Open-source software stack for e-commerce brands
For direct-to-consumer brands that want to own their storefront and customer data instead of paying platform and app fees as they grow.
9 tools · saves about $2,832/yr for a team of 10 · picks reviewed Oct 2026
Store & checkout
Replaces Shopify · Basic (billed yearly) · $29/mo · checked Oct 2026
Headless commerce you fully own; Saleor for GraphQL shops, Bagisto for a PHP stack.
Email & SMS marketing
Replaces Klaviyo · Email, 1,500 profiles · $45/mo · checked Oct 2026
Flows for abandoned carts, win-backs and segments without per-contact pricing.
Also good: listmonk
Customer support
Replaces Gorgias · Basic, 300 tickets (billed yearly) · $50/mo · checked Oct 2026
One inbox for order questions from chat, email, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Inventory & purchasing
Replaces inFlow Inventory · Entrepreneur (billed yearly) · $129/mo · checked Oct 2026
Stock, suppliers and purchase orders with barcode support.
Also good: ERPNext
Accounting
Replaces QuickBooks · Online Simple Start · $38/mo · checked Oct 2026
Full double-entry accounting, tax and stock in one system; Akaunting's licence caps it at two users.
Product search
Replaces Algolia · Grow · not counted · Pay per search request and record · checked Oct 2026
Instant, typo-tolerant product search that is simple to host.
Analytics
Replaces Hotjar · Observe Plus (billed yearly) · $32/mo · checked Oct 2026
Funnels, session replay and A/B tests on your store in one tool.
Also good: Umami
Social scheduling
Replaces Buffer · Essentials, 10 channels (billed yearly) · $50/mo · checked Oct 2026
Plans and schedules product posts across networks with approvals.
Product photos & creative
Replaces Midjourney · Standard (billed yearly) · $24/user/mo · 2 seats · checked Oct 2026
Generates on-brand product scenes and variants; run it on a rented GPU only when you need a batch, so there's no standing GPU cost.
Also good: InvokeAI
How we calculate
For each paid tool you tick, we take its public list price for the plan shown and multiply it by the seats your team would need. Some tools are only used by part of a team, so a row may count a share of your team or a fixed number of seats; the row says how many. Prices that depend on sales or usage are shown but not counted.
From that we subtract an estimate for running the open-source stack yourself: $165/month plus $2 per person per month (Two 8 vCPU / 16 GB cloud servers, plus storage per person), and any extra running cost a row lists, such as a GPU. The time it takes to set up and maintain the tools is not included.