Best Ecommerce Website Builders 2021

Wix

The perfect website builder for smaller online stores

Wix is brilliant for smaller online stores., but thanks to a massive overhaul of its sales features over the past year, plus regular Wix discounts, it can now truly hold its own with the very best ecommerce platforms. It makes creating an online shop incredibly easy, even for first timers, and the results will look slick and professional thanks to some brilliant templates.

Wix hasn't historically offered all of the features necessary for managing larger stores. However, Wix has been working hard to boost its ecommerce functionality in recent months with a host of new features and improvements, including its new Ascend all-in-one business solution and mass product imports.

It's some of the smaller feature updates, perhaps, that make Wix for ecommerce feel effortless for both merchants and customers. These include:

• Buy It Now and Add to Cart button features for smooth, customer-centric sales
• Updates to the shipping functionality, right down to the ability for merchants to print shipping labels
• Multi-channel integration, which now supports the ability to sell via Instagram
• Improvements to the Wix app store, which now has more ecommerce apps available, improved security features and a better search function

Shopify

The best ecommerce website builder for large online stores

Shopify excelled across the board in our testing. It combines top class sales channel integration with a simple and intuitive UI, and features great reporting tools to help optimize your sales.

Shopify is nearly unmatched when it comes to integrating disparate sales channels into a single online platform. 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 bricks-and-mortar store, you can manage all your sales, inventory, and accounting through one platform.

Designing an ecommerce site with Shopify

Shopify is probably the best ecommerce platform when it comes to design (excluding Squarespace, but we’ll get to that a little further down). It offers loads of different website templates, all of which are mobile optimized and can be edited and changed to your liking with remarkable depth.

Don't underestimate just how simple it can be to create your own online store – paying for a website designer is no small undertaking, with costs often spiralling into the thousands. A website builder, however, can be far cheaper and surprisingly easy, even for novices. Thanks to Shopify's great templates and intuitive setup, you could create a functioning online store in a matter of hours. To see for yourself, simply take advantage of the 14 day free trial.

How much does Shopify cost?

Shopify offers three main pricing plans: Shopify Basic, Shopify, and Shopify Advanced.

Now, a word of caution. Shopify will seem much more expensive than some of the other platforms on this list. However, you're paying for a superior experience with Shopify.

While the Basic plan costs $29 per month when paid annually, it will give you all the tools you need to run an online store. No extra apps required – everything is ready to go.

The confusingly named Shopify plan costs $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 bricks-and-mortar store as well as your website.

The Shopify Advanced plan costs $299 per month when paid annually. You get access to a 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.

Want to know more? See our Shopify pricing guide

Square Online

A simple and surprisingly powerful ecommerce platform

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.

What's more, unlike most of its rivals, you can start selling stuff online without signing up for one of Square Online's paid plans.

However, while it is simple and cheap to get started with, Square Online has some problems.

Square Online design

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. Unlike most of its rivals, Square Online doesn't give users a range of site templates to choose from. Instead, you get a basic layout which can be changed a bit, but you'll still be left with something that looks a bit generic.

Square Online pricing

As we mentioned above, Square Online is the only worthwhile ecommerce platform that allows you to start selling stuff for free — 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 is, in our mind, pretty remarkable.

The paid-for plans start with the $16 per month Professional plan which removes the Square Online branding whilst also giving you unlimited storage. The $29 per month Performance plan gives you some extra marketing and shipping features.

The $79 per month Premium plan lowers the transaction fee to 2.6% 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.

Square Online bricks and mortar

Perhaps one of Square's biggest upsides is that it has seamless integration with Square's POS software.

That 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.

Find out more in our full Square Online review

BigCommerce

A close runner-up to Shopify for creating a large ecommerce store

While it can’t quite match Shopify, BigCommerce is still an excellent ecommerce platform. The main drawbacks to BigCommerce are its slightly limited customization options, and that its help and support options can’t match Shopify's.

However, when it comes to its core function as a sales platform, BigCommerce can match Shopify stride-for-stride.

BigCommerce reporting and transaction fees

This is thanks to its excellent reporting and sales analysis tools, excellent product inventory detail, and the wide range of sales channels it can integrate, including real-world point of sale transactions.

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. However, BigCommerce will place a cap on the total value of sales you can make, which increases depending on the pricing plan you choose.

Want to know more? See our BigCommerce pricing guide

Sales channels

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.

This makes BigCommerce a much more viable option than some of the website builder-focused options, if you're looking to run a big ecommerce operation.

BigCommerce pricing

BigCommerce has three main pricing plans, and they're very similar to Shopify's. There's the $29.95 per month Standard plan, the $79.95 per month Plus plan, and the $249.95 Pro plan.

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 $150,000 per year. It also allows you to create custom customer groups for more precisely targeted marketing, while customers are able to score 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

Squarespace

Exceptional website templates, but some drawbacks

You might be forgiven for thinking we’ve put Squarespace in by mistake. After all, it’s a website builder first-and-foremost, designed to give you a great-looking website, and not designed as an ecommerce platform.

However, we found Squarespace to be a very competent ecommerce platform. For a start, its product and inventory management is just as advanced as any of the other platforms on this list, with a surprising amount of detail on offer. It also allows you to easily stock different types of products, from your standard physical products to digital downloads and even services.

Squarespace templates

As we mentioned above, Squarespace's real advantage is that it has some of the best website builder templates on the market. The templates are all designed in-house, and are completely optimized for mobiles and tablets as well as laptops and PCs.

There are plenty designed specifically for ecommerce websites as well, so getting started will be a piece of cake.

Taking payments on Squarespace

Squarespace is not completely without fault, though, as it limits your payment and accounting options to two third-party companies – not ideal if your business is already up-and-running. You’re also limited in your ability to internationalize due to tricky language settings and shipping choices.

However, Squarespace does offer compatibility with Square – one of the biggest POS providers out there.

Squarespace pricing

Squarespace offers two pricing plan for online stores: Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce.

The Basic plan costs $26 per month. For that, you get a mobile optimized checkout, and improved commercial metrics to identify any pain-points your users are finding with your site. What's more, you won't have to pay any transaction fees on any sales.

The Advanced plan costs $40, and gives you lots of extra features. For example, you get abandoned cart recoveries as well as 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

Volusion

Powerful ecommerce features, but can be trickier to use

Volusion is a great ecommerce platform. However, it isn’t quite as intuitive and straightforward to use as BigCommerce or Shopify, which really holds it back in this context. It does have great, mobile-responsive website templates, though, which will help make your site stand out from the crowd.

Volusion sales features

Like the other platforms in this list, 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 which can help you stay on top of your dealings.

Volusion confusion

But, as we mentioned above, it 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 which 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. Still, Volusion’s proactive help and support team should be able to help.

Volusion pricing

Volusion offers four fixed pricing plans, as well as a POA plan for the largest businesses.

The Personal plan costs $26 per month, and 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 costs $71 per month, and 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 Startup plan costs $161 per month, and gives you access to third-party app integrations. You can also list unlimited products, as well as sell on Amazon and eBay. Plus, the sales cap is increased to $250,000 per year.

The Business plan costs $269 per month, and 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.

Want to know more? Read our full Volusion review

Weebly

A respectable ecommerce builder, but bettered by Wix and Shopify

Weebly, like Wix, is a website builder looking to improve its ecommerce game. However, it’s still got some way to go before it can really challenge the ecommerce giants, or even Squarespace.

Weebly product management

With a Weebly ecommerce site, you’ll still be able to use its impressive website builder functions. This means you'll be able to make a great looking site very easily.

What's more, unlike Wix, Weebly does offer bulk product imports and stock management tools without the use of a third-party app. This will make setting up your ecommerce store much easier.

Want to know more? Read our full Weebly review

Sales features

However, Weebly doesn’t support multiple sales channels. This means extra work for you, as you won't be able to manage selling products in one central hub.

What's more, you’ll incur a 3% transaction fee on all but two of its pricing plans. Weebly also doesn’t give you the ability to customize your checkout, nor does it allow guest checkout options. All of these factors will hold you back in your quest for online sales, particularly if you’re looking to run a larger store.

Weebly pricing

We're not convinced of Weebly's efficacy as an ecommerce platform. But it is cheaper than lots of its rivals.

There are three plans for online stores: Pro, Business, and Business Plus.

Pro costs $12 per month, and lets you accept payments through Square and start selling products. The Business plan costs $25 per month and gives you some extra features, including proper inventory management, tax and shipping calculators, and shipping discounts.

The Business Plus plan costs $38 per month, and lets you charge real-time shipping rates and send abandoned cart emails.