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Quick answer
Shopify’s published US pricing starts at $39/month ($29/mo yearly) for Basic. Every alternative below matches or beats that sticker, but none is simply “Shopify for less”. The fees move rather than disappear.
WooCommerce lists $0 platform fees. You pay hosting ($25–$350/month for most stores) plus extensions ($29–$299/year each). BigCommerce Core and Squarespace Core both list $39/month ($29/mo annual). Big Cartel Platinum lists $15/month after a 7-day trial, the lowest paid entry we could verify. Wix publishes ecommerce plans, but its page returned currency and tax variants we could not pin to US dollars, so those figures stay unverified.
Table of contents
- What you are actually trying to escape
- The alternatives at a glance
- WooCommerce: you trade a subscription for upkeep
- BigCommerce: same sticker price, different overage rules
- Squarespace: the simple path with a hard merchandising ceiling
- Wix: ecommerce plans, unverified US pricing
- Big Cartel: small catalogs and the lowest entry price
- Cost and fit by store stage
- The fees that change the ranking
- Our verdict
- How we researched this
- Sources
What you are actually trying to escape
People search for Shopify alternatives for four reasons, and the right answer differs for each.
- The monthly bill. You want a lower subscription line.
- The transaction fees. You want to keep more of each sale, or use a payment provider Shopify does not own.
- The platform limits. You need what Shopify’s tiers do not offer at your price: unlimited variants, more staff accounts, multiple storefronts.
- The lock-in. You want to own the code and the database, even if that means owning the maintenance too.
Write down which one applies before you compare anything. A platform that solves reason 1 while worsening reason 2 is not an upgrade. Shopify’s published rate card makes reason 2 concrete: third-party transaction fees are 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus.
Our Shopify vs WooCommerce vs BigCommerce pricing breakdown models total cost of ownership across all three. This article covers the wider field.
The alternatives at a glance
| Platform | Published platform cost | Published payment processing | Biggest published constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce | $0 platform fee; hosting $25–$350/month for most stores; extensions $29–$299/year each | ~2.50–2.90% + 30¢ per transaction with WooPayments (Woo’s own comparison table) | You supply and maintain hosting, security and updates |
| BigCommerce | Core $39/mo ($29 annual); Growth $105/mo ($79 annual); Scale $399/mo ($299 annual); Performance from $1,499/mo billed annually | Begins at 2.89% + $0.29 per transaction across all plans | GMV caps and automatic plan upgrades at Core and Growth |
| Squarespace | Basic $25/mo ($19 annual); Core $39/mo ($29 annual); Plus $65/mo ($49 annual); Advanced $139/mo ($99 annual) | 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic and Core, 2.7% on Plus, 2.5% on Advanced (Squarespace Payments) | 2% online store transaction fee on Basic; plan-gated commerce features |
| Wix | Ecommerce plans published; US dollar figures not verifiable from the page we fetched | [DATA NOT VERIFIED: the Wix pricing page we fetched displayed prices with “Price includes GST” and a USD notice, so we could not confirm a US tier price] | [DATA NOT VERIFIED: no US plan price confirmed] |
| Big Cartel | Gold free tier (limited features); Platinum $15/mo after a 7-day trial; Diamond $30/mo | [DATA NOT VERIFIED: no card processing rate was published on the pricing page we fetched] | Built for small catalogs and simple shops |
Every figure above is quoted from the vendor’s pricing page or marked unverified. None is estimated.
WooCommerce: you trade a subscription for upkeep
WooCommerce’s pricing page states it plainly: $0 platform fee, no platform fees, no revenue share. The cost structure splits into four lines: platform (free), payments (your processor’s rates), hosting ($25–$350/month for most stores) and extensions ($29–$299/year per extension, à la carte).
That structure is why WooCommerce wins on paper and can still cost more in practice. The subscription does not exist. The work does. Hosting, SSL, backups, plugin updates and compatibility checks become your responsibility. Woo’s own page frames hosting as scaling “with traffic and performance needs”. That is a $325/month spread between the bottom and top of the published band, decided by your traffic rather than your plan.
The payment line is where the upside sits. WooPayments lists at ~2.50–2.90% + 30¢ per transaction on Woo’s comparison table, and there is no third-party transaction penalty because there is no platform to charge one. Woo also lists unlimited variants, where Shopify plans are listed at up to 2,048 per product.
It suits you if you already run WordPress, have someone to maintain it, and would rather pay a developer occasionally than a platform monthly. It fits badly if nobody wants to own updates and uptime.
If you are deciding between staying and leaving, work through our migration guide from Shopify to WooCommerce. The cost model only makes sense once you know what moves and what does not.
BigCommerce: same sticker price, different overage rules
BigCommerce’s published plan prices are Core $39/month, Growth $105/month, Scale $399/month and Performance from $1,499/month billed annually, with a 25% discount for annual billing on the first three tiers ($29, $79 and $299). Those are explicitly listed as US dollars excluding tax.
How the tiers move matters more than the price. BigCommerce caps each tier by trailing twelve-month GMV, and auto-upgrades you when you cross it:
- Core: up to $30K TTM GMV, then the plan auto-upgrades to Growth.
- Growth: up to $100K TTM GMV, then the plan auto-upgrades to Scale.
- Scale: $33,333/month in GMV, with a 0.9% overage rate on GMV above that cap and no tier jump. At $2 million TTM GMV the account automatically upgrades to Performance.
Two footnotes are worth reading before you sign. First, BigCommerce says it uses GMV after a 10% reduction to gross order value to evaluate plan thresholds. So the cap is measured on a number that differs from what is in your own reports, and the vendor states that difference is expected. Second, there is an “Open Payment Provider Fee” for orders processed through third-party providers: 2.0% on Core, 1.0% on Growth, 0.6% on Scale. Orders through Embedded Payment Providers carry a $0 fee.
Add-ons stack from there: extra storefronts cost $30/month (max 3), $50/month (max 5) or $100/month (max 8) by tier. Phone support is included on Growth and above; Core’s is described as coming soon.
It fits a store already past Shopify’s Basic tier on volume that wants published overage rates instead of a support call. It fits badly if your GMV sits near a tier boundary where a 25% step could arrive mid-year.
Squarespace: the simple path with a hard merchandising ceiling
Squarespace publishes four tiers: Basic $25/month, Core $39/month, Plus $65/month and Advanced $139/month, with annual billing at $19, $29, $49 and $99 respectively. Its pricing page carries an explicit warning that prices are quoted per billing country, so treat these as the US numbers.
The payment rates are published per tier and look competitive: 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic and Core, 2.7% + $0.30 on Plus, 2.5% + $0.30 on Advanced, using Squarespace Payments. American Express and some commercial cards carry a separate premium rate of 3.2% + $0.30 on all four tiers, and international cards add a 1.5% surcharge.
The catch is on Basic. Squarespace lists an online store transaction fee of 2% there, applied to products, services and donations, dropping to 0% from Core upward. Digital content and memberships carry 5% on Basic, 1% on Core and 0% on Plus and Advanced. If the $25 entry price is the attraction, budget the 2% before comparing against a $39 plan that has none.
Tax calculation is charged per transaction too: 0.15% on Core, 0.10% on Plus, 0.05% on Advanced, capped at $0.99 each, and not included on Basic.
Squarespace fits content-led businesses (portfolios, services, small catalogs) where the site is the product. It stops fitting when merchandising complexity or B2B pricing becomes the requirement.
Wix: ecommerce plans, unverified US pricing
Wix publishes an ecommerce-oriented ladder (Light, Core, Business and Business Elite), with Core and above unlocking the full ecommerce toolset. We fetched https://www.wix.com/premium-pricing on 2026-09-22 and the rendered prices came through with “Price includes GST” and a currency notice stating that USD prices are “displayed for reference only” and vary by location.
That is exactly the trap we flagged in our methodology. We could see numbers, but not US dollar numbers we are willing to publish. We are not converting them and we are not guessing.
[DATA NOT VERIFIED: Wix’s own pricing page was fetched on 2026-09-22 with a US exit IP and returned GST-inclusive display prices; no US tier price and no US card processing rate could be confirmed from the source we captured.]
What we can say without a number: Wix’s own page describes the full ecommerce platform as available from its Core tier upward, and WooCommerce’s published comparison table lists a “Wix Enterprise” row at ~$500–2,000+/month. That second figure is a competitor’s characterisation of Wix, not Wix’s own price list, so treat it as directional only. The page does not give us a Wix number, and I would rather leave the cell empty than fill it with a currency conversion.
Big Cartel: small catalogs and the lowest entry price
Big Cartel is the outlier in this comparison, and for small catalogs that is the point. Its pricing page lists a free Gold tier with limited features, Platinum at $15/month after a 7-day trial, and Diamond at $30/month with no commitment. Platinum includes custom domains, physical and digital products, shipping labels and order tracking, and bulk product editing. Diamond adds abandoned cart recovery, product drops, password-protected products, Zapier connections and priority support.
$15/month is the lowest published paid entry price among the platforms we could verify, and there is no GMV tier system to trip over. The limitation is that Big Cartel publishes no card processing rate on that page.
[DATA NOT VERIFIED: Big Cartel’s pricing page, fetched 2026-09-22, lists plan prices but no payment processing rate. Card fees depend on the processor you connect and were not published on the page we captured.]
If you sell a small, curated catalog and the site is a shop rather than a storefront operation, it is worth a serious look. If you sell hundreds of SKUs with complex variants, it is not.
Cost and fit by store stage
| Your situation | Platform whose published terms fit | Why, per the published rate card |
|---|---|---|
| First store, small catalog, want to start free or near-free | Big Cartel (Gold free tier, Platinum $15/mo) | Lowest published paid entry; no GMV tier system on the price page |
| Already on WordPress, have technical help | WooCommerce | $0 platform fee and no revenue share; you pay $25–$350/mo hosting plus $29–$299/yr per extension |
| Want hosted, predictable subscription near Shopify’s price | BigCommerce Core ($39/mo, $29 annual) or Squarespace Core ($39/mo, $29 annual) | Matching sticker price; BigCommerce caps Core at $30K TTM GMV, Squarespace charges 0% online store transaction fee from Core up |
| Selling under $30K/year and shopping on price alone | Squarespace Basic ($25/mo) — with a caveat | Cheapest hosted tier here, but carries a 2% online store transaction fee |
| Crossing $100K+/year online | BigCommerce Growth or Scale, or WooCommerce | BigCommerce publishes 1.0%/0.6% open-provider fees and a 0.9% Scale overage rate; WooCommerce has no GMV caps |
| Need unlimited variants | WooCommerce | Woo’s table lists unlimited variants; Shopify tiers are listed at up to 2,048 |
| Need multiple storefronts | BigCommerce | Published add-on pricing: $30/mo (max 3), $50/mo (max 5), $100/mo (max 8) by tier |
| Wix | [DATA NOT VERIFIED: no US tier price confirmed] | Cannot be compared cost-for-cost without a verified US price |
The fees that change the ranking
Sticker prices are the easy part. These are the published clauses that reorder the list.
Third-party payment penalties. Shopify charges 2%/1%/0.6%/0.2% by plan for third-party transaction processing. BigCommerce charges an Open Payment Provider Fee of 2.0%/1.0%/0.6% by plan, waived with its embedded providers. WooCommerce charges nothing because it has no platform to charge from. Squarespace lists no third-party penalty; its card rates are tied to Squarespace Payments.
GMV definitions. BigCommerce evaluates its plan thresholds on gross order value after a 10% reduction, and states that this figure may differ from what you track. A store near the top of Core’s $30K cap can therefore be upgraded on the vendor’s arithmetic, not yours.
Automatic upgrades. BigCommerce auto-upgrades you at each cap, and again at $2 million TTM GMV on Scale. No “hold this tier and pay overage” option is documented for Core and Growth.
Transaction fees charged by the builder. Squarespace’s 2% online store transaction fee on Basic is the clearest example: a lower subscription with a percentage on top. At $30,000/month in online sales, 2% is $600/month, several times the $14 difference between Basic and Core.
Add-ons and locations. Shopify lists POS Pro at $89/month per location, including 20 locations and up to 200 with Shopify Payments. BigCommerce charges per extra storefront by tier.
Rates are published, so run your own numbers before declaring a winner on the $39 in the header. Platform fee plus processing plus hosting plus extensions is the real comparison.
Our verdict
There is no single answer, but there is a defensible default for each starting point.
- Small catalog, lowest published entry price: Big Cartel Platinum at $15/month, after confirming processing rates with your processor, since the page does not publish them.
- Already on WordPress with maintenance covered. WooCommerce’s $0 platform fee is the strongest published cost structure here, and its unlimited variants and lack of GMV caps outlast the subscription you avoid.
- Hosted software near Shopify’s entry price. BigCommerce Core and Squarespace Core both list $39/month. Take BigCommerce if you expect volume and want published overage rates; take Squarespace if you are content-led and can stay above Basic, where the 2% store transaction fee disappears.
- Drawn in by Squarespace Basic’s $25/month: price the 2% first. It is the fee most likely to erase the saving.
- Unable to verify a platform’s US price: do not migrate on someone else’s comparison table, including ours.
That last bullet is the one I would underline. The most common bad decision here is leaving Shopify to cut a $39 subscription and landing on a stack whose payment penalty, hosting and extensions cost more than the subscription ever did. Model all-in cost at your own GMV and order count first. If WooCommerce is the destination, our migration guide covers what transfers and what is left behind.
How we researched this
- Sources are vendor pricing pages. Every price, rate and cap was captured from the vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-09-22. Where a figure comes from a competitor’s comparison table, we say so.
- We have not run a store on any of these platforms. Our work here is document review and arithmetic on published rate cards, not hands-on testing.
- Region was controlled. Requests went out through a US exit IP (199.237.109.149, country code US) with
Accept-Language: en-US; Shopify serves different currencies by IP, so US tier figures were used. - Unverifiable numbers are marked, not estimated. Wix returned GST-inclusive display prices, and Big Cartel publishes no processing rate, so both are marked
[DATA NOT VERIFIED]. We did not convert currencies or infer missing values. - Platforms were excluded rather than guessed at. Ecwid’s plan prices are rendered client-side and absent from the captured HTML, so no figure is cited.
Read the full method on our how we research page.
Sources
All pages fetched 2026-09-22 via a US exit IP (199.237.109.149, country code US) with Accept-Language: en-US.
- Shopify pricing (https://www.shopify.com/pricing): plan prices, card rates, third-party transaction fees, POS Pro add-on
- WooCommerce pricing (https://woocommerce.com/pricing/): $0 platform fee, hosting and extension ranges, WooPayments rate, cross-platform comparison table
- BigCommerce pricing (https://www.bigcommerce.com/pricing/): plan prices, GMV caps and auto-upgrades, open provider fees, storefront add-ons
- Squarespace pricing (https://www.squarespace.com/pricing): plan prices, card rates, transaction fees, tax calculation fees
- Wix pricing (https://www.wix.com/premium-pricing): checked; GST-inclusive and USD “reference only” display, so no US tier price is cited
- Big Cartel pricing (https://www.bigcartel.com/pricing): Gold, Platinum and Diamond prices; no processing rate published
- Ecwid pricing (https://www.ecwid.com/pricing): excluded; plan prices rendered client-side, absent from captured HTML