Centra: Best Shopify alternative? A side by side comparison

If you stay within the basic features set, running a small DTC brand, Shopify is a great, easy-to-use platform. 

You can sell to multiple countries and currencies with the help of Shopify Markets. But if brands want to add industry-specific features, use wholesale or customize experiences for individual markets, you would need to migrate to Shopify Plus.

There is a cap on the number of users that can access your Shopify store.

Shopify Advanced limits you to 15 staff accounts. The lower plans limit you to one, two, or five accounts. This constraints ambitious brands, no matter their size. 

Bear in mind that what seems like a small brand will quickly require many logins for a larger team, e.g. finance, marketing, social, SEO, sales etc., and any outside resources like development agency, SEO, integration teams, etc.

Integrating sales channels is difficult with standard Shopify. For instance, a Shopify store can be linked with channels, such as Instagram or POS, but can’t link your store to your wholesale so-called extension stores. Even if you connect the channels, you can’t manage them from one place, as they are separate entities.*

*Keep in mind that Shopify uses slightly different nomenclature than Centra. Sales channels are e.g., online store, Facebook, and embedded buy buttons, while wholesale is a store.

It's a clean, information-dense interface with all needed information in one spot. It’s built for merchandisers and brand users, not IT professionals or developers.

Advanced filters, search and sort functionality working across all data grid views.

With Centra, brands get a tightly integrated, comprehensive set of features they need – there’s no need to install additional apps to build a setup that serves a specific purpose.

This setup is easier to implement and use, which saves money and effort.

Shopify checkout is well-known for being locked-down and rigid. It’s a choice that’s making Shopify easier to manage. To customize the checkout you’ll need Shopify Plus.

Most of the industry specific features needed for fashion or lifestyle brands are only available as third-party plugins that vary in quality and manageability.

Sometimes new functionalities will require a plan upgrade.

Shopify Payments provides a limited number of fixed payment options, focusing on the North American market. Brands that want to use third-party PSPs need to pay extra fees.

Automatic platform updates.

All data accessible using powerful and flexible APIs. You can replace components in an agile process and ensure platform extensibility with no technology vendor lock-in.

Hosting is included, and scalable global performance is guaranteed with SLA.

Centra is built to work with a custom front end and external CMS. It offers direct API access rather than relying on cookie-cutter standard integrations. 

Design flexibility with GraphQL API access to all data in Centra enables fast integration of anything.

Centra can be used with common front-end technologies including Vue.js and React.js.

Centra’s robust headless architecture allows freedom of design and localized brand-authentic content marketing. You'll get full control over the feel and look of the website – from landing page to checkout.

There are no cookie-cutter templates or design restrictions. You can use the CMS of your choice and build pixel-perfect ecommerce sites.

Shopify and Shopify Plus don't have a multi-store architecture. There are expansion stores in Plus, but that's not really a multi-store setup. 

For multi-market you’d need to use Shopify Markets. It helps with basic internationalization, but does not allow proper local catalog management per market, custom content, base currencies, shipping, payouts etc.

If you want custom experiences for each market, you would need to set up a separate store, which creates inventory sync issues. Also, as you build a separate store, you'll have to copy and paste and sync inventory.

Shopify promotes using the platform’s native Shopify Payments gateway. On top of card processing and transaction fees, the vendor charges currency conversion fees of 1.5% in the US and 2% in all other countries and regions with Shopify Payments. This makes selling in local currencies quite expensive using Shopify. 

With Shopify, sharing data such as product information, prices and promotions as well as synchronizing inventory across stores is not natively possible. That results in either selling products internationally with very limited localization (same text, image, shipment, payment, promotions, sizes) or running multiple stores – no synchronization and plenty of redundant, manual work.

Shopify does not allow you to use multiple currencies unless you use Shopify Payments. However, Shopify Payments comes with extra cost and is available in 23 countries, excluding Norway and Poland.

Shopify offers some built in tax support. Shopify Tax is a US-only module that is free up to $100k and then 0.35% of GMV. Taxes outside of the US require manual setup with certain regions having preset values if your organization has a corporate tax ID in that region.

If you have complex requirements like shipping from multiple warehouses for a single order, click and collect, and shipping from the store needs to be handled outside the platform.

It’s possible to localize the checkout with local payment methods, price lists, currencies etc., without using multiple storefronts.

Centra serves 100+ countries globally with one single site tailored for every market.

The platform allows brands to offer different products and prices in different regions, independently of language and currency settings.

Centra is multi-language by design, which allows any information to be localized. Plus, you can use the best-converting payment options in every market.

With Centra, you can serve any number of markets, languages, currencies, price lists, warehouses, and users – without extra admin work and multiple storefronts.

Centra allows you to store all stock and order information for multiple countries and platforms in one back end and filter the data per country or market.

Each market can have different content etc.

Separate price lists per territory or currency. It's perfect for businesses with global wholesale relationships.

Centra offers free automated tax calculation for charging US sales tax with Avalara.

With Centra you can route payments based on location to optimize conversion. You can get the best auth rates and lowest costs with local PSP agreements.

With Centra, you can combine payment methods like PayPal, Stripe, Adyen, Klarna and Qliro for the best conversion rate on every market.

No extra commissions, no hidden fees.

Centra lets you add fallbacks if one payment service goes down, or allows your customer to choose payment methods from different PSPs.

Shopify is mainly a B2C solution that does not offer wholesale unless you set up a separate extension store, but this still lacks logic and processes geared toward fashion and lifestyle buying.

Plus is the only way to run wholesale on Shopify, but even that has limitations for fashion and lifestyle brands – read more in our Salesforce vs Shopify Plus vs Centra comparison.

Centra addresses all the commerce needs of original brands, unlocking the full potential of B2B Wholesale, B2C Direct‑to‑Consumer and Marketplace sales in a one neat package.

With Centra, you can build a wholesale process that mirrors your B2C sales. Centra offers all the B2B features most lifestyle brands need, such as:

• Customer groups (for sharing of discounts, pricing, restrictions / eligibility etc)

• Price lists (that can be shared or customer-specific)

• Tiered pricing / volume pricing (as well as customer-specific adaptations)

• Advanced discount management

• Credit limits, payment terms etc.

• Customer group and customer-level product availability

• Purchasing roles / levels

• Quotations

• Advanced shipment management

Centra allows brands to digitize their wholesale with an advanced, buyer-friendly Showroom with individual pricing, global tax calculations, and shipping management. The Showroom makes it easy for retailers to place preorders, reorders, and orders on the incoming stock via desktop, tablet or mobile.

With Centra you can find and invite new retailers globally to visit your beautiful digital Showroom, browse online lookbooks and place orders based on the preferred delivery window.

Use Centra’s clever automated back end, and integrate with other IT systems to eliminate manual file transfers.

With Centra’s real-time, collaborative Showroom environment, you can work on multiple orders with multiple buyers simultaneously. 

You can move small‑scale retailers to self‑service ordering and reordering to save time for both parties.

Centra lets you define different prices for the same products in different delivery times to adjust to fashion trends, manage excess inventory and production capacity.

You can separate products based on the stock type of delivery window, distinguishing between immediate availability and future production.

Centra helps you control all orders on existing and incoming future inventory, with corresponding delivery windows.

Shopify allows merchants to introduce new functionalities to the store through extensions. While it’s a good, quick solution for small retailers, a typical fashion brand needs 30-60 apps.

While adding apps can be easy, integrating and synchronizing them quickly becomes an issue. Since most apps are paid, costs start to rise, and support becomes patchy since it’s all done individually with each app developer

Despite deactivating and removing an app, its code remains in your code base. Without a rigorous approach to manually deleting this code, which few have the competence to do, your code base can become cluttered after testing just a few apps.

Shopify is a generic platform; although it offers some native discount capabilities, it lacks fashion-centric features like bundling, complex product variants.

Centra supports seamless global expansion by freeing your budget from unnecessary investments in IT, admin, or re-inventing the tools every brand needs.

There is no need to install dozens of apps to build an industry-specific setup that serves your purpose. This approach saves both money and effort.

Shopify offers some SEO capabilities out-of-the-box, which require work to prevent some issues (e.g. indexation of dynamic pages etc).

URLs are not customizable, which negatively impacts SEO.

Centra comes with a 99.9% availability guarantee. This covers peak sale periods like new collection releases, Black Friday, and flash sales. For the best performance, Centra uses static page generators like Netlify or Gatsby.js.

Centra does not hamstring your SEO efforts, because the back end is independent of the front end. It’s headless out of the box so you can apply mobile-friendly SEO technologies like AMP and PWA from day 1.

Centra is built to handle high traffic, whether it's bots, flash sales, or limited edition drops.

We improve functionality and performance every day, and you get the latest version of Centra Commerce every two weeks.

With Centra being a cloud-based platform it’s easier to scale it and ensure continual optimum performance.

24/7 support – live chat, email, phone support, and community are all available on Shopify. However, the vendor does not offer account management and implementation support.  

Many themes and plugins are offered by third parties who are under no obligation to release timely updates for the themes or plugins you use.

Unless your budget is exceptionally tight, it is often better to get a website developed properly from the get-go.

Centra offers premium support known for its reliability and availability. Our support hotline is always available to answer any questions. 

The support covers platform implementation and maintenance, updates, client onboarding, data migration, and more, to make sure you get up to speed quickly. 

You’ll get practical advice on the features and functionalities of Centra that suit your fashion brand’s use cases.

Centra’s customer success managers offer ecommerce expertise to assist you at each step, helping migrate your store to a new platform or start from scratch. You’ll set business goals to grow your business with the support of experienced professionals.

With Centra’s experienced tech team you’ll get technical partners that assist you through migration, deployment, and upgrades. No external hires required. 

Centra also gives brands onboarding teams that will walk you through the ins and outs of the platform so you can get the most out of it.

You get access to a support center, our step-by-step guides and tutorials, and product updates to learn how to make Centra work for you. Centra also offers detailed documentation written by developers for developers.

Most brands choose Shopify when they start an online business because they don't have to invest much up front. However, it's hard to build your brand’s global presence, and grow fast – prices increase with revenue, added plugins and selling in more markets.

Additional cost associated with acquiring or creating custom functionalities needed to support a global fashion and lifestyle store.

Shopify is a modular platform where customization is based on apps.

The majority of apps are available as a subscription with a monthly fee.

Shopify merchants pay additional transaction fees on top of credit card processing rates if they use a provider other than Shopify Payments.

The transaction fees range from 2% (on Shopify Basic) to 0.5% (on Shopify Advanced). Additionally, If you sell items in other currencies you will also be charged a currency conversion fee.

When running Centra, brands can use any payment processor – independently for each market.

There are no additional transaction fees with the platform, no matter which credit card processing provider you choose.

Centra offers all functionalities that international fashion brands need out of the box – you can invest the saved money in a unique custom design and the features that differentiate your brand.

When comparing TCO between platforms, it’s key to consider all aspects of costs, including those related to plugins, third-party consultants, FX fees, and variable fees.

Centra has transparent pricing without hidden transaction or exchange fees.

Centra has native core features for fashion and lifestyle brands, so you won't need to pay extra and manage countless add-ons to achieve core non-customer facing functionality. 

As a headless platform, Centra gives you design freedom to create the best possible customer experience. You will instead spend your resources together with front-end agencies on creating a great and distinct brand and customer experience.

Shopify has a clean reporting interface, covers the core metrics, and has a good API to support this. You can use third-party solutions like Daasity or create your data warehouse reporting for broader business analysis.

Depending on the Shopify plan, you get access to various amounts of reports. However, analytics isn’t intuitive, nor is it suited for fashion or lifestyle business logic. It doesn’t allow visualization of how different collections perform and which product is selling the best and the worst within a collection.

Centra provides fashion-specific reporting capabilities, e.g., sales by size, color, attributes from the size chart as well as more general sales reports. You can see best selling collections, items within those collections, and even best performing sizes.

Centra lets you use detailed reporting on product performance, sales, customers and other important areas.

Centra offers real-time reporting by collection, wholesale reports for reorders and preorders.

With Centra you store all data in one place. This allows you to create extensive reports or move data to your BI solution.

Predict how much safety stock you’ll need to avoid over-ordering, or worse, overselling. This can be especially important in Q4 and during times of unexpected demand fluctuations.

You can connect Centra to your inventory channels and can support a merchant-fulfilled strategy. This can give you more autonomy and control over order management operations.

Only available through extra plugins.

Most robust promotion and upselling capabilities require third-apps or coding. Only %, amount and buy X get Y discounts.

Brands can’t do discounts for individual variants. In addition, it's not possible to set fixed discounts per currency.

Centra offers advanced promotions and discounts. High flexibility in terms of pricing, stock, discounts, inheriting of attributes etc.

The built-in bundles cover all fashion and lifestyle use cases.

Centra features a powerful discounting engine to set up any discount you want, using vouchers and campaigns. 

Native support for gift certificates and vouchers.

By design, Shopify supports only 100 variations on a single product and lacks fashion-specific features.

The 100-variant limit is too restrictive for certain complex fashion products (bras, trousers, shirts). The variant and option limits can only be increased by using a third-party app.

There’s no size chart localization, which can be problematic if you serve multiple geographies – clothing and shoe sizes can vary significantly between, for example,  the US, UK, and Europe.

Shopify’s order management system is fairly basic. Brands that need more advanced use cases around multiple warehouses, stores and synced inventory have to use third-party apps.

What brands running on Shopify end up doing is usually investing in a PIM system, either as a Shopify extension, or more commonly stand-alone. However, the extensions offered still have many limitations).

With Centra, you can create pre-made carts for influencers and put buy buttons on blogs. It also has built-in affiliate tracking.

Centra supports all types of fashion bundles by default.

You can group and organize products into categories to enhance the shopping experience. With collection-based merchandising, you can strategically display and promote these collections throughout your store. 

Centra uses size charts to maintain and display inventory levels. You can freely create multiple size charts and attach them to products in order to insert inventory level. 

Centra provides textual representations of the sizes and dimensions of fashion items, to give customers information about the fit and size of items before they buy. You can use those charts for back-end reference as well. 

Centra allows you to freely group products to create unique categories, showcase products based on a specific attribute, like material, design, or occasion. This allows brands to highlight their unique product offerings and selling points. 

Centra’s omnichannel capabilities allow brands to create a seamless shopping experience, merging the online and offline worlds. Brands can sell products directly to customers online, via wholesale to retailers, via marketplaces, via social media, via their own stores. 

With Centra, brands can offer:

• endless aisles

• click and collect

• Buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) 

• Buy online, ship to store (BOSS) 

• Buy online, return in store (BORIS)

Centra’s order management is suited for managing the lifecycle of each new fashion collection released, from preorders, reorders to end off-season and clearance sales. 

tailored to the business logic of the fashion industry.

Centra uses customer feedback to shape its product roadmap – the product development follows best practices and know-how from top fashion brands on the market. 

Delivering an omnichannel experience in standard Shopify is difficult. For example, wholesale is impossible unless you create separate expansion stores.

Various add-ons enable basic omnichannel, but advanced options like an integrated control interface covering all channels is not possible.

You can use online channels, such as social media, and in-store if you use POS – an app that allows brands to sell in person.

The POS lets you collect and manage customer data across different channels.

POS syncs with your online store's inventory in real-time.

Shopify POS allows merchants to process orders and accept payments whether in-store, online, or through mobile devices.

However, the POS is geared towards mobile and social media channels. Additionally, Shopify provides an upgraded version called POS Pro with features like advanced inventory management, unlimited staff PINs, omnichannel selling capabilities, and more.

Centra’s omnichannel capabilities allow brands to create a seamless shopping experience, merging the online and offline worlds. Brands can sell products directly to customers online, via wholesale to retailers, via marketplaces, via social media, via their own stores. 

With Centra, brands can offer:

• Endless aisles

• Click and collect

• Buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) 

• Buy online, ship to store (BOSS) 

• Buy online, return in store (BORIS)

Centra allows brands to implement endless aisle functionality. This lets their customers browse items that are out of stock or not sold in-store on a device, e.g. tablet or in-store kiosks. The customer can then decide to order and ship such items to their home or a selected store.

Standard XML feeds are offered as default by Centra, taking into account multi-market, multi-currency, multi-price list and multi-warehouse settings.

It’s possible to connect Centra with marketplaces via APIs. It enables you to export and import order data from B2B and B2C marketplaces and display your products in Amazon, FarFetch, ASOS and more.

Centra lets you expand your global audience across any social media platform and marketplace in the world.

Open APIs allow listing products on marketplaces and receiving orders back into the standard order flow.

Centra lets you tap into top ad networks like Facebook and Google to improve sales. 

You can integrate Centra with your accounting system, inventory manager, warehouses, customer service departments, and more. Centra lets you build third-party connections with open APIs if the integrations are not available.

Centra's order management lets you handle orders from multiple ecommerce channels, such as websites, ecommerce stores, marketplaces, wholesale, and whatever else you sell through. Centra uses clever allocation rules to fulfill orders while helping with store restocking and avoiding overselling.

With Centra, you can employ popular social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok to improve brand awareness and increase your sales.

Brand’s influencers can embed a “buy now” button and add checkout on their pages with a single line of code.

Shopify's order management system is designed primarily for managing orders within a single store. If you have multiple Shopify stores, there is no native feature to view and manage orders from multiple stores in a single view. 

If you run multiple stores, for wholesale or for different regions, order management is harder since orders, inventory, and sales aren't synced.

Advanced distributed OMS capabilities are only possible through third-party integrations (e.g. Deck Commerce).

Shopify has built-in inventory management. But advanced features such as batch tracking or multi-location inventory management aren't included by default and may require third-party apps or custom development.

Advanced features such as batch tracking or multi-location inventory management aren't included by default and may require third-party apps or custom development. 

Shopify allows you to set up the logic of fulfillment from different locations. It enables priority orders for places with inventory. You can also integrate with third-party logistics (3PL) providers for fulfillment operations. 

You can split an order if one item in the request is out of stock so the rest can be delivered quickly to customers.

Centra specifically handles warehouse locations with uncertain stock levels, such as brick-and-mortar stores. When allocating to those types of warehouses, Centra can do a safety allocation at a central warehouse to ensure the selected products are available. 

Third-party stock owned by regional distributors and retailers can be easily integrated into Centra and used to fulfill orders according to the configured allocation. 

Centra helps you optimize fulfillment across multiple channels, including wholesale and direct-to-consumer, from a single admin panel. You can handle complex scenarios such as split orders, backorders, and multi-channel inventory. You can also use built-in ERP for inventory replenishment, keep accurate inventory levels, and automate key processes.   

Order data in Centra is synchronized to integrated systems such as warehouses, TA/freight systems and payment service providers in real-time. This allows for instant viewing of shipments, return tracking numbers and refunding of orders without leaving Centra.

With Centra you can automate order routing, order splitting, shipping, inventory forecasting, reordering, and inventory management.

Centra gives you a real-time look at products, inventory, returns, and processes in a single view covering all stores, regions, and channels such as DTC and wholesale. All commerce data is stored in one place and managed from a single admin panel.

You can route products intelligently to the perfect location. Centra lets you optimize space usage in click-and-collect shipments and handle returns to simplify inventory replenishment across your stores and warehouses.

Centra helps you reduce overselling risks by making sure no backorders happen and you never sell more than there is in stock.