Shopify is no longer useful to compare only as a hosted store builder with themes, payments, apps, and checkout. In 2026, its Agentic Storefronts layer also distributes merchant products into AI shopping environments such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Meta surfaces. A current Shopify alternative therefore needs to be evaluated on store operations and on whether products can be discovered, understood, and purchased when the shopping journey begins inside an AI assistant.
The Comparison Has a New Distribution Layer
For a conventional hosted store, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace Commerce, Square, Ecwid, and Shift4Shop remain natural comparisons. WooCommerce, Magento Open Source, PrestaShop, and OpenCart still make sense when architecture and hosting control matter. The additional 2026 question is whether the platform can expose accurate catalog data and transaction capabilities to AI agents without requiring a separate custom integration for every assistant.
Shopify as a 2026 Baseline
Shopify still uses its familiar hosted-commerce structure. Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus plans combine the storefront, admin, hosting, checkout, sales channels, and plan-dependent payment economics. Exact card rates, third-party payment provider fees, promotions, and plan prices depend on plan and region, so Shopify’s live pricing page is the safer reference than carrying a fixed figure into a long-lived comparison. [Official pricing]
The baseline has expanded: the normal Shopify calculation still includes subscription, payments, apps, themes, and operational add-ons. Merchants that care about emerging discovery channels should also include AI catalog distribution, agentic checkout support, and visibility inside conversational shopping environments.
Agentic Storefronts Change What Shopify Distributes
Shopify Agentic Storefronts lets eligible merchants expose products to AI shopping channels from the Shopify admin. Shopify currently lists channels including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Meta. Google AI Mode and Gemini remain in early access for some stores. Where a channel supports direct checkout, merchants can also allow a customer to move from discovery toward purchase without first navigating a conventional storefront. [Agentic Storefronts documentation]
The channel is not only a collection of AI crawler permissions. Shopify Catalog distributes structured product information such as titles, descriptions, variants, images, prices, and availability. Catalog data is kept updated so participating AI channels can work from current store information. Merchants can also map custom product data when important information lives in metafields, metaobjects, tags, or other store-specific structures. [Catalog distribution]
Discovery Layer
- Structured catalog data for products and variants.
- Real-time price and availability signals.
- Distribution into participating AI shopping channels.
- Catalog mapping for merchant-specific product structures.
- AI-channel performance information inside Shopify admin.
Transaction Layer
- Merchant checkout rules can remain part of the purchase flow.
- Direct AI-channel checkout can be enabled where supported.
- Orders continue into the merchant’s Shopify operations.
- Discount, fulfillment, and payment capabilities can be exposed to compatible agents.
- Human handoff remains possible where the transaction requires customer input.
UCP Covers More Than Product Feeds
The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), co-developed by Shopify and Google, gives compatible AI agents a common way to work with merchant commerce capabilities from discovery through checkout. Shopify’s UCP materials describe support for commerce operations including checkout, fulfillment, discounts, and payment handlers, with different transports able to use the same commerce logic. [UCP specification overview]
Catalog API Gives Agents a Structured Product Interface
Shopify’s Catalog interfaces give AI agents two scopes: a global catalog across Shopify merchants and a storefront catalog for one merchant. The storefront interface implements the UCP Catalog capability and lets an agent search products, retrieve product information, inspect variants, and work with availability and buyer context through a structured endpoint. This is materially different from relying only on an AI crawler to interpret a product page. [Catalog API documentation]
A merchant does not necessarily have to migrate its primary storefront to Shopify to use this distribution layer. Shopify now documents an Agentic plan for businesses using another commerce platform that want products added to Shopify Catalog and sold through Shopify agentic storefronts. That option should be considered separately from a full Shopify replatforming decision. [Agentic plan]
What Usually Changes Total Spend
Plan cost is still only one part of ecommerce economics. Payment processing, apps, development, support, and infrastructure can outweigh a small subscription difference. Agentic distribution adds another operational question: whether AI-shopping readiness is already provided by the platform or must be assembled through feeds, payment providers, plugins, custom APIs, or protocol integrations.
- Platform subscription: monthly or annual plans plus enterprise contracts.
- Payment processing: online and in-person card rates, local methods, payouts, and currency conversion.
- Platform transaction fees: additional fees that can apply with certain gateways or plans.
- Apps and extensions: subscriptions for search, reviews, email, subscriptions, shipping, analytics, or operations.
- Infrastructure: hosting, caching, security, backups, deployment, and maintenance for self-hosted systems.
- Catalog distribution: feeds, catalog enrichment, syndication, and AI-channel connections.
- Agentic checkout: payment and checkout infrastructure that lets an AI agent move beyond recommending a product.
- Conversational commerce: on-site or external AI assistants that need accurate product, policy, inventory, and checkout information.
Shopify Alternatives Compared
The additional columns below distinguish ordinary ecommerce capability from AI shopping-channel readiness. Availability can still vary by country, payment provider, merchant category, account, and rollout stage.
| Platform | Hosting Model | Typical Fit | AI Shopping Distribution | Agentic Transaction Readiness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Hosted SaaS | General ecommerce through enterprise commerce | Agentic Storefronts across supported ChatGPT, Google, Microsoft, and Meta surfaces | UCP, Catalog API, Shopify Catalog, and direct checkout where supported |
| BigCommerce | Hosted SaaS | Growing and complex catalogs | AI discovery across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and other channels through Commerce/Feedonomics capabilities | UCP support and agent-enabled checkout are active parts of its 2026 product direction |
| Wix | Hosted SaaS | Small and mid-sized brands combining site building and commerce | PayPal agentic commerce plus other AI-channel partnerships on eligible stores | ACP/Stripe and PayPal commerce integrations are part of current rollout |
| Square | Hosted commerce + POS | Local commerce, restaurants, retail, and omnichannel selling | ChatGPT, Claude, and Google conversational ordering in supported merchant categories | Orders flow through existing Square ordering and POS infrastructure where enabled |
| Adobe Commerce | Managed enterprise commerce | Large B2C, B2B, global, and multi-brand operations | AI discovery and LLM-oriented catalog distribution | Adobe has committed to UCP and ACP support for agent-mediated transactions |
| Squarespace Commerce | Hosted SaaS | Design-focused brands and content-led stores | Store discoverability still depends strongly on structured web and feed visibility | Verify the AI shopping and payment channels required for your account before assuming parity with Shopify Agentic Storefronts |
| Ecwid | Hosted SaaS | Adding commerce to an existing website | Existing multichannel distribution remains useful; AI-channel requirements should be verified separately | Agent-mediated checkout depends on supported channel and payment integrations |
| WooCommerce | Self-hosted | WordPress stores needing code and data control | Open architecture allows feeds, plugins, and custom agent integrations | Protocol and agent checkout support should be treated as an implementation choice rather than assumed platform behavior |
| Magento Open Source | Self-hosted | Developer-led custom commerce | Depends on the merchant’s catalog and integration architecture | Do not assume Adobe Commerce’s managed UCP/ACP capabilities automatically apply to a Magento Open Source installation |
| PrestaShop / OpenCart | Self-hosted | Modular stores with direct infrastructure control | Depends on feeds, modules, APIs, and custom integration | Agentic checkout readiness is implementation-specific |
AI Shopping-Channel Distribution and Agentic Checkout Readiness
There are several different levels of “AI commerce,” and they should not be treated as the same feature.
| Level | What the Platform Needs to Provide | What the Shopper Can Do |
|---|---|---|
| Crawler visibility | Accessible product pages and structured markup | Ask an AI system about products that it can find on the web |
| Catalog distribution | Structured feed or API with product, variant, price, and availability information | Receive more accurate product recommendations inside an AI surface |
| Conversational discovery | Searchable catalog plus product context and recommendation logic | Compare and narrow products through natural-language conversation |
| Agentic cart | Structured cart operations and buyer context | Let the agent assemble or modify a cart |
| Agentic checkout | Checkout, payment, address, discount, tax, and fulfillment capabilities exposed safely to the agent | Move from recommendation toward a purchase without rebuilding the cart manually on the store |
| Post-purchase agent support | Order and fulfillment operations with appropriate permissions | Potentially manage permitted post-purchase tasks through an assistant |
Shopify Is Strongest When You Want One Admin for Several AI Channels
Shopify’s Agentic area lets merchants manage participating AI sales channels from the Shopify admin. Products can be shared through Shopify Catalog or through existing Google and Meta sales channels, and direct checkout can remain enabled where supported. Shopify also allows merchants to manage channels individually rather than automatically joining every future supported channel. [Channel management]
BigCommerce Is Now a Much Closer Agentic-Commerce Alternative
BigCommerce can no longer be characterized only as a hosted catalog platform with more built-in features. Commerce, the parent company of BigCommerce and Feedonomics, introduced agent-ready product enrichment, distribution into AI discovery surfaces, agent-enabled checkout, and conversational shopping as current product capabilities. Its product page specifically names discovery across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and emerging AI shopping channels. [AI commerce capabilities]
Commerce also announced UCP support and described direct buying across Google AI experiences while keeping merchants as merchant of record. Its 2026 PayPal Store Sync integration extends BigCommerce catalogs into additional agent-driven discovery and checkout surfaces. [UCP support]
Wix Has Moved Beyond AI Site Building
Wix now has merchant-side agentic commerce features as well. Eligible U.S. Wix Stores using PayPal in USD can participate in PayPal Agentic Commerce Services, where products can become discoverable through PayPal and compatible AI-shopping experiences. Orders originating through this channel are identified as PayPal AI in Wix reporting. The feature remains a gradual beta rollout. [Agentic commerce availability]
Wix has also aligned with the Agentic Commerce Protocol and describes Stripe and PayPal integrations as paths for eligible merchants to participate in AI discovery and transaction flows. This makes Wix more relevant for merchants who want a website builder but do not want AI shopping readiness to depend entirely on custom development.
Square Is Strongest Where Commerce Starts Offline
Square is a different type of alternative because the POS and real-world operation can be the center of the system. In July 2026, Square introduced integrations for eligible U.S. food and beverage sellers that surface current menu and ordering information through ChatGPT and Claude, with qualifying orders routed into the seller’s existing Square systems. [AI ordering integrations]
This makes Square especially relevant for restaurants and local merchants where conversational commerce needs to reach the same POS, inventory, kitchen, and reporting tools already used for conventional orders. Availability is more category-specific than Shopify’s general merchant model.
Conversational Commerce Can Happen Outside or Inside the Store
AI shopping distribution and an on-site AI shopping assistant solve related but different problems. An external agentic channel helps a product appear when the shopper begins in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, or another assistant. An on-site conversational experience helps the shopper after arriving at the merchant’s own property.
External Conversational Commerce
- The customer begins inside an AI assistant.
- The AI needs reliable catalog data.
- The platform may need a protocol, feed, or partner connection.
- Checkout can redirect to the store or occur within the AI experience.
- Channel attribution should flow back into merchant reporting where possible.
On-Site Conversational Commerce
- The shopper has already reached the merchant property.
- The assistant can search the merchant’s own catalog.
- Product questions can use live inventory and attributes.
- Recommendations remain inside the branded storefront.
- The merchant controls the surrounding experience more directly.
A platform can be good at one layer and weak at the other. When conversational commerce matters, ask whether the product search is grounded in current inventory, variant, pricing, policy, and fulfillment data rather than merely connecting a general chatbot to store pages.
Hosted Platforms Similar to Shopify
BigCommerce
BigCommerce remains one of the closest hosted Shopify alternatives for businesses that need catalog management, promotions, checkout, integrations, B2B options, and multi-channel commerce without managing the underlying server. The additional advantage in 2026 is its parent company’s direct investment in agent-ready catalog enrichment, AI discovery, UCP, and conversational shopping.
Its Standard, Plus, and Pro plans remain published as subscription tiers, while Enterprise uses a sales-led model. Exact pricing and sales thresholds should be checked against the current account and region. [Official pricing]
- Compare with Shopify when: you want a hosted commerce platform with serious catalog and multi-channel requirements.
- Agentic angle: BigCommerce is now one of the alternatives that should be tested directly against Shopify’s AI distribution layer rather than treated as an ordinary storefront-only option.
- Verify: which AI channels, checkout paths, Feedonomics features, and account requirements apply to your store.
Squarespace Commerce
Squarespace is still most attractive when the storefront is closely tied to content, branding, appointments, services, or a design-led website. Commerce features are packaged within its website plans rather than around the deeper commerce operations found in Shopify and BigCommerce.
Current plan names, payment features, and commerce fees can vary with account and billing choice, so use the current plan selector when estimating the switch. [Official pricing]
For a merchant that expects AI assistants to become a primary acquisition channel, verify catalog feeds, structured product data, external AI-channel partnerships, and agent checkout support separately. A polished web storefront does not by itself provide Shopify-style Agentic Storefronts distribution.
Wix
Wix remains useful for businesses that want a visual site builder, commerce, bookings, marketing tools, and site management inside one hosted product. Its newer agentic commerce work reduces one of the gaps that older Shopify comparisons assumed would remain.
Wix offers several site and business plan levels, with prices and features varying by market and billing period. Check the current ecommerce-enabled plans rather than relying on a fixed historical figure. [Plan comparison]
- Good fit: small and mid-sized businesses that want site design and store operations in the same editor.
- Agentic angle: PayPal-based AI commerce is already available to some eligible merchants, with additional protocol and partner work underway.
- Check: country, currency, payment provider, product type, and whether agentic features have reached your account.
Square Online
Square is strongest when ecommerce needs to stay synchronized with a physical business. POS, inventory, payments, restaurants, appointments, and online ordering can remain parts of the same operational system.
Square still uses a mixture of free and paid software plans with payment-processing economics that depend on product and transaction type. [Official pricing]
The AI-commerce comparison is currently narrower than Shopify because Square’s most developed conversational ordering integrations are focused on eligible local and food-and-beverage businesses. For those merchants, however, keeping AI-originated orders inside the same POS and kitchen workflow can be more valuable than operating a more general ecommerce stack.
Ecwid
Ecwid continues to make sense when commerce needs to be added to an existing website rather than replacing the whole site stack. Product allowances, staff accounts, POS connections, marketing functions, and selling-channel features increase by plan. [Official pricing]
For an agentic-commerce requirement, test Ecwid on the exact AI surfaces you expect to matter. Multichannel commerce and product feeds can help with distribution, but they should not be assumed to provide the same protocol-level catalog and checkout functions as Shopify UCP.
Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop remains a feature-dense hosted alternative for merchants interested in an all-in-one ecommerce admin and integrated payment relationship. Its current site publishes its available commerce package and included functionality directly rather than requiring a large app stack for every basic store function. [Plan details]
Merchants prioritizing AI shopping distribution should verify supported external AI catalogs, agent checkout paths, product-feed freshness, and attribution before treating it as a direct Agentic Storefronts substitute.
Self-Hosted and Open-Source Options
Self-hosted commerce can offer much more control over how agent interfaces are implemented. The trade is that the merchant or development team becomes responsible for making catalog data, checkout operations, security, and payment permissions usable by AI agents.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source commerce platform for WordPress. The core software remains free, while real operating cost depends on hosting, development, extensions, payments, subscriptions, search, security, and other store requirements. [Open-source product details]
Agentic-commerce trade-off: WooCommerce gives developers access to the underlying store and can be integrated with feeds, APIs, agent protocols, or third-party services. That flexibility is useful, but it also means merchants should verify which part of AI shopping distribution is native to their chosen stack and which part depends on plugins or custom development.
Magento Open Source
Magento Open Source remains relevant for stores with complex catalogs, custom pricing rules, unusual checkout behavior, or an engineering team prepared to own the implementation. Adobe describes the open-source edition as a free commerce platform for customizable builds.
Keep Magento Open Source separate from Adobe Commerce when comparing agentic features. Adobe’s managed commerce product now has a defined UCP/ACP direction, while an independently operated Magento Open Source installation depends on its own extensions and development work.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop remains a modular open-source option for merchants who want hosting choice, international selling functions, and a marketplace of modules. [Platform overview]
For AI shopping, include structured catalog output, live inventory access, product feeds, payment integration, and protocol support in the technical scope. These requirements should be tested rather than inferred from ordinary product-page SEO.
OpenCart
OpenCart provides a conventional self-managed commerce admin with catalog, extensions, orders, customers, settings, and reporting. Its documentation remains useful for understanding the underlying store structure and extension model. [Product documentation]
As with other self-managed systems, AI-shopping compatibility depends on the actual implementation. A developer can expose the required data and operations, but the merchant owns more of that integration work.
Enterprise and Multi-Brand Commerce
Adobe Commerce
Adobe Commerce is a stronger Shopify Plus comparison when the buying decision involves global catalogs, B2B, multiple brands, custom integrations, enterprise governance, and a larger implementation program.
Adobe’s current AI-commerce product direction includes real-time product, pricing, and inventory data for AI agents, external AI shopping-channel distribution, conversational shopping, and support for both Universal Commerce Protocol and Agentic Commerce Protocol. That places Adobe Commerce among the alternatives that can be evaluated directly on agentic discovery and transaction readiness. [Agentic commerce capabilities]
Adobe Commerce pricing remains sales-led and should be evaluated with implementation, integrations, support, and operating scope rather than as a direct comparison with a self-service Shopify subscription. [Enterprise pricing]
Payments and Fee Structures
Agentic commerce does not remove conventional payment costs. It adds another checkout origin. Processing fees, gateway rules, merchant-of-record responsibilities, refunds, taxes, fraud controls, and payout handling still have to work when an order originates from an AI assistant.
| Area | What It Covers | Question to Ask |
|---|---|---|
| Processing fee | Card, network, wallet, and payment-provider costs | Does the rate change when the transaction originates from an external AI channel? |
| Platform transaction fee | Additional platform charge in certain gateway configurations | Does the AI checkout path use the platform’s preferred payment system? |
| Agentic channel fee | Potential channel, referral, marketplace, or partner economics | Does the AI surface charge the merchant or use the normal store economics? |
| Merchant of record | Who owns the transaction and related commercial obligations | Does the merchant remain merchant of record when checkout occurs inside the assistant? |
| Customer relationship | Order, email, address, consent, and post-purchase data | What information returns to the commerce platform after an AI-originated order? |
| Refund and fulfillment | Operational handling after payment | Can staff manage the order through their normal admin, POS, warehouse, or support flow? |
BigCommerce states that it does not add its own transaction fees to its standard commerce plans, although normal payment processing still applies. [Transaction fee policy]
Squarespace documents plan-dependent transaction fees and payment-processing rates separately, which is the right level of detail to check before comparing its headline plan price with Shopify. [Payment fee documentation]
For WooCommerce merchants using WooPayments, payment fees vary by country and payment method and can include applicable taxes. [WooPayments fees]
Data Migration, URLs, and AI Catalog Continuity
Moving away from Shopify in 2026 means auditing two distribution systems: the conventional website and the product data exposed to external channels. A technically successful product import can still reduce discoverability if structured attributes, variants, inventory feeds, agent access, or AI sales-channel connections disappear during the move.
Store Data to Inventory
- Products, variants, SKUs, images, and inventory
- Collections and navigation
- Metafields and product attributes
- Customers and orders where transfer is permitted
- Discounts and promotions
- Shipping and fulfillment rules
- Taxes and market configuration
- Subscriptions and app-owned data
Discovery Data to Inventory
- Product feeds for Google, Meta, and marketplaces
- Agentic Storefronts channel settings
- AI-channel checkout configuration
- Product data mapping and custom attributes
- Structured data and metadata
- AI crawler access rules
- Agent discovery endpoints
- Channel-level attribution and reporting
Shopify Now Publishes Agent Discovery Information Automatically
Shopify documents automatic agent-discovery URLs including /agents.md, /llms.txt, and /llms-full.txt. These expose store-level context that agents can read, while Shopify Catalog remains the primary structured product-data source for Agentic Storefronts. If the replacement platform does not create equivalent information automatically, decide whether the site, feed system, or development team will provide it.
URL Continuity Still Matters
- Export the current product, collection, page, and blog URL list.
- Map old URLs to the closest destination on the new platform.
- Create permanent redirects where paths change.
- Preserve canonical logic, metadata, structured data, and indexability.
- Reconnect merchant feeds and advertising channels.
- Verify product variants, prices, inventory, currency, and availability in external feeds.
- Test important products in the AI-shopping channels your customers actually use.
- Verify that AI-originated purchases reach normal order, payment, refund, and fulfillment systems.
A business can also separate the two decisions. It can move the main storefront to another platform while retaining access to Shopify’s agentic distribution through the Agentic plan, or it can choose an alternative with its own AI-commerce integrations. That can make agentic distribution a channel decision rather than the sole reason to choose the main ecommerce platform.
Which Shopify Alternative Fits Which Store
- Stay with Shopify
- Stay when the store benefits from one hosted system for storefront, checkout, payments, apps, international selling, and centralized Agentic Storefronts distribution across supported AI channels.
- Choose BigCommerce
- Choose it when you want another commerce-first SaaS platform with serious catalog requirements and a current agentic-commerce direction that includes AI discovery, UCP support, and agent-enabled checkout.
- Choose Wix
- Choose it when site building, content, services, and ecommerce need to live in one visual platform and the current PayPal, Stripe, and agentic-commerce rollout covers the markets and payment systems you use.
- Choose Square
- Choose it when POS, restaurants, local commerce, or in-person operations are the center of the business and conversational ordering should flow into the same operational tools.
- Choose Squarespace
- Choose it when design, content, services, and a smaller commerce operation matter more than advanced catalog operations or protocol-level agentic distribution.
- Choose WooCommerce
- Choose it when WordPress, source access, data ownership, and the ability to implement custom feeds, APIs, protocols, and checkout logic outweigh the convenience of a managed agentic-commerce layer.
- Choose Adobe Commerce
- Choose it when the organization needs enterprise B2C or B2B commerce, custom integrations, global operations, and a defined UCP/ACP strategy for AI-driven discovery and transactions.
- Choose Magento Open Source, PrestaShop, or OpenCart
- Choose a self-managed platform when the engineering team is prepared to own infrastructure and any agentic-commerce integration that the business requires.
Shopify Alternatives and Agentic Commerce Questions
What are Shopify Agentic Storefronts?
Agentic Storefronts is Shopify’s sales-channel layer for AI shopping environments. Eligible products can be exposed to supported channels such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Meta, with direct checkout available where the external channel supports it.
What is the difference between Shopify Catalog and UCP?
Shopify Catalog structures and distributes product data so agents can discover products with current attributes, prices, variants, and availability. UCP covers interaction between agents and commerce systems more broadly, including operations that can extend from discovery into carts and checkout.
Can I use Shopify agentic commerce without moving my online store to Shopify?
Shopify now documents an Agentic plan intended for businesses whose primary ecommerce platform is elsewhere. It can add eligible products to Shopify Catalog and make them available through Shopify agentic storefronts without requiring the business to migrate its existing storefront first.
Which Shopify alternative is strongest for AI shopping distribution?
BigCommerce is one of the closest direct comparisons because its current commerce stack includes AI product discovery, Feedonomics catalog distribution, UCP support, and agent-enabled checkout. Adobe Commerce also supports UCP and ACP for enterprise use. Wix and Square have active agentic-commerce integrations for eligible merchants, although availability and merchant scope differ.
Does a product feed make a store agentic-commerce ready?
Not by itself. A product feed helps an AI system discover current products, but agentic checkout can also require structured cart operations, payment handling, addresses, discounts, taxes, fulfillment information, and clear rules for when control returns to the shopper.
Is WooCommerce unsuitable for agentic commerce?
No. WooCommerce gives developers broad control over store data and integrations, which can be useful for AI-commerce projects. The difference is operational: merchants should verify which agent feeds, protocols, and checkout functions are provided by their chosen extensions or custom implementation rather than assuming they are managed automatically by the core platform.
Does Shopify Agentic Storefronts replace the normal online store?
No. It adds additional discovery and transaction channels. Shoppers can still use the merchant’s normal storefront, marketplaces, social channels, and other sales channels. Agentic Storefronts extends the places where Shopify catalog and checkout capabilities can be used.
What should I preserve when moving away from Shopify?
Preserve products, variants, inventory, customers and orders where appropriate, redirects, metadata, structured data, feeds, analytics, and payment configuration. If AI shopping matters, also inventory Agentic Storefronts settings, product-data mapping, agent discovery information, checkout behavior, and the AI channels currently sending discovery or sales activity.