Best Shopify Alternative? From Beginner to Big League

[dfontes1188]

Hi Everyone,

I was making 40k per month and climbing with my Shopify store, until my payment processor shut down.

My products are high risk. Many processors I find use their own gateways, which aren't available on Shopify.

I need an alternative fast.

I'm willing to invest in having a site built from the ground up, but wondering if there are any solutions that are right up there with Shopify.

Features that are important are mobile friendly design, loyalty program, abandon cart emails, automated emails for customer reviews, and SEO.

Ease of use is also important for my employee.

BigCommerce seems to be the runner up, waiting to hear if custom gateways are an option.

Is $5000 a realistic number to have a site built with all the features I need? If so, where to begin?

I'll start digging through biophase threads, but I appreciate any advice you can give.

 

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[biophase]

Are you saying that you can't find another processor that plugs into Shopify? Won't Bigcommerce have the same issue?

edit: just read you are looking at a custom backend with BC

 

[Syrus]

Hi Everyone,

I was making 40k per month and climbing with my Shopify store, until my payment processor shut down.

My products are high risk. Many processors I find use their own gateways, which aren't available on Shopify.

I need an alternative fast.

I'm willing to invest in having a site built from the ground up, but wondering if there are any solutions that are right up there with Shopify.

Features that are important are mobile friendly design, loyalty program, abandon cart emails, automated emails for customer reviews, and SEO.

Ease of use is also important for my employee.

BigCommerce seems to be the runner up, waiting to hear if custom gateways are an option.

Is $5000 a realistic number to have a site built with all the features I need? If so, where to begin?

I'll start digging through biophase threads, but I appreciate any advice you can give.

Hi! I suggest you to use WordPress with Woo Commerce plugin. It is mobile friendly, has built in automations and ot top of that is oe of the best for SEO.

Will be nice to hear if you can share some details, like how long did it take you to make 40K a month? Is is a physical products or virtual ?

Thanks i advance.

 

[Argue]

 

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[Dan1el]

I built a very clean and professional looking website with wordpress completely free (only domain + hosting costs), with no previous experience of building websites. Theres alot of guides on youtube where you can draw inspiration from!

 

[dfontes1188]

Are you saying that you can't find another processor that plugs into Shopify? Won't Bigcommerce have the same issue?

edit: just read you are looking at a custom backend with BC

The processors I found don't want to do the programming to integrate with both Shopify or Bigcommerce.

They will only work with WooCommerce or Magento. It's down to these two.

Got a 3 day weekend to get a site up and running.

Leaning towards Magento but Wordpress is much easier. Easier isn't always better though.

 

[MitchC]

Neto is very similar to Shopify

 

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[Ultra Magnus]

I have a WooCommerce site. It wasn't easy to do the way I wanted b/c I had absolutely no experience coding. Please note that I'm talking mostly about visual customization - I achieved everything I wanted once a programmer friend of mine showed me how to css.

But in terms of functionality, it is a powerful platform with plenty of high quality extensions, both free and paid. Everything you listed in the OP is available as an extension/plugin. You can be an absolute newbie like I was and you'd set it up, the back-end is easy to use so your employee shouldn't have issues, plus it integrates with most popular services, such as MailCheat(Chimp).

Since you already have experience in running an e-commerce store, you shouldn't run into problems if you go with WooCommerce. At least these are my 2 cents, do your research before you commit.

 

[dfontes1188]

Hi! I suggest you to use WordPress with Woo Commerce plugin. It is mobile friendly, has built in automations and ot top of that is oe of the best for SEO.

Will be nice to hear if you can share some details, like how long did it take you to make 40K a month? Is is a physical products or virtual ?

Thanks i advance.

I read everything in Biophase original e-commerce thread 3 years ago. Most of what I learned about starting and growing an e-commerce store is thanks to him.


I've been selling physical goods for almost 3 years. The market wasn't widely popular when I first started.

I sampled the products I wanted to sell more than once. Made sure the suppliers are honest, reliable, and will cover any damages that may happen.

Started off gaining exposure through online forums, facebook, reddit, and reddit ads.

Referral programs that offer discounts will get your customers to work for you, and get you more customers.

Capture emails as soon as people enter the store. Send weekly content to stay relevant, and offer quarterly sales - black friday & cyber monday is huge.

People know how much things costs and don't want to be ripped off. Be competitive and offer a no hassle 30 day money back guarantee.

Offer the most value compared to the competitors. It wasn't possible at first, but added more value as I grew, and will continue to do so.

Be real, be honest, be fair. Word gets around quick. Eliminate any doubt that buying from you will be a mistake.

Amazon is the top dog when it comes to site layout, turn around time, and delivery time. Strive to be like them.

Are you saying that you can't find another processor that plugs into Shopify? Won't Bigcommerce have the same issue?

edit: just read you are looking at a custom backend with BC

The processors I found use their own custom gateway. They will only integrate with WooCommerce or Magento.

Shopify won't allow for both eCheck gateway, and custom payment gateways. I can only choose from the gateways they have listed.

So as of now, my two options are WooCommerce or Magento. WooCommerce seems easier, but Magento seems to be the better long term option.

 

[dfontes1188]

It seems there more recommendations for Woo than Magento..

Another thing to consider is fast page load times to rank high on google search. The website has to be light and mobile friendly.

Either option will be hosted with VPS or cloud server.

 

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[Sadik]

From a programmer's perspective, Magento is very tough to customize. It's complex code and extension is not easy. So long term maintenance cost will be higher with Magento than with Woocommerce.

 

[LifeTransformer]

Woocommerce gets my vote too.

 

[Shades]

I used to be a big WooCommerce guy. However, you will find with a store the size of your that it probably isnt a headache you want. There isnt anything that happens that you wont find some solution for, but do you want to be finding solutions for things on your site often? Powerful, fairly cheap when all set up...yea it is that. But Wordpress updates quite often. Which means every damn plugin on your site is gonna be updating to. Then you just pray nothing breaks from the series of updates. But things will break and need some tending to. Not all the time, but enough to where it makes you question why you are using WooCommerce. And make sure you pay for some good hosting.

 

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[dfontes1188]

I used to be a big WooCommerce guy. However, you will find with a store the size of your that it probably isnt a headache you want. There isnt anything that happens that you wont find some solution for, but do you want to be finding solutions for things on your site often? Powerful, fairly cheap when all set up...yea it is that. But Wordpress updates quite often. Which means every damn plugin on your site is gonna be updating to. Then you just pray nothing breaks from the series of updates. But things will break and need some tending to. Not all the time, but enough to where it makes you question why you are using WooCommerce. And make sure you pay for some good hosting.

Thank you for posting.

This is exactly what I'm thinking. With 50 orders per day and growing, I don't want to spend extra resources on customer complaints for things like reward points not working, glitches etc.

I now have the money to have a site built with everything I need. I want to set it and forget it.

Only problem is... 3 DAY HOLIDAY WEEKEND!! One extra day of waiting for developer quotes.

Do you use Magento 2? How hard is it to apply minor tweaks like a sale banner, or a news announcement on top of home page, and category pages?

 

[JasonR]

My friend runs a seven figure per year business using UltraCart, selling supplements on a continuity basis. They have a multitude of gateways you can use.

Sounds like you need a simpler platform like UltraCart rather than a full fledged store as complex as Magento. UltraCart focuses more on marketing and funnels that being an ecommerce "store."

 

[Ultra Magnus]

My friend runs a seven figure per year business using UltraCart, selling supplements on a continuity basis. They have a multitude of gateways you can use.

Sounds like you need a simpler platform like UltraCart rather than a full fledged store as complex as Magento. UltraCart focuses more on marketing and funnels that being an ecommerce "store."

Haven't heard of that one before, it looks interesting - unlike most other online services I've seen the pricing isn't based on a "freemium" or up-sell model. That's always a plus in my book.

 

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[dfontes1188]

Ran into some luck, a credit card processor came through last week that could Integrate Shopify.

I'm keeping Shopify as I find it superior to the other platforms I tried in almost every way.

Can't recommend Shopify enough for small-medium size businesses.

Had things not gone this way Magento 2 would be my second choice, with WooCommerce a close third.

 

[theag]

Magento 2 would be my second choice

For everybody else that reads this, I would recommend to go with Magento 1 instead of 2. Faster, more stable, better support system. Magento 2 despite being labeled/marketed as ready for production really is only at beta testing level right now.

I use Magento 1 on my main site and its very solid and fast (with the right hosting/server setup -> nginx/PHP7/SSD/Varnish/Redis on managed AWS EC2 + Route53 DNS + Cloudfront CDN). Building a few new sites based on it too. Heavily customized, which isnt easy with Magento but once you get the hang of it you can do absolutely everything with it. I basically just plug my built-from-scratch frontend into Magento's backend.

Just make sure you stay on top of security patches. Dont ask me how i know.

Recently thought about switching to Woocommerce, but after some research the consensus seems to be that for a pure ecommerce site Magento is better, since its built for that purpose and Woocommerce is just an addon for a blogging software. On the other hand there are guys running massive and heavily customized Woocommerce stores, so I guess its not much of a difference.

I would give Shopify a try for new sites but the lack of payment options would basically cut my conversion rates by at least 50%. Too bad.

 

[dfontes1188]

I bought into the Magento 2 hype, thanks for your insight.

Are you selling high risk products as well? What gateway are you currently using?

 

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[Striver]

Are you selling high risk products as well? What gateway are you currently using?

Just using your rough numbers of 40k/month and 50ish sales a day... $26.66 per item doesn't sound very high risk. Unless you meant that the 40k was actually profit.

 

[Marina Patenaude]

Hey,

I own a shopify store (www.fashionwolfe.com)

Does anyone have any recommendations how to boost sales, how to market for this type of store?

I need help!

 

[laurenaria10]

BigCcommerce is a reliable alternative to Shopify, and offers a free version, but only gets five products and some limited features. The Ecwid solution is not a free option, but basically it is a shopping cart solution that integrates with any other website you currently have.

In fact, I found a article about this so you could find it useful: alternatives of Shopify

 

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[Marina Patenaude]

BigCcommerce is a reliable alternative to Shopify, and offers a free version, but only gets five products and some limited features. The Ecwid solution is not a free option, but basically it is a shopping cart solution that integrates with any other website you currently have.

In fact, I found a article about this so you could find it useful: alternatives of Shopify

Thanks for sharing, I'm currently working on a shopify store. This option might be very good as a substitute, I'll have a look.

 

[sparechange]

Hey,

I own a shopify store (www.fashionwolfe.com)

Does anyone have any recommendations how to boost sales, how to market for this type of store?

I need help!

Not an expert , I think having a physical store is important if your selling high end clothing. Much easier to goto the mall with friends and actually try on clothing. What if I spend $200 for something and I don't like it or doesn't fit? Why should I trust an online store I've never heard of compared to a real store like guess or Armani?

 

[Marina Patenaude]

Not an expert , I think having a physical store is important if your selling high end clothing. Much easier to goto the mall with friends and actually try on clothing. What if I spend $200 for something and I don't like it or doesn't fit? Why should I trust an online store I've never heard of compared to a real store like guess or Armani?

Hi, Thank you for your feedback.
However, online shopping is HUGE. Many retail stores in the City I live are closing down because they cannot compete with the online market.
I understand what you're saying however, finding a way to re-create that experience in a way that allows my customers to feel 100% safe buying from my store.
The way that I know is to have top quality customer service and make sure ALL customers always leave 100% satisfied. Eventually that will speak for its self. But how to find a way to speed that up? I need help with that. If you have any recommendations please let me know. But telling me that an online store isn't the way to go is not something I'm about to listen to. Online is the way of the future. Figuring out how to do it properly is the tricky part.

 

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[sparechange]

On

Hi, Thank you for your feedback.
However, online shopping is HUGE. Many retail stores in the City I live are closing down because they cannot compete with the online market.
I understand what you're saying however, finding a way to re-create that experience in a way that allows my customers to feel 100% safe buying from my store.
The way that I know is to have top quality customer service and make sure ALL customers always leave 100% satisfied. Eventually that will speak for its self. But how to find a way to speed that up? I need help with that. If you have any recommendations please let me know. But telling me that an online store isn't the way to go is not something I'm about to listen to. Online is the way of the future. Figuring out how to do it properly is the tricky part.

Online is the future yes, but having a physical presence is the big secret to success,

 

[sparechange]

Look into hosting an event at the mall, my local mall has tens of thousands walk through daily, buisnesses setup a promotion event inside and get a lot of advertising that way

 

[Marina Patenaude]

On

Online is the future yes, but having a physical presence is the big secret to success,

How do you recommend for a online company starting off to have a physical presence? Rent in my city for the necessary space I would need would be $20 000/month. I can't afford that at the moment. Do you have any recommendations or advice you can share with me?

 

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[sparechange]

How do you recommend for a online company starting off to have a physical presence? Rent in my city for the necessary space I would need would be $20 000/month. I can't afford that at the moment. Do you have any recommendations or advice you can share with me?

As I mentioned mall events or leasing some store in the mall, not sure how you came up with a $20k number.. I’m in Vancouver and don’t think I’d spend that much

 

[Marina Patenaude]

As I mentioned mall events or leasing some store in the mall, not sure how you came up with a $20k number.. I’m in Vancouver and don’t think I’d spend that much

I managed a store on robson for several years and the rent was $20 000/month +