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We tested every major online store platform out there, and our product testing suggests that Shopify is the best website builder for ecommerce thanks to its impressive design functionality, excellent customer score, and the best overall sales features of all the platforms we tested.
But there are other platforms out there that may be better suited to your businesses goals, for example:
Shopify is best for larger businesses with big inventories
Wix is ideal for beginners and small ecommerce businesses
Squarespace is for growing businesses that prioritize design
In 2023, ecommerce demand continues to grow steadily, particularly on social media and mobile. It's important that you choose an ecommerce platform that helps your online store reach and sell to your target audience.
Read on to find out exactly how the best website builders on the market compare for building a store to boost your business profits. Or if you're in a hurry, you can get a custom recommendation by taking our website builder matching quiz.
Test Score Our score is based on independent assessments of ease of use, features, ecommerce functionality and value for money | Starting Price | Priciest Ecommerce Plan (per month) | Digital Product Sales | Service Sales | Sales Features Based on our research: number and quality of sales features | Value for Money Based on our research: feature offering vs average price plan price | Ease of Use Based on our research: customer and user testimonials | Try Click to check for deals, discounts and tiers of plans | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BEST OVERALL | ||||||||||
4.6 | 3.6 | 3.3 | ||||||||
Free | $35 per month | Free | ||||||||
$72 per month | $269 per month | $19.99 per month | ||||||||
| | | ||||||||
| App required | | ||||||||
3.6 | 3.5 | 2.4 | ||||||||
4.8 | 2.8 | 3.2 | ||||||||
3.9 | 3.2 | 3.7 | ||||||||
All featured platforms in the table above allow for the selling of physical products online, so we've only noted whether or not the platforms allow you to sell digital or service products, as well.
About Our Research
It's not always easy to find an online resource that you trust. The fact that anyone can build a website, pretend they're an expert on a subject, or review software they haven't actually used, makes matters worse — so you've got to make sure you're reading articles backed up by testing, evidence, and research methodology.
At Tech.co, we have the resources to put each online store builder we write about through rigorous user testing. In addition to this, our in-house Insights Team conducts a full-scale research investigation into every piece of software we review. This, combined with the expertise of our dedicated writers, allows us to create accurate, independent reviews backed up by genuine knowledge of the product.
By evaluating our providers independently on their ease of use, help and support, sales features, website features, value for money and customer satisfaction against hundreds of data points, we can ensure no stone is left unturned when assessing the quality of their offerings. Learn more about our research methodology in our How We Test section below.
Top 7 Ecommerce Website Builders
We put each ecommerce website builder through a rigorous testing and analysis program to cut the wheat from the chaff. Based on our thorough tests, these are our favorite ecommerce website builders:
- Shopify – Best for larger ecommerce businesses
- Wix – Best for smaller ecommerce businesses
- Squarespace – Best for marketing features
- Square Online – Best for businesses on a budget
- BigCommerce – Best for inventory management
- Volusion – Best for non-beginners
- Big Cartel – Best for creatives launching a side gig
If you'd like to see just how much Shopify can do for you, get a free trial, or, alternatively, scroll down to find out more about the provider and all its competitors listed above.
Expert Tip
Shopify is by far the most capable ecommerce-focused website builder we've tested, especially when it comes to bringing clarity to inventory organization and managing an array of different sales channels. If you want to get selling quickly, there's no better choice currently available.


Pros
- Helpful and predictive website building experience
- Massive app selection for unlimited customizability
- Diverse multi-channel integration options
ConsÂ
- Limited customization options
- Few built-in features
- Apps cost extra
- High transaction fee without Shopify Payments
Shopify Summary
Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce website builders around. It excelled across the board in our testing, scoring highest on sales features (4.6 out of 5), which is obviously most important for ecommerce website builders. It's ideal for larger businesses, owing to the fact it allows for the easy management of inventories that can only be handled by the most powerful software.
Shopify combines top-class sales channel integration with a simple and intuitive UI, and features great reporting tools to help optimize your sales. What's more, the provider is virtually unmatched when it comes to integrating disparate sales channels into a single online platform. For all these reasons, we've dubbed Shopify the best option when it comes to ecommerce website builders.
What we like about Shopify
The reason Shopify is the preferred choice of so many large or ready-to-scale online stores is there's no one better at facilitating the addition of large amounts of products fast, as well as subsequently managing them. If you're less bothered about your site looking exactly how you want it and more interested in selling, selling, and more selling, Shopify is the best ecommerce website builder for you.
Through its Shopify Payments system, you’re able to track everything from sales on Instagram through to Google Shopping, and even real-world point of sale transactions. That’s right – if you run a brick-and-mortar store, you can manage all your sales, inventory, and accounting through one platform. Shopify also permits 100 other payment gateways if you're not using Shopify payments – but there will be transaction fees.
As of April 2023, anyone using Shopify Markets Pro can automatically sell in all of the platform's more than 150 supported countries, complete with international shipping rates calculated at checkout.
Shipping is another feature that Shopify has locked down, with tons of ordering options — Wix isn't too far behind, but you'll still need some apps to help you with taking payments from across the world.

Screenshot of Shopify's inventory management tools, Source: Shopify
Although not nearly as good as Wix for design, Shopify is still better than a lot of other ecommerce platforms in this regard. It offers loads of different website templates, all of which are optimized for mobile, and can be edited and changed to your liking with remarkable depth. To see for yourself, simply take advantage of Shopify's free trial (followed by three months at just $1 per month) and check out the video below:
What Shopify should improve
Although you won't be disappointed with Shopify's design function and features, user experience varies across the site. For instance, users might find Shopify's Checkout and Page Types & Design a little clunky to navigate, especially if they're new to website builders. While this isn't likely to be a deal breaker, the interface isn't exactly intuitive when you compare it to Wix or Squarespace.
One person that took part in our user testing described it as the “inverse of Wix,” with a heavy emphasis on the management of inventory and sales channels integrations rather than the actual design of the site. The reason Shopify's scored 4.8 out of 5 is down to excelling in fulfilling the first two functions rather than the design templates on offer.
Another downside is that Shopify is more expensive than most other providers on this list. While its cheapest ecommerce plan weighs in at a modest $29 per month, its app library, which allows users to take advantage of basically any ecommerce feature they can think of, doesn't come cheap either. This, combined with the lack of built-in apps available right out of the gate, means you could end up spending a lot on Shopify. The transaction fees the provider charges — in a marketplace where competitors like Big Commerce don't enforce any — could also mean you lose a bit of profit on purchases.

How much does Shopify cost?
Shopify offers three main pricing plans: Shopify Basic, Shopify, and Shopify Advanced:
- Basic plan: $29 per month when paid annually. It will give you all the tools you need to run an online store. No extra apps are required – everything is ready to go.
- Shopify plan: $79 per month. This gives you some cheaper credit card processing rates and some nice, extra features such as gift card issuing. It also gives you support for hardware peripherals, such as receipt printers, which are essential if you're running a brick-and-mortar store and your website.
- The Shopify Advanced: $399 per month when paid annually. You get access to report building tools, as well as third-party calculated shipping rates, which means customers will be able to see how much it'll cost them to get a product delivered through different companies.
To be transparent, Shopify does offer a Starter plan for $5 per month, and an enterprise-level plan, called Plus, for $2,000 per month. We recommend sticking to those middle three plans if you're interested in ecommerce.
Want to know more? See our Shopify pricing guide
Note on the table below: all Shopify plans include abandoned cart recovery, point-of-sale support, a free SSL certificate and 24/7 customer support. Hosting and shipping labels are included in all pricing packages, except Starter.
Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Price paid monthly The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed monthly | Staff accounts | Reporting | Gift cards | Online credit card rates | In-person credit card rates | Transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic | Shopify | Advanced | |||||||
$1/month for first 3 months | $79/month | $299/month | |||||||
$39/month | $105/month | $399/month | |||||||
Two | Five | 15 | |||||||
Basic | Standard | Advanced | |||||||
| | | |||||||
2.9% + 30¢ | 2.6% + 30¢ | 2.4% + 30¢ | |||||||
2.7% | 2.5% | 2.4% | |||||||
2% | 1% | 0.5% |

Pros
- Useful SEO best practice prompts
- Friendly onboarding experience
- Advanced business functionality like CRM
- Our top choice of ecommerce platform
ConsÂ
- Can't change site design after publishing
- Slower server response time than some competitors
Wix: summary
Wix is brilliant for smaller online stores, but thanks to a massive overhaul of its sales features over the past year, plus regular discounts, it can now truly hold its own with the very best competitors.
Based on our most recent round of research and testing, Wix now boasts an impressive score of 4.4 out of 5 for sales features, and an almost unbeatable 4.8 out of 5 overall as an ecommerce platform (compared to 4.6 in previous research). What's more, with the platform boasting stellar design features and a flawless user experience, it's no surprise the ecommerce tool is firmly in the top two.
What we like about Wix
When you sign up for a Wix ecommerce site, you get access to a rapidly improving ecommerce platform, with unmatched help and support. In our user testing, Wix scored well for ease of use – particularly for having an easy-to-understand interface. If you're not familiar with its backend, it does have a bit of a steep learning curve. But once you're past the initial growing pains, Wix is a breeze to navigate.
Wix's ecommerce platform uses exactly the same design tools as the regular Wix website builder. This means that you'll easily be able to build a brilliant-looking online store in minutes.

Screenshot of Wix's drag and drop feature. Source: Wix
Wix offers a great range of templates for online stores that you'll be able to customize with new text and images for all your products, plus contact forms and extra pages. Wix's drag-and-drop editor (pictured above) also makes everything super easy. Take a look at this tutorial video from Wix's YouTube channel:
Additionally, if you're using Ascend by Wix — the Marketing & Customer Management Suite provided by the website builder — you'll be able to centrally control and automate a range of business functions, from promoting your business with marketing emails to giving customers help and support with chatbots. Over $870 billion was spent online with US merchants last year, so it's these kinds of tools that will help you get in on the action.
If you're serious about your online store generating traffic, Wix's SEO capabilities will definitely cut the mustard too. Not only do Wix's newly refined SEO settings give users granular, page-level control over their SEO data, but its recent partnership with Semrush also gives them access to extensive keyword data, making it easier to identify keywords and user queries to target.
The platform is adding new payment channels, with one March 2023 update adding Tap to Pay on iPhone to allow users to accept contactless payments. What's more, you can also easily create multilingual sites with Wix — ideal for users in countries with one or more major languages.
What Wix should improve
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Wix is the inability to change anything after you've published your site. Unlike Shopify and Squarespace, you can't change the theme post-publishing, which can make for a stressful pre-launch experience if you aren't sure about your design. This saw Wix score a disappointing 0 out of 5 on our design flexibility tests.
Wix somewhat compensates for this by giving you significantly more creative freedom in the design phase than competitors like Shopify because it includes hundreds of templates to choose from. This does mean it's less likely that you'll ultimately want to change your site, but being able to make modifications after publishing is still a feature that newbies to the website building game would benefit from.
Another thing you need to know before buying is that Wix has quite a slow response time relative to other website builders on this list — but it still wasn't the slowest we tested.

How much does Wix ecommerce cost?
Wix offers three dedicated ecommerce pricing plans: Business Basic, Business Unlimited, and Business VIP.
- Business Basic:Â $27 per month when paid annually, and gives you all the essentials to start an online store, including 20GB of storage and the ability to sell products online.
- Business Unlimited:Â $32 per month when paid annually. It has some small advantages over the Basic plan, such as access to Wix's logo creator tool, but nothing completely essential to running a bigger online store.
- The Business VIP: $59 per month when paid annually, but gives you access to VIP help and customer support. This might not seem like a massive upgrade, but it might save you a small fortune in the event that something goes wrong with your website.
See our Wix pricing guide for more detail on its ecommerce plans, or check out the table below for a sneak peak:
Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Storage | Support | Verdict | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Business Basic | Business Unlimited | Business VIP | |||
50 GB | 100 GB | Unlimited | |||
24/7 | 24/7 | Priority | |||
A decent choice for new ecommerce businesses | Handy email tools for growing your business but nothing too substantial | Extra support tools make this plan almost essential for large online stores |

Pros
- Get 10% off with code TECHCO10
- Incredible value for the money
- Extensive marketing features to reach new customers
ConsÂ
- Poor site speed performance
- Few ecommerce templates
Squarespace summary
You might be forgiven for thinking we’ve put Squarespace in by mistake. It is, first and foremost, a website builder that is designed to give you a sleek website, and not as an ecommerce platform. However, we found Squarespace to be a very competent online store builder.
Even if it doesn't quite win in our Wix vs Squarespace comparison, it ended up with a better overall score than some dedicated ecommerce store builders, such as BigCommerce, according to our in-house testing and research.
What we like about Squarespace
The built-in scalability of the software allows for growing businesses to develop along with the platform. It's also one of the most improved ecommerce website builders we tested too – its user experience score jumped from 3.4 out of 5 in our last round of testing to 4.2 out of 5 this time, which means people who are using the platform are becoming more and more satisfied with what it can do.

Squarespace also offers compatibility with Square — one of the biggest POS providers out there — and this can be a huge benefit to any business, particularly physical stores.
As we mentioned above, Squarespace's real advantage is that it has some of the best website builder templates on the market. Squarespace's templates are all designed in-house and are completely optimized for cell phones, tablets, laptops, and PCs. There are plenty designed specifically for ecommerce websites as well, so getting started will be a piece of cake.
With a user-friendly site builder, Squarespace's back-end design is heaps more intuitive than Wix's. Thanks to Squarespace's Fluid Engine upgrade, which combines its classic drag-and-drop technology with an improved, flexible design grid, it's now easier than ever to create a slick, professional-grade site on Squarespace.
Finally, Squarespace is also ahead of the major providers when it comes to marketing and promotional tools. The platform offers built-in search engine optimization (SEO) features to help improve your store's web ranking; social media integrations, so that can drive more traffic to your page; and a free integration with Mailchimp, a leading email marketing tool. Since most other ecommerce builders don't offer these perks, Squarespace might be the best ecommerce builder for your team if you're looking to maximize the reach of your business.
What Squarespace should improve
While Squarespace previously only allowed for two third-party payment options, the company has since expanded, allowing payments through Stripe, Paypal, Apple Pay, and Afterpay. Unfortunately, you will be limited in your ability to internationalize due to tricky language settings and shipping choices.
In a related manner, although Squarespace offers inventory management, you'll find better systems offered by other providers. Overall, it's not the best choice for managing large quantities of stock, but it is a better option for businesses selling non-physical items (like event tickets) rather than physical ones (like handbags).
How much does Squarespace cost?
Squarespace offers two pricing plans for online stores: Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce.
- Basic plan: $27 per month. For this price you get a mobile-optimized checkout, which is a great feature for businesses relying on mobile commerce. The plan also offers improved commercial metrics to identify any pain points your users are finding with your site and you aren't required to pay any transaction fees on any sales, either.
- Advanced plan: $49 per month. On this plan you get abandoned cart recoveries, and shipping rate calculations for USPS, FedEx, and UPS. You get access to Squarespace's Orders API, which allows you to build custom integration with third-party services for order fulfillment and production logistics. Plus, you can sell gift cards and recurring digital services, such as magazines or members-only podcasts.
Want to know more? Read our full Squarespace for ecommerce review or check out the pricing table below:
Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Price paid monthly The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed monthly | Abandoned cart recovery | Gift cards | Transaction fees | Point-of-sale support | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cheapest Plan | Cheapest Online Store | ||||||
Personal | Business | Basic | Advanced | ||||
| | ||||||
| | ||||||
N/A | 3% | ||||||
| |

Pros:
- Allows users to sell for free
- Great integrations with POS system
- Ideal for small stores and restaurants
Cons:
- High transaction fees
- Restrictive designs options
- Confusing layout with unfamiliar technology
Square Online is one of the easiest ecommerce platforms to get started with. Signing up and building a store with the platform is remarkably straightforward.
All the tools you need to create an online store are offered up straightaway with minimal fuss and confusion — it's simple, effective and, importantly, excellent value for money. Businesses on a budget, take note.
What we like about Square Online
Unlike most of its rivals, you can start selling stuff online without signing up for one of Square Online's paid plans. Yes, that's right, this platform is completely free — you won't find many better options out there that don't demand any sort of payment.
Based on the provider feature offering in relation to its price point, our research team actually awarded square a value for money rating of 4.8 out of 5. That's head and shoulders above any other ecommerce builder on this list.
However, it must be noted that Square Online enforces transaction fees, whereas BigCommerce and other providers featured in this article do not.

Perhaps one of Square's biggest upsides is that it has seamless integration with Square's POS software.
This makes Square Online a great choice if you're already using Square's POS tools for a bricks-and-mortar store — all your sales, accounting, and inventory information will be stored together, making everything easy to access and easy to manage. Its seamless POS integrations, alongside its user-friendly interface and excellent value for money, are just some of the reasons Square Online scored 4.6 out of 5 — just behind Wix and Shopify — despite improvement being needed in several areas (more on this below).
Find out more in our full Square Online review
What Square Online should improve
In terms of improvements, Square Online doesn't offer you a whole lot in the way of design or customization options. In fact, during our user testing, we found Square Online's designs to be a bit basic.
Disappointingly, while design-focused sites like Wix offer hundreds of templates, Square Online doesn't give users a range of site templates to choose from. Instead, you get a basic layout that can be changed a bit, but you'll still be left with something that looks slightly generic.
How much does Square Online cost?
As we mentioned above, Square Online is the only worthwhile ecommerce platform that allows you to start selling stuff using a free plan — with a pretty expensive 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee on all sales.
However, there are some drawbacks to the free plan. For example, you won't get a custom domain name — meaning you'll be left with something that looks sloppy and a bit unprofessional. Your site will also feature Square Online branding, with banner adverts that, again, make your site look amateurish. However, you get access to all the accounting and inventory features offered on the more expensive plans, which are:
- Plus plan – $29 per month. Removes Square Online branding and gives you unlimited storage and some extra marketing and shipping features.
- Premium plan – $79 per month. Lowers the transaction fee to 2.6% + $0.30 and offers improved shipping discounts. Your customers will also be able to use the real-time shipping calculator, letting them see exactly how much they'll pay at checkout.

Pros
- Free Trial
- Only platform with transactional emails
- Very user-centric experience
ConsÂ
- Restrictive pricing plans based on annual turnover
- Limited template customization
- Steep learning curve with little assistance
While it can’t quite match Shopify or Wix, BigCommerce is still an excellent ecommerce platform that's ideal for businesses managing large or complex inventories. If you're looking to set up a clothing store, for instance, BigCommerce or Shopify is the way to go.
When it comes to its core function as a sales platform, BigCommerce can match Shopify stride-for-stride. In fact, the impressive inventory management features mean you could make the case, depending on your needs, that BigCommerce is a better fit for your business, particularly if you're a smaller business that still requires these advanced ecommerce features.
What we like about BigCommerce
BigCommerce doesn’t place transaction fees on the sales you make — something that you might have to put up with if you opt for Shopify but don't want to use Shopify payments. However, BigCommerce will place a cap on the total value of sales you can make, which increases depending on the pricing plan you choose.

BigCommerce Analytics Dashboard. Source: BigCommerce
The provider also offers excellent reporting and sales analysis tools (see above), granular product inventory detail, and a wide range of sales channels it can integrate, including real-world point of sale transactions. It's also the only platform that allows you to send transactional emails to confirm purchases.
BigCommerce allows you to manage loads of different sales channels through its platform. In addition to selling on your own website, you'll also be able to sell products on Instagram, eBay, and Amazon, while controlling everything through your BigCommerce account. Here's a quick guide to advertising on Meta's platforms with BigCommerce:
What BigCommerce should improve
The main drawbacks to BigCommerce are its slightly limited customization options.
As well as this, BigCommerce commits the cardinal user experience sin of having an interface that is difficult to navigate and does not provide many helpful tips to get the hang of it. This is especially noticeable when considering sites like Wix, which has so many tutorial elements, especially during setup.

How much does BigCommerce cost?
BigCommerce has three main pricing plans, and they're very similar to Shopify's:
- $29 per month Standard plan.
- $79 per month Plus plan.
- $299 per month Pro plan.
Pricing went into effect on February 23, 2023 based on evolved product offering.
The Standard plan allows you to list an unlimited number of products with any payment processor you want. However, it doesn't give you access to some of the customer-centric features that are now commonplace, and your annual sales are capped to $50,000.
The Plus plan ups the sales cap to $180,000 per year. It also allows you to create custom customer groups for more targeted marketing, while customers are able to store credit cards.
The Pro plan gives you access to Google customer reviews, allows you to import a custom SSL certificate, and lifts the sales cap to $400,000 per annum.
Want to know more? See our BigCommerce pricing guide, or check out the table below:

Pros
- Strong site speed performance
- Pre-designed promotional options
ConsÂ
- Overly complicated when it doesn't need to be
- Worst knowledge center option
- Restrictive design customization
We're not going to sugar coat it; Volusion is a great ecommerce platform, but it's difficult to use, especially when compared to the increasingly user-friendly Squarespace.
Simply put, it just isn’t quite as intuitive and straightforward to use as many of the options on this list, which really holds it back in this context.
What we like about Volusion
Volusion has great, mobile-responsive website templates, which will help make your site stand out from the crowd and, with 5.31 billion unique mobile users across the world, you'll need all the help you can get.
On top of that, it provides one of the strongest site speeds on this list, meaning that websites set up by Volusion typically benefit from faster loading times. Since Google awards well-performing sites with higher rankings, this can be a great asset for businesses looking to boost their traffic organically.
Volusion's industry-leading site speed actually makes it one of the best platforms on the market — especially for experienced users. However, with an ease of use score of 3.2 out of 5 — due to its restricted backend and complex user design — the ecommerce website builder is unable to appear any higher on our list.

Like the other ecommerce building platforms, Volusion has a good range of strong sales features – especially its highly detailed inventory management. This will pay dividends as your business grows, as managing your stock and analyzing your sales performance will be easy.
It also has no transaction fees, and a great range of reporting tools that can help you stay on top of your dealings.
What Volusion could improve
But, as we mentioned above, Volution's software can be a bit confusing to navigate. Some features relating to your site’s design, for example, can be accessed from two separate menus, creating a doubled-up feeling that leaves your head spinning.
Some menus are simply confusing, with pages you’d expect to be in one place being located in a seemingly unrelated menu. Due to its complicated design and clunky usability, Volusion received a rating of 3.2 out of 5 for ease of use — placing it last out of all the providers on this list. It would be useful if Volusion had a good knowledge center to compensate for this poor score but, according to our in-house research team, the software also performed the worst when it came to (not) finding the information we needed.
How much does Volusion cost?
Volusion offers three fixed pricing plans, as well as a POA plan for the largest businesses, with pricing based on your gross merchandise volume:
- The Personal plan –Â $35 per month, which is meant for small businesses. You only have access to online support and will be limited to 100 products and up to $50,000 sales per year.
- The Professional plan –Â $79 per month, will let you list 5,000 products on your site. The sales cap is doubled to $100,000 per year, and you get access to features such as product reviews, newsletters, and abandoned cart recoveries.
- The Business plan – $299 per month, which gives you a lot of extra features. For example, you get access to Volusion’s API, advanced report builder tools, and the platform's “Dedicated Success Team”, who can advise you on business decisions rather than simply offering support.
Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Bandwidth | Abandoned cart recovery | Transaction fees | Maximum sales | Support | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ||||
Personal | Professional | Business | Prime | ||||
$31.50 per month | $71.10 per month | $269.10 per month | On request | ||||
Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | ||||
| | | | ||||
0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | ||||
$50,000 | $100,000 | $500,000 | Unlimited | ||||
Online | Online + Phone | Priority | VIP |

Pros
- Great user experience with helpful prompts
- Extremely simplified interface
- Ideal for selling art
ConsÂ
- Limited to 500 physical products max
- No advanced ecommerce features
- No branding capabilities
Big Cartel is unique on this list because it is primarily aimed at artists and other creators to sell pieces on a simple and affordable platform. Between the stripped-back feature set, the low prices, and the basic templates, you'll be able to set up an online shop quickly and easily and it won't distract from your creative vision.
What we liked about Big Cartel
Unlike most of the website builders on this list, Big Cartel has a pretty notable niche: artists. According to Big Cartel's website, they've helped in the sale of more than $2.5 billion worth of art, and the small team aims to support artists however they can.
To accommodate for cash-strapped creatives, Big Cartel offers a free plan, and it can be very attractive if you're planning on selling less than five products. However, there are a few features missing from the free plan that you get when you pay, including Google Analytics, theme code editing, and inventory tracking.
Inventory tracking is, however, available on the provider's paid plans. With this feature, you'll be able to sell your products and ensure you're keeping track of everything effectively. Plus, you'll be perfectly set up to scale down the road, which is always beneficial for a growing business.

Where Big Cartel could improve
With the above considered, any other kind of business likely wants to steer clear of Big Cartel. It's incredibly limited, and even the more expensive plans miss advanced ecommerce features like gift cards and abandoned cart recovery. It's also quite restricted in a branding sense because marketing features are virtually non-existent. This makes Big Cartel an unfavorable option for businesses intent on broadening their reach.
What's more, if your business is budget-conscious, you could get a much more effective website builder that is a bit more robust when it comes to ecommerce features, like BigCommerce, or better design functionalities, like Squarespace. Still, if you're looking to launch a small, artistic side gig, you've found the perfect option.
Big Cartel pricing
There are two paid plans for Big Cartel, and they denote the number of products you can sell with each: Platinum (50 Products) and Diamond (500 Products). The provider's three pricing plans are:
- Gold: free
- Platinum: $9.99 per month
- Diamond: $19.99 per month
As far as the Big Cartel website is concerned, these two plans are identical, providing features like inventory management, customizable themes, real-time stats, a custom domain, and reporting through Google Analytics.
As mentioned previously, The free plan allows you to sell up to five products, but you also get a custom domain thrown in too. It's obviously pretty bare bones and the five-product limit is quite restrictive but, if you're an individual looking to launch a side gig, Big Cartel represents a viable way to do so at no cost.
How Did We Choose the Best Website Builders for Ecommerce?
Our recommendations aren't based on random guesswork. We put every website builder on this page through extensive, independent testing.
Why you can trust Tech.co
Working out which technology review websites provide up-to-date, independent information – and actually test the products they're writing about – can be just as difficult as choosing between website builders or other software.
Setting up a website is pretty simple, which is one of the reasons there are so many review pages on Google. But having the resources to properly compare complex business software is rare. At Tech.co, our research & insights team run extensive tests on all the products we review in collaboration with Tech.co's expert writers, so everyone's clued up on what they're talking about.
Research team insights
We're lucky enough to have a professional research team that provides us with insight on all of the products we discuss, review, and rate. They spend hours, days – and often weeks – assessing what providers offer. No stone is left unturned, and all the important information a user would need before they buy is uncovered. We only award providers with scores (such as Wix's 4.8/5) if the research we've conducted justifies it.
Their knowledge, skills, and research methods allow us to talk with confidence, for instance, about a given product's value for money and estimated return on investment, as well as identify and comment on the latest market trends.
Real-life user testing
For an ambitious online store, you'll need excellent features and access to a range of apps – but it's no use having these options if they're too complex to use.
Our insight team is full of software experts, so we also conduct real-life user testing, getting users with a range of skill levels to try out the website builders and provide feedback on how approachable they found them. That way, we can ascertain real-world usability for each online store platform.
We take their comments on the variety and quality of templates you can use to create an online store, plus the Help & Support on offer when you need assistance, and factor it into our scoring. While you read, remember: website builder comparisons made in this article – as well as other pages on our site – are based on in-depth, independent assessments.












Next Steps in Creating an Ecommerce Site
Those are the best platforms to create an ecommerce site, but how do you actually go about creating one? We’re going to run through all the things you should consider before, during, and after the creation of your site – and with the global ecommerce market expected to be worth almost $6 trillion by 2023, there's no time to lose.
- Pick the right software – This is crucial because, if you don’t get this right, your business might never reach its potential. We advise comparing all the available providers, but would recommend Wix if you’re after a fully-featured website with the ability to sell products.
- Use the trial – Once you’ve picked your software, you should always try it out before committing to it. Most other ecommerce builders will give you a free trial period, normally lasting a couple of weeks.
- Prepare – If you’re already running a business, it’s worth checking whether the software you’re going to use can work with the existing payment systems and accounting software you currently use. Some platforms encourage you to use their own payment systems, for example.
- Get people to try it – Ask friends, family, or even random people to use your store and gather their feedback. After all, when a customer navigates to your online store to buy your products, you should at least make sure they can use your website.
- Optimize – Don’t sit still; make sure you use the reporting tools offered by your ecommerce builder to improve different aspects of your site.
Don't forget, you can always take our website builder quiz, where just a few questions will provide you with ecommerce website builders that fit your particular needs.
Verdict
Wix is still a solid option, though, depending on your particular needs. Wix's templates are second to none, it's feature-rich and easy to use. It's a great choice for smaller businesses, and the attentive customer support — as well as the fact you don't need to be tech-savvy to build a beautiful website — makes it an excellent option for beginners.
Still, Shopify is our go-to ecommerce website builder, particularly if you're running a highly complex sales operation that involves managing a large inventory, perhaps split between online and physical stores. It is, however, a lot pricier than Wix, which is worth remembering if you're on a strict budget.
For more information on both of these providers, including their various features and price points, check out our free website comparison tool today.
Wix makes creating a website incredibly easy, and you'll have loads of design tools at hand to make it fit your existing branding. Squarespace, on the other hand, has a laser focus on design, and has loads of built-in ecommerce tools.
Wix, however, does offer a more scalable platform than Squarespace for ecommerce sites. So, while both are good for starting out, Wix will likely be a better fit in the long run.
- Ensure navigation is easy
- Use high-quality images and videos
- Optimize your site for Mobile – (More than 40% of online purchases happen on mobiles)
- User-generated reviews
A well-designed ecommerce website can improve your revenue; research by Shopify has found a correlation between quality online store design and increased customer loyalty. In fact, Shopify is so confident in its research that it has produced a 39-point checklist for all online stores to use when deciding on a design.
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