.
Who it’s for: Small businesses, entrepreneurs, and those looking to get started with a commerce platform
What it can do:
- Online storefront: Our storefront builder offers free templates and drag-and-drop features to set up your store — even without technical and design skills.
- Product listings: Assign accurate, consistent categories to products on your ecommerce website to make sure they show up in search results.
- Strong analytics: Monitor key metrics like conversion rates, website traffic, and cart abandonment.
- Promotion creation: Use existing templates for promotions or customize them to boost customer retention and revenue.
- Seamless checkout: Simplify your checkout process with Salesforce’s trusted merchant services for payments, taxes, and shipping.
- Unified dashboard: Get a 360-degree view of your customer information, leads, and sales performance. This provides a better understanding of your overall business.
- Better segmentation: Hyper-personalize your product recommendations and marketing campaigns, as Starter Suite allows segmenting customers and buyer groups.
How it benefits SMBs: Starter Suite helps you improve your average order value (AOV) with an eye-catching website, dynamic landing pages, and promotions. Faster and more effective marketing is possible, thanks to email templates and campaign analytics. Starter Suite enables SEO-friendly product listing pages that boost your visibility in search and navigation.
Improve customer satisfaction by delivering contextual, personalized service. Resolve issues from anywhere, anytime with the Salesforce Mobile App. Commerce operations are more streamlined with Salesforce’s native checkout capabilities — from payments and taxes to shipping, we got it covered.
How it scales business (1-10): 10
What it costs: $25 per user per month and offers a free 30-day trial.
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2. Pro Suite
Pro Suite is a flexible CRM suite built for growing commerce businesses. It expands on the Starter Suite’s core features to provide advanced tools to handle more complex sales, service, and marketing needs. Pro Suite can seamlessly handle growing volumes and customers. It makes your life easier with advanced customizations and automation for scaling and building a sustainable business without significant investment.
Who it’s for: Growing midsize businesses or those competing with large enterprises, and startups scaling fast
What it can do:
- Seamless payments: Pro Suite offers a simple checkout feature within your digital store and through email. Your customers can choose their preferred payment method.
- In-app and web messaging: Offer customer support through your storefront and mobile app, enabling commerce customers to contact you from anywhere they access your store.
- Comprehensive self-service: Implement chatbots and create self-service portals (online knowledge bases) for customers to resolve common concerns.
- Deeper analytics: Create custom reports and dashboards to gain deeper insights into your key performance indicators (KPIs), like email click-through rate (CTR) or sales performance.
- Automation: Set workflows to get things moving fast, including repetitive tasks and routing customer queries to the right agents.
- Diverse integrations: Access Salesforce AppExchange, a marketplace for apps and integrations that enhance your CRM capabilities, for free.
How it benefits SMBs: Pro Suite comes with advanced features and customizations to help scale your commerce business. You’ll convert B2B customers faster with customized pricing structures and discounts. Customer experiences are enhanced, thanks to merchandising tools that allow you to curate product displays and customize your offerings based on sales insights. Understand customers and business operations better with a unified dashboard. Use that data to attract more customers with creative promotions tailored to your business needs.
Increase your marketing ROI with precise audience segmentation and email nurtures that recommend the best times for running campaigns. Also, Pro Suite makes it easy to manage your marketing, providing a complete view of all your channels and activities — from social media to every other touchpoint — in one place. Its security features, including multi-factor authentication (MFA) and data encryption, protect your business from cyber threats.
How it scales business (1-10): 10
What it costs: $100 per user per month and a free 30-day trial.
Pro tip: Learn a wide range of business skills, like social commerce strategies, setting up your online store, and preparing your commerce business for holiday season on Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform. These engaging, hands-on courses will prepare you for the evolving business needs.
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3. Ecwid
Ecwid, short for Ecommerce Widget, is an ecommerce platform that allows you to add a shopping cart to an existing website, blog, or social media page. It provides a simple code snippet that you can embed anywhere, allowing you to start selling immediately. Ecwid also offers free content blocks and templates to help you set up an online store.
Who it’s for: SMBs and social media-based sellers
What it can do:
- Customizable templates: Set up your online store with templates and customize them to meet your brand guidelines. No coding or design skills required to get started.
- Mobile-responsive store: Ecwid supports online stores across various devices and screens.
- Single dashboard: Get a unified view to access all your customer interactions and purchase history.
- One-tap checkout: Connect your store to Lightspeed Payments or Stripe to enable one-click checkout for faster payments.
- Free domain: Ecwid offers a free custom domain name, allowing you to personalize your storefront.
How it benefits SMBs: Save time, and start selling easily by embedding a code snippet to your existing website or blog. Customizable design templates allow you to set up an online store to match your brand identity. Payments are smooth and secure with integrated payment gateway tools. You’ll expand your market presence with multichannel selling that helps attract different customer segments. Also, Ecwid doesn’t charge any transaction fees, making it a cost-effective solution.
How it scales business (1-10): 6
What it costs: $5 per user per month
4. Gumroad
Gumroad is an ecommerce platform for digital creators to sell products such as ebooks, online courses, and music directly to their audience. It offers a straightforward, no-code solution for creating an online store and managing payments and sales. The platform operates on a revenue-sharing model, taking a percentage cut from each sale. However, early-stage entrepreneurs may find the transaction fees high.
Who it’s for: Influencers, creators, and solopreneurs
What it can do:
- Content-based selling: Creators and freelancers can sell digital products like comics, ebooks, and art without a complicated setup.
- Memberships and subscriptions: Create and manage recurring revenue streams by offering memberships or subscriptions to your content.
- Payment gateway: Gumroad handles all payment processing and security, providing a straightforward, built-in payment gateway for your customers.
- Sales insights: Track your sales and customer data to gain valuable insights into what’s working and who your audience is.
How it benefits SMBs: Gumroad is a good starting point for creators and influencers selling digital content — especially those who aren’t tech-savvy. Save time by using the free templates and payment solutions to set up your online store. Diversify your revenue streams with multiple monetization opportunities, from one-time sales to subscriptions. Enhance your products and services with sales analytics that help you understand customer behavior and make data-driven decisions.
How it scales business (1-10): 6
What it costs: Varies per user as Gumroad charges a commission on each sale
5. HubSpot Commerce Hub
HubSpot Commerce Hub is a suite of tools that helps businesses get paid faster by simplifying the entire quote-to-revenue process. It offers invoice management, payment links, and quotes to manage revenue and automate billing. However, you’ll have to buy other HubSpot products or integrate it with third-party tools to set up your online store or run marketing activities.
Who it’s for: Early-stage SMBs
What it can do:
- Invoice management: Track and manage your invoices and payment schedules within your Commerce Hub.
- Payment links: Generate payment links and sell from anywhere: email, website, and forms.
- Fast checkout: Get a clear overview of orders, recurring items, and discounts, enabling seamless shopping with online payment methods.
- Billing automation: It can handle repetitive tasks, such as payment collection and renewing subscriptions or services.
How it benefits SMBs: Get paid on time and manage all your invoices, quotes, and payment links from the tool. The HubSpot Commerce Hub centralizes payment and order data, providing a quick summary of each customer’s AOV. Save time with simple automation for tasks like subscription management and billing.
How it scales business (1-10): 3
What it costs: Get started for free, with platform fees waived for the first 60 days. Transaction and platform fees vary per user.
6. PrestaShop
PrestaShop is an open-source platform for building a customizable online store. It’s self-hosted, and offers complete control and ownership of your data. The free “Classic” version offers unlimited users and a free theme to create your website. PrestaShop’s payment solutions are integrated with PayPal, enabling a smooth checkout experience for your customers.
Who it’s for: Small businesses and entrepreneurs
What it can do:
- Online store builder: Build a simple online store, and customize its design and functionality to meet your brand guidelines.
- Extensive module library: Extend your store’s capabilities with thousands of paid modules and themes — from product management to analytics.
- Multi-language and currency support: Expand globally as it supports multiple languages and currencies, making your store accessible to international customers.
- SEO tools: Built-in SEO features for marketing on Google, Instagram, and Facebook help you optimize your store and product pages to rank higher in search engine results.
How it benefits SMBs: Attract customers with PrestaShop’s mobile-responsive sites, which work across various devices and screen sizes. With multiple user profiles, sell unlimited products while keeping costs under control. You’re more discoverable on Google Search, as PrestaShop supports displaying products on Google. This can help you tweak your marketing strategy for better results.
How it scales business (1-10): 7
What it costs: $33 per month and offers a 14-day free trial
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7. Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop is an ecommerce platform for building and managing your online store. It comes with customizable website templates, payment processing, and inventory management. Shift4Shop reduces vendor juggling by combining marketing, fraud detection, and shipping in one platform. Free and paid plans make it accessible to businesses of different sizes and budgets.
Who it’s for: Small businesses and entrepreneurs
What it can do:
- Website builder: Customizable templates and responsive designs for creating your ecommerce website, even without coding knowledge.
- Abandoned cart recovery: Automatically sends targeted emails to customers who abandon their carts, helping you reclaim lost sales.
- Social media selling: Integrates with Facebook and Instagram to sell directly on social media and reach more customers.
- Reporting dashboard: Comprehensive analytics to track sales performance, customer behavior, and store traffic, helping you make data-driven decisions.
How it benefits SMBs: Offer consistent shopping experiences across all devices and reach customers wherever they browse. Generate more traffic with built-in SEO tools, which improve search engine rankings and online discoverability. Customers get a smooth checkout experience as Shift4Shop accepts multiple payment methods.
How it scales business (1-10): 8
What it costs: $39 per month
8. Square Online
Square Online is a free solution for small commerce businesses. It comes with a website builder and integrates with Square’s point-of-sale (POS) system. Manage online and in-person sales, inventory, and orders from a single dashboard. This unified approach simplifies commerce operations, making it easy to grow your business — from one sales channel to multiple channels.
Who it’s for: Small businesses
What it can do:
- SEO-optimized storefront: Build a professional, search-engine-friendly store using the prebuilt design templates and site layouts.
- Social commerce: Sell directly on social media channels to their social scrolls into actual revenue opportunities.
- Logistics management: Simplify shipping and local deliveries with integrated tools to handle your fulfillment process.
- All-in-one POS: Connect your online store with in-person sales to manage inventory, orders, and customer data — all from one place.
How it benefits SMBs: You’ll know your customers better and serve them exactly what they need, when they need it. With everything — from deliveries and bookings to loyalty programs and invoices — managed in one simple dashboard, spend less time juggling systems and more time growing your business.
How it scales business (1-10): 8
What it costs: Free for basic plan, with a processing fee of $3 upward.
9. Squarespace
Squarespace is an ecommerce platform that offers templates and a website builder to launch your small business. Their mobile-responsive design templates created for all kinds of businesses — from real estate to fitness. It provides a suite of tools for invoice management, and selling your products, memberships, and services online.
Who it’s for: Early-stage businesses and creative entrepreneurs who prioritize clean, visual experiences.
What it can do:
- Online store builder: Customizable templates to create an online store and showcase products that align with your brand.
- Event scheduler: Easily manage bookings for appointments, classes, and other services with an integrated scheduling tool.
- Create courses: Squarespace allows you to build and sell online courses, providing a platform to share your expertise and generate revenue.
- Invoice management: Simplify your finances by creating and sending professional invoices to customers directly from your dashboard.
How it benefits SMBs: One of the key benefits of using Squarespace is that you get a free domain name. Your products are more discoverable with built-in guidance for improving your search rankings. Get more conversions as you personalize your marketing efforts with insights into website traffic, traffic sources, and popular content pieces. Built-in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities can help you create content.
How it scales business (1-10): 7
What it costs: $16 per user per month
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Here's your free e-book!10. Wix eCommerce
Wix eCommerce is an ecommerce platform to create online stores with drag-and-drop tools and customizable templates. From capturing leads to tracking analytics, Wix offers key features to manage your business effectively. It provides mobile-responsive designs and built-in marketing features, including SEO optimization and email marketing, to support customer acquisition and retention.
Who it’s for: Early-stage startups
What it can do:
- Capture quality leads: Automatically capture leads from your website, survey forms, quizzes, and registration forms.
- Google ad management: Reach your target market by running advertisements on all Google products, including YouTube and Google Search.
- Analytics dashboard: Get insights and recommendations on your website performance, revenue, and what’s driving traffic.
How it benefits SMBs: Stay more organized by easily moving from spreadsheets to an ecommerce platform. Boost your credibility as a business with a beautiful, mobile-optimized online store. Your decisions are data-driven as you analyze user behavior and sales cycles more deeply. And get a free domain name for a year.
How it scales business (1-10): 5
What it costs: $17 per month for two users
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Top resources for commerce
Picking the right CRM is a big deal. We’ve put together some great resources, all backed by Salesforce’s own research, so you can feel confident about your choice:
State of Commerce: The State of Commerce Report reports highlights on Commerce AI and provides insights into key commerce trends, including the rise of unified commerce and the demand for more seamless online and in-person experiences.
CRM Buyer’s Guide: Our CRM Buyer’s Guide video series answers your most important questions about choosing the right platform, and why successful businesses choose Salesforce.
Start Selling Online with Storefronts in Starter, Pro, and Foundations: Start Selling Online with Storefronts in Starter, Pro, and Foundations is a Salesforce webinar exclusively created for small and growing businesses like yours. Learn about automation and achieving unified customer journeys by integrating commerce with sales, service, and marketing.
Webinar: Start Selling Online with Storefronts in Starter, Pro, and Foundations
Trailblazer Community: Salesforce’s Trailblazer Community is a global network of Salesforce users, entrepreneurs, and experts. Salesforce Small and Medium Business Hub and Commerce Trailblazers are great learning spaces.
Create an Online Store in 7 Steps or Less: In our Salesforce Explained YouTube video with Brian Tong, “Create an Online Store in 7 Steps or Less,” learn about using Starter Suite for setting up your store. This includes demos to help you get started without unnecessary complexities.
Salesforce — your best Shopify alternative for small business
While Shopify is a solid choice, the Starter and Pro Suites go a step further and help SMBs win big. With a 360-degree view of your business, you’ll manage everything — commerce, sales, service, marketing — from a single place. And the best part? All the tools you need to build long-lasting customer relationships and succeed are packed right in there. Get started with Starter Suite today. Looking for more customization? Explore Pro Suite.
Already a Salesforce customer? Activate Foundations and try out Agentforce 360 today.
AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Salesforce for Small Business is a free CRM suite for businesses to get started. Gumroad is another low-cost option that operates on a revenue-sharing model, making it easy for creators to get started without a monthly fee.
When choosing an ecommerce platform for a startup or a small business, prioritize features like a simple setup, one to two users, scalability, and built-in sales and marketing tools to attract your first customers.
For beginners, platforms that are simple and quick to set up are ideal. Ecwid is perfect for those who already have a website, as you can simply embed a code snippet to start selling. Starter Suite is also beginner-friendly, providing a free trial and intuitive platform to build a professional online store without any coding.
Several platforms offer free plans for startups and small businesses. Ecwid provides a free plan that allows you to sell up to five products. Salesforce Free Suite offers a free plan with no monthly fees, a website builder, and various features across sales, marketing, and service.
Some disadvantages of Shopify may be higher costs, design, and functionality limitations, often requiring expensive third-party apps or custom coding. As your business grows, you may have to upgrade to the pricier Shopify Plus plan for advanced features.
