Best Ecommerce Website Builders

Best for small online stores

Wix Pros and Cons

Wix Features

Wix is known for being an easy to use, drag-and-drop website builder – but it’s also a powerful ecommerce option. It offers the full package – tons of creative freedom so you can control your branding, plus plenty of selling tools to make your store a roaring success.

You can sell all sorts of product types, from bookings and services to digital goods, and there are no transaction fees to worry about either. If you choose Wix’s cheapest ecommerce plan, you’ll get a good range of basic selling tools, including:

• Abandoned cart recovery to recapture lost customers
• Multichannel selling across social channels like Facebook and Instagram
• Online bookings so you can connect with clients through your site
• Reservation management to make your life easier
• Product zoom built into ecommerce templates
• 15+ payment options so you can choose your best fit

Wix’s features focus on convenience to help you set up your online store as easily as possible. If you upgrade, other features such as subscriptions, selling in multiple currencies, automated sales tax, and selling across other marketplaces become available too.

Wix Pricing

Wix has three ecommerce plans that let you sell online, ranging from $23 to $49 per month, plus a custom plan for enterprise-level businesses:

• Business Basic: $23/month, billed annually
• Business Unlimited: $27/month, billed annually
• Business VIP: $49/month, billed annually
• Enterprise: custom pricing

There’s also a free plan so you can build your store without paying anything – but to accept payments and launch your store you’ll need to choose one of the ecommerce plans above.

The $23 per month Business Basic plan is best for new stores, and gives you the basic selling tools you need to start your store. Business Unlimited is best for growing your business, while Business VIP is for established stores that need priority support, more generous features, and better discounts.

Find out more

• Read our Wix Ecommerce Review for a full look at Wix’s selling features, pros, and cons
• Check out our Wix Pricing Review if you want more details on Wix’s pricing plans, and to find out which plan is best for you
• If you want to start a dropshipping business, check out our guide on How to Dropship on Wix

Best for larger businesses

Shopify Pros and Cons

Shopify Features

Shopify is a dedicated ecommerce builder, meaning its sole purpose is to help people build online stores. It’s no surprise, then, that its templates, features, and apps are all geared towards ecommerce success.

Here’s a quick look at just some of the features you get on Shopify’s cheapest plan:

• Sell an unlimited number of products
• Multichannel selling across social media and marketplaces
• Abandoned cart recovery to re-engage customers
• Print shipping labels from home
• Shipping discounts up to 64% from DHL Express, UPS, or USPS
• Gift card and discount code creation
• Assign inventory to where you store your products – up to four locations

These features are all designed to help you create a professional store and deliver the best service possible to your customers. If you upgrade to a more expensive plan, you can also unlock more advanced features such as professional reports and third-party calculated shipping rates.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify has three main pricing plans, ranging from $29 to $299 per month:

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

The Basic Shopify plan comes with all the core features you need to run a store, so we recommend starting out on this plan and upgrading as you grow. You can start off with Shopify’s 14-day free trial to see if it’s right for you.

The main appeal of the Shopify plan is that it increases your plan limits (for example, you can have up to five staff accounts rather than two), and unlocks professional reports. The Advanced Shopify plan unlocks even more professional tools, such as third-party calculated shipping rates.

Shopify also has a $9 per month Lite plan for adding products to an existing, non-ecommerce website, and a Shopify Plus plan, which is a custom priced solution for very large businesses.

Find out more

• Read our Shopify Review to learn more about whether this top ecommerce builder is right for you
• Which Shopify plan is right for you? Find out in our Shopify Pricing Review

Best value for money

Squarespace Pros and Cons

Squarespace Features

Like Wix, Squarespace is a website builder that comes with ecommerce functionality – unlike Shopify and BigCommerce, which are platforms fully dedicated to ecommerce. Some website builders struggle to provide powerful ecommerce tools, but not Squarespace. Its ecommerce features include:

• Beautifully designed ecommerce templates, perfect for showing off product photos
• Limited availability labels to encourage customers to click buy
• Sell digital and physical products, services, and subscriptions
• Customizable checkout on your own domain so you can keep everything on-brand
• Inventory and order management through your Squarespace dashboard

Squarespace does a great job of combining customization with a strong ecommerce focus. Features such as customizing your checkout page and customer emails allow you to create strong, consistent branding across the whole customer journey.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace has three ecommerce plans, ranging from $18 to $40 per month, billed annually:

• Business: $18/month, billed annually
• Basic Commerce: $26/month, billed annually
• Advanced Commerce: $40/month, billed annually

The Business plan is aimed at business websites that aren’t primarily online stores, but want to sell a few products on the side. This plan comes with a 3% transaction fee. If you’re setting up an actual online store, then you’ll want at least the Basic Commerce plan, which doesn’t charge any transaction fees.

Squarespace starts all users off on a 14-day free trial, so you’ll always get to try it out before choosing a plan.

Although Squarespace’s prices are much cheaper than both Wix and Shopify, it’s also less generous with its ecommerce features on its starter plans. For example, to unlock abandoned cart recovery, selling subscriptions, and advanced shipping, you’ll need the $40 per month Advanced Commerce plan.

Find out more

• Squarespace has beautiful templates, but how good is it for online stores? Discover all the details in our Squarespace Ecommerce Review
• Discover which Squarespace plan you should choose in our Squarespace Pricing Review

Best way to sell for free

Square Online Pros and Cons

Square Online Features

Square Online aims to make it quick and easy for anyone to start their online store. In fact, you can sell for free and still get access to some pretty neat sales features, including:

• Ability to sell unlimited products – physical and digital goods, services, events tickets, and also to accept donations
• Automatic inventory, order, and item syncing with Square POS
• Shipping, curbside pickup, or delivery
• Instagram integration
• Send order update texts to customers
• Customer order customization

These features reflect a strong focus on customer satisfaction as well as convenience for sellers. Square Online charges a 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee on all but its most expensive plan.

Besides reduced transaction fees, other advanced features include abandoned cart recovery, customer reviews, and a real-time shipping calculator.

Square Online Pricing

The first thing to say about Square Online’s pricing is that it has a free plan. Yep, you can actually sell for free with this ecommerce website builder, which is pretty rare! Its paid plans range from $12 to $72 per month, billed annually:

• Free: $0/month – 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee
• Professional: $12/month, billed annually – 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee
• Performance: $26/month, billed annually – 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee
• Premium: $72/month, billed annually – 2.6% + 30¢ transaction fee

To remove adverts from your site and use your own custom domain, go for the $12 per month Professional plan. To unlock abandoned cart emails you’ll need the $26 per month Performance plan. To reduce transaction fees and make use of the real-time shipping calculator, among other advanced features, opt for the $72 per month Premium plan.

Although it’s perhaps not as generous with its features as other ecommerce builders, Square Online offers incredible value for money, and its super affordable starting prices make it a top choice for new sellers on a tight budget.

Find out more

• You can sell with Square Online for free! But what else does it have to offer? Get the full lowdown in our Square Online Review

Best for a purely online business

BigCommerce Pros and Cons

BigCommerce Features

BigCommerce is one of the most powerful and scalable ecommerce website builders on the market, thanks to its impressive range of built-in sales tools. It’s a great choice in a world where an estimated 60% of our interactions with companies are now online! It’s got a strong focus on fuelling growth for businesses, so if you’re ambitious and looking to power up your store, BigCommerce has the features to support you.

Some of BigCommerce’s best features include:

• 0% transaction fees – unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t take a cut of your sales
• Generous allowances, such as unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth
• Unlimited staff accounts
• Multi-currency
• Professional reporting tools
• Real-time shipping quotes
• Multi-channel selling across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and eBay
• BigCommerce mobile app
• Product ratings and reviews

All of these features (and more) are included on BigCommerce’s cheapest plan – that’s a fair few features that aren’t on Wix or Shopify’s cheapest plans. That said, it’s worth noting BigCommerce doesn’t include abandoned cart recovery on its cheapest plan.

The full list of BigCommerce’s features is frankly staggering – there are far too many to list here. It’s clear, even from the small selection we’ve mentioned above, that BigCommerce has a strong focus on supercharging the stores using its platform.

If you’re a small startup or entrepreneur, BigCommerce might actually have too much to offer – make sure you have use for plenty of its features in order to get value for your money.

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce has three main ecommerce plans, ranging from $29.95 to $299.95 per month, plus a custom-priced Enterprise plan for big businesses:

• Standard: $29.95/month
• Plus: $79.95/month
• Pro: $299.95/month
• Enterprise: custom pricing

BigCommerce has a 15-day free trial so you can try it out before committing to a paid plan. As we’ve already mentioned, the cheapest Standard plan comes with a huge range of features – perfect for a new but ambitious store.

As your sales grow, BigCommerce will automatically inform and upgrade you based on your yearly revenue. So, if you were on the Standard plan but started getting over $50,000 in online sales per year, then BigCommerce would automatically move you up to the Plus plan.

Although this model removes a lot of choice, it does mean your store always has enough features to sustain its level of performance and growth. You can see how many online sales each plan is designed for below:

It’s worth noting that BigCommerce will never move you down a plan, though, as that would mean you lose features. Downgrading your plan is totally in your own control.

The Plus plan provides a better customer experience – it adds abandoned cart recovery, customer groups, stored credit cards, and persistent cart (where a customer’s cart gets saved to their account so they can shop across multiple devices). The $299.95 Pro plan is aimed at scaling up an already growing store with tools such as product filtering and Google customer reviews.

Find out more

• Want to know more about BigCommerce? Our expert BigCommerce Review has all the answers
• It’s important to get value for your money. Find out which plan is right for you in our BigCommerce Pricing Review
• Check out BigCommerce vs Squarespace to see how these two top builders compare

Okay all-around, but best at nothing

Volusion Pros and Cons

Volusion Features

Volusion is an ecommerce builder with definite strengths and weaknesses. It made our best list, so it certainly has some standout features, but overall it came out in our research as okay, scoring 3.3 stars out of 5.

Its key strengths lie in its backend features – its best score in our testing was for its sales features, which include:

• Great stock inventory with low stock alerts, product status and more
• Recommended product feature
• Store management mobile app
• Barcode generator so you can create custom barcodes for your products

That said, Volusion’s features aren’t as generous as Shopify’s. On its cheapest $29 per month plan, Volusion only gives you one staff account, and lets you sell up to 100 products. You don’t get abandoned cart recovery or Amazon and eBay integrations unless you upgrade to a more expensive plan.

Volusion Pricing

Volusion has three ecommerce plans ranging from $29 to $299 per month, plus a custom priced plan that’s based on GMV (gross merchandise value):

• Personal: $29/month
• Professional: $79/month
• Business: $299/month
• Prime: custom pricing

Although Volusion has the same pricing points as Shopify, it doesn’t offer the same value.

Find out more

• Check out our Volusion Review for more information on this data-driven ecommerce builder

Best for independent artists

Big Cartel Pros and Cons

Big Cartel Features

Big Cartel has a decent range of features, but none of them really knocked our socks off. On the free plan you get basic sales tools such as:

• Shipment tracking
• Discounts and promotions
• Product option groups
• Real-time stats
• Sales tax autopilot

There are some nice perks thrown in, such as the sales tax autopilot, but on the whole it’s fairly standard stuff. For this reason, we recommend Big Cartel for hobby sellers who just want to enjoy selling a small number of items.

Big Cartel Pricing

Big Cartel has a free plan, and three paid plans ranging from $9.99 to $29.99 per month:

• Gold: $0 – sell up to five products
• Platinum: $9.99/month – sell up to 50 products
• Diamond: $19.99/month – sell up to 250 products
• Titanium: $29.99/month – sell up to 500 products

The main reason for upgrading your Big Cartel plan is to increase your product limits. You unlock a few more features as you move up through the plans, but the main difference is the number of products you can sell on each one.

Find out more

• Big Cartel is a great option if you want to sell a few products for free. Find out more about what makes it tick in our Big Cartel Review

Others do it better

Shift4Shop Pros and Cons

Shift4Shop Features

Shift4Shop gives you plenty of useful sales tools to power your store, including:

• Over 200 fully integrated payment providers
• Customer accounts and guest checkout options for customers
• Real-time shipping rates
• Saved carts for customer convenience

However, it’s also worth noting that in testing, our users found Shift4Shop difficult to use – because of this, Shift4Shop received the unfortunate title of the ecommerce builder least likely to be recommended.

Shift4Shop Pricing

Shift4Shop has a 15-day free trial, and five price plans ranging from $19 to $229 per month:

• Startup: $19/month
• Basic: $29/month
• Plus: $79/month
• Power: $129/month
• Pro: $229/month

The cheapest Startup plan for $19 per month comes with a pretty long list of features, making it a good choice for a new store. More serious sellers should look at the $79 per month Plus plan – this is the cheapest plan to unlock abandoned cart recovery.

In truth, though, you can get more for your money from an ecommerce builder higher up this list. 

Find out more

• Okay, so Shift4Shop isn’t the best builder on this list. But it’s still one of the best ecommerce builders on the market. See if it’s right for you in our Shift4Shop Review

Now you know the eight best ecommerce builders on the market today! But which one will you choose? Wix is the best builder for small stores, combining easy customization with a great set of sales tools. Shopify is best if you’re running a large store – we recommend its free trial if you’re selling more than 10 products.

Let’s have a quick recap of the top ecommerce builders and what sets them apart!

We set out to help you find the perfect ecommerce builder for you, and now you’re ready to take the next step in your journey. Every ecommerce builder in our list comes with either a free plan or a free trial, so your next step is simple: try your favorite builder for yourself for free!