The 7 Best Ecommerce Platforms & Website Builders 2023

Features

Wix’s sales features have only gotten better over the years. What started off as a modest ecommerce offering has now grown into something to rival even the biggest of online store builders.

Some of our favorite ecommerce features include:

• Abandoned cart recovery – send automatic emails and regain lost sales by encouraging customers to finalize purchases
• Multi-channel integration – sell on Instagram and Facebook without installing any apps
• “Buy now” and “Add to cart” buttons – create an easier shopping experience and increase sales
• Printable shipping labels – develop your brand image by personalizing your packaging
• Store card details – customers can pay-on-the-go using their stored card details in the “wallet” area of the checkout
• Dropshipping – use a third-party company and save the hassle of packaging and shipping yourself
• Integrations with Shipstation – provide a seamless shipping experience for your customers using apps like Shipstation

Better still, all Wix websites automatically come with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. This is really important as it means customers can safely submit their details through your website.

On the downside, though, Wix does have pretty basic inventory features and lacks a stock level management alert system.

Another way to add ecommerce features to your Wix online store is to use apps. Wix has a formidable app store that means you can boost your selling functionality even further. Be careful, though – lots of these apps come with extra costs that can quickly mount up.

Design

Wix has over 800 templates to choose from, around 500 of which are specifically for ecommerce stores. You can even filter them by specific ecommerce industries, too.

Each template is highly customizable, meaning you can create a really strong brand for your online store. Because of Wix’s drag-and-drop editor, it’s super easy to add product videos and other cool features to create the ultimate shopping experience.

With Wix, you also know exactly how your online store will look to customers while you’re editing, making customization really easy.

However, it is worth noting that once you publish your online store, you won’t be able to change your template, so make sure you choose carefully! If you do decide that you want to switch it up, you’ll need to start from scratch.

Pricing

Wix offers three pricing plans which are totally dedicated to ecommerce. Here’s each plan, with its monthly cost, billed annually:

• Business Basic – $27/ month
• Business Unlimited – $32 a month
• Business VIP – $59 a month

The cheapest plan is ideal for those who are just starting out on their ecommerce journey, allowing you to take payments and sell across multiple channels. However, you won’t be able to sell on marketplaces – you’ll need to upgrade to either the Business Unlimited or Business VIP plan for this.

The higher tier plans also allow you to sell subscriptions, as well as give you access to dropshipping apps. You’ll also be able to display our prices in a variety of currencies, too.

Features

When it comes to sales features, Shopify excels. Second only to BigCommerce, it has a near-infinite list of ecommerce tools to boost your sales performance.

Here are a few of the main sales features:

• Sell physical and digital goods and services
• Abandoned cart recovery is built-in, helping catch incomplete sales
• Online invoice generator makes billing and collecting money easier
• Sync with 10 other sales platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon
• Over 100 different payment gateways to choose from (including Shopify Payments and Google Pay)
• Sell unlimited products
• Stay on track on the go with Shopify’s mobile app
• Easily customize your checkout with your own logo, brand colors and fonts

Plus, for anything that Shopify doesn’t offer as a built-in feature, it has an app for. Its app market rivals even that of Wix, so you can increase your store’s functionality as it grows.

However, as with Wix, it is worth bearing in mind that lots of these apps come with an additional cost. This, on top of a fairly steep monthly subscription price, isn’t ideal for those working with a smaller budget.

While talking about some of Shopify’s pitfalls, we should also mention its transaction fees. Shopify offers over 100 different payment options – something we’re big fans of. However, many of these gateways will come with additional transaction fees.

The only way for you to avoid this is if you sign up for Shopify’s own payment gateway, Shopify Payments. Although this isn’t the worst thing in the world, it does limit some of your choices, especially if there’s a particular gateway you’d rather use.

This is a small complaint, though, given the impressive functionality of Shopify as a whole. It’s no wonder that Shopify scores so highly in this category, making it a great choice for anyone who’s serious about building a successful and scalable ecommerce store.

Design

In our design category, Shopify scored 3.9 out of 5, putting it just below Wix. It has over 100 themes to choose from, although only nine of these are actually free. The rest you’ll need to pay for, and prices vary between $180 and $350.

There’s a lot to be said for purchasing a premium theme, not least because they often come with more complex designs and built-in features, but it’s a big investment to make right off the bat.

For those just starting out, the free themes are still a good option. Each one is professionally designed and comes in a variety of color options to best suit your branding. However, because there are only nine to choose from, it can be tricky to create a storefront that truly stands out.

This is made harder by the fact that the Shopify editor isn’t as straightforward as it could be. This is because it’s set across two different interfaces – a front end and a back end – meaning you’ll need to constantly switch between the two when editing.

It’s not an insurmountable learning curve, but users commented that it did make things more complicated and took a while to master.

Pricing

Shopify has three different pricing plans available:

• Shopify Basic – $29/month
• Shopify – $79/month
• Shopify Advanced – $299/month

With a value for money score of 3 out of 5, Shopify is one of the more expensive ecommerce builders out there. However, it’s a worthy investment, especially if you run a larger store that needs more complex inventory control.

We’d definitely say that the quality of Shopify’s tools justifies its prices, and the popularity of this platform with users all across the world lends plenty of weight to this. Plus, with a 3- day free trial (then 3 months at $1/month) there’s nothing to lose in trying Shopify out!

Features

Squarespace doesn’t boast the longest list of sales features, which is why it has a slightly lower score of 3.4 out of 5, but those features it does have are all of the highest quality.

Ideally suited for those with a smaller inventory, or for a store specializing in digital products, Squarespace comes with limited but functional in-house stock management, as well as revenue reports, stock-level email reports, and strong marketing tools.

Promotional features are an area where Squarespace really stands out. You can add different types of discounts to the products in your store, from individual products to entire orders.

Squarespace also allows you to sell unlimited products on any of its ecommerce price plans. Plus, you have the option of either uploading them in bulk or one at a time.

One thing’s for sure – your store won’t just look good with Squarespace: it’ll pack a punch too! But if you want speedy growth on a large scale, you might find Squarespace too small too soon – shipping and payment options are limited when compared to Shopify and BigCommerce.

Design

Design is kind of Squarespace’s thing. It’s well-known for its beautiful templates and strong customizability, consistently scoring well in this area.

In this round of testing, we awarded it 4 out of 5 for its design functionality. This puts it in joint first place, alongside Wix and BigCommerce.

Squarespace has a smaller but comprehensive selection of online store templates, covering an impressive range of industries from fashion to food & drink.

However, the number of ecommerce templates available compared to other builders is disappointingly low. Luckily, those that are available are very appealing, so users won’t struggle to find a template they like.

Pricing

Alongside its stunning designs, we really like the fact that Squarespace offers such good value for money. In our testing, it scored 4.4 out of 5 in this category, putting it in joint second place with Wix.

Squarespace offers three pricing plans, two of which are solely dedicated to ecommerce. The prices for each are as follows (billed annually):

• Business Plan – $23/month
• Basic Commerce – $27/month
• Advanced Commerce – $49/month

Both the Basic and Advanced Commerce plans come with everything you need to run an online store. The only difference between the two is that the Advanced plan comes with increased ecommerce functionality, including abandoned cart emails, advanced shipping and discounts, as well as the ability to sell subscriptions.

If you aren’t fully ready to commit to an ecommerce-specific plan, we’d recommend opting for the Business plan. This comes with reduced ecommerce features but still allows you to sell an unlimited number of products.

It’s worth noting, however, that if you do choose the Business plan, you’ll be charged a hefty 3% transaction fee on all of your orders. This disappears if you upgrade to either the Basic or Advanced Ecommerce plans.

Features

In our research, Square Online scored 3.5 out of 5 for its sales features. Although not the best on the list, Square Online does come with enough tools for small businesses. Here’s a quick look at some of our favorites:

• Sell unlimited items – even on its free plan
• A variety of shipping options are available, including curbside pickup
• Automatically generate shipping labels and take advantage of shipping discounts
• Accept payments through PayPal, Apple Pay, Stripe, and Square
• Sell on Facebook and Instagram

Adding products and product variations is extremely easy, and Square Online’s paid plans let you include small labels like “on sale” or “only a few left!” to create a sense of urgency around special deals.

Plus, if you want to host a pop-up store, or open a brick-and-mortar business alongside your online store, you can integrate your website with Square’s Point of Sale (POS). This can sync up with your online stock inventory, too.

The variety of delivery options available makes Square Online the ideal choice if you’re planning on starting a food or drink delivery business. It even has a self-serve option, so users can use QR codes in your restaurant for contact-free delivery.

Although Square Online has a lot going for it, one of its main drawbacks is that it charges quite high transaction fees. You’ll need to pay 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. There’s no way of getting around them, either, like there is with Shopify. You’ll have to pay them on even the most expensive plans.

Design

We were pretty impressed with Square Online’s sales features and its ease of use, but we were less thrilled by its lack of design customization. It only scored 2.7 out of 5 in our research for this category.

Square Online only has two layout options: Shop Online and Order Online. Both are fairly similar, but one is aimed particularly at food and drink businesses, while the other targets the more typical “online store” market.

It’s true that you’ll have everything you need to create a simple store that emphasizes your products, but if you want to create a layout with your own personal creative flair, you may be better off with a design-oriented builder like Squarespace.

Pricing

Pricing and value for money are where Square Online really shines. Not only can you sell products for free, but even its paid premium plans are pretty cheap, too!

Aside from its free plan, Square Online has three plans to choose from:

• Professional plan – $12/month
• Performance plan – $26/month
• Premium plan – $72/month

Although the free plan is great for getting your business up and running, we’d always recommend upgrading to a paid plan if and when you can. This is because, on Square Online’s free plan, you’ll have to contend with ads on your site, and you won’t be able to use a custom domain name.

Upgrading to the Professional plan will remove these ads, and let you set your own domain name. Your business will immediately look more legitimate, increasing customer trust.

Plus, at $12 per month, the Professional plan is still a steal! 

Features

BigCommerce wants to see your store grow and succeed and this is evident in the number and quality of features it offers.

You can upload products in bulk to save you time, and there’s no limit on the number of products you can sell. You can keep track of your products and customers using BigCommerce’s analytics reports. This is an important strength of the platform, with these reports available:

• Store overview
• Real-time reports
• Customer reports
• Abandoned cart reports
• Merchandising reports

Abandoned cart recovery is already built in, plus you can customize the email that gets sent out to customers. You can even combine this with coupon codes to entice your customers back to your store.

Most importantly, BigCommerce’s stock management system is second-to-none. It can cope with complex, multi-variation inventories and its functionality beats even the likes of Shopify.

If you have ambitions to run a large store one day, BigCommerce has all the tools you need to support that dream.

Design

With a score of 4 out of 5, BigCommerce came joint first in our research for design, alongside Wix and Squarespace.

BigCommerce has over 100 themes in its library. Like Shopify, however, only a few of these are free. You’ll have 12 free designs to choose from, but if you decide to opt for a premium theme, you’ll find yourself paying anywhere between $145 and $235.

All of BigCommerce’s themes are fully mobile responsive. Even better, it’ll optimize your design for you, so you don’t need to worry about flicking between the different editor modes to make sure you get the formatting right.

While the editing interface isn’t the most straightforward, BigCommerce’s customizability is great. Whereas with other builders, you might struggle to create a storefront that’s unique and personal, this isn’t a problem for BigCommerce users.

Pricing

BigCommerce isn’t the cheapest of builders, especially when you get onto the more advanced plans, but as with Shopify, this is another platform where you get what you pay for.

Although BigCommerce offers tiered pricing like its competitors, these tiers are also based on how much revenue your business makes each year. Take a look at its pricing plans (and the associated revenue brackets) below:

• Standard plan ($0 – $50k)  – $29.95/month
• Plus plan  ($50 – $180k) – $79.95/month
• Pro plan  ($180 – $400k) – $299.95/month

If your business has made more than $400k in the last year, you’ll need BigCommerce’s Enterprise plan, which comes at a custom price.

Generally, BigCommerce is aimed more at larger, enterprise-level businesses that can often afford the higher costs. This is why it operates on a revenue-based model. That means your pricing plan will be decided for you, depending on how much money your business has made in the last 12 months.

But if you’re a small startup, don’t let this discourage you. With an entry plan that is fairly affordable, you can still get a piece of the BigCommerce pie, upgrading only when your business has grown and you’re making more money.

BigCommerce doesn’t offer a free plan, but it does have a 15-day free trial so you can test out whether investing is the best move for your online business.

Features

In terms of its sales features, Zyro’s offering is rather modest. We scored it 3.4 out of 5 in this area, which, while by no means bad, is not the best score on the board. It’s not really enough to hold its own in the company of more well-known names.

Although it supports the sale of both physical and digital products, as well as services, Zyro only allows you to sell up to 100 items on its ecommerce-specific plan. This is limiting for larger stores or smaller ones with the ambition to grow.

Zyro supports both PayPal and Stripe, as well as 14 additional US-based payment processors, but you’ll need to be prepared to pay a 1% transaction fee unless you upgrade to the most expensive plan.

Despite this, we were particularly impressed that Zyro can be connected with a POS device. Not many website builders offer this, and it’s a big bonus if you want to sell your items in real life, too.

You can also connect your online store to a number of social media platforms. Zyro supports integrations with Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Pinterest, and Whatsapp. It also works seamlessly alongside marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping, too.

Design

Zyro excelled when it came to design. It has 29 ecommerce-specific templates to choose from, all of which are attractive and professionally designed.

As we’ve mentioned, there were some elements of the editing process that our users found frustrating, but creating a storefront that looks and feels good for customers wasn’t one of them.

The grid-based layout makes it very easy to drag and drop elements where you want them, and reminds us of Wix – which is no bad thing!

The difficulty comes in when you need to switch between the frontend editor and the ecommerce store manager. The two feel very disconnected and it’s hard to picture how your website will look once it’s all done.

However, Zyro did offer a trump card here that helped to boost its score. Usually, ecommerce builders offer a standard product page design, but Zyro goes much further.

It allows users to amend the layout of product pictures and text, as well as determine how many products are displayed per page. You can also completely customize your checkout page for an experience that’s unique to your online store.

No other builder we’ve tested has offered this depth of creative control, and we really liked that it allowed us to give our online store that extra personal touch.

Pricing

Zyro has one ecommerce dedicated plan – its Business plan – that allows you to sell online. This costs $14.99 per month, however Zyro regularly runs sales where you can save as much as 77%. This brings the price down to $3.39 per month if you commit to a two-year plan, or $4.24 for an annual plan.

Zyro does offer monthly payment plans, however, we don’t recommend these. Not only are they more expensive per month, but they don’t come with a free domain either.

Although cheap, Zyro isn’t necessarily good value for money because it lacks lots of the core ecommerce features its competitors have. Plus, it doesn’t offer a free trial for ecommerce plans. As a result, we only awarded it a score of 2.5 out of 5 for value for money.

Features

If you don’t intend to grow your business much in the near future, then Big Cartel’s simple sales tools are more than enough to get you started.

It has enough sales features to get you off the ground, like payment processing integrations with PayPal and Stripe, and no in-house transaction fees (you’ll still have to pay the fee imposed by the payment processor, which is usually 2.9% + $0.30 for each sale, but this is pretty standard).

Don’t expect anything too advanced, though. Big Cartel doesn’t offer anything like abandoned cart recovery, and you’ll only be able to display up to five product images per product. If you opt for the free plan, you’ll only be able to feature one image.

On the more expensive plans, however, you will be able to offer promotions and sales. Big Cartel also offers shipment tracking and a sales tax autopilot to help with those pesky taxes.

With an overall sales features score of 2.3 out of 5, Big Cartel isn’t going to be winning any awards, but it provides just enough for very small businesses. Those vendors making the move from a marketplace like Etsy will find everything they need to satisfy their ecommerce needs.

Design

Although it’s possible to build a professional-looking website with Big Cartel, design isn’t its strong suit.

The templates on offer are clean and neat, but they can’t compete with the likes of Squarespace. They’re also not the easiest to customize either. The editor is fairly rigid, and what you can do with each template is limited. Unless you have coding knowledge, of course, which not everyone does.

Overall, it’s pretty difficult to build a brand with Big Cartel. It’s much easier if your business is already fully established, but if not, carving out a unique corner of the internet could prove tricky. Because of this, we only awarded it a score of 2.2 out of 5 for design.

Pricing

In addition to its free Gold plan, Big Cartel has two premium plans on offer:

• Platinum plan – $9.99/month
• Diamond plan – $19.99/month

Although these prices are fairly affordable, they don’t offer very good value for money. This is because the features you get for what you pay are fairly lacking. Instead, we’d recommend checking out Square Online for free selling and cheap premium plans.