Best Shopify Alternatives in 2026

Leaving Shopify is a margin decision, not a feature hunt. The Grow subscription is the small line on the invoice, and the third-party gateway fee is the charge that grows with every order you take outside Shopify Payments. Full checkout customization sits on Plus, which starts at $2,300 a month, so a store that needs its own checkout logic is choosing that plan or a platform that does not lock the feature there.

This page is for operators, DTC founders, and merchandisers who already run a store and are pricing a move. Our Shopify review covers the platform you would be leaving, and the cheaper Shopify alternatives piece prices a $10,000-a-month store, which answers a smaller-volume question than the one below. If the sticker price is the only pain, start there. If the gateway fee or the Plus wall is the pain, the totals on this page are the ones to use.

A Shopify alternative is a commerce platform that runs the catalog, cart, and checkout in place of Shopify. Hosted plans charge a subscription and run the servers, while self-hosted plans charge for hosting and extensions, and the software fee can be zero.

The two exits are different, and pricing the wrong one makes the migration look cheaper than it is. One is a payment constraint: the processor is not Shopify Payments, so Grow adds its third-party percentage on top of the processor's own charge. The other is a product constraint: checkout customization is listed as limited on Basic, Grow, and Advanced, and full only on Plus. A store with neither problem usually spends less by staying than by rebuilding elsewhere.

BigCommerce and WooCommerce are the two exits that can take a mid-size catalog without turning the move into a website rebuild. The other six fit a narrower shop: a design-led catalog, a Square register, a site you already run, a maker's assortment, or an enterprise quote.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, evaluated 108 ecommerce platforms for its ecommerce platform ranking. Shopify was the most compared platform on Toolradar over the last 90 days, with 411 side-by-side comparisons, as of October 17, 2026.

Operators run those comparisons because they are pricing a switch, and a wrong stay is the fee already on the invoice. On the scenario later in this page, Grow plus the third-party fee runs $82 a month more than BigCommerce Scale when the gateway is embedded, or $984 over a year, before redirects, apps, and customer accounts. The cost of a wrong leave is the reverse: if Shopify Payments is available, that gateway surcharge is off the invoice, and the hosted swap can cost more than staying.

We priced Shopify and these eight alternatives on each vendor's own pricing page on October 17, 2026. The ranking follows the reason for leaving, not the lowest sticker. BigCommerce is first because it is the hosted peer a mid-size catalog can move to without taking on servers. WooCommerce is second because it removes the platform fee for a team that will run hosting.

The other six are fit picks, and each card names the store that should skip it. Retailpresso does not run a test lab, so nothing here is a timed migration or a conversion test. How we compared: each price is the vendor's published price, next to the plan limit, with one sales volume worked out in public. How we rate pages is at our how we rate page.

Prices were read on October 17, 2026, on Shopify pricing, BigCommerce pricing, WooCommerce pricing, WooPayments fees, Squarespace pricing, Square pricing, Wix plans, Wix Payments fees, Ecwid pricing, Big Cartel pricing, Magento Open Source, and Adobe Commerce pricing.

The scenario is one store on Grow, billed monthly, that cannot use Shopify Payments, with $40,000 a month in gross order value. Grow's monthly plan is $105, and the third-party fee on that order value is $400, so the platform layer is $505 before the gateway's own card rate. Card processing is extra on every option, so it stays out of the comparison, and a lower platform bill can still lose to a worse card rate.

BigCommerce defines GMV as gross order value minus 10% when it sets plan thresholds, which on this store is $36,000. A year of that volume is far past Growth's $100,000 trailing cap, so the honest comparison is Scale, not the mid-tier price.

Scale includes $33,333 a month in GMV, the amount over that cap is $2,667, and at 0.9% the overage is $24. Scale's monthly plan is $399, so the bill is $423 when the gateway is embedded. Stripe, PayPal, and Adyen are on that list, and the gap versus Grow is $82 a month, or $984 a year, only while the processor stays on it.

The gap reverses if the gateway is off the embedded list. Scale's open-provider fee is 0.6% of eligible order GMV, which on the same reduced GMV is $216, so Scale then costs $639, or $134 more than staying on Grow. Upgrading to Advanced instead of leaving is also $639 at this volume, because the fee on the gross order value is $240 and that total does not beat staying.

If you can use Shopify Payments, drop the gateway surcharge and rerun the math, because this scenario no longer applies. Plan-by-plan Shopify numbers are in our Shopify pricing breakdown, and the WordPress side is in WooCommerce pricing.

Move to BigCommerce when the store is already hosted, the catalog is past a starter shop, and the processor is one BigCommerce lists as embedded. That path can beat Grow without asking the team to run servers. Move to WooCommerce when the team already runs WordPress and will own updates, because the platform fee goes away only if someone hosts the store. The Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison is the longer version of that split.

Choose a lighter platform only when the catalog matches it, not because the software line looks smaller. Squarespace from Core up is the design-led case, and Shopify vs Squarespace prices the plans against each other. Wix is the case where the marketing site and the shop are one project, covered in Shopify vs Wix. Square Online is the case where the register is already Square, which our Square POS review and POS ranking cover from the counter side.

Ecwid fits when the website stays and only the cart is added, which suits a small catalog and fails when the cart is the whole business. Big Cartel is the maker shop, and Adobe Commerce is the quote for a team that has outgrown Plus and has developers.

A store chasing the lowest total at a smaller sales level should use the cheaper-alternatives scenario instead. A store that wants a $0 software line, and will accept a free tier's limits, should read free ecommerce website options. The wider field, including Shopify, is in our ecommerce platform ranking.