7 Best Ecommerce Website Builders | Grow Online in 2024 (2024)

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The best website builder for ecommerce is Wix, because it offers an impressive selection of features, robust email marketing to reach new customers, and seamless integration between in-store and online purchases, thanks to its own POS products, alongside 24/7 customer support.

Wix isn’t the only option out there, though. We’ve conducted hours of in-depth research on the best ecommerce website builders to provide you with all the information you need to make an informed decision. We’ve looked at everything from features and pricing to security and ease of use, so you don’t have to analyze the dozens of free trials available from various providers. Here are our top three picks:

Wix is best for smaller ecommerce ventures.
Shopify is best for larger ecommerce businesses.
Squarespace is best for marketing features.

In this guide:

• How to Choose an Ecommerce Website Builder
• Top 7 Ecommerce Website Builders
• Methodology: How We Test the Best Website Builders
• How Much Does It Cost to Build an Ecommerce Website?
• Verdict: The best website builder for Ecommerce
• Frequently Asked Questions

Buying Guide 2024: Ecommerce Website Builders

With so many high quality ecommerce website builders on the market, choosing the right one for your business isn’t always an easy task. To make the buying process a little less daunting, below we list some important factors to consider before you make your final call.

How to choose an ecommerce store builder

We’ve ranked the best website builders based on their overall potential, but the right solution for you will depend on a variety of factors. We list some important considerations below:

• What type of business do you run? Different ecommerce builders have different specialisms. For example, if you’re selling products, you’d be better off going for a platform that prioritizes stock management like Big Commerce.
• How big is your budget? There’s no point opting for an ecommerce builder you can’t afford. Therefore, choosing a solution that complements your budget is a must, with prices ranging from $20 to $300 per month.
• Are you an omnichannel seller? If you sell goods in-store as well as in-store, you should be looking for ecommerce builders that integrate with POSs like Square Online, Shopify, or Squarespace.
• Which online channels will you sell through? Not all ecommerce builders integrate with social channels, so if you want to sell goods through platforms like Facebook or Instagram you should check if they offer this capacity first.
• How much design experience do you have? If you’re a beginner, choosing an ecommerce builder with a shallow learning curb and user-friendly design functions, like drag and drop builders, is a must.

Which is the easiest ecommerce website builder to use?

If you’re already intimidated at the thought of using a website builder, you might be in the market for an easy-to-use website building option rather than a functionality-robust tool. Fortunately, we’ve done the research and found that, Squarespace is the easiest website builder to use.

The simple drag-and-drop functionality allows beginners to fully customize the site, and the ability to change templates after it has gone live makes it that much better than Wix.

Top 7 Ecommerce Website Builders

We put each ecommerce website builder through rigorous testing and an analysis program to cut the wheat from the chaff. Based on our thorough tests, these are our favorite ecommerce website builders:

1. Wix – Best for smaller ecommerce ventures
2. Shopify – Best for larger ecommerce businesses
3. Squarespace –Best for marketing features
4. Hostinger– Best for local businesses
5. GoDaddy– Best value for money
6. BigCommerce –Best for inventory management
7. Square Online –Best for businesses on a budget

1. Wix – Best for Smaller Ecommerce Ventures

There’s really no two ways about it: Wix is the best website builder for ecommerce, and it’s the best website builder period. It offers more website features, better design functionality, and more robust help and support options than any other provider we have tested. If you’re looking to start selling online, Wix can help you to do that easily, and at great value for money.

To be fair, though, Wix didn’t end up at the top of our research for sales features, an honor bestowed on Shopify for its vast selection of ecommerce-specific functionalities, which is why we think Wix is better geared towards smaller ventures than bigger ecommerce businesses. Still, because Wix offers so much across the spectrum when it comes to website building, and a very respectable selection of sales features, it still earns our top recommendation, if you want to start building an online store.

What we like about Wix

Wix offers array of AI features that have rolled out over the last year, which will build an entire website for you from just a few simple questions. Neither Shopify nor Squarespace offer this feature right now, although both do feature other AI functionality to help you build your site.

Wix offers the most templates for online stores with 19 options. A template will provide you with the basic design, and then you’ll be able to customize it with new text and images for all your products, plus contact forms and extra pages to make it your own.

There are also plenty of royalty-free images ready and waiting for you to use. Wix’s drag-and-drop editor makes everything super easy to arrange. Take a look at this tutorial video from Wix’s YouTube channel:

What Wix should improve

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Wix is the inability to change templates once you’ve published your site. That means that once you select a template, which is the basic preset design theme you choose at the start of the process, you won’t be able to pop over to another template if you change your mind. You’ll have to completely start from scratch with a new template or customize it manually. This can make for a stressful pre-launch experience if you aren’t confident about your design.

Wix somewhat compensates for this by giving you significantly more creative freedom in the initial phase than its competitors (like Shopify) because it includes hundreds of templates to choose from, helping you to pick the right one. This reduces the risk that you’ll want to change your site template before you’re too far in – but being able to make template modifications after publishing is still a feature that newbies to the website building game would benefit from.

From an ecommerce standpoint, Wix isn’t ideal for larger businesses that need to sell a lot of products, because it puts a limit on the number of products you can sell at 50,000, even with the most expensive plan. Additionally, it doesn’t offer many inventory management features, unlike Shopify, so that enterprise-level functionality just isn’t there for Wix.

How much does Wix ecommerce cost?

Wix offers three pricing plans that allow you to build an online store, each with an increasing number of ecommerce features to improve the experience. Overall, Wix offers competitive pricing, although the $159 per month Business Elite plan certainly sets the bar a little high compared to other competitors on this list. Only Shopify has a more expensive plan, the $299 Advanced plan, and it offers far more sales functionality.

The $27 per month Core plan and the $32 per month Business plan, though, are fairly standard for the industry, and provide a robust set of sales and website builder features for your business. It’s worth remembering that no matter how much you pay for Wix, you’ll be limited to only 50,000 products, whereas Shopify and Squarespace offer unlimited products.

Check out our Wix pricing guide for more information

2. Shopify – Best for Larger Ecommerce Businesses

In our research, we scored Shopify the highest for sales features, since it offers an unmatched selection of ecommerce-focused functionality for building out your online store, including unlimited products, a customizable POS interface, and built-in product bundles. It’s ideal for established businesses that are looking to scale online, owing to the fact it allows for the easy management of complex inventories.

Shopify combines top-class sales channel integration with a simple and intuitive UI, and it features great reporting tools that help optimize your sales. What’s more, the provider is virtually unmatched when it comes to integrating sales channels into a single online platform, with functionality to combine Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, Snapchat, Google, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy. For all these reasons, we’ve dubbed Shopify the best option when it comes to larger-scale ecommerce ventures.

Check out our Shopify POS review for more information

What we like about Shopify

The reason Shopify is the preferred choice for so many large or ready-to-scale online stores is there’s no other provider that is better at facilitating the addition and management of large amounts of products. Wix puts a limit on products sold, but Shopify allows for unlimited products, which is why it’s great for larger businesses. Simply put, if you’re more interested in selling a lot of products than having a site that looks exactly how you want it, Shopify is the ecommerce website builder for you.

Even better, through its Shopify Payments system, you’re able to track everything from sales on Instagram, 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 to pay.

Shipping is another feature that Shopify has locked down, with tons of ordering options. For example, Shopify’s carbon-neutral shipping option is great for businesses watching their environmental footprint. Wix isn’t too far behind, but you’ll still need some apps to help you with taking payments from across the world, as it only allows for up to 10 currencies maximum. Shopify, on the other hand, accepts more than 100 different currencies.

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 ecommerce website templates, all of which are optimized for mobile, and can be edited with ease. In fact, despite all those sales features, we found Shopify to be easier to use than Wix, largely due to the lack of customizability in Shopify’s design functionality.

To see for yourself, simply take advantage of Shopify’s free trial (followed by your first month at just $1) and check out the video below:

What Shopify should improve

While our testers scored Shopify higher than Wix for user experience, Shopify definitely has a specific niche it’s going for when it comes to functionality. 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 biggest downside to Shopify, though, is that it’s 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 when you don’t use Shopify Payments can range from 0.5% to 2%, which further adds to the lack of affordability, particularly in a marketplace where competitors like Wix and Squarespace don’t enforce any.

Check out our Wix vs Shopify guide for more information on our top two ecommerce builders.

How much does Shopify cost?

Shopify offers three main pricing plans, but as we mentioned, they’re quite expensive. The $29 per month Basic plan is one of the more expensive starter plans in our research, while the $299 per month Advanced plan is easily the most expensive plan on this list.

Shopify has other plans available, but we recommend sticking to those two plans, though, as they’re the best suited for ecommerce. If you use the “$1-for-first-month” deal, you’ll have a long runway to see if the features really work for your needs.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning Shopify POS, which is software that can be used for in-person sales and also integrates with Shopify’s ecommerce and payments services.

Check out our Shopify POS pricing guidefor details on its costs.

Compare Shopify plans and deals before you buy Shopify Deals

3. Squarespace – Best for Marketing Features

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 online profile, and not an ecommerce platform. However, we found Squarespace to be a very competent online store builder, largely due to its wealth of marketing features, including an AI-powered tool — dubbed Squarespace AI — that is aimed at helping you create marketing copy instantly.

Even if it doesn’t quite win in our Wix vs Squarespace comparison, our in-house testing saw it perform better than some of the dedicated ecommerce website builders like BigCommerce, for sales. In fact, we found it to have quite similar sales features to Wix, having made a big improvement to its functionality since the last time we tested it, due largely to its addition of unlimited products and multi-channel selling.

What we like about Squarespace

Squarespace is one of the most improved ecommerce website builders we tested, likely due to the platform adding more and more AI functionality, which makes it easier for anyone to build a website in just a few simple steps. In fact, Squarespace is the best website builder for beginners, due to its notable ease of use.

Squarespace’s compatibility with Square POS, one of the biggest POS providers, also lets you process cash and card payments that integrate with your online store. This can be a huge benefit to any business – particularly physical stores. Yes, some options have their own POS systems built in, like Shopify, but this free integration can be a big help considering Square is such a popular option.

Squarespace’s best-known advantage is that it has some of the most beautiful 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 that are designed specifically for ecommerce websites as well, so getting started should be a piece of cake.

As we mentioned above, Squarespace is ahead of the major providers when it comes to marketing and promotional tools. The platform offers built-in search engine optimization (SEO) features, helping 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 website builders don’t offer these perks, Squarespace might be the best ecommerce website builder for your team, if you’re looking to maximize the reach of your business.

What Squarespace should improve

Although Squarespace offers unlimited products and inventory management, other providers do it a bit better. Shopify, for example, offers customer wishlist options and product bundles, whereas Squarespace doesn’t. Additionally, Shopify offers slightly more robust analytics, allows users to see the ROI of marketing campaigns right in the software.

Overall, Squarespace is not the best choice for managing large quantities of stock, but it is a better option for businesses selling digital items (like event tickets) rather than physical items (like handbags).

How much does Squarespace cost?

Squarespace offers three pricing plans that allow for ecommerce functionality. However, the most affordable one, the $23 per month Business plan does charge a 3% transaction fee, whereas the next two plans, Commerce Basic ($27 per month) and Commerce Advanced ($32 per month) have no transaction fees.

Squarespace is an excellent value pick, with comparatively low pricing plans with a lot of functionality.

Want to know more? Read our full Squarespace for ecommerce review, or check out the pricing table below:

4. Hostinger – Best for Low Cost Deals

The value of affordability cannot be overstated when it comes to building an online store, and Hostinger offers this in spades. Between the low starting price and the lack of transaction fees, local businesses in particular can keep their budget intact while selling products and services online. Plus, the company frequently hosts special deals that can get you a website for less than $3 per month.

At this price, though, there are naturally some limits, which is why we only recommend it for smaller businesses, namely the very limited marketing features for email and ads. Still, with a fairly intuitive interface, improved sales features, and lots of AI functionality, Hostinger will easily satisfy your basic ecommerce website builder needs.

Check out our Hostinger review for more information

What we like about Hostinger

From an ecommerce website builder standpoint, Hostinger has a lot going for it. No transaction fees is hard to come by on this list, with Wix, Shopify, and GoDaddy all requiring them for all pricing plans. Additionally, Hostinger offers a surprisingly wide range of templates covering 18 different industries, more than every other builder in our research, other than Wix, which has 19.

Additionally, Hostinger is all about the new AI features rolling out to website builders across the industry. You can get a site up and running in less than 60 seconds thanks to these features, and all you have to do is answer a few short questions to get the ball rolling.

What Hostinger should improve

While there’s a lot we like about Hostinger, the website builder is definitely missing some key functionalities that some users may consider a dealbreaker. For starters, there are no email marketing features whatsoever. This means you’ll either have to sign up for another service to attract and retain customers, or just hope that word-of-mouth can keep you in business. There are also no advertorial marketing features, so clearly Hostinger is not made for marketing in general.

Hostinger is also lacks content tools, offering notably fewer options than Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace. This means you won’t be able to present content on your site in calendars, banners, charts or tabs, so hopefully design isn’t at the forefront of your mind when using Hostinger. This leads some sites — especially those created by AI — to look pretty generic and unimpressive, particularly compared to the beauties created by Squarespace.

Check out our Wix vs Hostinger guide for more information

How much does Hostinger cost?

Hostinger is quite simple in the pricing department compared to others on the list, offering only a single pricing plan that costs $11.99 per month. However, Hostinger almost perennially offers discounts on this plan, bringing the overall cost down to as low as $2.49 per month. Even better, you can get Hostinger for free for the first three months with some of these deals, which dwarfs any and all free trials on this list by quite a bit.

From a value standpoint, Hostinger is a solid pick, but the lack of advanced functionality is definitely a problem if you’re looking to scale.

5. GoDaddy – Best Value for Money

If you’re looking for value without sacrificing a lot of online store features, GoDaddy is an excellent choice for your website builder needs. For one, it undercuts the majority of our top picks on starting price for ecommerce functionality and keeps costs low across all of its pricing plans.

On top of that, GoDaddy has made some big improvements, adding a lot of website features and design functionality that will make building and managing your site easier and more effective.

What we like about GoDaddy

GoDaddy is a solid pick for businesses that are looking to get their online presence set up for the first time. The AI features available through GoDaddy were some of the quickest in our research, with the ability to get a site live and online in under 30 seconds. Hostinger can do it in 60 seconds, which isn’t much longer, but every second counts if you want your site online now. Additionally, its customer support team was unmatched, responding to queries quickly and expertly to keep problems for newbies at a minimum.

On top of all that, GoDaddy netted the highest score in our site speed analysis, beating out Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and Hostinger in this category. This means that your site will load faster with GoDaddy than any other website builder in our research. And considering slow load times lead to higher bounce rates, this kind of thing can make a big difference.

What GoDaddy should improve

The biggest downfall of GoDaddy is the design functionality. While it has been improved recently, the overall experience is quite limited, preventing users from having a lot of control over how their website actually looks, namely lacking the ability to customize checkout pages. This is especially true of the AI-generated sites, which admittedly save you a lot of time, but definitely turn out a bit generic-looking.

Another downfall of GoDaddy is related to security. For fraud detection, GoDaddy doesn’t just help users detect it, but rather relies on customers to report the fraud to combat the problem. Essentially, the strategy is reactive rather than proactive, which means the impact of fraud could be much worse for your business.

Check out our GoDaddy vs Wix guide for more information

How much does GoDaddy cost?

GoDaddy offers only one pricing plan that has ecommerce functionality. Appropriately named the Commerce plan, it costs $16.99 per month, which is decidedly lower than other options on this list. Wix, for example, costs at least $27 per month for just basic ecommerce functionality.

GoDaddy offers a Basic plan for only $9.99 per month, but there’s no ecommerce functionality at all, so moving on.

Check out GoDaddy plans for yourself right now Visit GoDaddy

6. BigCommerce – Best for Inventory Management

BigCommerce, as you can likely guess from the name, should be viewed as an ecommerce-exclusive website builder. It offers sales features on par with Wix and Squarespace, as well as top tier inventory management features that rival Shopify, including unlimited products, customer wishlists, and multi-managed inventory, which allows you to manage portions of product inventory in-person or in an app.

That, unfortunately, is where the good times end for BigCommerce. The ecommerce website builder lacks substantially when it comes to website features, design functionality, ease of use, and help and support options, scoring some of the lowest scores in our research in all categories. Even worse, BigCommerce is expensive, with nearly an identical pricing plan lineup to Shopify while offering notably fewer features.

All that to say, BigCommerce may be a good fit if inventory management is more important to you than anything else, but otherwise, there are other options out there that are a better fit.

Read our Shopify vs BigCommerce guide to see how the ecommerce website builders compare.

7. Square Online – Best for Businesses on a Budget

Yes, you read that right: Square Online allows you to sell products online for free without subscribing to any of its paid plans, a unique perk on this list. Some website builders on this list do have free plans, but none of them allow you to set up an online store and sell products without a paid subscription.

There is, of course, a catch, in that you’ll be subjected to hefty transaction fees that get as high as 2.9% + $0.30 for purchases. On top of that, Square Online is very limited when it comes to design functionality, netting the lowest score in our research due to the fact that it only has six templates, the fewest of any website builder by a substantial margin.

Still, Square Online provides all the tools you need to create an online store for free, which is great for smaller businesses with non-existent budgets that need to start selling now. If you plan to scale even a little bit, though, other paid options on this lists are definitely worth the investment.

Check out our Square Online review for more information

Methodology – How We Test the Best Ecommerce Website Builders

How Much Does It Cost to Build an Ecommerce Website?

Broadly speaking, the cheapest ecommerce plans from Wix and Squarespace will cost you between $20-$30 per month. Wix’s ecommerce plans, for example, range from $27 per month for the Core plan, to $159 per month for the Business Elite plan.

Meanwhile, Shopify’s cheapest plan is $29 per month, giving you access to a serious ecommerce experience. However, its other plans cost $79 per month and $299 per month, which are a bit expensive, but you get what you pay for with the most comprehensive ecommerce website builder available.

The top tier plans are designed for established ecommerce stores, with complexities that require the extra features and profit margins that can accomodate the higher cost, so there’s no need to worry about these high prices if you’re just starting out.

Check out our website builder pricing guide for more information

Next Steps to Create an Ecommerce Site

These 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. With the global ecommerce market expected to be worth almost $6.9 trillion by 2024, 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 Shopify 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 ecommerce builders will give you a free trial period, which normally last for a few 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.

Alternatively, you can take our website builder quiz and you’ll be linked with ecommerce website builders that fit your particular needs.

Ecommerce Website Builders FAQs

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