Shopify alternatives in 2026, from someone who doesn't sell Shopify
Who should stay on Shopify, who shouldn't, and an honest look at WooCommerce, PrestaShop and BigCommerce for stores doing $30k a month and up.
Most "Shopify alternatives" articles are written by the alternative. This one is written by a small engineering company that fixes WooCommerce and PrestaShop stores and turns Shopify work away, so take the bias into account – it is at least a different bias.
First: who should stay on Shopify
If you're under about $20k a month, have no developer and don't want one, and everything you need is covered by the plan plus two or three apps, stay. Shopify's checkout converts well, the admin is good, nothing breaks on a Friday night. We'd tell you the same thing on a call, and we don't get paid for that answer.
The people who should be reading the rest of this are the ones who already know why they're here: the bill (we added it up in what Shopify really costs), the checkout you can't touch below Plus, the app that got acquired and tripled its price, or the simple fact that the store is the business and you'd like to own it.
WooCommerce
WordPress plus the WooCommerce plugin. Free software, your server, your code. It runs more stores than anything else on the web – roughly 6.6% of all measurable sites, more than Shopify.
Good for: stores with a lot of content around the products (guides, blog, comparisons), B2B with custom pricing, anything where you want to change how checkout or the catalogue works without asking permission. The plugin ecosystem has something for everything, and most of it is a one-off purchase or a small yearly licence rather than a monthly percentage.
The honest downside: that same ecosystem is why so many WooCommerce stores are slow and fragile. Twenty plugins, three of them doing the same job, a theme from 2019, shared hosting. It gets slow for boring reasons, and if nobody is responsible for it, it stays slow. We wrote up why WooCommerce stores get painfully slow and the fixes are on the WooCommerce page.
Who runs it: you need someone. Not full time, but someone whose job it is. That's the trade: you save the platform fee and lose the "somebody else's problem" part of Shopify.
PrestaShop
Open source, PHP, built for e-commerce from the start rather than bolted onto a blog. Very strong in Europe – France, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Balkans – and it handles multi-language, multi-currency, VAT rules and B2B catalogues natively, which is where Shopify starts needing apps.
Good for: stores selling across European countries, large catalogues with complex attributes, anyone who wants a real e-commerce data model rather than WordPress posts pretending to be products.
The honest downside: the upgrade path. A lot of stores are stuck on 1.6 or 1.7 with modules that won't survive the jump, and a failed upgrade takes checkout down. It's the single most common reason people call us. PrestaShop 9.1 is genuinely good; getting there from 1.6 is a project, not a button. Here's how we do those migrations.
Who runs it: same answer as WooCommerce. Someone.
BigCommerce
The closest thing to Shopify that isn't Shopify: hosted, monthly plan, no server. Entry plan around $39 a month, and the point most people move for: no extra transaction fee when you use your own payment gateway.
Good for: stores that want Shopify's model with fewer of Shopify's tolls, and don't want to own a server.
The honest downside: it's still rented. The plans have annual sales thresholds that bump you up a tier whether you asked or not, the theme and app ecosystem is smaller, and you're back to "can I do X? – only on the enterprise plan" for a different set of X. We don't work on it, so we won't pretend to know it as deeply as the two above.
What about Wix, Squarespace, Ecwid?
Fine for a small store that's mostly a website with a shop attached. Not alternatives for anyone doing $30k a month. If you've outgrown Shopify you've outgrown these twice over.
How to actually choose
Ignore feature lists. Answer three questions.
Do you sell mainly into the US, or across several countries? Mainly US and English: WooCommerce or BigCommerce. Several countries, several languages, VAT: PrestaShop.
Is the store more content or more catalogue? Content-heavy: WooCommerce. Ten thousand SKUs with attributes and tiered pricing: PrestaShop.
Will you pay someone to be responsible for it? If the answer is no, stay hosted – Shopify or BigCommerce. An open-source store nobody looks after is worse than an expensive hosted one. If the answer is yes, either open-source option will cost you less over three years and you'll own the result. This is the part people skip, and it's the part that decides whether the move works.
For a sense of what "looked after" changes, the Kozelj store went from a Google speed score of 44 to 99 after an upgrade – same products, same business, different underneath.
If you're weighing this for a store doing $30k a month or more, we'll tell you honestly which way to go, including "stay". Book a call.