5 Best Shopify Competitors and Alternatives for Your Dropshipping Business

Based out of Canada, Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce solutions that helps to come up with interactive online stores without any hassle. While Shopify has some of the best-in-class features, there are times when users look for Shopify alternatives.

Therefore, to help you make up your mind, I have come up with the best Shopify competitors that you can explore to set up your dropshipping store.

Things to Know about Shopify

Before we discuss some of the popular Shopify competitors, let’s get to know the basic features of the platform. It is a user-friendly all-in-one platform that is trusted by some of the biggest eCommerce store owners in the world. Here are a few of the major reasons why you should consider using Shopify to set up your online store as well:

· User-friendly

One of the best things about Shopify is that the platform is extremely easy to use and is friendly to beginners. It is available in different languages, and you can create your store’s interface with simple drag-and-drop actions.

· Easy to Manage

There are tons of automatic features to manage your online store on Shopify. For instance, you can automatically calculate shipping charges, work on taxes, remind customers, and so on.

· Tons of Features

You can explore numerous features like email templates, fulfillment centers, customer profiles, and more – all in one place.

· What More?

Apart from that, you can also integrate tons of SEO practices in Shopify and can even sell your products on social media platforms like Facebook. Shopify also provides a 256-bit SSL layer of security and is known for its responsive customer support.

Limitations of Shopify

· While Shopify is recommended for small and medium-scale stores, it can be tough to get customized results for large online stores.

· Compared to other online platforms, Shopify is a bit expensive.

· Shopify has limited features for content management (like fewer AR tools and carousel display options).

· The mobile app shopping support provided by Shopify is quite limited.

5 Best Alternatives to Shopify

As you can see, Shopify has several advantages with a couple of limitations. Therefore, if you are looking for any other platform for your dropshipping store, then you can consider the following Shopify alternatives.

1. Wix

Wix is one of the most popular Shopify competitors that has been around since 2006. Similarly, it is a user-friendly website builder that has dedicated dropshipping tools that you can further explore.

Wix is mostly recommended for beginners as you can easily come up with a customized online store using its website builder.

· It has tons of readily available themes for online stores that you can customize.

· Wix features a user-friendly website builder with tons of plugins to pick from.

· Includes automatic plans for marketing, secure payment gateways, and other options.

· It has limited integration options with third-party applications.

· You can’t integrate Apple Pay or Amazon Payments into your Wix store as of now.

· Its premium plans can get a bit expensive in the long run.

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin that is owned by WordPress. If you are looking for free Shopify alternatives, then WooCommerce would be an ideal option.

Though, if you want to explore its advanced features, then you can subscribe to WooCommerce’s premium plan.

· The basic version of WooCommerce is freely available.

· Seamless integration with WordPress (for free website creation).

· You can access numerous SEO tools and hundreds of plugins.

· Your store would be heavily dependent on WordPress extensions and plugins.

· It can be a bit time-consuming to create and manage a WooCommerce store.

· The overall customer support provided by WooCommerce is not on par with that of other solutions.

3. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the oldest players in the industry and provides dedicated services to create and manage your online store.

There are also advanced content marketing features to work on SEO tactics for your store.

· Without coding, you can come up with your store’s interface via its dedicated website builder tool.

· It provides omnichannel selling features (to sell your products on Facebook or Instagram).

· BigCommerce offers numerous plugins and supports 50+ different payments gateways.

· Only a few themes for online stores are available for free and you have to pay extra to use some plugins.

· Learning how to use its advanced SEO features can be a bit tough.

· Its overall store creation and integration steps could be simplified.

4. Magento

Even though Magento was founded in 2007, it underwent a drastic change after being acquired by Adobe in 2018.

Now, Magento provides tons of themes and smart solutions to manage your store, making it one of the best Shopify competitors.

· The best part about Magento is that it is an open-source platform that is quite robust.

· Magento also provides a wide range of cloud-based solutions that can easily be applied to your store.

· Since Magento has an extensive ecosystem of developers, you can find several resourceful extensions and plugins, such as one step checkout, free gift,  product feed and SEO.

· Compared to Shopify or Wix, Magento has a significant learning curve.

· You would require third-party hosting services to implement Magento.

· No dedicated customer support.

5. Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop was started way back in 1994 and is still considered one of the best solutions to host an online store.

It is one of the most affordable Shopify alternatives that is highly recommended for small business owners.

· You can implement excellent SEO practices with the inbuilt features of Shift4Shop.

· By integrating your store with Google AMP, you can make your platform mobile-friendly.

· It supports 70+ different payment gateways with no additional transaction fee.

· Learning Shift4Shop can take a while (not as user-friendly as Shopify).

· There are only a handful of free themes for online stores and a lot of them are outdated.

· It provides a limited scope of integration with third-party plugins and applications.

Empower Your Dropshipping Store with DSers

Choosing a front-end solution to create your store is only a job half-done. You would need a powerful platform like DSers to run the overall operations of your store.

It is the official dropshipping solution by AliExpress that is available for free and would let you come up with an ideal catalog for your store from its extensive list of suppliers.

· Automatic Processing

Make the most of your time by automatically syncing tracking numbers of your products or updating their order statuses.

· Supplier Optimizer

This unique feature in DSers will let you find a better supplier with the best-rated services and maximum profit generation.

· Order Management

You can make orders in a bulk and even map different variants in your store. There are also dedicated features for product division and stock management.

· Other Features

There are tons of other features that you can explore in DSers like automatic pricing, bundle products, shipping settings, and more.

Conclusion

After reading this post, you would be able to know more about Shopify and all the high-end features that it offers. Even though Shopify provides an affordable and hassle-free solution to create your online store, you might look for its alternatives.

Therefore, you can explore all the top Shopify competitors and alternatives that are listed in this guide. Besides that, you can also take the assistance of a tool like DSers to find the perfect products for your store and run it like a pro with its advanced back-end features.