Ecommerce platforms like Shopify: which is closest — comparison table

Ecommerce platforms like Shopify: which is closest

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By Jason Feng, Founder & Researcher. See how this review was researched.

Quick answer

Closest to Shopify on workflow is BigCommerce. It publishes the same $39, $105 and $399 monthly tiers, bundles hosting, and runs an app marketplace you browse the same way. Second closest is Squarespace, which is easier to set up but weaker on catalog size and third-party tooling.

WooCommerce is the most different, because you buy the server. Volusion publishes the lowest entry point at $35 a month but caps each tier by annual GMV. Wix could not be priced from a US exit on the research date, so I left it out of the ranking rather than guess.

Table of contents

Four unmarked cardboard boxes lined up in a row on a floor

What makes a platform feel like Shopify

Six things decide it, and none of them is the price.

The first is whether hosting is bundled. Shopify states "unlimited web hosting" and "unlimited bandwidth (no bandwidth fees)" on its pricing page, which means the merchant never opens a server ticket. The second is how much a non-developer can change without touching code. The third is the app marketplace: how many integrations exist and whether installing one is a two-click job.

Then come the payment rules, the theme ecosystem, and the migration path out. A platform that scores well on the first five and badly on the sixth is a platform people stay on for years because leaving is too expensive.

If you want the generic list rather than the similarity ranking, our Shopify alternatives overview covers the field without the similarity lens.

The five candidates, by published price

Prices below were read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-10-01 through a US exit IP.

Platform Entry monthly (US) Mid tier Top self-serve tier Hosting bundled
Shopify Basic $39 Grow $105 Advanced $399 Yes, unlimited bandwidth
BigCommerce Core $39 ($29 annual) Growth $105 ($79 annual) Scale $399 ($299 annual) Yes
Squarespace Basic $25 Core $39 Advanced $139 Yes
Volusion Personal $35 Professional $79 Business $299 Yes, free web hosting
WooCommerce $0 platform fee n/a n/a No, hosting $25 to $350/mo
Wix [DATA NOT VERIFIED: the Wix pricing pages fetched on 2026-10-01 returned no US dollar tier prices, so no Wix figure is cited] [DATA NOT VERIFIED: same] [DATA NOT VERIFIED: same] Yes

Three of these publish $39 as a mid-tier number and one publishes $25 as an entry point. That tells you less than it looks like. Volusion’s Personal plan at $35 comes with a $50,000 annual GMV cap and a 100-product limit, and the caps are the operative term, not the price. I compared that structure against BigCommerce’s in our BigCommerce vs Shopify pricing breakdown.

How close is each one, really

This is the table the price comparison cannot give you.

Similarity signal BigCommerce Squarespace Volusion WooCommerce
Bundled hosting and SSL Yes Yes Yes, plus free SSL No
App or extension marketplace Over 1,200 apps Built-in plus a smaller extension directory Built-in features, no large marketplace Plugin ecosystem, self-managed
Theme catalog size Commercial themes sold separately Template library with the plan 100+ free themes Any WordPress theme
Payment freedom $0 fee with embedded providers Tied to Squarespace Payments for its best rates Preferred gateway recommended Any gateway, no penalty
Non-developer editing Visual editor Strongest of the group Drag-and-drop builder Theme dependent
Catalog ceiling Plan-capped GMV, not products No product limit published 100 to unlimited products by tier Unlimited

Shopify’s own ecosystem numbers are on public pages: the Theme Store lists 1,298 themes, and the App Store homepage advertises "over 16,000 apps." BigCommerce advertises "over 1,200 apps." Squarespace states that extension pricing is set by the developer, not by Squarespace. Those are different scales of ecosystem, and they matter more in year two than month one.

BigCommerce: same workflow, different limits

BigCommerce is the platform that looks most like Shopify from the merchant’s chair. Same plan names at the same prices, same bundled hosting, an app marketplace organized the same way, and a checkout you configure rather than build.

The difference is the meter. BigCommerce publishes a $30,000 trailing-twelve-month GMV ceiling on Core and $100,000 on Growth, and it auto-upgrades the account when you cross either one. Its pricing page adds a Scale clause of $33,333 in monthly GMV with a 0.9% overage above that, and automatic movement to a contract plan once trailing GMV reaches $2 million. Shopify publishes no revenue ceiling on any tier.

For a store growing steadily, that is the line that decides the total cost. A store at $150,000 a year lands on BigCommerce Scale at $299 a month billed annually, while the same store can sit on a lower Shopify plan all year. The full arithmetic is in our BigCommerce vs Shopify pricing comparison.

Where BigCommerce pulls ahead is payment freedom and B2B. Its embedded provider list includes Stripe, PayPal Braintree, Adyen, Klarna and others, and orders through those carry a $0 platform fee. Shopify charges a third-party transaction fee of 2% down to 0.2% when Shopify Payments is not in use.

Squarespace: easier setup, smaller ceiling

Squarespace is the easiest of the group to launch. Pick a template, connect a domain, add products. Its published tiers run $25, $39, $65 and $139 monthly, or $19, $29, $49 and $99 billed annually, which is the largest annual discount in the table.

The catch is on the metering side of payments, not products. Squarespace states there are no limits on the number of products and services you can sell, but its Basic plan carries an "online store transaction fee of 2%" that disappears on Core and above. There is also a separate digital content fee of 7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus, and a tax calculation charge of 0.15% per transaction on Core capped at $0.99.

The ecosystem is the second catch. Squarespace’s extension directory is smaller than BigCommerce’s and far smaller than Shopify’s, and the vendor states it does not control extension pricing. If the site depends on a specific third-party integration, check for it before comparing prices.

Volusion: a lower entry price with a GMV wall

Volusion publishes the lowest self-serve entry in this group at $35 a month, and it comes with the largest free-tier catalog limit at 100 products. That is a genuine option for a small store.

Read the caps before the price. Volusion’s own page states the GMV definition plainly: the amount of total online payments processed through one of the payment methods Volusion offers, calculated on a trailing 12-month basis. The ceilings are $50,000 on Personal, $100,000 on Professional and $400,000 on Business, with product limits of 100, 5,000 and unlimited respectively. Volusion also notes that "additional fees may apply if you are not on a preferred payment gateway," which is the same shape of clause BigCommerce and Shopify both use.

One caveat on the marketing: Volusion’s site carries "Industry-Leading Payment Solutions" and similar phrasing in its feature list. I would not treat vendor self-description as an SEO or payments benchmark without a source outside that page.

WooCommerce: not similar, and that is the point

WooCommerce answers a different question. It is free to download, and everything Shopify bundles becomes a purchase you make separately: hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, and the maintenance of the stack itself.

The cost of running an ecommerce store on your own hosting is where this option either works or does not. On a managed plan at $25 to $35 a month with a handful of extensions, it competes. On a $6 droplet you patch yourself, it competes differently.

What you get back is control. WooCommerce lets you use any payment gateway without a platform penalty, and its core ships with unlimited products, orders and APIs. For a store with unusual requirements, that flexibility is worth the loss of simplicity.

For dropshipping specifically, the two platforms diverge in ways a general comparison misses, and our WooCommerce vs Shopify dropshipping comparison works through supplier apps, SKU handling and order-volume costs.

The migration cost nobody quotes

Every platform in this article will import a product CSV. None of them will rebuild your theme, your redirects and your integrations for you.

The parts that move cleanly are products, customers and orders. The parts that do not are theme customizations, app-specific data, URL structures and whatever the site’s search rankings depended on. That is why a store on a $39 plan often stays there: the subscription is a rounding error next to a rebuild.

If you are small enough that the platform is still a decision rather than a commitment, our guide to the best ecommerce platform for a small business puts the same platforms into a size-based decision instead of a similarity one.

Our verdict

Ranked by how closely each one matches Shopify’s day-to-day workflow:

  • BigCommerce, for the closest match. Same prices, same bundled hosting, a real app marketplace, and no third-party transaction fee when you use an embedded payment provider. Accept the GMV ladder if you pick it.
  • Squarespace, for the easiest launch and the smallest catalog ambition. Start at Core, not Basic, because the 2% online store fee on Basic outruns the annual saving quickly.
  • Volusion, for a low entry price with published caps. Know your product limit and your GMV ceiling before you sign, because both are published and both bind.
  • WooCommerce, if flexibility matters more than simplicity and you are comfortable buying hosting separately.
  • Wix, unranked here. Its US tier prices could not be verified from a US exit on the research date, and a platform comparison built on unverified prices is not worth reading.

Shopify itself stays a defensible answer. It publishes no revenue ceiling, it bundles the hosting, and its app and theme ecosystems are an order of magnitude larger than the alternatives in this table.

How we researched this

  • Prices and caps come from vendor pricing pages fetched on 2026-10-01 through a US exit IP with an en-US locale. Region matters for these vendors, so every figure here is the US version.
  • Ecosystem counts come from vendor pages read on the same date: the Shopify Theme Store and App Store, and BigCommerce’s apps page.
  • Cap structures, overage rates and embedded provider lists were taken from the vendor pricing page or its FAQ, not from marketing summaries.
  • Where a vendor did not return a usable US price, the cell is marked as unverified instead of estimated. That is why Wix is listed but not ranked. The full method is on our how we research page.

Sources

All URLs fetched 2026-10-01 via a US exit IP with Accept-Language: en-US.

  1. Shopify pricing (https://www.shopify.com/pricing): plan prices, unlimited web hosting and bandwidth, third-party transaction fees, marketplace order allowance
  2. BigCommerce pricing (https://www.bigcommerce.com/pricing/): plan prices, GMV caps, Scale overage rate, open provider fee, embedded provider list
  3. BigCommerce pricing FAQ (https://www.bigcommerce.com/pricing/faq/): auto-upgrade mechanics, API call limits, free SSL statement
  4. BigCommerce apps (https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/): app count and marketplace structure
  5. Squarespace pricing (https://www.squarespace.com/pricing): tier prices, annual prices, online store transaction fee, digital content fee, tax calculation fee, product limit statement
  6. Volusion pricing (https://www.volusion.com/pricing/): tier prices, GMV caps, product limits, gateway fee note
  7. WooCommerce pricing (https://woocommerce.com/pricing/): $0 platform fee, hosting and extension bands, gateway flexibility statement
  8. Wix premium pricing (https://www.wix.com/premium-pricing): fetched, no US tier prices returned
  9. Shopify theme store (https://themes.shopify.com/themes): theme count
  10. Shopify App Store (https://apps.shopify.com/): advertised app count

Directly comparable breakdowns on this site:

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