For the best ecommerce website builder, Shopify is comes first, having excellent sales features in our research with a score of 4.5 out of 5. It has tons of apps and supports long-term growth, making it great for large stores. As an alternative for smaller businesses, we recommend Wix in second place. Its ease of use makes it accessible to anyone, and its variety of features and tools means that you can have a professional online store in no time, whether you’re a beginner or a pro.
The Comparison Chart below gives you all the essential details and data for the top five ecommerce platforms we’ve identified, simplifying the choosing process and helping you make an informed decision.
Plus, this table is customizable! Click the “X” by the builder to remove it and then “Add Builder” to re-add it to the chart. You can also collapse sections you don’t want to look at just yet. Click the minus symbol in the top-right of each section and you can collapse it, meaning you can just keep the sections that concern you!
Play around and give it a go below!
All the results you see below are based on our own in-depth research and user testing:
Basic Shopify :$29 ($29 /year)
Light :$16 ($192 /year)
Personal :$16 ($16 /year)
Free :$0 ($0 /year)
Standard :$29 ($359.4 /year)
Our overall ratings are based on the average score of all ratings combined.
Our scores give you an at-a-glance overview of which service offers you the best features, value, and more.
Find out what areas of website creation our recommended builders are best for
Our ‘Best for’ awards highlight builders which excel in the areas that matter most to our readers. If you don’t know where to start, these awards should help you to quickly identify the builder best suited to your needs.
Tells you how easy and intuitive each builder is to use.
Not feeling confident around technology shouldn’t prevent you from having a website! We’ve rated each builder on how easy it is to pick up and use, so you know how much of learning curve each one has. Why spend hours figuring out which builder is suited to your skills when we’ve saved you the trouble?
How many online stores are hosted on each platform.
Popularity doesn’t always translate to quality, but it can be helpful to know how many others trust the platform with their ecommerce business.
How likely people who have tested the platform would be to recommend it to a friend.
Word of mouth is an important factor when making any decision, and having non-experts test each platform is a surefire way to work out which are most beginner-friendly. This testing is something we really believe in – it’s what sets us apart from our competition.
Transactions fees, whether you can create promotional codes and abandoned cart recovery. These are just some of the sales features we have taken into account to provide you with a combined score of how good each platform’s sales features are.
How we rate each ecommerce platform’s inventory quality is based on the amount of products you can sell, the ability to create multiple variants, if you can import products in bulk, the stock management available, whether you get revenue reports, and if you can see visitor counts.
Can you to sell across social media and other marketplaces?
When an automatic email is sent to a customer should they leave your site with items in their cart, but without checking out.
Abandoned cart recovery emails can help you recoup up to 15% of otherwise lost sales. It’s a great way of retargeting your customers and getting them to come back to your store.
Does the platform itself enforce any additional fees when you process a customer’s payment?
If the platform takes a cut each time you process a payment, you’ll be losing unnecessary money on each transaction.
Do they accept PayPal as a payment option?
Do they accept Square as a payment option?
Do they accept Stripe as a payment option?
Do they accept Apple Pay as a payment option?
Do they accept Amazon as a payment option?
The number of different paid subscription plans offered by each builder.
The bigger the choice of plans you have, the better you can tailor your subscription to your needs.
The cost of each service’s cheapest pricing plan. Please note, these are the regular prices – most providers will offer further discounted rates for new customers, but these will only be applicable to your initial sign-up term. Check out each host’s own site for further details.
Basic Shopify :$29 ($29 /year)
Light :$16 ($192 /year)
Personal :$16 ($16 /year)
Free :$0 ($0 /year)
Standard :$29 ($359.4 /year)
A cost-free subscription plan.
Having access to a free plan lets you take your website builder for a test drive before deciding if it’s right for you. It’s the best way to get to know a website builder before you commit your time, energy and money to it.
Incorporated in this category of investigation are areas such as inbuilt features, storage space, app store quality and whether the platform has the ability to support a blog.
Being able to control your website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) helps you to refine your website in order to improve its visibility online and in search engine rankings
Having more control of your website’s SEO is a great way to improve your search engine rankings, increase visitors to your website, boost sales, and grow your website’s online reputation. It’s a vital piece of the online success jigsaw puzzle.
Having a custom domain lets you personalize your website’s URL or address (e.g. www.mycustomdomain.com).
Some website builders offer you a free custom domain when signing up to one of their premium plans. Having a custom (and more personalized) domain not only makes your website look legitimate, but it can also help you stand out and become more memorable to users too! Heck, you’re far more likely to click on www.mycoolsite.com than www.mycoolsite.weebly.com – right? If you want to know more about domain names, check out our domain name guide (Domain name guide).
Features that don’t need installing which help you advertise and market your store/products.
Having marketing tools readily available to you means you’re not wasting time searching around for them, or paying extra to install them. It also lets you know the platform takes your marketing seriously.
Do they have customer login as a security option?
Do they have a members area as a security option?
Do they have password protection as a security option?
Design is one of the main categories we researched. It looks at things like the number of themes offered, how many types of industry the themes suit, to what extent you can customize each theme, and what industry branding professionals thought of them.
The design of your website is how you make it your own. The better the design is on a platform, the more freedom you have and the more creative you can get.
If you can change your store’s theme to a different one after you’ve published your site online – without having to redesign your site.
Times change. The theme you opt for today may not be the one you want in a year’s time. If you do decide a change is needed, it’s nice to know you don’t have to start from scratch again.
On-site support that provides helpful articles and “How to” guides.
Knowing what support you have available when encountering problems can save you a lot of time. And professional guidance can help you build your site the way you want to.
Professional service and platform support via phone.
Professional service and platform support via on-site live chat.
Knowing what support you have available when encountering problems can save you a lot of time. And professional guidance can help you build your site the way you want to.
Professional service and platform support via email
Knowing what support you have available when encountering problems can save you a lot of time. And professional guidance can help you build your site the way you want to.
Lets you get service and platform support from other users in offical forums.
Knowing what support you have available when encountering problems can save you a lot of time. And professional guidance can help you build your site the way you want to.
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Best Online Store Builders: The Roundup
That’s a lot of information to take in. Choosing the best online store builder isn’t always easy – especially when the best option for you may not actually be the highest-ranked ecommerce website builder.
To help you out, here’s a short, handy summary of our best online store website builders, and what they’re best for:
What’s the Best Online Store Builder?
Top Website Builders for Ecommerce
- Shopify – Best for Large Online Stores, Selling 10+ Products
- Wix – Best for Small Online Stores
- Squarespace – Best Value for Money
- Square Online – Sell for Free
- BigCommerce – Best for a Purely Online Business
Want to learn more about any of these ecommerce website builders? Simply click the name and you’ll be sent straight to our expert, in-depth review of that platform. For our latest ecommerce reviews, comparisons and guides, check out the articles below.
How We Do Our Research
Here at WebsiteBuilderExpert, we believe that any and all recommendations we put forward to our readers should have proper, data-led reasoning. We make sure all the information on our site is as honest and as up-to-date as possible to ensure that you know exactly what’s in store for you when you commit to a builder.
The scores on our Comparison Graph are not randomly drawn from a hat but tirelessly researched and cross-checked by our own internal and independent Insights team. Each ecommerce product we review on the site undergoes countless rounds of testing in these 7 categories:
- Website Features
- Sales Features
- Design
- Value for Money
- Help and Support
- Customer Score
- Ease of Use
We also test across various different industries, such as Small Business, Food and Drink, Fashion and Health, Beauty and Fitness.
But if an in-house research team with years of experience under their belts wasn’t enough, then you also have our expert team of writers. Our writers know these builders inside and out due to their own experiences with them and testing with the research team. And our scores are continually updated across the site too, oftentimes compared with the old so you can track how a platform has improved (or hasn’t) over time. Like the platforms themselves, we’re constantly striving to give our users the best possible experience and work towards that goal in all areas of the site.
If you want to know more, you can read here How We Conduct Our Ecommerce Website Builder Research. It’s our mission statement at WebsiteBuilderExpert to make sure everyone is given the opportunity to learn and get the best experience online. That’s why we take our research so seriously.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our Comparison Chart and feel a little more prepared for your online journey. Hope to see you again soon!
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