In this guide, obviously Mailchimp will be the benchmark for the other tools, and here we will start by discussing its key highlights. Mailchimp is still the industry leader in email marketing tools, and not without its reasons. First, Mailchimp has the benefit of being one of the first players in creating a user-friendly email scheduler, with its drag-and-drop approach and various templates to choose from. Ease of use is indeed the key highlight of Mailchimp as an email marketing tool, while also providing a well-rounded set of features. However, many other Mailchimp alternatives – as you’ll learn further below – offers more advanced features in one area or the other. For example, Mailchimp’s automation features are relatively basic, and there’s no drag-and-drop composer for automation. Mailchimp, as one of the oldest email marketing tools available, is still leading the industry amidst the saturated competition. One of the biggest reasons, is the fact that it’s a well-rounded tool that is very easy to use with its rich set of features. However, Mailchimp is certainly not the perfect tool for all situations, there are other Mailchimp alternatives that offer different features, more advanced functionalities, and different price ranges. Below, we will discuss 6 of the best of these Mailchimp alternatives. However, let us begin with a brief discussion of Mailchimp itself, and why it’s so popular.

Key Features:

• Easy to use composer with a drag and drop approach
• Automated email scheduler and workflow
• Personalization features
• Segmentation features for better audience targeting
• A/B testing
• Lead capture features to capture email addresses via signup forms, pop-ups, and landing pages

We can consider MailChimp as a well-rounded tool designed for beginners or those who are only looking for simplicity and ease of use. Power-users and advanced marketers, however, might benefit from other Mailchimp alternatives with more specific advanced features.

Pricing: The limited free version is sufficient for most basic marketers, the cheapest “Essentials” plan is $9.99/month, and the Premium plan is $299/month.

Top 8 Best Mailchimp Alternatives

1. Omnisend

Omnisend is much more than an email marketing tool compared to Mailchimp. Omnisend allows you to connect several marketing channels into the same seamless automated workflow. While email marketing sits at the core of Omnisend, you can do use a lot of by improving your email marketing: email automation workflows, drag-and-drop visual composer, pre-built templates, email capture and lead generation forms, and more. Omnisend offers advanced segmentation to target your customers based on their profile data, campaign engagement, and shopping behavior.

Pros of Omnisend:

• Advanced segmentation for precise targeting
• Email capture using popups, static sign up forms, landing pages, and gamified forms
• Live website tracking for behavioral data and A/B testing
• 24/7 customer service

Cons of Omnisend:

• Relatively expensive with its email subscriber-based pricing
• Not too many email templates included

Pricing:

For starters, you can try out Omnisend’s 14 days trial package to see whether it fulfills your specifications or not. For basic email marketing, Omnisend offers a free plan that lets you send up to 15,000 emails per month. After that, their paid plans start off at only $16 per month.

2. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor also offers ease of use and user-friendliness in its email builder, making it the direct competitor to Mailchimp in the visual builder department. Campaign Monitor is also strong in its email automation features, offering a better automated email workflow than mailchimp that is more user-friendly with more advanced features. A few minor downsides about Campaign Monitor is in the lead capturing aspect. For example, you can’t configure pop-ups. Also, it’s not dedicated to ecommerce so it doesn’t has as many integrations with ecommerce platforms compared to other tools (it does offer integrations with Shopify and Magento, among others).

Pros of Campaign Monitor:

• Slightly more affordable than MailChimp across all plans
• Easy to use, very visual email buildier and automated campaign builder. Various templates available
• In-depth analytics and reporting tools, useful in developing your strategy and evaluating your progress

Cons of Campaign Monitor:

• No free plan, and the $9/month plan is relatively basic
• Although easy to use initially, has a pretty steep learning curve for the advanced features

Pricing: starts at $9/month, the most expensive plan is $149/month. There’s also the option for custom, advanced plan called Emma HQ, and the option to pay per campaign.

3. TargetBay

TargetBay is more than an email marketing tool. It has three products under its wing – BayEngage, BayReviews, and BayRewards. BayEngage is an email marketing tool that supports SMS marketing as well. It has all email marketing features at affordable pricing, which makes it a direct competitor to Mailchimp. The email marketing tool BayEngage, TargetBay’s product, is an easy-to-use and user-friendly tool that offers pre-built email templates with a drag-and-drop builder along with advanced segmentation, reports, and analytics with UTM tracking, making it perfect for campaign tracking. BayEngage has a powerful email automation feature, making it easy and better automation workflow along with SMS and more advanced features.

Pros of BayEngage

• Advanced segmentation features
• A/B testing
• 24/7 dedicated account manager, be it on any plan
• In-depth analytics and reporting
• Create your own pop-up to capture emails or showcase your offers for website visitors

Cos of BayEngage

• Relatively fewer email templates
• The pricing plan for the 50000 email subscribers is not displayed on the pricing page, but you should contact the sales team.

Pricing: TargetBay offers a 14-day free trial and pricing starts at $169/month for 100K emails. Pricing scales with eCommerce needs. Although this can look costly, it is not. The catch is here since the eCommerce needs to scale up the tool has come up with direct pricing for 100K emails per month. (Note: If the emails sent per month are relatively less, then pricing also drops off).

4. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is not only an email marketing tool, but also an all-round digital marketing and sales automation tool offering various advanced automation and scheduling features. The Lite plan, however, is focused only on email marketing and email automation, with some excellent features like the ability to create segmented lists for targeting purposes, autoresponder set-ups, and analytics, among other features. As a digital marketing automation tool, however, ActiveCampaign is among the best available. So, if you are also looking for a solution for your overall digital marketing campaign, ActiveCampaign can be a great option.

Pros of ActiveCampaign:

• Great customization and personalization options
• As a well-rounded digital marketing and sales automation tool, very cost-effective
• The lite plan (dedicated for email marketing), is also very cost-effective where you get unlimited sending with just $9/month

Cons of ActiveCampaign:

• The user interface is relatively outdated, and not as easy to use as MailChimp
• Customer service is sometimes not very responsive

Pricing: Free trial available, the Lite version is $9/month, and the Enterprise (full) plan is $229/month

5. Mailjet

Like Mailchimp, Mailjet is a cloud-based email marketing tool focusing on simplicity and ease of use, characterized with the visual, drag-and-drop style email builder. Mailjet also offers basic email automation features, which can be useful for those looking to implement drip campaign. There are two main factors why Mailjet might be an interesting Mailchimp alternative: there is a relatively useful basic plan that is totally free, which can be useful for those looking for a free tool to assist their email marketing  campaign, and it’s very easy to setup SMTP server with Mailjet. SMTP can significantly improve the speed of email delivery, so this can be useful for time-sensitive campaigns (i.e. limited-time offer, flash sale, etc.).

Pros of MailJet:

• Easy SMTP server setup
• The basic version (that is totally free) is fairly useful and might be sufficient for most basic email marketing needs
• The most affordable option in this list where the paid plan starts from $8.69/month
• Easy to use with user-friendly interface
• Can easily implement sign-up forms within the email

Cons of Mailjet:

• Fairly basic features compared to others on this list so far, basic segmentation,targeting, and automation features.
• Customer service not as good as MailChimp

Pricing: free version available, basic plan is $8.69/month and the premium plan is only $18.86/month. Customized enterprise version available.

6. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a Mailchimp alternative focused for ecommerce companies’ email marketing needs. So, there are several useful features for ecommerce needs like the ability to design opt-in forms, landing page builder, recipient analytics, and so on.

Features-wise, ConvertKit is probably the best on this list with various unique features designed for—as the name suggests— conversion.

Pros of ConvertKit:

• Rich set of conversion-focused features, the best choice for ecommerce businesses
• Great marketing automation features
• Great user interface, easy to use campaign builder, website design, and marketing automation builder, among other features

Cons: 

• Relatively expensive with its email subscriber-based pricing
• Not too many email templates included
• Steep learning curve due to its deep set of features

Pricing: Free trial available, $29/month for up to 1,000 subscribers, $79/month for up to 5k subscribers, customizable plan available

7. Aweber

Unlike some of the tools in this list that offer well-rounded digital marketing automation features, Aweber is totally focused on email marketing. In fact, Aweber is one of the oldest email marketing tools around that is still widely used today not only for its popularity, but also functionality. For instance, Aweber offers more email templates than any other tools in this list, where each template is completely customizable. Aweber also offers one of—if not the best—visual email builder around. Also, Aweber has very intuitive email capture features, where you can easily create popups and forms. There is, however, a major downside in Aweber’s segmentation features. This can be a problem if you are aiming for more targeted personalizations in your email campaign.

Pros of Aweber:

• Easy to use email creation features, among the best in its class.
• Great analytics features including intuitive A/B testing tool
• Responsive and fast customer service
• A lot of customizable email templates

Cons of Aweber:

• Lack of targeting and user segmentation features
• The basic plan is limited for 500 email subscribers, so might not be cost-efficient if you have a big contact database
• Relatively basic email automation features

Pricing: Free trial available, plans start from $19/month for up to 500 subscribers.

8. HubSpot

HubSpot blends AI-powered functionalities with a straightforward email builder to create a highly capable, yet easy-to-use email marketing tool. HubSpot includes a drag-and-drop email builder that further streamlines the campaign creation process through numerous goal-based templates. You can also set up rule-based workflows that pull in data from your contact lists to easily send and deploy personalized emails. As for analytics, HubSpot provides insights into your campaign’s click and open rates and also reveals how many users either glanced, skimmed, or read through your emails in their entirety.

Pros of HubSpot: 

• AI writing assistant that generates personalized emails based on your input.
• An intuitive drag-and-drop email builder with numerous templates.
• Email health reporting tools to monitor and boost sending reputation.
• A/B testing with in-depth analytics.
• Free version available.

Cons of HubSpot: 

• Steep pricing differences between paid plans can cause issues in terms of scalability.
• Design elements within the email builder can only snap into place, which can limit customization options.

Pricing: You can access basic email marketing features completely for free. Paid plans are available in HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, which starts at $15 per user per month.

End Words

As you can see, each of the 7 Mailchimp alternatives we have shared above has their own advantages and disadvantages. There are mainly two reasons for choosing an email marketing tool that is not Mailchimp: either you are looking for something cheaper, or you are looking for more advanced features not offered by Mailchimp. It’s important to figure out your needs carefully with the help of digital marketing consultant before making your choice, and choose the one according to your email marketing goals.

The post Best Effective Mailchimp Alternatives to Look At appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

However, Ahrefs is certainly not a perfect tool for everyone: some might think it’s too expensive and are looking for cheaper/free Ahrefs alternatives, some others might want different features and benefits.

Here, we will discuss five of the best alternatives to Ahrefs available, but before we begin, let us discuss the benchmark: Ahrefs itself.

A Brief Overview on Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most popular SEO tools/software available today. A common misconception is that Ahrefs is just another keyword research tool. While it’s true that keyword research is indeed one of Ahrefs’ strong suits, Ahrefs is—technically— a suite of various SEO tools from content research/curation, link building analytics, SEO audit, and many more.

There are at least five core features where Ahrefs really shines:

• Backlink Profile Analysis

Ahrefs is often regarded as the best in the backlink analytics department, especially due to its massive link index. Simply enter any URL, and Ahrefs will give an in-depth report about the backlink profile. We can use this insight to build our own link building tactics and validate our target keywords.

• Keyword Research

Probably the most important feature for any SEO tool. While some might say that Ahrefs is relatively subpar in this department (as we’ll learn while discussing Ahrefs alternatives below), Ahrefs actually offers an excellent set of keyword research features, giving you all you need to find and analyze target keyword and content ideas.

• Content Insights

Analyze various topics and trending content to find out which actually produce the most backlinks, traffic, and engagement on various social media networks. 

• Site Audit

SEO audit is an important aspect of SEO success, analyzing your site to find possible technical errors and optimization issues, so you can make the necessary adjustments.

• Rank Tracking

Track the ranking performance of your target keywords, where you can filter by device and location. 

Pricing:

Ahrefs offers four different plans:

• Lite for $99/month, 1 user, some locked features
• Standard for $179/month, 1 user, most core features unlocked
• Advanced for $399/month, 3 users, more data with each analysis and report
• Agency for $999/month, 5 users, even more data than the advanced plan

As you can see, Ahrefs isn’t necessarily an affordable tool, and this is probably the biggest reason many people are looking for Ahrefs alternatives. 

Part of why Afrefs is relatively expensive is the fact that it included several different tools in one. This can either be a good or bad thing. For example, those that only want a content research tool might opt for a dedicated tool for that, which might be more affordable and might offer more focus in its features.

With that being said, here are some of Ahrefs alternatives we’ll recommend.

1. SEMRush

SEMRush is often regarded as Ahrefs’ closest competitor for several reasons. First, SEMRush is also an all-in-one SEO suite. 

In fact, for a bit of history, SEMRush was the first one to adopt that approach as a well-rounded SEO tool, while Ahrefs initially is “just” a link analytics tool. 

However, over the years, Ahrefs has added various features and tools to catch up with SEMRush, the leading all-in-one SEO tool at that time. We might get a hint about this at how Ahrefs priced their plans $0.95 cheaper than SEMRush.

Nowadays, they both offer very similar sets of features, but there are also key differences to consider, which in general are:

• Ahrefs is still better—overall— in the link analytics department, considering it was their first expertise

• SEMRush, on the other hand, offers more keyword research features. However, some might feel that SEMRush’s UI for keyword research is too complex due to all the displayed metrics

• SEMRush is slightly better in the technical SEO features. For instance, the site audit feature is more comprehensive.

• SEMRush offers more accurate, and faster rank tracking

• Ahrefs wins in the content analytics and research department with its “Content Explorer” feature

Pricing: 

• Pro for $99.95/month, Guru for $199.95/month, and Business for $399.95/month

Conclusion: for most SEO purposes, SEMRush is the better tool and the $0.95 difference is definitely worth it. However, if you want to focus more on backlinks analytics and content insights, Ahrefs is still better.

2. Moz Pro

Another strong contender as one of the best Ahrefs alternatives, Moz Pro is yet another all-in-one SEO suite offering various different tools from keyword research to site audit. Moz offers a similar price to Ahrefs with the standard plan costing $99/month, so they are very similar to each other in many different aspects. 

It is noting that Moz Pro’s Large plan is significantly cheaper than the comparable Ahrefs Business plan ($249/month vs $399/month), so it might be a plus point if you require a large amount of data/insights and a lot of users. 

One of the key highlights of Moz Pro is the Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority(PA) metrics, both developed by Moz and are widely used by SEO marketers nowadays to measure ranking performance.

Again, since both tools are offering similar features, here are some important considerations between the two:

• Ahrefs, again, is better in the link analysis department, but it’s worth noting that Moz Pro includes DA and PA in its link analytics (called Link Explorer). Moz Pro is slightly better than SEMRush in this department.

• Moz Pro shows more keywords compared to Ahrefs and SEMRush in its Keyword Explorer.

• Moz Pro is the pioneer of local SEO analytics and is still the best today in this aspect

• Moz has a great community, and its blog is one of the best resources for SEO information and tutorial

Pricing: Standard ($99/month), Medium ($179/month), Large ($249/month), Premium ($299/month)

Conclusion: offers less functionality overall compared to Ahrefs, but some really nice features in its Keyword Explorer and Moz Local. The Large plan is more affordable than Ahrefs’ and SEMRush, and if you regard DA and PA as important SEO metrics, Moz Pro is the way to go. 

3. BuzzSumo

Unlike SEMRush and Moz Pro, which we have discussed above, BuzzSumo is not a dedicated SEO suite, but rather focuses on content analytics, one of the key features of Ahrefs.

BuzzSumo only offers two core features, but is really good—if not the best— on what it does:

• Content analytics: scouring the internet and social media networks for the trending content for the topic, and displaying key metrics like engagement, number of shares, backlinks, and so on
• Influencer outreach: finding key influencers for a certain topic, a unique feature not offered by Ahrefs

It is also worth noting that BuzzSumo does offer basic SEO analytics functionalities like keyword research and backlinks analysis, but they are not as comprehensive as Ahrefs’.

Pricing: Pro ($79/month), Plus ($139/month), Large ($239/month), custom plan available.

Conclusion: if you are only looking for a content analytics tool, BuzzSumo is a more cost-efficient alternative while providing a more in-depth content analytics feature. If you are also planning to start an influencer marketing campaign, BuzzSumo is a great choice. 

4. SEO Powersuite

As the name SEO Powersuite suggests, this is another all-in-one SEO tools suite, similar to what Ahrefs offers. 

However, there is one key difference from SEO Powersuite compared to Ahrefs, SEMRush and Moz Pro: it is not sold as a SaaS product with a monthly subscription, instead, you only need to pay for one time, much like traditional software.

The best part about SEO Powertools is probably the fact that the free version is so good with all the SEO features from the premium packages included, you are only limited in volume and you can’t save projects or generate a report. Meaning, if you only want an analytics tool for strategizing purpose, the free version is probably sufficient. 

It is also worth noting that SEO Powersuite offers a really good link profile analytics feature, comparable to Ahrefs’, and some might even swear that SEO Powersuite is better than Ahrefs’ in this department. 

Pricing: a free version with all SEO features (limited data volume only), $299 one-time purchase for the Professional package (unlimited data), and $699 for the Enterprise package with advanced reporting features.

Conclusion: an excellent Ahrefs alternative with great core features. The traditional one-time-only pricing will be more cost-effective if you plan to stay long in the SEO game. 

5. Majestic

Majestic is a UK-based SEO suite offering various SEO features from site analytics (site explore), link profile analysis, domain comparing, and others.

However, just like Ahefs, Majestic is especially focused on the backlinks analytics department, with over 230 billion URLs in its link database. 

Probably the most interesting selling point as an Ahrefs alternative is Majestic’s pricing: the basic plan, called Lite, is ‘only’ $41.67/month, more than half of what’s offered by Ahrefs and SEMrush, while offering comparable features in the backlinks analytics department.

However, for other crucial SEO features like keyword analytics, Majestic is a little lacking compared to other alternatives in this list.

Pricing: Lite ($41.67/month, 1 user, 5000 data volume), Pro ($83.33/month, 1 user, 15000 data volume), Full ($333.33/month, 3 users, 30000 data volume)

Conclusion: an affordable alternative if you are especially looking for a backlinks checker.

End Words

Each of the Ahrefs alternatives we’ve discussed has its own pros and cons: some are affordable (one is free), some others offer a different set of features and/or specializations. It’s important to choose the right SEO tool according to your needs and your budget to maximize cost-efficiency. If you want to discuss what tool will be right for your business don’t hesitate to contact B2B SEO consultant.  

The post Top 5 Effective Ahrefs Alternatives to Pay Attention to appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

So, the main highlight of Shopify is its ease of use even for complete beginners, with various templates to choose from for both branding and functional purposes. 

Although we’ve stated that you don’t need any technical knowledge to build a store with Shopify, having HTML and CSS proficiency will allow you to have more flexibility in customizations. This is actually a huge plus point, so power-users can also opt for depth and more personalization. We can also customize Shopify online store with Shopify apps, as well as custom codes.

There are five different plans available:

• Shopify Lite ($9/month), you don’t get an actual e-commerce site but Shopify Lite integrates with Facebook and existing site
• Shopify Basic ($29/month) 
• Shopify ($79/month)
• Advanced Shopify ($299/month)
• Shopify Plus: custom-tailored according to your needs, will range around $1,500-$2,000/month

The more expensive the plan gets, obviously more features will be unlocked, with the key differences to pay attention to are:

• Reporting features: only the $79/month Shopify plan and above has the reporting feature, and the ‘Advanced’ plan unlocks advanced reporting features
• The feature to produce gift cards for the ‘Shopify’ plan and up
• Real-time Shopify shipping for ‘Advanced Shopify’ plan
• More staff (user) accounts the more expensive the plan gets
• POS, only ‘Shopify’ plan and above offer point of sale (POS) feature

The recently introduced Shopify Lite plan, however, is currently Shopify’s biggest unique factor among its alternatives, giving a much cheaper option at just $9/month. Keep in mind however, that the Lite plan doesn’t give you an actual ecommerce website, but will allow you to integrate Shopify with existing platforms (physical store, Facebook, existing website via Shopify’s Buy Button).

It’s also important to note that, with Shopify, you’ll need to pay transaction fees on every single sale that is not processed through Shopify Payment.

Top 7 Shopify Alternatives

1. WooCommerce For WordPress

WordPress—traditionally a blogging platform— is now the most popular website builders powering 34% of all websites in the world. However, WordPress, unlike WordPress alternatives, doesn’t offer a native ability to build an e-commerce store on its platform, but due to its open-source nature, there are various e-commerce plugins that can do the job.

Among these plugins, WooCommerce is the most popular for two main reasons: it’s free (with exception if you need to pay for the advanced extensions), and it works.

With WooCommerce, however, your site must be built on WordPress, where the WooCommerce—as a plugin— will provide additional tools to create your online store. Meaning, this won’t be as easy to use as Shopify, and you’ll need a bit of technical know-how. Yet, this will also give you more flexibility and depth in customizations.

Pros of WooCommerce:

• Both WooCommerce and WordPress are free. Paid advanced extensions, but you have the freedom to choose what you actually need
• More flexibility in customizations with the WordPress platform
• Huge user base with established community where you can get help from fellow users
• Very stable and reliable, as expected from WordPress platform

Cons of WooCommerce:

• You will need to pay separately for a domain name and hosting service
• Open-source, so you don’t get any customer service
• Steep learning curve

Pricing: Free with various paid extensions. 

Conclusion: the Shopify alternative for more technical users that are looking for more versatility and personalization.

2.BigCommerce

BigCommerce is probably the most direct competitor to Shopify, because they are indeed very similar in many different aspects. For instance, all of BigCommerce’s plans are $0.95 more expensive than Shopify’s, but you won’t need to pay any transaction fees with BigCommerce. So, on paper BigCommerce can be the cheaper one, depending on your payment gateway. 

Feature-wise, they are also very similar to each other. Some features are offered by Bigcommerce’s starter plan, but only available on Shopify’s more expensive plans, and vice versa. For example, BigCommerce offers the gift card feature on the standard plan, which is only available on the ‘Shopify’ plan (the $79/month). On the other hand, BigCommerce offers the abandoned cart recovery only from the ‘Plus’ plan, which is available on Shopify’s Basic plan. 

Pros and Cons of BigCommerce: 

Since BigCommerce and Shopify are very similar to each other, we won’t list specific pros and cons. However, there are three key consideration points when choosing between Shopify and BigCommerce:

1. If you exclusively use Shopify Payment, Shopify is more cost-efficient due to no transaction fee. If you use other payment gateway, BigCommerce is almost always better.
2. Make sure to study each plan’s features lists extensively. As mentioned, there are features that are available on BigCommerce’s certain plan, but only available on Shopify’s more premium plan, and vice versa.
3. BigCommerce limits your revenue with each plan. When your sales volume reach $50,000 in 12 months, you will be upgraded automatically to the Plus plan ($79.95/month). This doesn’t happen with Shopify, so you can stay with the Basic plan forever if you want.

 Pricing: Standard plan is $29.95/month, Plus is $79.95/month, Pro ($249.95/month) and custom-tailored Enterprise plan (BigCommerce claims that it is cheaper than Shopify Plus). No Lite plan available.

Conclusion: very similar to Shopify, and choosing between the two will ultimately depend on your specific needs discussed above.

3.Volusion

Volusion is one of the oldest ecommerce platforms available, and also one of the most popular Shopify alternatives. 

Volusion offers exactly the same pricing as Shopify across all their different plans. However, there are several key differences between Volusion and Shopify, as we’ll discuss in the pros and cons section below. 

Volusion, BigCommerce, also doesn’t charge transaction fees, while Volusion also offers their own payment gateway—meaning, lower credit card processing fees—-. However, also like BigCommerce, Volusion limits your revenue with each plan.

Pros of Volusion:

• Similarly priced to Shopify across all plans
• No transactional fees
• No paid app for subscriptions
• More built-in features with each plan (in Shopify you’ll need to pay for extra apps)
• Native payment gateway

Con of Volusion:

• Limited paid apps mean less versatility
• Limited revenue and products sold per plan (i.e. 100 products sold and/or $50,000 revenue per year for the Personal plan)
• Limited integrations compared to Shopify

Pricing: Personal ($29/month), Professional ($79/month), Business ($299/month), custom Enterprise plan available. Exactly the same pricing as Shopify.

Conclusion: best if you are selling subscriptions (no additional costs necessary), offers more built-in features than Shopify with similar price.

4. 3dcart

3dcart is also an interesting Shopify alternative for several reasons. The Startup plan is one of 3dcart’s unique selling point, which at just $19/month ($9.5/month for the first 6 months), is significantly more affordable than Shopify and the alternatives we have discussed above. This Startup plan already offers unlimited product storage and all of 3dcart’s core features, with the main limitation is that you can only use it with 1 user at one time.

3dcart, however, has a fairly modest—if not relatively obsolete— user interface, and Shopify offers better mobile-responsive design. However, 3d cart offers in-house web design service that is fairly reasonably priced, which might be an interesting option if you don’t want to design your store yourself.

Pros of 3dcart:

• Unlimited product listing starting with the cheapest plan
• More affordable with its 6-months 50% discount
• Very fast load speed
• No transaction fee
• Web design service
• Supports many different payment gateways

Cons of 3dcart: 

• Obsolete themes and user interface
• Shopify offers better drop shipping
• Less reliable customer service overall

Pricing: All plans 50% for the first 6 months, Startup ($19/month), Basic ($29/month), Plus ($79/month), Pro ($229/month)

Conclusion: a great, affordable option, also an interesting option if you want someone else to design your site.

5. Magento

Magento is among the most popular ecommerce platforms available, while offering different features and selling points than Shopify.

For instance, Magento is an open-source platform, which will mean two things: first, it’s not as easy to use as Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, and will require at least a bit of programming knowledge. On the other hand, if you have the technical requirement, you get more freedom with Magento.

Being an open-source platform, Magento is totally free, but you will need to pay for your own domain and hosting service, — which might be more affordable or far more expensive than Shopify’s monthly fees, depending on your choice. 

Pros of Magento:

• Totally free, except for hosting and domain services
• Great SEO features,if you are aiming to implement SEO
• Very versatile due to its open-source nature
• A lot of extensions
• Responsive designs

Cons:

• Will need coding knowledge, including e commerce security
• You will need to pay for a separate hosting service and get a domain, which can be a hassle

Pricing: Free (open-source)

Conclusion: a great option for those with programming and network security knowledge, totally free, and you have the freedom to customize your site according to your needs.

6. BigCartel

BigCartel is a popular Shopify alternative among small businesses and design product sellers for several reasons: it’s very affordable, has all the essential features, and if necessary, there are the HTML and CSS customizations.

With that being said, the $9.99/month pricing is a very interesting offer, with all three plans offering similar core features and the main differentiator is only the number of product listing. The most affordable plan allows 25 products, while the most expensive plan allows 300. Meaning, if you only sell a few products, BigCartel can be an interesting option.

It’s worth noting, however, that BigCartel offers a more limited set of features compared to Shopify, but there are some interesting features like integration with familiar platforms like Google Analytics, PayPal, and Facebook, and its core features are sufficient for small to mid-sized ecommerce.

Pros of BigCartel:

• PayPay integration, no extra transaction fees (unlimited)
• A free plan with full feature for 5 products or less listed
• Easy to use and intuitive

Cons of BigCartel:

• Limited customer support
• Modest set of features (no inventory search function, etc.)

Pricing: Free plan (5 products or less), Platinum ($9.99/month, 25 products), Diamond ($19.99/month, 100 products), Titanium ($29.99/month, 300 products) 

Conclusion: the key highlight of BigCartel is its affordability, and you can even use the free plan if you only sell less than five products.

7. Pretashop

Pretashop is also one of the more affordable Shopify alternatives that might be suited for those who only wanted to start an online store without spending too much on a platform. 

Pretashop is—like Magento or WooCommerce—, technically free, but you’ll need to invest in separate hosting service and get a domain name. However, Pentashop does offer several partnerships with various hosting services like BlueHost and Microsoft Azure. 

Pretashop offers few templates and themes, but it offers a very good set of features for a free product: no transaction fees, multi-lingual support for 20+ languages and currencies (international sales), unlimited product listing, and so on. If you need more, there are premium (paid) modules to further customize your store. It is worth noting, that some of these premium modules are really good. 

Pros of Pretashop:

• Free, not including hosting service and domain (paid hosting packages available)
• No transaction fees
• Supports international sales in various currencies and languages
• Great set of features overall, especially the paid ones

Cons of Pretashop:

• Steep learning curve, might need the help of a web developer
• Few templates included

Pricing: free with paid modules (extra features), optional hosting service package

Conclusion: a great alternative for those with tech knowledge or those with a tight budget. 

End Words

Each of the Shopify alternatives we have discussed on this list has different price offers, different sets of features, and different pros and cons.

Figure out your needs in building your online store, and choose the right platform according to your needs, goals, and budget to maximize ROI.

The post Top 7 Shopify Alternatives for Effective Online Stores appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

However, BuzzSumo is certainly not a perfect-for-all tool, and it’s certainly not cheap. This is why many people are looking for BuzzSumo alternatives, either to get a cheaper option or to get different features where BuzzSumo is lacking.

Here, we will discuss five of the best BuzzSumo alternatives available, but let us begin with a brief discussion about BuzzSumo itself.

Brief Overview on BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a very popular tool among content marketers, and not without its reasons. As a content analytics tool, it has a well-rounded set of features including:

• Brand monitoring: monitoring mentions about your brand across various social media.
• Analytics on your content, especially engagement metrics, and comparison with your competitors’
• Checking trending content and topics
• Backlinks analytics
• Find and analyze influencers

However, BuzzSumo offers two standout core features:

1. Content analytics: BuzzSumo is often considered the best in this aspect with various useful features discussed above. It is especially useful to monitor trending content across the internet and various social media platforms, giving you various insights to help you develop the best possible, high-performing content
2. Influencers outreach: allowing you to get insights about various influencers in any niche/industry. This is especially useful if you are looking to build an influencer marketing campaign, as well as to get guest posting opportunities.

Pricing: limited free plan available, premium plan starts from $79/month, and the most expensive package is $499+/month

Top 5 Best BuzzSumo Alternatives

There are generally two reasons in looking for BuzzSumo alternatives: you want something cheaper (or, you want to get more value of what you spend). The second common reason is that you are looking for a different set of features to fulfill your needs.

Taking account of those two reasons (and others), here we have compiled five of the best alternatives to BuzzSumo, and why we think they might be a decent pick.

1. Social Animal

Social Animal is often considered the best “cheap” alternative for BuzzSumo. We say “cheap” because the starting plan is only $49/month compared to BuzzSumo’s $79/month, while offering the same core features of BuzzSumo, and slightly more. In fact, SocialAnimal has their own comparison page with BuzzSumo, which you can check here.

It actually offers some useful unique features like headline analytics, the ability to search within articles, advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP),and the feature to compare two keywords in real-time, among others.

Feature Highlights:

• Content analytics: check article keywords, compare top articles, analyze headlines, and check various engagement metrics.
• Content marketing suggestions: optimal content length, optimal headlines and title, suggestion about when to publish, etc. InsipireMe is Social Animal’s unique feature that can suggest any topics that might connect to any keyword, very useful in content development process
• Influencer analytics: similar features to BuzzSumo, suggesting trending influences across various niches and their key metrics

Pricing: 14-day free-trial for all plans, plan starts from $49/month and the most expensive plan is $499/month. In most cases, the cheapest plan is sufficient for 1-user.

Conclusion: more affordable with slightly more features than BuzzSumo, probably the best alternative out there.

2. Ahrefs Content Explorer

Ahrefs is a prominent keyword research tool, among the best of its class. However, Ahrefs also offers a content analytics tool in the form of Ahrefs Content Explorer. You will, however, need to subscribe to Ahrefs’ full package that starts with $99/month, and cannot subscribe only to Content Explorer. However, Ahrefs also offers many useful tools especially about SEO—which is closely related to content marketing anyways—. You can try it for a week for $7.

As a content analytics tool, Ahrefs is very powerful tool that can find thousands of trending topics and millions of pages in real-time, the largest compared to other tools. However, it is fairly limited in its content analytics features, which only focus on backlinks and domain referrals.

Feature Highlights:

• Powerful SEO tools: among the best keyword research tools available today,regarded as the absolute best in the backlinks analytics department. Offer various features that can help you get more backlinks.
• Competitor Insights: similar to BuzzSumo’s feature in finding trending topics and analyze the top competitors on the topic.
• Advanced Searches: various filters to help you in content curation process from the ability to filter posts by traffic, word count, number of social shares, etc.

Pricing: 7-day trial for $7, Lite package with $99/month and Standard package for $179/month

Conclusion: more expensive, but more advanced set features for technical and power users. Best choice if you are going to focus on SEO. Limited influencer analytics features.

3. NinjaOutreach

If Ahrefs is a more advanced alternative for BuzzSumo regarding technical content analytics. NinjaOutreach is the tool to get if you want more influencer outreach features. It’s also important to note that NinjaOutreach is cheaper than BuzzSumo, with the most affordable plan only costs $49/month.

NinjaOutreach offers some content analytic features, like the ability to analyze current trending topics. However, it’s more focused on influencer outreach features, some are unique among other tools on this list.

Feature Highlights:

• Automatic email outreach: automatically send outreach emails to your target influencers. A great, time-saving feature if you are serious about influencer marketing. There are also various email templates to choose from, and all messages are personalized.
• Influencer analytics: over 6.5 million influencers in NinjaOutreach’s database, and simply by entering a keyword, you can find various influencers from bloggers to authoritative companies to press.
• Influencer outreach tracking: track open rate of your email outreach, see which templates are generating the best results, and check reply-rate. You can continuously improve your influencer outreach campaign with these insights.

Pricing: free-trial available for all plans, the basic package is $49/month and the premium package is $149/month

Conclusion: focused on influencer analytics and influencer outreach features, while a little lackluster in the content insights department. An affordable option if you are especially looking for an influencer outreach tool.

4. ShareIt

ShareIt is a content curation-influencer insights tool by SocialPilot, offering the core functions of BuzzSumo for absolutely free.

The free price tag is arguably its best “selling” point, but as expected, it’s not as powerful as BuzzSumo or other tools we have shared above. It is, however, very simple and easy to use: simply enter your keyword or topic, and ShareIt will show you two tabs: one for trending articles on the topic, and another one for the top influencers.

Feature Highlights:

• Free: arguably its best feature, as you can use this tool alongside BuzzSumo or other alternatives to compare insights. Also, obviously it’s a great option for content marketers on a tight budget.
• Simplicity: very simple to use with clean interface.
• Trending content: although it’s free, ShareIt can show various trending content according to your target keyword. Combined with its ease of use, it’s one of the best BuzzSumo alternatives when you are in a hurry.

Pricing: free

Conclusion: a great free option for those looking just for some basic insights on trending content and influencers.

5. ContentStudio

As the name suggests, ContentStudio is another alternatives for BuzzSumo especially in the content curation department. However, ContentStudio also offers some social media management features making it a good option for those looking to get help in the social media marketing aspect.

A unique feature of Content Studio is how it analyzes social engagement data to predict whether a content will go viral. You can easily setup various automations and filtering options

Also, it’s another affordable option starting at just $49/month.

Feature Highlights:

• Content strategy planner: view your overall content strategy in just a single dashboard, either in a list view or calendar view. Powerful filters to find trending content according to keywords/topics, and great analytics features.
• Automation: can automatically schedule your posts, complete with recycling features, hashtag suggestions, and mention suggestions (which influencer to mention, author mentions, tc.). You can automate content posting according to your preferences.
• SEO optimizer: various suggestions and insights to optimize your content and social media posts.
• Analytics: detailed metrics for any website and social media profiles, including performance analytics of our own content.

Pricing: Starting from $49/month, the most expensive package is $299/month

Conclusion: a relatively affordable option for those who wanted a focused tool on content curation and content development. Not very powerful regarding influencer outreach.

End Words

So which of these BuzzSumo alternatives should you choose? As you can see, no two tools are exactly the same: some are cheaper than others (and even free), some offer better features in one area but lacking on the others. The best approach is to choose the right tool according to your budget and your current needs, and we’ll let you be the judge.

However, in our opinion the best well-rounded tools we have on this list is Ahrefs, while NinjaOutreach is the best regarding influencer outreach. For a free alternative, you might want to try ShareIt.

The post Top 5 BuzzSumo Alternatives For Better Content Marketing Insights appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.