Want to jump straight to the answer? The best website builder for ecommerce for most people is Wix.
If you want to start selling online, you need a great ecommerce website builder.
These are website builders built specifically to help you make an online store. It’s different than your run-of-the-mill website builder or ecommerce platform.
Ecommerce website builders are really the only option to consider if you’re building a website from scratch. It’s much easier than building out the entire website yourself.
I’ve reviewed 8 of the best ecommerce website builders below. Use this guide to find the right one for you.
The Top 8 Best Ecommerce Website Builders
- Wix — Best for getting a store up in minutes
- BigCommerce — Best site builder for multichannel selling
- Squarespace — Highest quality website templates
- Square Online — Best integration with brick-and-mortar
- Zyro — Best ecommerce site builder for beginners
- Shopify — Most customizable ecommerce site builder
- Weebly — Most affordable for small businesses
- Shift4Shop — Best enterprise-level builder at rock bottom prices
I’ll explain the top features, benefits, prices, and specific use-cases for the platforms below. I’ll point out any potential downsides or drawbacks, as well.
#1 – Wix – The Best for Getting a Store Up In Minutes
- Price starts at $23/mo
- 100% commission free
- Build a site in mere minutes
- 500+ templates
Wix is one of the most popular website builders out there.
That’s probably because it’s possibly the best website builder out there.
If you’re creating a new ecommerce site without any experience, the simplicity of Wix will make your life much easier. Its incredibly versatile platform is practically tailor-made for someone with no web development experience.
It’s jam packed with features to help you grow your site and generate leads.
Your Wix website will be SEO-friendly and fully customizable with its drag-and-drop builder.
Wix has specific plans made for ecommerce websites. All of the ecommerce solutions have unlimited bandwidth, $300 in advertising vouchers, a free domain for one year, and visitor analytics.
It’s also worth noting that all online payments from your Wix store are 100% commission free. This is a HUGE benefit.
Most ecommerce software takes a percentage of all your sales. It’s an extra tax on your entire business. You’ll save hundreds (or thousands) of dollars per year by going for Wix for this reason.
Here are some other great features Wix’s ecommerce plan offers:
- 500+ templates
- SEO tools
- Mobile optimization
- Wix chat
- Multiple payment methods
- Global shipping
- Coupons and discounts
The Wix store manager makes it easy for you to track orders, inventory, and your product pages. You’ll also be able to add a blog and design your own logo without any third-party integrations.
The SEO tools are also a big standout. They allow you to optimize your website for mobile by creating an automatic mobile-friendly version of your website as you customize it. They also get your site listed on Google within 60 seconds.
Wix’s AppMarket is a further bonus. It provides a bunch of excellent apps from services like MailChimp, Quickbooks, and HubSpot to seamlessly integrate into your website. That way, you can take advantage of their offerings to grow your business.
These are the price points for Wix ecommerce solutions:
- Business Basic — $23 per month
- Business Unlimited — $27 per month
- Business VIP — $49 per month
- Enterprise — $500 per month
Wix does have cheaper plans but they’re for personal or portfolio sites. But if you want to accept online payments, the Business Basic plan is the lowest plan available that’ll work for your needs.
To save some money, you could always sign up for an entry-level Wix plan without the ability to accept online payments. You can build a personal website with Wix for as low as $14 per month and then upgrade to an ecommerce plan once you’re ready to start selling.
If you’re not happy with Wix, you can always cancel within 14 days to get a full refund. Try Wix for 14 days free.
#4 – BigCommerce – The Best Site Builder for Multichannel Selling
- Price starts at $29.95/mo
- B2B selling tools
- Move your products across any channel
- Loaded with built-in features
BigCommerce is a reputable and trustworthy ecommerce site builder.
It’s also very versatile. It has B2B-specific features like bulk pricing rates, quote management, customer groups, and custom price lists.
BigCommerce specializes in multichannel selling. Every plan comes with the ability to sell on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Shopping, eBay, Amazon, and POS.
So for those of you who want to leverage omnichannel sales, BigCommerce should be at the top of your list.
The website builder itself is very intuitive and includes a drag-and-drop tool that makes creating the website easy.
BigCommerce is packed with lots of essential features right out of the box. Compared to other platforms on this list, it’s probably the most extensive feature list that you’ll find.
That said, beginners might be wary of BigCommerce. That’s because the extra features tend to make things more complex.
The platform is designed to help larger ecommerce sites scale quickly. So, if you’re just starting out, you’ll most likely be paying extra for features that you won’t be using.
However, if you want the ability to have tons of ecommerce and website customization features at your disposal without paying extra for apps or extensions, BigCommerce will be perfect for you.
All BigCommerce stores benefit from enterprise-level security and high uptime rates. You’ll also get 24/7 customer support via phone, live chat, and email.
Here’s a look at the price points for BigCommerce:
- Standard — $29.95 per month
- Plus — $79.95 per month
- Pro — $249.95 per month
These rates are almost identical to Shopify. While Shopify is a bit easier to use, BigCommerce comes loaded with more features. So if you’re deciding between those two options, you’ll need to determine which features are the most important to you.
You can try BigCommerce for free with a 15 day trial before you select a plan.
#3 – Squarespace – The Highest Quality Website Templates
- Price starts at $12/mo
- Beautiful designs
- Drag and drop site builder
- Sell products, subscriptions, and digital goods
Squarespace offers ecommerce functionality built directly into its plans, which is not the case for most traditional website builders.
Perhaps the reason most people love them, though, is their beautiful, award-winning template designs.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned pro who loves to jump in and craft a website to your exact design specs or if you’re a complete beginner who just wants a fantastic looking website right out of the box.
Anyone can build a modern and visually appealing ecommerce store using Squarespace.
Every element of your pages can easily be customized using the intuitive and highly-responsive, drag-and-drop builder.
Squarespace has award-winning templates that are specifically designed for online stores. Whether you’re selling products, services, subscriptions, or digital goods, Squarespace has a solution for your needs.
The Squarespace mobile app allows you to manage and edit your website on the go. You can also use it as a POS solution if you have physical locations.
Squarespace has built-in SEO tools, blogging tools, analytics, and anything else you’d need to make your online store a huge success.
There are hundreds of apps built-in to Squarespace. However, there is not an app store or marketplace for one-click installations. So, if you want to install a third-party app that’s not already built-in to Squarespace, you’ll need to use a code injection.
Squarespace has four different plans, three of which have fully-integrated ecommerce capabilities:
- Personal — $12 per month
- Business — $18 per month
- Basic Commerce — $26 per month
- Advanced Commerce — $40 per month
Online selling starts with the Business plan. Although I’d recommend the Basic Commerce option as the bare minimum for most of you.
This option has 0% transaction fees, POS, ecommerce analytics, customer accounts, and other features you’ll want at your disposal once you start selling online. It’s well worth the extra $8 per month.
As your business scales and you want more advanced features, you can always upgrade to the Advanced Commerce plan. But you may not need that on day one if you’re starting a new store from scratch.
All plans come with 24/7 customer support. You can try Squarespace for free with a 14-day trial.
#6 – Square Online – The Best Builder for Integration with Brick-and-Mortars
- Price starts at $0
- SEO tools
- Great integrations
- Flexible customer connections
Square is best known for their point-of-sale software (which is great, by the way).
However, they also have a great website builder that comes packed with features for free.
It’s especially great if you already use Square for your in-store POS system. The website will be able to seamlessly integrate with Square POS. You’ll also be able to accept all major credit cards, sync with your existing Square POS, and streamline your inventory management.
It’s so good that we highly recommend both their services for brick-and-mortar stores. It gives you a great way to seamlessly integrate your website with your current POS system.
By using both Square POS and their website builder, you’ll be able to easily sync your inventory so you can see your real time stock. This helps prevent overselling—and keeps customers happy.
You’ll also be creating a centralized database for your sales. No longer will you have to manually input your sales for the day, week, or month into a separate database since it’s all one system. With their analytics and reporting tools, you’ll be able to take a deeper look at the metrics behind your sales and improve them.
Square is very flexible in how you connect with customers too, allowing you to sell through Instagram, on your website, or local pickup and delivery.
Setting up the website is a snap too. You don’t need to know a bunch of code, or even hire a developer. All you need is a computer or mobile device and you can get started.
Square also gives you SEO tools to help your website reach even more potential customers.
Prices start free with 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. Complete pricing is as follows:
- Free: $0 / month and 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
- Professional: $12 / month and 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
- Performance: $26 / month and 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
- Premium: $72 / month and 2.6% + 30 cents per transaction
Try the Square Online for free.
#2 – Zyro – The Best Ecommerce Site Builder for Beginners
- Price starts at $1.70/mo
- Easy user interface
- Drag-and-drop site builder
- Tons of payment options
Zyro offers a very beginner-friendly experience that comes at a highly affordable price.
Using drag-and-drop tools, you’ll be able to lay out exactly how you want your website to look and see it change in real time. In fact, you’ll be able to set up your website up and running very quickly.
This is also known as the “What You See Is What You Get” method of website building. You don’t need any coding knowledge. You don’t need to switch back and forth between “preview” mode and editing mode. All you need is to drag and drop the elements to your exact specifications.
You’ll be able to promote and sell your products across websites like Instagram, Facebook, and Amazon.
There’s a ton of different customizable themes across nine categories—so you can pick the perfect one for your business.
One thing that helps set Zyro apart form the competition though is their powerful AI business tools. These tools leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to help you create your brand identity using:
- Business name generator
- Slogan generator
- Logo maker
- AI content generator
- AI heatmap
The AI content generator will furnish SEO-friendly content for your website. That’s perfect for those who are new at writing copy for the web or anyone who might be a little nervous about their word choices.
Currently their prices and plans are as follows:
- Basic — $1.30 per month
- Unleashed —$1.79 per month
- Ecommerce — $8.99 per month
- Ecommerce+ —$13.99 per month
As you can see, even the most expensive plan is still pretty affordable.
If you really want to get the most out of your ecommerce experience with Zyro though, I highly suggest you go with the Ecommerce plan at least. That’ll give you unlimited storage and bandwidth, along with a free domain, the ability to accept online payments, and their line of ecommerce functionality.
#5 – Shopify – The Most Customizable Ecommerce Site Builder
- Price starts at $29/mo
- 70+ themes
- Built-in payments gateway
- 24/7 customer support
Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms out there. More than one million online stores are powered by Shopify. They’re still growing too—and for good reason.
Out of the box, Shopify is the most powerful ecommerce website builder on the market today. This web-based CMS comes with everything you need to set up and manage your online store.
To get started, choose from one of Shopify’s 70+ free and premium themes.
Each theme has settings that allow you to customize everything to your liking. Add features and functionality to your store by installing apps from the Shopify App Store.
I like that all payments are handled directly through the platform. With the Shopify Payments gateway built-in to your plan, you won’t need to connect any third-party processors to accept payments. So, you can start selling immediately.
But you can always use another payment gateway by choosing from one of the over 100 payment processors that integrate with Shopify.
All plans come with web hosting, unlimited email forwarding, unlimited bandwidth, and a content delivery network for optimal performance. You’ll also benefit from marketing and SEO tools, mobile optimization, and analytics.
Shopify offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat.
With Shopify, you have the potential to set up dropshipping, customer accounts, target abandoned carts, POS software, and manage your shipping rates. There’s an expansive Shopify App platform to add any feature that you want
Here’s an overview of Shopify’s plans and prices:
- Basic Shopify — $29 per month
- Shopify — $79 per month
- Advanced Shopify — $299 per month
Consult with a Shopify sales expert if you’re building a high-volume ecommerce shop and need an enterprise-level solution. You can try Shopify free for 14 days.
#7 – Weebly – The Most Affordable Ecommerce Site Builder for Small Businesses
- Price starts at $12/mo
- Drag and drop site builder
- Add product search to your store
- Integrates with PayPal, Square, and Stripe
Weebly is another well-known website builder that offers a free forever plan. In fact, this plan made my list of the best free website builders on the market today.
Unfortunately, the free plan doesn’t include ecommerce capabilities. But, you can still use it to test out the Weebly platform before you upgrade to a paid subscription.
Their ecommerce builder plans are still some of the lowest priced ones out there. That makes Weebly one of the most affordable options you could look at.
You can accept payments with popular gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Square.
Weebly makes it easy for entrepreneurs to establish an online presence and expand with ecommerce. So, if you already have a small or local business, I’d recommend Weebly as the best solution for you.
Since Weebly is powered by Square, it’s very easy to integrate the Square POS with your online sales system as well. You’ll be able to manage your products and inventory all in one place.
The drag and drop site builder allows you to launch your store with minimal effort and no coding.
You’ll get tools for email, SEO, site stats, shipping, inventory, and more. Help your customers find what they’re looking for by adding Weebly’s product search to your online store. Add badges to products when items go on sale or when availability becomes limited.
These are Weebly’s prices for online stores:
- Pro — $12 per month
- Business — $25 per month
- Business Plus — $38 per month
The Pro plan is pretty basic, but it’s affordable if you don’t need any complex ecommerce features. It’s essentially just a shopping cart with the ability to accept payments.
If you want to get the most out of Weebly, you’ll need a Business plan at a minimum.
Try out Weebly’s free forever plan and use it as an extended free trial before you officially launch your online store.
#8 – Shift4Shop – The Best Enterprise-Grade Builder at Rock-Bottom Prices
- Free enterprise-level online store
- 200+ built-in features
- No long-term contracts
- Powerful yet easy to use
Shift4Shop (formerly known as 3DCart) is certainly not the most popular ecommerce website builder on the market—but that doesn’t mean you should sleep on it.
In fact, they offer an enterprise-grade plan for absolutely free.
I know what you’re thinking, “If it’s free, they must skimp on the features.”
Nope.
They include all the features and tools you expect from an enterprise-level ecommerce website builder including unlimited products, users, and bandwidth, along with SEO marketing tools and more than 100 themes to choose from.
The catch: You have to use the Shift4 payment platform (hence the new name). Also, you have to be based in the United States to take advantage of their ecommerce plan.
Currently, Shift4’s transaction fees run 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. That’s considered industry standard with ecommerce businesses, which makes it a fantastic deal for you.
This could be especially great for seasonal business. That way, you don’t have to be on the hook for a monthly website fee during lean months, since you only have to pay the payment processing fees when you make transactions.
Shift4Shop also comes with features and benefits like:
- API access
- Unlimited products
- Mobile-ready themes
- Web hosting
- Unlimited bandwidth
- No transaction fees
- Built-in blog
Obviously, the big appeal regarding price is the completely free ecommerce platform at the cost of using Shift4. But, if you’ve got a different payment processor very near and dear to your heart, or you’re unconvinced about switching to Shift4 for accepting payments, Shift4Shop also offers traditional pricing tiers with monthly fees.
- Basic Store — $29 per month
- Plus Store — $79 per month
- Pro Store — $229 per month
Either way, you’re getting a powerful ecommerce site builder and platform. You can get started with Shift4Shop for free today.
How to Find the Best Ecommerce Website Builder For You
We tested all of the ecommerce platforms above using rigorous criteria, allowing us to discover the strengths and weaknesses of each one, along with what makes them stand out from one another.
You can use the same methodology we used for your own decision making process. But ultimately, this is going to be unique to you. After all, the humble online store selling cottage goods is going to need different things than the seven-figure dropshipping company.
However, we find that these elements are most important when considering a platform:
Easy to Use (Without Sacrificing Quality)
If you’re creating your first ecommerce website, you likely have little to no experience building websites. But without knowledge of code or web design, creating a site can be frustrating and stressful.
That’s why you want to find a platform that makes creating a beautiful yet powerful site easy.
Not only does this mean you can launch more quickly, but it also saves you money and time you otherwise would have spent doing it yourself or on a web designer (who can sometimes cost you over $10,000).
Even if you have more complex needs like multiple digital storefronts or bigger product inventories, you still want a website builder that’s easy to use with a simple learning curve.
Good website builders make the process simple for you in a variety of different ways. For example, Wix uses powerful AI technology to help you create a website from the ground up once you answer a few quick questions. If you’re looking for the simplest option, definitely go with Wix.
Many of the websites on this list, such as Squarespace and Zyro, use drag-and-drop technology so you can easily customize your website. This gives you more freedom over how your website looks without having to know how to type a single line of code.
If you have more complex needs (but still want to benefit from an easy-to-understand-no-computer-degree-needed builder), try a platform like BigCommerce. It’s packed with features, such as bulk pricing rates and customer groups, to help larger ecommerce businesses grow quickly.
3DCart is another option, one that offers features such as API access to let more seasoned ecommerce store builders have more control over their site.
Depth of Customization
While we looked for ecommerce website builders that were easy to use, we also wanted to make sure that those who wanted to customize their website more could do so.
The builders on this list include a lot of tools and features to help make your website more customizable. For example, Shopify has a ton of different plugins and integrations—like Google and Facebook integrations, email marketing tools, live chat bots, and more—to build the right site for your business.
Those social media integrations can be especially helpful if you plan on having an omnichannel ecommerce business.
If that’s something you’re interested in, you’ll want to definitely take a look at platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce. Each of BigCommerce’s plans, for example, comes with the ability for you to sell on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Shopping, eBay, Amazon, and more.
If you have a warehouse with inventory, look for easy integrations with your warehouse management system and logistics/shipping systems. Once again, BigCommerce is another great option for that.
Another area that these platforms can offer customization is through SEO tools. Some offerings like Wix, Shopify, and Weebly help you build Google-friendly web pages and articles with suggestions as you customize your site.
Often these tools are optional and come in the form of plugins or dashboard features. Overall, they can be incredibly helpful if you plan on using SEO marketing as part of your growth strategy.
The templates offered by these websites offer varying levels of customization too. You’ll want to make sure that they give you options you need to fit your brand.
Quality and Variety of Templates
Each of the website builders on this list comes with a variety of different templates for you to easily create a great website for your ecommerce business. When reviewing the templates for each of the builders on this list, we looked at two areas:
- Quality: We wanted to see that the templates offered were eye-catching and visually appealing. We believe it’s better to offer a dozen really beautiful templates over 100 “meh” templates.
- Variety: While the templates needed to look good, there also needed to be a healthy variety to choose from as well. This helps ensure that the ecommerce website builder can be a good fit for your specific brand and look and not look identical to others.
The templates offered by each platform differ—sometimes drastically—from each other.
For example, Squarespace puts a lot of emphasis on visuals—splashy and vibrant photos, beautiful art, gorgeous design, and so on. If your ecommerce website has a lot of products that can create strong images (e.g. photography and art businesses), Squarespace is a no-brainer.
If you’re looking for an ecommerce site that also relies heavily on a blog for content marketing purposes, I highly suggest something like Wix. They offer 500+ templates, with most including a blog along with an ecommerce component. They easily offer the most options for templates on this list too.
It’s definitely worth mentioning though that Weebly is another platform that is incredibly versatile, allowing you to do a lot of different things with your site.
If you want to run just a pure ecommerce site and really home in on that, Shopify, Zyro, BigCommerce, and Square are platforms I highly recommend. Their design templates really let you optimize for sales and create the best site for your specific products.
Additional Considerations (But Not Deal Breakers)
There were other elements we took into consideration as well, but they weren’t deal breakers when it came to our ultimate decision with this list. They might be important to you, though, so we want to take a look at them now.
They include:
Responsive customer support: You’ll want to make sure that the ecommerce website builder you choose can help you out with any questions you might have quickly. After all, if your site crashes in the middle of a product launch you want that fixed ASAP.
Analytics and reporting. This helps you track your website’s traffic and engagement–and can help you improve them as well.
Email integration. If you plan on scaling up your business and want to get serious with branding, you’ll definitely want to be able to get a branded email address using your ecommerce store’s domain. Some platforms like Wix allow you to create a branded email address, or purchase one from their website.
Pricing: Don’t get us wrong, pricing is important. However, it wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker for how this list was arranged. That’s because all of the offerings on this list are in line with what we consider to be the industry standard.
A builder like Shopify might be on the more expensive end of the spectrum, but nothing too outrageous considering their quality and strong offerings.
The price tiers for each offering on this list are roughly equivalent to one another, and they tend to offer a free version with minimal features or (at the very least) a free trial.
Summary
If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for building an ecommerce site, then look no further than the choices on this list.
These are the best choices for building a new online store from scratch.
I’ve included an option for every type of website below. Here’s a recap of my top picks for the best ecommerce website builders to see which category fits your unique situation.
Best Ecommerce Website Builders for 2021
- Wix — Best ecommerce website builder overall.
- BigCommerce — Best for scaling with omnichannel sales.
- Squarespace — Best site builder for beautiful and creative ecommerce store designs.
- Square Online — Best integrations with physical stores.
- Zyro — Best ecommerce website builder for beginners.
- Shopify — Most popular ecommerce website builder.
- Weebly — Best for entrepreneurs and small business owners.
- 3DCart — Best ecommerce site builder for developers and experienced store owners.
from Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/2XNoAY2
via IFTTT
