Top 6 Ecommerce Builders 2023
The wide range of ecommerce builders available on the market makes it easier and more affordable to start a website. Below is a list of the top six ecommerce builders that have delivered outstanding performance as well as great adaptability to a variety of business models.
Shopify – Best for Simplicity
Wix – Best for Smaller Stores
SquareSpace – Best for Beginners
BigCommerce – Best for Blogs and Content Focused Website
Zyro – Amazing Free Plan Option
WooCommerce – Best for WordPress Users
Table of Contents
Shopify
Shopify is the perfect choice for anyone wanting to start an online store with minimal effort. It offers an extensive selection of free and paid themes, so you can customize your store to your preference.
Pros
- Free SSL Certificate
- One-Click Domain Name Setup
- Daily Backups
Cons
- Monthly Costs
- Transaction Fees
Furthermore, you can add features and functionality to your store by installing apps from the Shopify App Store.
With Shopify, you have unlimited potential to sell as many products as you‘d like on as many channels as you‘d like, making it an ideal ecommerce platform for beginners.
Shopify Pricing Table
With Shopify, you can start selling immediately thanks to the built–in Shopify Payments gateway. Plus, you can choose from over 100 payment processors to integrate with Shopify. You‘ll also benefit from web hosting, unlimited email forwarding, unlimited bandwidth, and a content delivery network for optimal performance. Additionally, you‘ll get access to marketing and SEO tools, mobile optimization, and analytics. Plus, Shopify offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. You can also use Shopify to set up dropshipping, customer accounts, target abandoned carts, and manage your shipping rates.
Shopify Features
Wix offers a free plan you can keep for as long as your wish. This is great for getting started. It has some limitations so if you want a professional website, you should consider the paid plans.
Eight premium plans are available, with prices starting at $16 per mo (billed annually). You can get rid of Wix ads and use your personalized domain name. This will also increase your storage allowances. Wix offers three dedicated ecommerce packages, starting at $27 per month (billed annually). Wix is more expensive than other alternatives, but it offers so many more features than its competitors, we believe that the price is well justified.
Wix offers over 800 templates to choose from. That's a lot, considering that they are all professionally designed. Wix's templates can be divided into different industries like “Events” or “Photography” so you can filter until you find what you are looking for.
Once your site is live you can't modify templates, so be patient.
You can easily make your website unique by simply dragging elements such as images and text boxes to the exact place you want, adding pages and deleting anything you don’t want. Wix gives you total creative freedom!
Wix
Wix has a lot to offer and is one of the most popular website builders in the market today. It provides users with an intuitive and powerful drag–and–drop editor, so creating your website is easy.
Pros
- Drag-and-drop building tools
- Powerful infrastructure
- Custom domain, logo and more brand tools
Cons
- Limited Scalability
- Transaction Fees
Wix offers a variety of templates that are professionally designed and customized with drag–and–drop features so you can personalize yours the way you want. Even more, you‘ll get to take advantage of Wix’s free features and great tools like a mobile app, blogging platform, and more.
The drag–and–drop editor allows you to craft almost any page with no coding or design skills required. It lets you drag and drop components, ranging from text, menus and videos to photos, icons, and more. You can even start with a blank canvas to create a truly unique design. The editor is organized into three main sections: Edit, Add, and Publish.
Wix Pricing Table
The template selection that comes with Wix is extensive and you can find templates for any industry, from creative portfolios to eCommerce stores. The majority of their templates look modern and professional, and each offers unique designs with unique layouts and customizable blocks.
All of their templates are mobile–ready and look great on any device. What’s more, all of the templates are formatted to load quickly and SEO–friendly to make sure you can maximize your presence on the web. But these outstanding features don’t come free, as Wix is a paid platform.
There’s a free plan, but it’s very limiting in terms of features and it’s a bit restricted in terms of website design. To access the full range of features and design, you’ll have to pay for the more expensive plans.
Wix Features
Overall, Wix is an excellent choice for anyone looking for an easy, user–friendly and affordable website builder. It’s especially great for small business owners who want to create a website without having to figure out complex designs and coding. Thanks to its intuitive drag–and–drop editor and numerous professional templates, creating a website takes no time.
SquareSpace
Squarespace is a professional website builder with a lot of features for creatives and small businesses. Although Squarespace is not the most intuitive builder available, it's easy to learn and use. It just takes a little more patience than Wix.
Pros
- Drag-and-drop building tools
- Powerful infrastructure
- Custom domain, logo and more brand tools
Cons
- Template Dependency
- Limited Payment Options
Squarespace's template designs are where it shines. They are the best available on the market and are ideal for creatives who need a visually striking website. This is especially important considering that there are more than 1.8 billion websites online as of January 2021. Squarespace offers a wide range of features that will give your website the power it requires. This is not about style over substance.
Squarespace has the best knowledge center available. You'll find text, image and video guidance as well as seamless onboarding and clear navigational signs and guidance.
Squarespace offers a free 14-day trial. You can also sign up for premium plans starting at $16 per monthly if you like the free trial.
Squarespace Pricing Table
Squarespace offers a 14-day trial that is completely risk-free. There are four premium plans available, with prices ranging from $16-$49 per month (billed annually). Advanced ecommerce features are available with the highest two plans.
The platform also saw growth in pricing as a result our website builder ratings. Although it is not the most affordable builder, its features make it a worthy choice.
SquareSpace Templates Gallery
Squarespace offers the highest quality website builders on the market. It creates stunning websites with its sleek, sophisticated and modern templates. Squarespace is ideal for creatives who want to customize their site.
Even after you publish your site, you can change your template easily. You can also work on multiple templates at once.
It is a great platform for customization and design. Squarespace is still the best website builder in terms of providing all the necessary attributes to help you create a beautiful online presence you can be proud to display.
It also has has a wide range of features that are all created in-house. You can be sure of high quality and security and have everything you need at your fingertips.
Squarespace Extensions can be used to connect with third-parties like ShipStation, Quickbooks and Printful to improve your site's performance. Squarespace Extensions are a great way to grow your site without having to upgrade your plan.
Squarespace is also committed to expanding the range of its features. It has received a 4/5 rating from our research in the ‘Value For Money' category and it also scored 1.4 stars higher in the old rankings.
BigCommerce
WordPress.com is a great website builder that offers some of the most beautiful designs available. The interface is simple and can take some getting used too, especially if your experience with more complicated website building tools. After you have completed the initial learning phase, you will be able to create beautiful responsive-design websites in no matter how much time.
Pros
- Robust Security
- Actionable insights for data-driven decisioning
- Omnichannel & Commerce-as-a-Service
Cons
- Complexity for Beginners
- Costs
WordPress.com's interface is a great mix of accessibility and complexity, but it is best for those who have a basic understanding of computer programs.
WordPress.com Squarespace can be quite expensive, with some essential ecommerce features reserved for the most costly plans. However, it offers unlimited bandwidth and storage as well as fully responsive designs and a great support team that responds quickly (during its somewhat limited business hours).
BigCommerce.com Pricing Table
WordPress.com's ad-supported free account level includes 3GB of storage, dozens of themes, and a preinstalled SSL certificate. The Personal plan costs just $4 per month with an annual commitment, and adds a custom domain name, a limited selection of themes, and 6GB storage. It also removes WordPress ads, but not all WordPress branding. Personal doesn't offer any way to monetize your site, but does include SEO, spam protection, social sharing, site stats, and email and live chat customer support.
WordPress.com Builder
Squarespace offers the highest quality website builders on the market. It creates stunning websites with its sleek, sophisticated and modern templates. Squarespace is ideal for creatives who want to customize their site.
Even after you publish your site, you can change your template easily. You can also work on multiple templates at once.
It is a great platform for customization and design. Squarespace is still the best website builder in terms of providing all the necessary attributes to help you create a beautiful online presence you can be proud to display.
It also has has a wide range of features that are all created in-house. You can be sure of high quality and security and have everything you need at your fingertips.
Squarespace Extensions can be used to connect with third-parties like ShipStation, Quickbooks and Printful to improve your site's performance. Squarespace Extensions are a great way to grow your site without having to upgrade your plan.
Squarespace is also committed to expanding the range of its features. It has received a 4/5 rating from our research in the ‘Value For Money' category and it also scored 1.4 stars higher in the old rankings.
Zyro
Weebly, another flexible website builder from the Squarespace and Wix family, is also available. It is great for solopreneurs and freelancers who want a website with a way to invoice for their services.
Square, the company behind Weebly's point-of-sale software, powers Weebly.
Pros
- 1 million+ free to use website images
- Powerful AI tools
- 24/7 Customer Support
Cons
- Limited Advanced Customization
- Smaller App Ecosystem
Square, the company behind Weebly's point-of-sale software, powers Weebly. This means that if you sell products in person, such as at a farmers market, you can easily integrate your POS sales to your website.
We spoke to users from musicians who used Weebly directly to sell their music to fans to bloggers and LinkedIn coaches who offered coaching sessions via her website. A website designer used Weebly as a way to attract new clients to her site.
The web designer stated, “I chose Weebly years ago to design all my websites with the idea that it would be simple enough for my clients to update their websites.”
Weebly Pricing Table
Weebly is easy to integrate with third-party tools you will need for your website, such as Google Analytics or Mailchimp.
Drag-and-drop is the best way to build a website. It's easy to use and doesn't require any technical knowledge. You get what you see.
Email, SEO, site analytics and shipping are all available to you in the ecommerce plan. An online store can even have a product search. This is something I love. This function is essential if you have many products or services.
You can also add badges to your products or services when they go on sales or when stock is low for a particular item. This is a great way for your products to create scarcity and make customers want to buy.
It is easy to set up. It's WYSIWYG-based, so I can change products, prices and descriptions as well as digital assets such logos, product images and banner images. After signing up, it took me less than five minutes for me to set up a basic store.
Zyro Features
Weebly allows users to create simple websites and sell products and services.
We recommend Shopify for most ecommerce users, but consultants, freelancers and solopreneurs who need a simpler set of services might want to consider Weebly.
Squarespace is similar to Weebly, but Weebly lacks the flexibility and customization of WordPress. However, Weebly is much more user-friendly than WordPress from day one.
Bottom line: Weebly is a great option for anyone who runs a business.
WordPress
Jimdo allows you to start designing your website without even signing up. Jimdo's complimentary account is generous, according to industry standards. Your site's storage is limited to 500MB and bandwidth at 2GB. Jimdo allows you to have multiple sites, such as Duda Wix ($14 per month for a Combo Plan at Wix), (Opens in new window), and Weebly.
Pros
- Impressive numbers of features on the free plan
- Nice product import features
- Huge collection of addons
Cons
- Complexity for Beginners
- Security Concerns:
The Pro ($7.50 per monthly, billed annually), and the Business ($20) tiers take Jimdo branding off your site. They also include custom domains and allow you to increase commerce limits, increase site stats, and increase storage caps to 5GB and unlimited. Premium support and online store functionality are included in the Business plan. Site builders charge $25 per month or more for business-level features. Jimdo's annual fee is $240. This is a great deal.
Jimdo Pricing Options
Jimdo now offers two options to build your website: the standard site builder or the Dolphin AI-and Wizard-driven simple site builder. Jimdo claims that this allows you to create a website in three minutes. Dolphin allows you to enter the name of your company as the first step.
Dolphin will then show you the possible businesses it found online content about. You can click on the one you like, or skip to the next step if it isn't. Jimdo next asks you about the purpose of your website, such as whether it promotes a business, an event or portfolio or sells goods and services online. Next, you can choose from a more detailed list that includes options like Bakery or Fast Food. For images, you can connect to your Instagram account. This is great, but I would like to see Flickr and Facebook also here. You can choose from Modern, Elegant, Playful and so forth. Jimdo will give you the choice to either register a domain name or transfer an existing one. If you don't have one, you can purchase one at namecheap.com for 66 cents. Jimdo will assign you an address at the jimdosite.com domain if you don't pass that along.
What was the result? The result? The site even included photos of the local bagel shop that I tested. Although the copy was adequate, it did not exaggerate Dave's Bagels quality and charms. Some menu items had boilerplate copy that required editing. The site has a responsive design and even a GDPR-compliant cookie warning.
Jimdo Features
Modern site builders are conscious of creating responsive and mobile-friendly sites. Jimdo's Settings panel has two options for you: Mobile View or Mobile Express Page. Mobile templates can be activated to allow menus and purchasing to work on mobile phones. Your videos won't work if you don't activate a mobile template. Navigation will also be difficult.
After activating a mobile template, the site worked quickly and well on my iPhoneX. Slideshows look great and have a full-screen option. Mobile Express allows you to add important information such as address and hours of operation to your mobile site. However, I miss the ability of other builders to add a mobile splashscreen image.
Mobile site building also includes the actual creation of your site using a mobile device. Jimdo was among the first to launch an iPad app. Weebly has an app web designer and Wix only allows you to manage your online store transactions. Jimdo's app, while intuitive and well-designed, offers fewer content types that Weebly's.
Duda
Duda's main selling point is its simplicity. You can quickly and easily create attractive websites that will look great on smartphones, tablets, desktops, and other devices using the website builder. Duda allows you to create beautiful websites even if your technical or design skills are not as advanced as those at the higher tiers.
Pros
- Robust API options available
- 99.9% uptime, 1-Click SSL and 24/7 support.
- Exceptional core web vitals results
Cons
- Limited Beginner-Friendliness
- Pricing
The powerful and elegant Duda is an Editor's Choice choice for website builders. It features many templates and strong ecommerce tools.
Duda used to let users create websites for free in the past. This was similar to Editors Choice Wix. Today's Duda does not offer a free tier. However, you can try the service for 14 days free. There are three paid tiers, powered by Amazon Web Services. They focus on creating collaborative websites. Basic is a monthly fee of 19 dollars, or $14 per month if you bill annually). This allows one user to create one website. Basic only allows you to contact customer support via email.
Duda Pricing Table
You can choose from over 100 modern, attractive templates to start a new website. Duda offers many other options for sorting your search. You can filter by color or by category, such as Online and Travel, Restaurant & Food and Blog. Duda wants to show all it has, not Squarespace or other website builders that offer questionnaires to narrow down your search.
A panel will appear when you click on a thumbnail of a template to show you how it looks on a tablet and phone. The panel lets you see how the template appears on each of three devices simultaneously: tablet, smartphone and desktop. This is a better option than many website builders. Strikingly shows only one preview. However, you can shrink your browser window to see how it will look when it is smaller.
Duda Features
Duda comes with a complete sales system that includes shopping carts and checkout pages similar to those offered by Squarespace, Wix and Weebly. PayPal buy buttons can be inserted into any page of a site. You can also add printable coupons to site visitors and create customer accounts. Duda users can add a 10 page web store to any of their websites, provided they have paid for the eCommerce addon. It's easy, straightforward, and well-guided.
Duda creates a new page with a demo catalogue when you add a store to the eCommerce section. It also displays a Help box that explains how to set it all up. The tooltip tour will explain your store page, shopping cart and search features, as well as store management options. You can add products, configure shipping and payment options on a separate Store Control Panel Page. SSL security is automatically used for credit card transactions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using an eCommerce builder can be a practical choice for many individuals and small businesses looking to establish an online presence and start selling products or services. It offers a straightforward and cost-effective way to enter the eCommerce space. However, it's essential to carefully assess your business's specific needs and long-term goals.
If you have a unique business model or require extensive customization and scalability, you may eventually outgrow the capabilities of an eCommerce builder. In such cases, consider transitioning to a more flexible and customizable platform, which may require a greater upfront investment but can offer greater control and tailored solutions.
Ultimately, the decision should align with your business objectives, budget, technical expertise, and the level of control and customization you require for your online store.
Frequently Asked Questions
An eCommerce website builder is a platform that allows you to create and customize your online store without extensive coding or technical skills. You should use one to quickly and easily set up your eCommerce business, saving time and resources.
To add products, log in to your account, go to the admin dashboard, and use the product management tools. You can add product details, images, prices, and inventory information.
Our eCommerce website builder supports a variety of payment gateways, including credit/debit cards, PayPal, Stripe, and more. You can choose the payment methods that best suit your business and customers.
– Yes, we take security seriously. Our platform uses encryption to protect customer data and ensures a secure shopping experience. We also provide options for SSL certificates to enhance security.