The 6 Best Ecommerce Website Builders 2023

However, since we last tested, Shopify has improved its website-building features, with more focus on internal features rather than plugins and apps. They’re still important, but no longer as essential as they once were.

Some of the newly implemented internal features include onsite testimonials, audio uploads, product comparison functionality, and suggested purchase popups. While we still wouldn’t recommend Shopify for any non-ecommerce websites, the improvement in Shopify’s website features since last year, including storage and site speed improvements, makes it a great all-rounder for marketing and growing your site.

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 + new channels added like TikTok and Snapchat
• 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 font

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

For example, Shopify has recently introduced a new Ecommerce Booster app in partnership with Semrush – the tool will run SEO checks on your store and provide you with feedback to action yourself. This is a great way to improve your online store’s performance across search engines and boost visibility.

However, it’s 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, which at the lowest price plan begin at 2.9% + $0.30. 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. Shopify earns a 5 out of 5 in virtually every sales feature area except transaction fees, where it only scores 1 out of 5.

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.

It has over 100 themes to choose from, although only 12 of these are actually free.

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 12 to choose from, it can be tricky to create a storefront that truly stands out.

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, as their prices vary between $180 and $360.

While the themes, both free and paid, are better than last year, Shopify’s editor can still be confusing to new users, as you have to constantly be flitting back and forth from the front end to the back end. However, a huge omnichannel improvement (a rise of 150% in our research!) has enabled users to create and organize internal marketing from one dashboard, which has really alleviated a lot of stress Shopify used to induce.

In our research, value for money is worked out by pitting features vs pricing. If pricing has increased, we expect features offered to increase to make up for the more expensive plan. Shopify followed this very well, actually increasing its feature vs price score by 33.33% since last year, going from 3 to 4 out of 5 – the only builder to do so!

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

A lot of our testers were impressed by the number of sales features, saying:

“Loads of payment options which is vital for businesses. They had far more than most builders.”

However, Shopify is not fully transformed, and some of our testers still encountered trouble with the Shopify editor:

“There are so many options for your business, which is great, but there are so many in front of you that you can’t find anything.”

These features include:

• 24/7 phone support
• Social media support
• 24/7 live chat support
• Community forum
• Email support
• Help center
• Video tutorials
• Advanced specialist support

• Shopify has launched Shopify Tax Platform, a solution to help businesses connect their preferred sales tax service with their website. Shopify merchants can now manage everything tax-related from the dashboard, including embedding tax calculations into the checkout page for customers to see. The feature is currently only compatible with Vertex, but more partners are coming soon.

Unlike Shopify though, Wix tops the ranking in our best website builder list, due in no small part to its fantastic features. Its ecommerce offering is no exception since users wanting to build an online store still get access to all of the same wonderful features and unique tools, such as:

• Content Manager
• Bookings
• Scheduling
• Events
• Ticketing
• Pricing Plans

Wix improved its website features score in our rankings by 4.5% since last year. This was due to improvements to its internalization and site speed, with Wix now supporting 180 languages and its site speed being measured at 17% faster; important for users who want to get full use of all Wix’s tools.

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

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

Thankfully, Wix websites automatically come with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates at no extra cost. This is really important as it means customers can safely submit their details through your website.

Wix used to have pretty basic inventory features and lacked a stock-level management alert system. However, we can report that Wix has improved on this functionality since the last time we tested. The only downside Wix has is that there is still a 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee, but an additional 48 payment gateway options to choose from since our last round of testing.

In our research, we gave it a design score of 4.2 out of 5, an increase of 5% from last year’s score of 4 out of 5, due to improved aesthetical capabilities in its editor, outpacing Squarespace’s usual dominance over this category.

Each Wix template is highly customizable, meaning you can create a really strong brand for your online store. And, 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’s 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.

Wix has a free plan available, but you aren’t able to sell on it. You can, however, still create your store and customize it to your heart’s content before deciding to upgrade to one of Wix’s dedicated ecommerce plans:

• Core – $27 per month
• Business – $32 per month
• Business Elite – $159 per month

As one of our testers said:

“It really had the most customization of any builder we tested. You wanted something? It could do it. Very impressive.”

This limitless customizability has led to… unintended consequences on Wix’s end. With so many tools and features and the ability to customize them all, many of our testers actually found that it was too overwhelming and they were frozen with indecision over what they could do, with one tester saying:

“It is a great builder, and you can do a lot of things, but if I gave this to my mom I think she would breakdown in tears, I don’t think she’d know what to do.”

Our testers recommended going at a slower pace when using Wix, which could be a strain on some potential users.

• Phone support
• Social media support
• Community forum
• Email support
• Video tutorials
• 24/7 on-page editor support
• In-depth knowledge base

Wix’s score actually increased since last year by an impressive 6.6% from 3.8 out of 5. This was due to a new feature introduced by Wix called Specialist Support, which puts you in contact with a dedicated Wix expert to solve your issues in your language.

• The Wix AI Meta Tag Creator will join Wix’s suite of SEO tools, allowing users to save time and effort by instantly generating meta tags that are optimized for search engines. The feature aims to boost search visibility for Wix website owners.

However, Squarespace still has a lot of great website features. Increased third-party integrations have brought its app store Squarespace Extensions up to 32 high-quality plugins. Plus, with a handy booking system and digital product selling available, Squarespace has enough functionality to operate a great online store. It also improved 66.67% in our category for storage, going from a 3 to a 5 out of 5, and additionally improved its site speed by 9%.

Promotional features are an area where Squarespace really stands out with a rise of 33.33% in our scores. You can add different types of discounts to the products in your store, from individual products to entire orders plus a new feature of adding discounted featured products on the homepage.

Other areas where it improved were in its multi-channel sales, with selling now available through Facebook and Instagram and an Etsy marketplace, plus adding Stripe, PayPal, and AfterPay payment functionality. 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.

Squarespace has also introduced Squarespace Courses to users, allowing businesses to sell online courses, such as fitness videos or a tutorial on writing.

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.

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.

While all builders have had an increase in price over the past year, Squarespace’s pricing has increased by 28% since 2021, double what Shopify increased in the same amount of time.

If you aren’t fully ready to commit to an ecommerce-specific plan, we’d recommend opting for the Business plan. The Business plan comes with reduced ecommerce features but still allows you to sell an unlimited number of products. However, you’ll be charged a hefty 3% transaction fee on all of your orders with this plan. This disappears if you upgrade to either the Basic or Advanced Ecommerce plans.

Our testers were very favorable on Squarespace, saying,

“Squarespace made building a store so easy and simple. The navigation made sense, the design tools are great for beginners or experts, and there are so many features available to use. Any time I got stuck, I found an answer almost immediately in the help center.”

One negative to mention is a lack of autosave in the editor. If you don’t save manually, you’ll lose progress so keep that in mind!

• Live chat Monday to Friday
• 24/7 social media support via Twitter
• 24/7 email support
• In-depth knowledge base
• Community forum
• Video tutorials

• Squarespace recently launched Squarespace Refresh 2023, unveiling a wide range of new features and upcoming tools for its users. For ecommerce stores, there are plenty of exciting things to mention! To name just a few, if you’re interested in monetizing your skills, check out Squarespace Courses, and if you want to streamline your invoicing process, Client Invoicing helps you easily manage everything from your Squarespace dashboard.

BigCommerce also has an excellent SEO suite, giving all online store owners access to change basic SEO features like metadata, tags, and product filtering as well as advanced SEO capabilities such as 301 redirects, microdata, and CDNs. In our research, BigCommerce’s SEO score remains a perfect 5 out of 5.

BigCommerce also recently increased its storage space limit amounts, raising its storage score by 33.33% and its overall website feature score by 7.8% from 3.6 to 3.9 out of 5.

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 also keep track of your products and customers using BigCommerce’s analytics reports. This is an important strength of the builder, with these reports available:

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

Another interesting product feature involves AI! BigCommerce now offers AI-powered ecommerce features, including text generation to help business owners with product descriptions and general website copy. The tool will also produce relevant recommendations for customers with the aim of increasing conversions and improving customer engagement, saving you time and energy when building your online store.

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.

Like Shopify, you are slightly reliant on third-party apps with BigCommerce, though to a lesser extent. The store has over 600 apps to choose from, giving you the extra functionality you may need if you have ambitions to run a large store one

BigCommerce has over 100 themes in its library. Like Shopify, however, only a few of these are free. You’ll have 15 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.

In our research, BigCommerce’s value for money rose 13.3% since last year from 3 out of 5 to 3.4 out of 5. BigCommerce was actually one of the few builders to not increase its prices at all over the past year, yet its value still isn’t that great, having the lowest score in our research (tied with GoDaddy).

Generally, BigCommerce targets large, enterprise-level businesses that can often afford 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. 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.

But if you’re a small startup, don’t let this discourage you. With an entry plan that’s 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.

The editor is split between the inventory system’s backend of the products and the front end, which is your actual user-facing web page. You’re constantly having to navigate and jump between the two, which can be a pain.

To combat this, we recommend putting in all your products and descriptions first, then working on visual design. In our research, we gave BigCommerce a 3.3 out of 5 overall for ease of use.

Well, BigCommerce has actually fallen -12.8% since our last testing, where we rated it 3.9 out of 5. This is due to the fact that BigCommerce no longer appears to commit to a zero-carbon offsetting agreement. The amount of power needed to keep multiple stores on servers, especially stores as large as BigCommerce specializes in, is a lot. To combat all the carbon released in the atmosphere in their upkeep, many website builders offset this by committing to a scheme to reduce emissions.

BigCommerce has seemingly abandoned its offsetting commitment, which is disappointing for a large tech organization. We reduced its offsetting score down to 0 out of 5 from last year’s 5 out of 5, bringing down its average score.

• BigCommerce has been named as an Inc. 2023 Power Partner for its impressive work as an ecommerce website builder. While this isn’t necessarily an update on the product itself, we think it’s worth mentioning because it really highlights BigCommerce’s authority and value in the industry.

Other features Square Online has improved upon are professional product photographs, checkout links for email marketing, and booking appointments. While Square Online definitely gives you a website builder experience, we also have to concede that its features can be a bit bare compared to others on this list like Wix or Squarespace.

Square Online was also the only builder on this list to see a reduction in site speed, suffering a -10.96% drop from a site speed score of 3.9 down to 3.5 out of 5.

That being said, Square Online excels for ecommerce websites that aren’t too intensive. After all, you can sell for free!

• 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. Coupled with a lack of payment options, you can start to see that you’ll still be paying even on the free plan.

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. Square Online seems to have focused on the “sales” side of its business and ignored developing the design side. While this makes sense for the long term, it has caused a drop in design scores during our testing.

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.

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

However, Square Online’s prices have increased by 142% since we last tested! What used to be $12 per month is now $29 per month, so it definitely isn’t the easy bargain we used to recommend (Square Online’s value for money score in our rankings dropped by -6.7% because of this). We still recommend upgrading when you can, but, for that price point, you may as well choose any other paid ecommerce website plan, such as the better-rated Shopify for the same price.

As one of them said,

“The dashboard has so many options and headings that it becomes overwhelming at times.”

However, for some of our testers, Square Online actually was exactly what the doctor ordered, saying:

“It gave you just the right amount of options, it never felt like it was overloading you. This always makes the process easier when you’re not getting overwhelmed with choice.”

However, since our last round of testing Square Online’s support score fell -11.3%, going from 4 last year to 3.6 out of 5 this year. This was mainly due to a drop in help features offered vs pricing plan. As we mentioned, Square Online increased its price quite considerably since last year. It did not bolster this with new improvements in help features, leading to it getting left behind by the other ecommerce website builders.

• Square Online has revealed 10 new generative AI features to help small businesses, such as Photo Environments for AI-generated website backgrounds and Menu Generator to help restaurant owners create a menu in just a few clicks.

One aspect we can shout about for GoDaddy is its performance. We don’t call it the fastest website builder for no reason – it got the highest score for site speed of any of the builders we tested, a 4.5 out of 5. Plus, when we tested the website out for ourselves, we had a polished website ready to publish in minutes!

Although it supports the sale of both physical and digital products, as well as services, GoDaddy only supports 5,000 products on its cheapest plan. This is limiting for larger stores or smaller ones with the ambition to grow.

GoDaddy only supports AstroPay, PayPal, and Stripe as payment gateways. There’s a minimum 2.3% + $0.30 transaction fee to pay as well, but it can actually get up to 3.3% +$0! On top of that, it only has multichannel integration with Facebook and Instagram, and zero integration with any marketplaces like Etsy or Amazon.

Despite this, we were particularly impressed by GoDaddy’s mobile app and abandoned cart recovery, in which we scored both 5 out of 5 in our research. It can also be connected to 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.

While it has more templates than Square Online, it still doesn’t have any for important industries like Outdoor and Sports or Books and Education. Many of the ecommerce-focused design features feel tacked on, like a bit of an afterthought.

As one of our testers said,

“It doesn’t feel like it was built to be a store from the ground up, just added in as you go.”

The $29.99 per month Commerce Plus plan does let you sell unlimited items, but this is still a steep price to pay for that feature alone, and the rest of GoDaddy’s sales features aren’t quality enough to match that price tag either.

GoDaddy isn’t necessarily good value for money because it lacks lots of the core ecommerce features its competitors have, especially in comparison to Shopify. As a result, we only awarded it a score of 3.4 out of 5 for value for money.

“One of the best product page UX I’ve used. You could amend variants, discounts, and shipping all in one place.”

Being so non-frills mean there are fewer confusing menus and settings to use and customize, but for other testers, this simplicity did cause some issues:

“It could do everything but there was no interesting features – it just felt boring from start to finish. I have seen everything being done on other platforms in more exciting ways.”

However, we only gave it a 2.3 out of 5 overall in our research due to a lack of carbon offsetting and a poor knowledge center, only earning a 1 out of 5 respectively for these specific subcategories.

• GoDaddy has launched the GoDaddy Essential Website Design Service to help website owners and small businesses get off the ground quickly and easily. The service includes basic website features, such as four pages, a contact or sign-up form, and up to 500 words of copy, all generated by a GoDaddy expert and optimized for search engines. Users can pay a one-time fee for the design service.