The Free Shopify Alternative For Small Businesses

Shopify has become an increasingly expensive webshop platform over the past few years. This is due to the amount of services that Shopify tries to provide under the Shopify umbrella. It is easy to get lost in the app store and end up with a bill in the hundreds of euros a month when you’re only using 5% of the features needed.

TinyShop is aiming to provide a free Shopify alternative specifically for small to medium sized businesses looking to dip their toes into ecommerce. The underlying goal is to keep bloat to a minimum while maximizing simplicity, all without losing the usability your customers expect from a modern ecommerce experience.

This is topped off by a clear pricing model that allows you to grow your online business and only pay for what you use. If you don't receive any orders you don't pay a cent.

See also: Free Etsy Alternative

Shopify is battling an endless cycle of bloat and slowdown due to their business model. The ability to add 'apps' to your ecommerce store directly correlates to the complexity involved in the ever growing platform. Shopify gets a share in the apps on the platform and each app added will cause more slowdown on individual shops as the majority are not developed with performance in mind. Site load speed has and will continue to be an ever growing factor in search engine optimization for ecommerce sites. Quicker loading speeds directly correlate to more sales. By adding more and more apps your Shopify store becomes increasingly slow to use and load, resulting in more checkout drop offs.

Another factor that has started contributing to administrative woes over the past years on the Shopify platform is that the depth and breadth of the features & plugins available directly result in a steeper learning curve to get started. Keeping it simple at the beginning of your ecommerce journey should be your number one priority. Ideally you should be up and running within minutes and be in a position to sell to your customers. The longer the setup process or learning takes, the higher the chances are your ecommerce venture will fail to even get off the ground.

Shopify can also end up being too restrictive when your catalog grows by capping you to 100 SKUS and a maximum of 3 options per product. TinyShop sets no limitation on how much SKUS or options per product you can create. This allows you to build your catalog of products in an unrestricted manner that best suits your needs.

This is again a result of third party apps being added to stores without the ability to properly vet the code that is being introduced without being a developer. This means you run the risk of having your customers tracked by third parties without even your own knowledge.

TinyShop aims to provide you a viable free Shopify alternative with all the necessary tools you need to get your business online quick and easy