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Self-host Shopify

Ecommerce platform · Category: CRM, billing & ops

Shopify owns the hosted-storefront default; alternatives are credible only if you accept owning checkout, shipping, and payments integration yourself. WooCommerce is the volume leader in self-host; Medusa and Saleor are the modern headless options.

Shopify pricing anchor: $39/mo Basic + 2.9% + $0.30/transaction; $399/mo Advanced.

Medusa medusajs/medusa alive

GitHub
★ 32.9k · last commit today · 180 open issues
License
MIT
Setup time
20min (Node.js + Postgres + Redis)
Monthly cost
$10-20 VPS for early-stage stores; pricing scales with payment-provider fees, not platform.
Migration sketch. Shopify → Admin → Apps → 'Matrixify' (or 'Easy Migration') exports products, customers, orders to CSV. Medusa has a `medusa-plugin-shopify` plugin that ingests Shopify export JSON / CSV directly into the products / variants / collections schema. Storefront has to be rebuilt — Medusa is headless and ships a Next.js starter.
Good fit forDevs building custom storefronts who want headless commerce with a JS/TS stack.
Weak atApp ecosystem is much smaller than Shopify; you build / glue features Shopify gives free.

Saleor saleor/saleor alive

GitHub
★ 22.9k · last commit 2d ago · 237 open issues
License
BSD-3-Clause
Setup time
30min docker-compose
Monthly cost
$15-25 VPS — Python + GraphQL + Postgres + Redis.
Migration sketch. Shopify CSV exports map to Saleor via their `manage.py loaddata` + a custom transformer (the Saleor docs include one for Shopify). GraphQL-first means storefront integrations are clean but your existing Shopify Liquid theme does not port — you build a new storefront against Saleor's GraphQL API.
Good fit forTeams that want a GraphQL-first headless commerce stack with channel-based multi-store.
Weak atHeavier ops (Python + Celery + Postgres + Redis); learning curve is steeper.

WooCommerce woocommerce/woocommerce alive

GitHub
★ 10.3k · last commit 1d ago · 3070 open issues
License
GPL-3.0
Setup time
20min (WordPress install + plugin)
Monthly cost
$5-10 VPS for low-volume stores; LiteSpeed or NGINX + PHP-FPM is fine to mid-traffic.
Migration sketch. Shopify → Apps → 'Cart2Cart' or 'LitExtension' (paid migrators) connect Shopify Admin API and import products + customers + orders into WooCommerce. Free path: Shopify CSV exports → WooCommerce Products → Import (CSV) handles products + variants; orders need a paid plugin or manual SQL.
Good fit forStores already on the WordPress stack or that need a content-marketing site + storefront in one CMS.
Weak atPlugin sprawl; checkout performance and security depend on which payment + tax plugins you stack.

In a terminal? npx os-alt shopify prints this table — how the CLI works →