CinchStack

Shopify alternatives, priced honestly

By Rohail Nisar Updated Prices verified

Quick answer

As of 26 September 2026, Shopify's cheapest plan for an actual live storefront, Basic, costs $39 a month and includes zero staff accounts, so a single employee login already means paying for Grow at $105. Most searches for a Shopify alternative start there, or with the extra fee Shopify charges when a store uses a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments. A direct-to-consumer brand selling its own physical products, within Grow's 5-account or Advanced's 15-account staff cap, usually gets more from staying than from switching. A course creator, a coaching business, a service business billing for appointments, or anyone who wants to own the code outright typically does not.

Every alternative below with its real monthly bill for a small team, next to Shopify's own ($105/month), as of the dates on each pricing page. Each bill is sized for the job that tool does, shown under the figure.

ToolLayerSmall teamScore
Shopify the tool you are replacingSell$1053 staff, $30,000/mo in sales4.4
WooCommerceSell$453 staff, $30,000/mo in sales3.6
SquarespaceSite$393 editors4.1
ClickFunnelsSell$1973 staff, $30,000/mo in sales3.6
KajabiSell$2493 staff, $30,000/mo in sales3.5
Systeme.ioSell$473 staff, $30,000/mo in sales3.9

Basic, the plan on the sticker price, includes zero staff accounts — hiring one part-time employee already means paying for Grow just to give them a login.

WooCommerce

Staff get ordinary WordPress user accounts, and the Shop Manager role grants full store access with no per-account fee and no plan tier gating it.

Small team: $45/mo · real cost

Visit WooCommerce

Squarespace

Core, its cheapest unlimited-contributor plan at $39 a month, and every plan above it remove the contributor cap entirely, with no staff-account limit to hit again as the team grows, unlike Grow's cap of 5 or Advanced's cap of 15.

Small team: $39/mo · real cost

Visit Squarespace

Pay with anything other than Shopify Payments and Shopify adds its own cut on top of the processor's fee — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced — for as long as that gateway stays connected.

WooCommerce

Charges no extra fee for using a third-party gateway; its own comparison table lists that additional fee as 'None,' and you can run several gateways at once.

Small team: $45/mo · real cost

Visit WooCommerce

ClickFunnels

Takes no percentage of sales on any plan, from $97 a month; card payments run through Stripe or its own Payments AI gateway at the standard rate with no separate markup layered on top.

Small team: $197/mo · real cost

Visit ClickFunnels

What you're actually selling is a course, a coaching program or a membership, not a catalog of physical items to browse.

Kajabi

Bundles courses, coaching, community and checkout into one subscription with 0% platform revenue share on every plan, from $179 a month on Basic.

Small team: $249/mo · real cost

Visit Kajabi

Systeme.io

Sells funnels, courses and email in the same flat plan, from $17 a month on Startup, also at 0% transaction fees.

Small team: $47/mo · real cost

Visit Systeme.io

You're mostly billing for appointments and services, not running a browsable product catalog.

Squarespace

Built-in invoicing and scheduling live on the same $25-a-month Basic subscription as the website, with no separate Squarespace fee added to an invoice.

Small team: $39/mo · real cost

Visit Squarespace

Systeme.io

Its booking calendar is bundled into the same account as the funnels and email a service business would already need, not sold as a separate app.

Small team: $47/mo · real cost

Visit Systeme.io

You want to own the code and hosting outright, and don't want any platform holding a cut of what you sell, on principle rather than over one bill.

WooCommerce

The core plugin costs $0 with 0% revenue share, and you choose, and can switch, the host and payment gateway at any time; nothing about the storefront itself is Shopify's to hold.

Small team: $45/mo · real cost

Visit WooCommerce

Shopify's only $0 plan, Agentic, can't publish an online store or take an order through its checkout — there's no way to run an actual live storefront on Shopify for free.

Systeme.io

Its Free plan is a genuine $0 live storefront: build a funnel with a real checkout and take orders with no credit card required, until its lifetime-sales cap kicks in.

Small team: $47/mo · real cost

Visit Systeme.io

If you want one answer

Highest-scored option

Squarespace

Website builder with built-in online stores, invoicing and AI tools, priced per site with no per-contributor fee above the entry-level Basic plan.

Score 4.1 · small team $39/mo

Visit Squarespace

Who should stay on Shopify instead of switching?

Shopify earns its price in one specific setup: a brand that designs, sources or manufactures a physical product and sells it mainly through its own storefront, not through a booking calendar or a drip-fed course. Every paid plan bundles hosting, checkout, abandoned-cart recovery and automatic sales tax into one bill, so a seller can launch without hiring anyone to run a server. Route payments through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay or PayPal Express Checkout and Shopify adds no transaction fee on top of card processing, which alone offsets a lot of what the picks below solve for. A team that fits inside Grow’s staff cap of 5 logins, or a bigger one inside Advanced’s cap of 15, has no reason to switch over headcount alone either. If your catalog is mostly physical goods, your team fits those caps and you already use Shopify Payments, what follows probably costs more than it saves. Everyone else, keep reading.

What actually pushes sellers to look for a Shopify alternative?

The reasons above repeat for a handful of concrete reasons, not vague dissatisfaction. Basic, the plan behind the $39 sticker price in Shopify’s own ads, ships with zero staff accounts, so hiring one part-time helper already means paying for Grow before you’ve sold a single extra order. Route a payment through anything other than Shopify Payments and Shopify layers its own cut on top of the processor’s fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, for as long as that gateway stays connected. Sellers whose real product is a course, a coaching program or a membership run into a platform built around items to browse, not a curriculum to release. The same mismatch hits a business that’s mostly billing for appointments and services: a catalog with a checkout doesn’t replace an invoice or a booking calendar. Some sellers just don’t want a platform holding the code, the host or a cut of a sale, on principle rather than over one bill. And the one plan Shopify prices at $0, Agentic, can’t publish a storefront or take an order through it at all, which surprises anyone who assumed a free tier meant a free store.

What should you check before you cancel Shopify?

Two mechanics matter more than whichever plan you switch to. First, check whether the login you actually need is a full staff account or a collaborator account: Shopify’s collaborator accounts, the kind agencies and freelancers use, don’t count toward Basic’s, Grow’s or Advanced’s staff-account limits, so a bookkeeper or a contract developer may not force you onto Grow at all. Second, Shopify’s plan charges are generally non-refundable, so canceling partway through a billing cycle doesn’t buy back the days you stop using it. If your store is less than six months old, confirm whether it’s still earning Shopify Rewards credits first: new merchants earn 1% back on sales through Shopify Payments (0.5% through other providers) for their first six months, up to a cap that rises with the plan, and canceling forfeits whatever you’ve built up so far.

How do you move a store off Shopify?

Treat the move as a project with an overlap period, not a single cutover day. Start with the product catalog: it’s the part almost any platform, this one included, can actually export and re-import, so pull that data out first rather than last. Customer accounts and order history carry over less cleanly, and how much of either a new platform can import is worth confirming before you commit to one. A paid Shopify theme is built for Shopify’s own templating system, so plan on rebuilding the storefront itself on the new platform rather than assuming the theme travels with you. Build and test the new store’s checkout, product pages and any embedded forms before the old one goes dark, then run both side by side for at least one full billing cycle so a customer who lands on the old checkout on launch day still finds one that works. Because the plan itself is generally non-refundable, time the actual cancellation for the end of that cycle rather than partway through it.

Which alternative actually fits the reason you’re leaving?

Pick based on which specific problem is actually yours, not on whichever name ranks first in a search. Blocked by Basic’s staff-account cap? WooCommerce hands out ordinary WordPress logins at no extra charge, and Squarespace‘s Core plan, at $39 a month, removes the contributor cap entirely rather than raising it again at a higher tier. Paying extra just for using your own gateway? WooCommerce charges nothing on top of the processor’s rate, and ClickFunnels takes no percentage of sales on any plan, from $97 a month. Selling a course or coaching program instead of a catalog? Kajabi, from $179 a month, and Systeme.io, from $17 a month, both take 0% of what you sell. Mostly billing for appointments? Systeme.io’s booking calendar and Squarespace’s invoicing both live on a subscription you’d already be paying for the website. And if what you actually wanted was a genuinely free live storefront rather than Agentic’s password-protected one, Systeme.io’s Free plan takes real orders until its lifetime-sales cap kicks in. Whichever fits, weigh it against Shopify’s own bill on the Shopify vs. WooCommerce breakdown before you commit to a new one.

How we checked this

Shopify: Read from Shopify's US pricing page (with the billing switch on both Pay yearly and Pay monthly, and the FAQ expanded), the Shopify Plus and POS pricing pages, and Shopify Help Center articles on plans, fees, staff limits and billing, in a US-locale headless browser; snapshots saved. Last verified . Prices are US list prices in USD; Shopify adjusts subscription prices to the local cost of living in some regions and bills Basic, Grow and Advanced in EUR, GBP, INR or USD depending on where the store is located (new Plus merchants can also be billed in AUD, JPY or CAD). Card rates, Rewards caps and Shopify Payments availability vary by country. Figures here are the US list prices in USD.

Automated re-check on : all 12 prices we re-read were still on Shopify's pages.

What we could not verify:
  • Starter plan price: Shopify's current pricing page no longer lists Starter, shopify.com/starter now redirects to the free-trial offer, and the help centre says Starter isn't available to new stores. No captured Shopify page shows its price, so it is not listed.
  • Retail plan price: the plan is closed to new stores and no captured Shopify page shows its price.
  • The monthly fee for adding carrier-calculated shipping to a Grow plan billed monthly is not published; the help centre only says it costs an additional monthly fee.
  • The Advanced tax platform is marked as an add-on on every plan, with no price on the pricing page.
  • Shopify Plus: the variable platform fee for complex businesses is quote-only, non-US card rates require contacting sales, and Shopify's pages differ on how the Plus term is paid (the pricing page's comparison table puts 'Starts at $2,300 USD/mo' in its Pay monthly row and marks Pay yearly as not included, while shopify.com/about shows $2,300 'billed yearly' on a 3-year term). We list the 1-year term price in the annual column because every Plus option carries at least a 1-year commitment. The terms behind the pricing page's 'Try for $399' Plus button were not captured.
  • The pricing page does not define which cards count as premium cards for the higher online rate.
  • Domain registration and paid theme prices vary and were not captured.

WooCommerce: Read from WooCommerce's pricing page, the WooPayments fee schedule, Woo Marketplace extension pages and subscription/refund documentation, Woo's hosting recommendations, and the pricing pages of two hosts Woo recommends (Pressable, WordPress.com) in a US-locale headless browser, flipping billing toggles where offered; snapshots saved. Last verified . Prices are US list prices in USD; The core plugin is free everywhere, and extensions are listed in USD by default (woocommerce.com has a site-currency switcher, and other currencies were not captured). WooPayments fees depend on the merchant's country. US merchants pay 2.90% + $0.30 per card. Eurozone merchants such as Germany and France pay 1.50% + €0.25, plus 2.00% for cards from outside Europe. Australian merchants pay 1.75% + $0.30 as listed. VAT or GST is added to WooPayments fees in many countries. Hosting prices are set by each host. We publish US list prices in USD.

Automated re-check on : all 15 prices we re-read were still on WooCommerce's pages.

What we could not verify:
  • WooCommerce's cost calculator (woocommerce.com/tco-calculator) emails its estimate only after you submit a lead form with a business email, so we could not capture its figures.
  • The pricing page's comparison table shows WooPayments card processing as "~2.50-2.90% + 30¢". The published US fee schedule lists only 2.90% + $0.30 for cards, so the 2.50% low end is unexplained. It may be custom pricing, which Woo says is available through its Customer Success team but does not publish.
  • The terms and eligibility for the "Save 10% on processing fees for the first 3 months" WooPayments offer were not captured.
  • Hosting is a third-party cost. We captured only Pressable and WordPress.com prices. Convesio and Bluehost Cloud (named in Woo's hosting guide) and Bluehost, Hostinger, Seravo, SiteGround and WordPress VIP (on Woo's hosting page) were not priced.
  • WordPress.com's yearly renewal price for the Commerce plan changed between page loads on the same day ($50/month, then $57/month), so we don't record a yearly renewal price.
  • The scenarios borrow visit counts from the site layer (10K, 50K, 250K visits/month). A store's real traffic decides which Pressable plan it needs.
  • Domain registration is not included in the scenarios. Pressable's pricing page lists no domain, and WordPress.com includes a free domain for the first year only.
  • The WooPayments page's related-products widget lists the WisePad 3 and M2 card readers at $84.99 and $79.99 with an "annually" label, which is unclear for hardware, so we don't record them as prices.

Squarespace: Read Squarespace's pricing page in a US-locale headless browser with both the Pay-monthly and Pay-annually toggle states and the full feature-comparison table expanded; cross-checked every plan price and card-processing rate against Squarespace's own checkout API (curl, JSON) and the page's schema.org JSON-LD and tooltip text (curl); and read Squarespace Help Center articles on transaction fees, contributor roles and limits, page limits, AI credits, Google Workspace pricing, Email Campaigns pricing (plus its own checkout API and pricing-slider captures), domain pricing, student discounts and the refund policy. Snapshots saved. Last verified . Prices are US list prices in USD; Squarespace's own OfferCatalog markup states it prices per billing country, with a different currency and amount offered outside the US. This record captures US-locale USD list prices only and was not compared against other countries' pricing.

Automated re-check on : all 1 prices we re-read were still on Squarespace's pages.

What we could not verify:
  • AI credit pack price: Squarespace lets you buy up to 400 extra AI credits per purchase from inside the account dashboard, but no USD price per credit or per pack is shown on any public page — only the purchase flow itself, which requires a logged-in account.
  • A single per-domain renewal price (e.g. for a .com): Squarespace's domain pages show only a $10 promotional entry price and an overall '$11–$130' range across TLDs; the exact renewal price for a specific domain is shown only in Squarespace's interactive domain search/checkout, not as a static figure.
  • Non-US pricing: Squarespace's own markup says it prices per billing country in local currency; this record checked US-locale USD pricing only and did not capture any other country's amounts.

ClickFunnels: Read ClickFunnels' pricing page in a US-locale headless browser in both its default "Annual Discount" view and after switching the "Monthly Plans" toggle, opened its FAQ accordion for the money-back-guarantee, change-plan and percentage-of-sales questions, followed the "Start Free Trial" signup flow one step, and read ClickFunnels' own support article comparing Stripe and Payments AI processing fees; snapshots saved. Last verified . Prices are US list prices in USD.

Automated re-check on : all 6 prices we re-read were still on ClickFunnels' pages.

What we could not verify:
  • Free-trial length and whether a credit card is required at signup could not be verified on ClickFunnels' current site: the "Start Free Trial" button leads only to a name/email step ("Create Your Account: Step 1 of 2") before real signup data would be needed to continue. Third-party sites and ClickFunnels' own "Classic"-product support articles describe a 14-day trial that auto-charges the card on file at the end, but that support content is explicitly for the legacy ClickFunnels Classic product, not the current platform priced here, so it was not carried into this record.
  • What happens when a workspace goes over its plan's contact, email-send or workspace limit (automatic upgrade, overage billing, or a feature lock) is not stated on the pricing page and was not found elsewhere.
  • The FAQ answers to "Can I use a custom domain?" and "Do I need a hosting account?" were never expanded or captured; custom-domain availability is inferred instead from each plan's own "5 Custom Domains" / "Unlimited Custom Domains" limit line.
  • Whether the "AI Tools" word allowance (1M/2M/5M/10M words) resets monthly, is a one-time signup credit, or something else was not stated on the pricing page.

Kajabi: Read Kajabi's pricing pages (kajabi.com/pricing and kajabi.com/pricing-new) in Annual and Monthly toggle states with the full feature-comparison table opened, followed the real signup/checkout flow for every plan (Kickstarter, Basic, Growth, Pro; annual and monthly where offered), and read Kajabi's help-center articles on account users, AI credits, subscription management, add-ons, trials, parked accounts and Kajabi Payments fees, all in a US-locale headless browser; snapshots saved. Last verified . Prices are US list prices in USD.

Automated re-check on : all 17 prices we re-read were still on Kajabi's pages.

What we could not verify:
  • Kickstarter's month-to-month price and its contacts/products/websites/communities limits are not published on any page captured; only its annual price ($71/mo, $852/yr) was found, on a legacy checkout link not linked from Kajabi's current public pricing pages. A guessed monthly-checkout URL returned a Cloudflare block page rather than a price.
  • Website Widgets add-on pricing is described only as "multiple paid tier levels" on Kajabi's help center; the actual dollar amounts appear to be shown in an image/table that the headless-browser text capture did not extract.
  • Expert Agents (AI chat agents) are still marked "Coming soon" on the live pricing and feature-comparison pages for every plan, yet a separate help-center article already publishes live per-agent pricing ($49-79/month); whether a new signup can actually buy an Expert Agent today could not be confirmed from a captured snapshot of the purchase flow itself.
  • Backstage's long-term pricing is explicitly unconfirmed by Kajabi itself: its help article calls Backstage a Beta feature and states "Future entitlements and pricing are subject to change."
  • Whether the $179/$249/$499 US list prices change for non-US billing addresses (beyond added tax) was not checked; only Kajabi Payments' processing fees are confirmed to vary by country (e.g. Australia's rates, captured separately).

Systeme.io: Read from systeme.io's pricing page in both billing states, the plans API that page loads, the annual order pages, the terms and conditions and help-centre billing articles in a US-locale headless browser (API responses fetched with curl); snapshots saved. Last verified . Prices are US list prices in USD; Plan prices depend on the site language and currency. The English site bills USD ($17/$47/$97 a month). The French site's plans API shows the same numbers in euros (€17/€47/€97), and the Portuguese site shows BRL (R$95/R$200/R$414). Other language sites list other local currencies, which were not captured. We publish the US list price in USD.

Automated re-check on : all 3 prices we re-read were still on Systeme.io's pages.

What we could not verify:
  • The "For teams" plan has no published price. It is quoted only on a sales call.
  • Monthly-plan checkout pages are not public (systeme.io/startup and /unlimited return 404, and /webinar is an inactive page). The monthly prices come from the pricing page and the plans API it loads. Monthly upgrades happen inside the app.
  • The Perks rows in the comparison table (free migration, early access) and other check-mark features are drawn as icons and did not come through as text. Free-migration eligibility comes from the free-migration page instead.
  • The pricing FAQ tells agencies wanting white label or resale to contact systeme.io for white-label pricing, while the help centre describes a self-serve white-label feature. We captured no separate white-label fee.
  • SMS cost depends on the customer's own Twilio account and was not captured.
  • Third-party reviews say Startup cost $27/month before a cut to $17 in May 2025. We did not capture a vendor source for the old price, so it is not recorded in history.

We re-check every price against the vendor's page each Monday; changes are logged on the changes page. See a price that's wrong? Tell us and we will correct it the same week.

Frequently asked questions

What's the cheapest alternative to Shopify?

It depends on what you actually need a storefront to do. If you just need to publish a real, live store, Squarespace's Basic plan costs $25 a month and includes hosting, checkout and invoicing in that price, cheaper than Shopify's own $39-a-month Basic. WooCommerce's core plugin is free, but it needs separately billed hosting, so its real floor is whatever a host charges, not $0. Systeme.io's Startup plan runs $17 a month and includes funnels and a store, though its catalog tools are lighter than a dedicated ecommerce platform's. None of the three copies Shopify's specific combination of POS hardware support, an app ecosystem built around a product catalog and Shopify Payments' built-in fee waiver, so match the swap to what your store actually sells before you pick on price alone.

Is there a free way to run an online store instead of Shopify?

Not on Shopify itself: its only $0 plan, Agentic, keeps the online store password-protected and can't take an order through its own checkout, so a public storefront always costs at least $39 a month on Basic. Systeme.io comes closest to a genuine free live store: its Free plan needs no credit card and lets you build a funnel with a real checkout, until you pass its lifetime-sales cap, at which point new payments stop until you upgrade. WooCommerce's core plugin is also free and open source, with 0% revenue share, but it runs on a WordPress site you host yourself, and hosting is a real, separately billed cost, not a free one. Match the free option to what 'free' needs to mean for you: no monthly bill for the platform, or no bill of any kind until you're actually selling.

Do you get a refund if you cancel Shopify partway through a billing cycle?

No. Shopify's plan charges are generally non-refundable, so canceling mid-cycle doesn't buy back the days you stop using the store; the current cycle is treated as fully paid for once it's started. That makes timing matter: if you're switching platforms anyway, it usually costs nothing extra to keep the Shopify subscription running until the cycle you've already paid for ends, rather than canceling the moment the new store goes live. If your store is less than six months old, check whether it's still earning Shopify Rewards credits before you cancel: new merchants earn 1% back on sales through Shopify Payments (0.5% through other providers) for their first six months, up to a cap that rises with the plan, and canceling forfeits whatever you've built up so far. Neither of these is shown on the plan-price sticker, only in Shopify's billing fine print.

How do you move a store off Shopify without losing your data?

Treat the move as a project with an overlap period, not a single cutover day. Start with the product catalog: it's the part almost any ecommerce platform, this one included, can actually export and re-import, so pull that data out before you touch anything else. Customer accounts and order history carry over less cleanly, and how much of either a new platform can import is worth confirming before you commit to one. A paid Shopify theme is built for Shopify's own templating system, so budget time to rebuild the storefront itself rather than assuming the theme comes with you. Build and test the new store's checkout and product pages before the old one goes dark, point your domain at it only once it's tested, and run both side by side for at least one full billing cycle so a customer who lands on the old checkout on launch day doesn't hit a dead page.

Which Shopify alternative is best for a course or coaching business instead of a product catalog?

Two tools fit that job better than an ecommerce catalog does. Kajabi bundles courses, coaching, community, email and checkout into one subscription, starting at $179 a month on Basic, and takes 0% of what you sell on every plan; Growth and Pro add a discounted Kajabi Payments card rate on top. Systeme.io covers similar ground at a lower entry price, $17 a month on Startup, with unlimited email sends and 0% transaction fees on every plan including its free one, though its course tools are lighter than Kajabi's and its plans are tiered mainly by contact count rather than admin users. Pick Kajabi if community and live cohort features matter and you're past the earliest stage; pick Systeme.io if funnels and email matter as much as the course itself and you want to start at a lower monthly base.

Which Shopify alternative doesn't charge extra for using your own payment gateway?

WooCommerce is the clearest answer: its pricing page lists the additional fee for using a third-party payment solution as 'None,' and you can run more than one gateway on the same store without a platform surcharge on either. ClickFunnels takes the same position from a different angle: it charges no percentage of sales on any of its plans, from $97 a month on Launch, and card payments run through Stripe or its own Payments AI gateway at the same standard rate either way, with nothing extra layered on for ClickFunnels itself. Shopify's own version of this fee is tiered by plan, 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, and it applies only when a store skips Shopify Payments for something else; stores that already use Shopify Payments, Shop Pay or PayPal Express Checkout never see that specific charge at all.

Which Shopify alternative fits a service business that sells appointments and invoices, not products?

Squarespace and Systeme.io both bundle that job into a subscription you might already need anyway. Squarespace's built-in invoicing carries no Squarespace transaction fee on any plan, and Basic, its cheapest tier at $25 a month, already includes it alongside the website you'd be building regardless. Systeme.io folds a booking calendar into the same account as its funnels and email, starting at $17 a month on Startup, so a service business selling consultations or sessions doesn't need a separate scheduling tool billed on its own. Neither is a product-catalog platform the way Shopify is, which is exactly the point: a business whose real transaction is a booked appointment or a sent invoice doesn't need Shopify's checkout, inventory and shipping tools sitting underneath it unused every month.

First published 27 September 2026 · Last updated