SHSelfHostIndex

E-commerce Platforms

Run your own online store with self-hosted e-commerce software, alternatives to Shopify.

51 self-hosted apps · 295 comparisons

All e-commerce platforms apps

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 425 words

The stars in this category are misleading. Medusa (36,003 stars) and Saleor (23,265) top the charts, and neither will give you a working shop out of the box — they are headless engines, meaning you get an admin panel and an API, and the customer-facing storefront is yours to build. If you read "self-hosted Shopify alternative" and pictured picking a theme and listing products the same afternoon, the app you actually want is further down the list.

How to choose a store platform

Decide turnkey versus headless first, because it changes the project by an order of magnitude. Turnkey (WooCommerce, Bagisto) means a storefront, checkout, and theme system exist on day one. Headless (Medusa, Saleor, EverShop) means weeks of frontend development before a customer can buy anything — the payoff is total control over the buying experience. Second, match your stack: WooCommerce and Bagisto are PHP, Medusa is TypeScript, Saleor is Python/Django, Spree is Rails. You will be patching and extending this thing; pick the language your team can debug at 11pm. Third, be honest about catalog size. A hundred products need 512 MB and any of these; tens of thousands of SKUs with multi-warehouse inventory justify Saleor's 2 GB footprint or Magento's heavier one.

Where to start

WooCommerce is the default for most people: 10,474 stars on the plugin alone, running millions of stores, with the largest extension and payment-gateway ecosystem in open source. The trade is that you're now maintaining WordPress, and paid extensions add up. Medusa is the pick for developers building something custom — a marketplace, B2B pricing, a storefront that doesn't look like a template — with a modern TypeScript codebase and modular architecture. Saleor suits larger catalogs and teams already fluent in GraphQL and Kubernetes; it's the most scalable option here and the steepest to operate.

The Magento question

Magento Open Source is genuinely powerful — advanced promotions, multi-store, an enormous extension marketplace — and it's the wrong answer for almost every self-hoster. It wants 4 GB of RAM minimum, its operational complexity is a part-time job, and Adobe's attention goes to the paid Commerce edition. If you've outgrown WooCommerce, evaluate Saleor or Medusa before signing up for Magento's upkeep.

For a first store, run WooCommerce. It's the only option where a solo founder gets from zero to taking payments in a weekend, and the ecosystem means every problem you hit has been solved publicly, three times over.

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E-commerce Platforms comparisons

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