How to Close a Shopify Store and Pick Its Best Alternative

When we talk about platforms to create or manage online stores, Shopify is one of the first names that come to our minds. Even though Shopify might seem like an ideal platform for beginners, a lot of pros consider using its alternatives.

Don’t worry – you can also close your Shopify store and move to any other platform. Here, we will let you know how to close a Shopify store and what other platforms you can consider for hosting your eCommerce store instead:

Why You Might Wish to Close a Shopify Store?

Before we learn how to close a Shopify store, let’s quickly consider some of the major reasons why users move away from it.

Lack of Customization

One of the major disadvantages of Shopify is that it only offers limited options for us to customize our store. For instance, when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, there are limited options.

Expensive

While Shopify’s basic plan is not that expensive, it only has limited features. If you want to access more features, then you need to spend a lot for its premium plans or buy third-party plugins separately.

Content Management

The overall Content Management System of Shopify also has fewer options to showcase products. A lot of Shopify users find it hard to host product carousels, videos, or AR shopping tools.

Scalability

While Shopify is ideal for small eCommerce stores, it can’t handle millions of customers or an extensive catalog. Furthermore, you won’t have 100% authority over your data, which would make it harder for you to scale up your business.

How to Close a Shopify Store: A Stepwise Solution

As you can see, there could be multiple reasons for closing a Shopify store. Even though it is a simple process, there are a couple of things that you need to take care of in advance.

Things to do before closing a Shopify Store:

• At first, make sure that there are no pending Shopify dues. Sadly, Shopify won’t offer a refund so you might not get any pre-paid amount after closing the store.
• If you are using any third-party add-ons or plugins on your Shopify account, then you need to cancel their subscription and uninstall them.
• In case you were using a custom domain, then go to its DNS settings, and redirect it accordingly.
• You can also go to your store’s settings and export the entire catalog as a CSV file. This will help you migrate your products to any other platform.

Great! Now when you are all prepped up, you can learn how to close a Shopify store by following these steps:

Step 1: Go to Your Shopify Account Settings

To start with, just log in to your Shopify store as an administrator and click on the “Settings” option from the sidebar. From the available options, just visit your Account Settings on Shopify.

Step 2: Choose to Close Your Shopify Store

Once you enter your Account Settings, scroll a little to find the “Store Status” option. Out of all the listed options to pause or close your account, click on the “Sell or Close Store” feature.

Step 3: Close Your Shopify Store Successfully

To validate your action, you need to enter the administrative password of your Shopify store here. After entering the correct password, click on the “Close Store” button at the end.

Once your store is closed by Shopify, you will get 30 days to reclaim it (by simply going to its account settings). Though, if it has been more than 30 days, then you need to get in touch with Shopify’s customer support to reclaim your account.

3 Best Alternatives to Shopify to Create Your Online Store

Learning how to close a Shopify store is quite simple and a lot of people do it to move to other platforms. If you have the same intentions, then you can consider exploring the following alternatives to Shopify instead.

1. Wix

Wix is one of the most popular alternatives to Shopify to create dynamic websites and dropshipping stores. There are all kinds of plans on Wix that are ideal for small or medium-scale business owners.

• Wix provides plans for different storage spaces, letting you scale up your store easily.
• The overall Content Management System of Wix is more intuitive than Shopify’s and would let you add product images, carousels, and videos easily.
• There are tons of editable templates in Wix that would let you come up with a customized store without any technical hassle.
• You can also set up better SEO preferences in Wix and integrate your account with several third-party plugins.

• There is still limited number of apps in Wix, and you would be restricted to its native environment.
• Shopify has more payment options than Wix as of now.
• Unlike Shopify, there are no inbuilt options for tax calculations in Wix.

2. WooCommerce

Owned by Automattic (the parent company of WordPress), WooCommerce is an open-source platform that can turn any WordPress website into an eCommerce store. Unlike Shopify or Wix, WooCommerce provides extensive options to customize your store.

• It is extremely easy to include a WooCommerce plugin and setting up an online store on your WordPress website.
• There are dedicated options like inventory management, sales reports, customer insights, and so on.
• WooCommerce is extremely flexible, and it is super-easy to customize it by including tools like PayPal, Square, Tax Jar, Google Ads, and more.

• You might be required to pay separately for all kinds of extensions.
• While there are multiple plugins, they can make your website a bit heavy and affect its accessibility.

3. Magento

Powering more than 100,000 online stores, Magento is one of the most popular options to create eCommerce stores. It is pretty flexible and has some of the most advanced features for small and big businesses.

• With basic drag and drop features, you can come up with a customized eCommerce store however you like.
• Magento is extremely scalable and offers a wide range of features to integrate your store with several dropshipping tools.
• There are all kinds of plugins to manage your store, inventory, billings, taxes, and so on.
• After being acquired by Adobe, Magento has been integrated with numerous Adobe solutions.

• Compared to other tools, creating a Magento store is a bit time-consuming.
• Only the basic version of Magento is free and its enterprise version can be expensive in the long run.

DSers: The Official AliExpress Dropshipping Tool

You might already know that setting up an online eCommerce store is only half the job. Finding the right products and dropshipping clients would be the backbone of your store.

Therefore, you can consider using DSers, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool. As you know, AliExpress is one of the most-picked dropshipping platform for online sellers to source from. With DSers, all the dropshipping process will be way easier to operate. DSers also supports Wix and WooCommerce now, so don't hesitate to take advantage of it with your online store business!

One of the best things about DSers is that it gives us the freedom to browse thousands of sellers in one place. It also offers a Supplier Optimizer feature that would help you pick the best supplier for any product (with maximum profit margins).

Apart from that, you can also automate several processes like updating order statuses and syncing tracking numbers via DSers. You can place orders in a bulk, create customized bundles, set up multiple variants, and do so much more to manage your store like a pro.

As you can see, it is pretty easy to learn how to close a Shopify store. If you want, you can even pause your store temporarily and restart it whenever you want.

Besides that, there are several other platforms like Wix and WooCommerce where you can migrate your store. Though, if you want to get profitable results with your dropshipping store, then simply use DSers.

It is the official AliExpress Dropshipping platform that offers tons of advanced features for managing your store like a pro.