New E-commerce Website Alternative To Shopify

Have you ever sat down at a Starbucks coffee shop with a “copywriting” t-shirt design and moments later have someone from the lobby approach you and ask “excuse me, but do you know about SEO product description or like

... salescopy for a online brand shopping store”.

This is exactly what happened to me and in the exchange of conversation, the individual mentioned he was using Shopify but was not getting the amounts of sales he wished for: maybe to break even, maybe to keep his website online, maybe to keep paying for his plugins, who knows!

As soon as I got home, I took a deep look at E-commerce websites and found a variety of platforms who offer this type of service to anyone who is interested in the space of selling products or services online, mostly physical products.

Shopify takes the “popularity” lead when it comes to small business and entrepreneurs who want to sell online but yet, other platforms offer premium features plus app integration for free to save you more money in your pocket and make more profit in the long run.

GrooveKart is one of them that offers easy and free integration apps with popular partner brands who offer drop shipping fulfillment centers and more. When it comes to print on demand, I personally feel like GrooveKart is the way to go.

You can also use Amazon, Ebay and even Etsy to set up your own website within these platforms but I feel like the downside of doing e-commerce this way is that you do not have full control over your business because you're using a third party platform instead of a first party.

A first party is pretty much having a website that you own all the assets such as: traffic, email accounts, pixel data, pricing, etc.., because with a third party you will have to pay access to some of the assets

… not to mention that every time you sell a product the third party website will take a cut from your sale leaving you with less profit.

Many small businesses or entrepreneurs that decide to take this route usually acquire one of these website builders to set up their business for e-commerce: ClickFunnels, GrooveCm, Kajabi, Kartra, among others…

When it’s done this way there is no middle man taking a cut from the transaction nor blocking any type of information that your ecommerce business website is receiving.

In this blog article we will jump and take a look at a rising star that’s been in the game for a while but is now coming out of the shadows and it’s showing itself to the public. Yet before talking about software, let’s go ahead and explain exactly what Shopify is!

What Is Shopify?

Shopify is a Canadian company that provides an e-commerce platform for customers to create their own online stores. Shopify has more than 600,000 customers in 175 countries and does $40 billion in gross merchandise volume annually.

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that makes it easy for entrepreneurs to sell products through the web or social media. 

It provides small business owners with many features including setting up a store, designing their product pages, and processing transactions. Shopify also offers inventory management tools, automated email marketing campaigns, and analytics.

They also have ready to go website templates that you can download for free (typically, these have low reviews maybe because they do not convert as well) as well as paid ones do.

Shopify does not provide web hosting; instead it recommends using either Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform for web hosting services. This is one of the few downsides when it comes to Shopify.

In order to use the full potential of Shopify they will be charging you $299/month and it does not include the extra fees when it comes to integrating with other partners like to do “Print On Demand” between others.

What Is GrooveKart?

GrooveKart is the main branch off of the software platform ‘GrooveCm' when it comes to building an ecommerce website. This platform is one hundred percent dedicated to those who want to sell their own products or “Print On Demand” products with a very easy learning curve.

As a GrooveKart user, if you understand the basics of how to set up a funnel then the rest of the process of building an ecommerce website will be very easy and GrooveKart also provides a multitude of ready to go templates which makes the process of building a website much easier.

I like taking sections from different templates (copy and paste) to create uniquely designed ecommerce websites in addition to seeing what my competitors' website looks like to make sure my online store looks up to date.

If you like the idea about creating your own online store but feel a bit overwhelmed when it comes to putting an ecommerce website together, GrooveCm has lots of tutorials that it feels like they are grabbing you by the hand and building the website together.

I love doing P.O.D (Print On Demand) and the best part is that GrooveKart has an app integration which makes it super easy to connect with other platforms such as: Aliexpress, Printful, Printify, Dropified, Teescape, between others…

Just like Shopify you can see your orders, abandoned carts, customer information, sales, registration, etc. This way, you can measure what is working on your ecommerce website and what’s not to fix it to stop losing profit through that “leaky pipe”.

As of February 2022, in order to access the full capabilities of GrooveKart it will be a total of $299/month but the features and integration partner apps mentioned above will remain free at no extra cost plus some other cool secrets tools coming soon.

GrooveMail is part of GrooveCm which means you can use this email server without paying an extra cost (up to 25,000 contacts) in comparison of using other email platforms such as: GetResponse, Mailchimp, SendGrid, Klaviyo, which charge you by X amount of contacts you send email to.

Differences Between Shopify And GrooveKart?

Now that GrooveKart is starting to come out the shadows Shopify will continue to reach more masses to keep its status as the number one ecommerce platform for small businesses and entrepreneurs. 

GrooveKart number one weapon as of right now that surpasses Shopify is that over 90% of its premium features and app integration partners are completely for free.

In addition to it, GrooveCm has a open Facebook group were lots of the community who uses GrooveKart share tips and information to

...create a ecommerce website, how to optimize your pages, how to use SEO, how to use the marketing tools provided by GrooveKart and so much more…

Shopify on the other hand doesn’t necessarily have its own Facebook group but many other power users do have a group name associated with this ecommerce platform where they also share insight tips to get more leads and more sales.

Frank Salinas and John Garcia are the main faces of GrooveKart and they are showing you from scratch how to build an Ecommerce business for free on Youtube, yes...ON YOUTUBE!

Usually people charge for this kind of insights but they believe information like this should be available and accessible to the public and this is just another reason why GrooveKart is amazing, model what they are doing and apply it to your own industry

When it comes to Shopify, in order to change the checkout out page they will charge a high amount of money regardless of your membership plan, but GrooveKart won’t and you can do it as long as you're a paid member to the software GrooveCm.

Benefits Of Using GrooveKart?

Again, GrooveKart is just one part (& POWERFUL PART) of GrooveCm. Once you create an account with them, they will allow you to also set up a free merchant account with their other branch which is GroovePay.

One of the cool things about GrooveKart is their app integration partner program like with Aliexpress. You can choose from their many products on their website and bring that product into your GrooveKart and sell it like if it was your item at the price you wish to sell it for

… In my case, I sell “cartoon led night lights” and I get every product for about $12 after tax. I sell these guys for about twice the price and once a customer buys, the vendor takes care of the shipping for me!

Another app integration partner they have is TeeScape who have a wide variety of t-shirt clothing & selection material and when they print your unique image on the shirt, it looks amazing. I personally use them for all my clothing material.

Everyone knows Printful, of course GrooveKart had to partner with them so we can start using them as a Print On Demand platform. Outside of clothing, they have stuff you can print your unique graphic designs on mugs, shoes, laptop cases, posters, hats, pillow cases, etc.

Slingly is another Print On Demand platform and provides similar stuff as Printful.

Later in 2022, they will be partnering up with a jewelry platform where you can sell bracelets, necklaces, watches, etc.., and you can make a high profit margin for each product you sell. Look out for this because it is going to be awesome!

The last two I heard Frank Salina & John Garcia talk about were other Print On Demand Stores like Printful but that offer a lot more accessories and different stuff that they do. These two partners will be coming soon to GrooveKart later 2022.

Within GrooveKart settings, activate the ‘GrooveQuiz’ to capture your visitors information in exchange of offering a discount code so they can buy then and there something from your website to also generate more sales!

GrooveKart also has a ‘Spin Wheel’ option to gamify your website and engage more with your website visitors and leads. Usually you will set it up with 3 different types of discount codes like: 5% off, 10% and 20% and in order to get it, they will have to type in their email address.

As of you reading this now, they probably have way much more stuff within GrooveKart so if I was you, I’d set up a free trial account to see what other goodies they have to grow the size of your wallet.

Conclusion: GrooveKart Offers Premium Features And App Integration For Free Compared To Most Of Its Competitors.

Overall, GrooveKart is we’re the high profit margins are at, to make you keep more money in your bank instead of just making small profits like other platforms, charging you for each premium features and app integrations which is not cool.

Print on Demand is what I use GrooveKart for and once you set up everything, is like making sells on autopilot because you don’t have to worry about printing images on shirts or mugs or on anything else, because they companies associated and partnered with GrooveKart will take care of it.

If you have another business, do this on the side when you have free time from your main hustle you do to generate you a second income, again… On autopilot!