E-Commerce is short for “electronic commerce.”
Some tools make buying and selling possible and smooth on the internet.
For example, you pay when you buy something online. Payment processors and payment gateways make it easy for merchants to receive payments on their websites.
So, you don’t have to worry about writing and mailing checks. You also don’t worry about safety issues after giving your credit card details and personal information online.
For merchants to connect payment processors and gateways with their stores and a host of other things, they need an e-commerce platform.
That is where a tool like Magento comes in.
Magento is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms that make buying and selling online easy.
The tool offers a blend of scalability, flexibility, and extensibility at your fingertips.
It gives you all the world-class features you need to run your store 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week, nonstop.
The great thing is that Magento is a free and open source software. That means talented web developers are working hard to make it better and safer for e-commerce stores and web shoppers.
Magento is a powerful e-commerce platform that has a thriving community behind it.
But for you to be able to use Magento, you need to understand PHP and know how to code well.
This is a major obstacle for many who want to use Magento.
You’ll need the help of a PHP coder to use Magento.
Because of this reason, many e-commerce business owners opt for Magento competitors.
Now, talking about Magento competitors, who are the best?
This article answers that question.
There are six great Magento alternatives.
1. Shopify
Shopify is one of the leaders in the e-commerce space. Perhaps, is the easiest-to-use e-commerce platform. Usually Shopify is compared to BigCommerce as one of it’s main competitors.
The platform allows you to set up your store and sell.
You can organize your products, customize your store, accept payments, track and respond to orders.
The Shopify user interface is easy to use and understand.
As you can see in the above screenshot, there are no complex terms.
Shopify is an out-of-the-box solution. You can begin selling on Shopify within a couple of minutes of signing up.
Payment plans are based on monthly billing.
Shopify has some of the most stunning themes on the web.
There are fifty-one themes on the Shopify theme marketplace, with over 100 styles to choose from.
Shopify takes care of web hosting for you. They make sure your site is fully optimized and available always.
If you want a Magento competitor that offers easiness and affordability, it should be a wise move you choose to migrate Magento to Shopify.
If you’re just starting out, Basic Shopify, which costs $29 per month is a good place to start.
But, if your store has been existing for a while and receives a huge number of orders per day, Shopify or Advanced Shopify may be suitable for you.
They cost $79 and $299 per month respectively.
2. WordPress + WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce platform.
It’s a plugin for WordPress, the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world.
It’s no surprise that Automattic, the company behind WordPress itself, bought WooCommerce.
Unlike Shopify, WooCommerce is open source. (Magento is an open source e-commerce platform too).
As you may know, WordPress and WooCommerce are both free to use.
However, you’ll need to find a reliable web hosting for your WordPress site before you can use WooCommerce on it.
And also, you may have to buy some WooCommerce extensions to extend the functionality of your store.
The cost of extensions can quickly add up.
If you’re already familiar with WordPress.org, you’ll find it easy to use WooCommerce.
If you haven’t used WordPress before, or you find it difficult to use, then WooCommerce may not be the perfect Magento alternative for you.
But WordPress and WooCommerce give you much more freedom than other Magento competitors.
You have 100% control over your online store.
You’re also more likely to grow your store faster as you use our tool OmniKick, which works perfectly well for WordPress.
OmniKick lets you collect visitors’ email addresses in your store.
Our tool allows you to create high-converting popups you can use to promote discounts and special offers on your site.
Sign up for OmniKick for free today.
3. BigCommerce
Like Shopify and WooCommerce, BigCommerce is always among the “top five” lists of online store builders.
BigCommerce hosts your store for you. No need to buy any additional web hosting service.
The platform offers you customizable templates you can use in your store.
If you can tweak HTML and CSS, you can make your store unique without hiring a web developer.
Bigcommerce follows a software as a service (SaaS) model – meaning you pay a monthly fee to use it.
There are four monthly pricing plans:
- Bigcommerce Standard: $29.95 per month
- Bigcommerce Plus: $79.95 per month
- Bigcommerce Pro: $249.95 per month
- Bigcommerce Enterprise: pricing varies, depending on your business requirements
If you’re just starting out, I recommend the Bigcommerce Standard plan as it offers you the basic features you need to start selling.
You’ll have a fully functional site with the ability to sell an unlimited number of products.
The bad news is that BigCommerce will limit your annual online sales to $50,000.
If you’re looking to sell more than $150,000 or $400,000, you should upgrade to BigCommerce Plus or BigCommerce Pro plans, respectively.
BigCommerce has around 500 apps and integrations that will make selling on the platform even easier.
You can also use OmniKick
OmniKick with BigCommerce. It’s easy and fast.
Here are the simple steps you’ll have to take:
4.YoKart
Yo!Kart, a powerful self-hosted ecommerce platform that has specialization in building ecommerce marketplaces. It is a license-based ecommerce solution that, unlike SaaS-based solutions, don’t charge monthly subscription price or transaction costs. The platform has won the best product of the year award in 2016 given by STPI. Considering the demand for mobile apps in the ecommerce ecosystem, Yo!Kart provides ready to go and feature-rich mobile apps (IOS & Android) for buyers, which come at competitive prices.
Key Features & Benefits of Yo!Kart:
- Advanced multi-vendor capabilities
- User-centered design
- Important in-built features such as Product Catalog, Discount Coupons, Affiliate Management, etc.
- Easy product management (Yo!Kart claims to handle 500k products)
- Advanced order management
- Multiple Payment Gateways
- Multi-lingual, Multi-currency
- Intuitive designed admin, sellers, & buyer dashboards
- Free 6 months of digital marketing consultation services
- 12 months of free technical support
Also, the platform is scalable, which can be achieved through customization. Regarding the pricing, Yo!Kart has 3 packages with flexible payments option:
Overall, if you are looking to start a large-scale e-commerce marketplace at a competitive price, then Yo!Kart marketplace platform can be considered as a replacement for Magento for its wide ranges of features and startup-friendly pricing strategy.
5. Wix
Wix is the best drag and drop website builder in the world today.
You can insert content anywhere on Wix. Just drag and drop it there.
Here are the key features you’ll get in Wix:
- Product galleries to display your product
- A product page for each product
- Create product variations like styles and sizes
- Twelve payment processors to choose from
- The ability to automatically calculate tax and shipping
- An optimized mobile store
- Sell both digital and physical products
- Zero transaction fees
Wix gives you the tools to automate and expand your store.
There are over 300 apps on the Wix App Market, with over 45,000 app installations on a daily basis.
Wix is one of the big Magento competitors out there because of its ease of use.
There are a number of chat apps on the platform that let you offer live chat to your visitors.
There are also apps for email marketing, customer reviews, invoicing and accounting, and social media management.
Wix is cheaper than Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. You’ll save more money when you pay annually.
I’ll like to point out that many web developers hate Wix because it’s so simple and easy to use for site owners.
A new web beginner can set up a shop on Wix as long as they can use web browsers.
6. PrestaShop
Over 270,000 merchants are using PrestaShop to power their stores.
It’s another open source software, with thousands of developers working on it from all over the world.
Like most open source software, it’s free to use by anyone.
But, you’ll have to pay for web hosting on your chosen hosting service.
The software itself is free, but also, you’ll have to buy some modules.
Modules are to PrestaShop what extensions are to Magento.
If you have zero tech experience, you’ll need a web developer to help you through the rough spots.
Ensure that your chosen developer has experience working with PrestaShop stores.
Hiring a good web developer who knows what they do will keep your store and customers secure.
PrestaShop has lots of third-party web designers on its platform. Their themes are beautiful and mobile-responsive.
Open source software like PrestaShop, Magento, WooCommerce, give you full access to the code that was used to build your site.
So, you can always customize it to fit your unique needs.
Here are PrestaShop’s payment partners for American merchants:
- Amazon Pay
- Worldpay
- Simplify Commerce by Mastercard
- Net
- First Data
- PayPal USA & Canada
- Additionally, you can choose from the 250+ payment providers available as add-ons.
7. Volusion
Volusion is a leading e-commerce platform that is a great Magento competitor.
But, unlike Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce, their software leans towards the operational side of an e-commerce store than the marketing aspect.
What does this mean?
It means Volusion is more focused on making your e-commerce site run smoothly than helping you drive and convert new customers.
Examples of the operational side of e-commerce are inventory management and customer management, and the marketing side are conversion tools, email marketing, and others.
If you want to set-up a simple e-commerce store that sells your product, then Volusion may be the perfect Magento alternative for you.
Volusion has a huge knowledge base that will teach you anything you need to know about using the platform.
They have articles, case studies, guides, videos, and even webinars.
They also manage a “Help Center” where you’ll find articles and tutorials written by their experts.
Conclusion
These Magento competitors are powerful platforms you can use to set up your store.
But wait!
You’re not starting an online store for the sake of it.
You want to sell and generate revenue.
How do you do that?
By empowering yourself with the right tools that boost growth.
That is OmniKick.
OmniKick helps you collect visitors email addresses and names on your site.
Imagine you being able to address a visitor by their name when they return to your site?
It makes them feel more connected to your brand.
OmniKick will help you develop a deeper relationship with prospects and customers.
Thank you for reading, and please share this article with your friends on social media.
