Best Ecommerce Website Builders (2023)

Building an online store but don’t know which platform to use? I’ll take a look and compare the best ecommerce website builders available on the market today. 

What Is A Ecommerce Website Builder?

An ecommerce website builder makes it easy to build and manage a fully functional online store. This includes the ability to sell any type of products – physical products that ship to customers, digital items like e-books and downloads, and even subscriptions-based items with recurring payments. A good ecommerce website builder delivers all the tools you need to market your brand, accept payments, and expand your business to other channels like eBay and Amazon. 

Ecommerce website builders come in all shapes and sizes. Some are extremely versatile and offer a wide range of selling options, while others are tailored for specific selling needs. Some even have add-ons to further extend the functionality of the ecommerce website builder. 

The best ecommerce website builders that I’ve compiled are powerful and user-friendly. Each builder has a quick and easy launch process that will get your store up and running in no time. Moreover, you don’t need a technical or coding background to get started. 

Best Ecommerce Website Builders Comparison

If you’re wondering, “What is the best ecommerce website builder,” you can start your search by referring to the summarized breakdown below:

1. Shopify: Best all-in-one ecommerce website builder.
2. BigCommerce: Best ecommerce website builder for features.
3. Wix: Best Ecommerce Website Builder For Quick Implementation.
4. Squarespace: Best ecommerce website builder for beautiful design.
5. Volusion: Best ecommerce website builder for analytics.

1. Shopify: Best All-In-One Ecommerce Website Builder

You’ve more than likely heard of Shopify by now (if not, read this Shopify review). It’s the king of ecommerce. With over 5 million stores, Shopify is by far the most popular ecommerce website builder. Shopify has a quick launch process, user-friendly interface, tons of features, and the largest ecommerce app store. 

Shopify is for experts and beginners alike, and that’s the versatility it brings to the table. 

Shopify Pros

Shopify Drawbacks

Now, it wouldn’t be fair to call Shopify a perfect ecommerce website builder. There are flaws and hiccups when using Shopify for ecommerce. 

Shopify will not charge transaction fees if you use Shopify Payments to accept credit card payments. However, if you use an external payment processing service (e.g. PayPal), you will have to pay transaction fees – ranging from 0.5% to 2% (varies by plan). 

Next, Shopify-built stores rely heavily on the app store for additional add-ons, features, and functions. The more paid apps you sign up for, the higher your monthly bill is going to be. 

Finally, Shopify uses a template language called “liquid.” You’ll have to learn to use Liquid tags, filters, and objects if you want to build Shopify themes, and render storefront functionality.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers five different monthly plans:

• Starter: $5 per month (this plan is only for adding a “buy” button on a website or social media. 
• Basic: $39 per month or $348.00 per year with discount. 
• Shopify: $105 per month or $948.00 per year with discount.
• Advanced: $399 per month or $3,588.00 per year with discount. 
• Shopify Plus: Starting at $2,000 per month (this is their enterprise plan).

Note: Shopify offers a 25% discount for annual prepay and a three day free trial.

Who Uses Shopify?

There are over five million stores across 175 countries that are built using Shopify. Some of the largest brands use Shopify for their ecommerce needs. These include Pepsi, Kylie Cosmetics, Nestle, and Tesla. 

Try Shopify For Free
Give the best ecommerce website builder a try free for three full days. No credit card needed.

2. BigCommerce: Best Ecommerce Website Builder For Features

Feature-wise, BigCommerce is the best ecommerce website builder, and arguably the most advanced Shopify alternative. BigCommerce has all the bells and whistles right out-of-the-box. 

Much like Shopify, BigCommerce has a fairly straightforward store set-up process. In many cases, their ecommerce website builder is more appealing to larger or already established stores.

BigCommerce Pros

BigCommerce Drawbacks

The biggest drawback of using BigCommerce is the annual revenue threshold. Each plan has a set amount of sales that you can have per year ($50K for Standard plan, $180K for Plus plan, and $400M for Pro plan). Moreover, you can expect to pay an extra $150 for each extra $200K in online sales (or you can upgrade to a plan with a higher sales threshold).

The next potential drawback is theme design. BigCommerce has 12 free themes and over 100 premium themes ranging from $150 to $399 per theme. Although the premium themes are modern and ready for ecommerce, the free themes are outdated and very basic. You’d have to make some design changes using HTML and CSS. 

Next, BigCommerce doesn’t offer any discounts or deals on shipping postage. For instance, Shopify offers up to 88% savings when you purchase postage through them. 

Moreover, BigCommerce seems to be pushing everyone towards their Enterprise plan, which is their complete solution. Although this isn’t a big deal right now, it could end up being a problem down the road. 

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce offers four monthly plans:

• Standard: $39 per month or $348 with discount.
• Plus: $105 per month or $948 per year with discount.
• Pro: $399 per month or $3,588 per year with discount.
• Enterprise: Custom monthly and yearly pricing tailored around your business needs. 

Note: BigCommerce offers a 25% discount on all plans (except Enterprise) with annual prepay and a lengthy 15-day free trial.

According to BigCommerce, over a million stores across 150 countries are built using their ecommerce website builder. Some large noteworthy companies that use BigCommerce are Sony, Ubisoft, Almanac, Casio, and GE Appliances. 

Try BigCommerce For Free
Give BigCommerce a free test drive for 15 days. No credit card needed for the trial period.

3. Wix: Best Ecommerce Website Builder For Quick Implementation

Much like Shopify, Wix is very popular – not for just for ecommerce but building websites in general. Wix has a large catalog of designer templates, industry leading speed, and enterprise-grade security. 

To give you an idea of their speed infrastructure and reliability; the Wix platform can handle up to 750 simultaneous transactions per second. 

Wix Pros

Wix Drawbacks

A major drawback of using Wix is the limitations on certain features. For example, their basic plan, which costs $27 per month, limits you to 50GB of storage and five hours of video. Moreover, this plan doesn’t offer advanced shipping rates, multiple currencies, subscriptions, automated tax rates, product reviews, nor the ability to sell on third-party marketplaces. 

Next, Wix doesn’t have the option to enable stock management alerts. Most other ecommerce website builders will send you an alert each time your inventory for a product is low. While this isn’t problematic for smaller stores, it becomes one for larger stores. It becomes difficult to scale without these alerts. 

As far as I’m concerned, the biggest drawback of using Wix is that your ecommerce store isn’t transferable. You will have to pay someone to recreate your website from scratch. In other words, once you sign up for Wix, they have you for life. 

Wix Pricing

Wix offers three ecommerce plans:

• Ecommerce Basic: $27 per month with 50GB of storage and up to five hours of video. 
• Business Unlimited: $32 per month with 100GB of storage and up to 10 hours of video.
• Business VIP: $59 per month for unlimited storage and video hours. This plan doesn’t have a limitation on any of their features.  

Note: To summarize, Wix may not be the cheapest solution here, especially with the limitations on the key features. However, Wix does have the option to create a free account without having to sign up for any trial periods.

Who Uses Wix?

According to Wix, over 220 million people worldwide use their platform. Large companies like Deloitte, CBS, Hilton, Lyft, and Ruby all use Wix.

Try Wix For Free
Create a free Wix account and give the platform a test drive.

4. Squarespace: Best Ecommerce Website Builder For Beautiful Design

Much like Wix, Squarespace is a multi-option platform – catering to building standard content websites and ecommerce stores. Squarespace is the go-to platform for creative professionals that are looking to showcase their portfolios and sell online.

On top of selling traditional products, you can use their platform to schedule bookings and appointments, sell subscriptions and gift cards, and build an audience with the included email marketing.

Squarespace Pros

Squarespace Drawbacks

In my opinion, the biggest problem of using Squarespace is the exclusion of major features to non-US customers. For example, automatic tax calculations, point of sale, and certain payment processing services are limited to customers in the United States. So if you live overseas and find yourself needing one of those features, you should probably avoid this platform.

Next, Squarespace has a poor selection of third-party extensions. There are only a handful of extensions that you can add. Their extensions are years behind Shopify.

Finally, the Business plan charges transaction fees of 3%. To put this in perspective, you’d pay Squarespace $30 for every $1,000 in revenue. For a business just starting out, this is a major blow.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers the following five monthly plans:

• Personal: $23 per month or $192 per year with discount (can’t sell products).
• Business: $33 per month or $276 per year with discount (3% transaction fees).
• Basic Commerce: $36 per month or $324 per year with discount.
• Advanced Commerce: $65 per month or $588 per year with discount.

Note: Squarespace offers a 30% discount for annual prepays and a 14-day free trial. The Personal plan isn’t ecommerce compatible. Lastly, the Business plan charges transaction fees of 3%.

Who Uses Squarespace?

According to Squarespace, roughly four million stores use Squarespace. About 3.8% of all websites are built using their platform. Popular companies and brands that use Squarespace include Adidas, Ace Hotel, Cadillac, Apple, and Burton.

Try Squarespace For Free
Give Squarespace a test drive free for 14 days. No credit card needed.

5. Volusion: Best Ecommerce Website Builder For Analytics

Founded in 1999, Volusion is one of the oldest ecommerce platforms on the market today. A simple interface and a handful of step-by-step tutorials is what makes Volusion one of the best ecommerce website builders.

While Volusion isn’t the most popular choice, the platform is constantly updated to reflect the ongoing changes in the world ecommerce.  

Volusion Pros

Volusion Drawbacks

With the exception of the Prime plan, all other Volusion plans have a limitation on annual revenue (calculated on a trailing 12-month basis). Here are the current limits per plan:

• Personal: $50K per year.
• Professional: $100K per year.
• Business: $400K per year.
• Prime: No limit on revenue.

This is very similar to BigCommerce.

The next potential drawback of Volusion is the number of products you can list together. While the Business and Prime plans offer unlimited products, the two cheaper plans are limited to 100 products (Personal plan) and 5,000 products (Professional plan). A smaller store with multiple variations of a single product can exceed this fairly quickly.

The final major drawback of Volusion is the design limitations and setbacks. When it comes to overall design, Volusion is very basic. It would take a lot of work to get your store looking unique. Even if you were able to get there, you’d run into constant problems. You’d probably need a web developer for any major design changes.

Volusion Pricing

Volusion offers the following four monthly plans:

• Personal: $35 per month or $378 per year with annual discount.
• Professional: $79 per month or $853.20 per year with annual discount.
• Business: $299 per month or $3,229.20 pear year with annual discount.
• Prime: custom pricing tailored around the needs of your business.

Note: Volusion offers a 10% discount for annual prepays and a 14-day free trial. While Volusion doesn’t charge any transaction fees, the platform does have a limit on annual revenue (varies by plan).

Who Uses Volusion?

As of right now, over 250,000 online storefronts use Volusion. The companies and brands that use Volusion include Combi USA, Smokin It, Airframes Alaska, and Carroll Stream.

Try Volusion For Free
Give Volusion a free test drive for 14 days. No credit card needed for the trial period.

Best Ecommerce Website Builders Conclusion

The best ecommerce website builders make it fairly easy to build and manage a fully functional online shop. Not only that, an ideal ecommerce website builder delivers all the tools you need to market your brand, accept and process payments, and expand your business across other venues like Amazon and eBay.

While Shopify is by far the best all-in-one ecommerce website builder for any type of business, the other platforms listed are just as good – and even better in certain areas.

Here’s a summary of the platforms I’ve discussed in this article:

1. Shopify: Best all-in-one ecommerce website builder.
2. BigCommerce: Best ecommerce website builder for features.
3. Wix: Best ecommerce website builder for quick implementation.
4. Squarespace: Best ecommerce website builder for beautiful design.
5. Volusion: Best ecommerce website builder for analytics.

Note: There are a handful of other ecommerce website builders that didn’t make the cut on my top five list. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t worth trying. It comes down to your overall needs and budget.

Best Ecommerce Website Builders: FAQS