The different eCommerce website builders do vary in terms of complexity, however. Some make it as simple as possible to create an online store at the cost of flexibility, custom design, and uniqueness. Others give you many options and advanced features, but they can be daunting for beginners and inexperienced eCommerce operators. Each of the eCommerce website builders we cover in this post has features that make them the most suitable for particular types of online shops. Therefore, it makes sense to look at your specific needs and select the website builder that best suits your technical skills, experience, budget, and store type you wish to build.
10 Best eCommerce Website Builders:
BigCommerce comes in two forms: BigCommerce Essentials and BigCommerce Enterprise (a more customized experience for larger customers). BigCommerce Essentials, in turn, comes in three plans. Prices are similar to Shopify’s. The plans do have revenue caps, and BigCommerce charges you if you exceed them, so bigger shops obviously need to use the higher-level plans. BigCommerce provides a straightforward step-by-step process for building your eCommerce website. It shows you where you need to start and what you need to complete. You begin by adding your products and only create your website after that. BigCommerce provides a sidebar navigation menu, each item on it linking to the appropriate section. It includes clear instructions about what information is needed and links to help files related to what you’re filling out. BigCommerce even shows you precisely what third-party apps will help you expand your functionality. It includes a detailed built-in CMS where you can easily build a database of all the types of stock you wish to sell. The CMS adds links to help your data entry and to cross-reference items across your site. You enter collections of similar products that link across your site. One of Shopify’s greatest advantages is its ability to work with more than 3,500 add-on apps, adding additional features to its core. While these can add to your overall cost, it does mean that small businesses don’t have to pay for features they will never use. The core Shopify includes nine free themes and offers a further 64 premium themes in the Shopify Theme Store. However, there are over 1,100 themes on third-party markets, all of which are customizable. You should never have to worry about your Shopify site looking too much like a standard template or resembling the competition. Weebly is a drag-and-drop website builder, making it easy for non-coders to develop a site. Unlike Shopify and BigCommerce, Weebly doesn’t solely build eCommerce sites – you can create any type of website using it. It does, however, offer all the essential features you need to make your online store. Weebly lets you build standalone product pages for each of your products. You can include multiple images in a gallery for each of your products. It caters well for product variations, so you can sell different sizes or colors of the same product, for instance. You can also build a Storefront page, where you can highlight specific products. Your shoppers can click on these to go to the relevant product pages. Weebly includes a comprehensive toolset for online stores, although not as exhaustive as the specialist eCommerce platforms, Shopify and BigCommerce. They offer eight pricing plans, four of which include eCommerce capabilities. Wix takes a different approach to the initial setup of your site than most other eCommerce website builders. You begin by designing your site and only move into the eCommerce-specific parts (like entering inventory) later in the process. When you do enter your inventory, you will find it a simple and intuitive operation. After you enter your inventory details, Wix guides you through the remaining steps, including setting up shipping parameters and payment methods. Wix’s eCommerce offering has pretty much all the features you’d expect from a good quality platform. Although Wix doesn’t have an app marketplace, like Shopify, you can add more features through integrations with programs such as Avalara, Modalyst, KudoBuzz, and Smile.io.
Find an eCommerce template on Squarespace Register or transfer your business’s domain name Set up your online store by adding products and connecting a payment processor If you sell services, set up appointments through Squarespace scheduling Customize your online store categories and content with the website builder Grow your online store with email marketing and SEO
One of Squarespace’s advantages is the quality of its design templates. All are designed to be customer-friendly, and you can set them up quickly using drag-and-drop. You can customize and personalize your website pages while at the same time giving all of your web pages a consistent look and feel. Each eCommerce template includes a Products page. Unfortunately, Squarespace doesn’t have an app store, so you are limited to its in-built features. With WooCommerce being a WordPress plugin, you will need to begin by creating your WordPress website. You will find numerous free or paid WordPress templates. Check that your theme is compatible with WooCommerce, however. You create pages and posts just like any other WordPress site. You then install WooCommerce as a plugin. Adding products is relatively straightforward: you click the “Add New” button under WooCommerce’s Product menu and fill in the details. Square Online is easy to use. You can set up your eCommerce store using a general layout which you can adapt using your company’s fonts and colors. The cost of this simplicity is that it is not as customizable as some of the other CMSs. You don’t get a large selection of templates. However, the design Square Online uses is suitable for eCommerce. The emphasis is firmly on your products rather than your store’s layout and design. You can easily add products to your store, including variations. It works particularly well when you use Square’s POS and payments systems. Volusion’s eCommerce-specific features are generally very good, although you can’t use them to sell digital products such as eBooks, courses, digital art, or music. You can include product videos, however, a feature that is unavailable on most other website builders. You can manage your store from Volusion’s mobile app, meaning you don’t need to be stuck at your computer to check your inventory, update your prices or many other regular updates. Volusion supports more than 1000 third-party apps, which you can add through Zapier. Its free plan will appeal to those on a budget. Although it has a user-friendly interface, you will need to code if you want to make the most of its features. It guides you through the onboarding process with helpful prompts, reminders, and tips. You can select a template, though they are basic and allow limited customization. To make much change to the templates, you need to code. You can expand BigCartel’s eCommerce capabilities by adding third-party apps. You will need to use these for selling digital products, creating promotional pop-ups, making dropshipping available, and more. BigCartel offers four pricing plans, ranging from free to $19.99/mo. The three paid plans vary by the number of products you can sell, but the maximum number is 300 products on the Titanium Plan. With the free plan, you can only sell five products. Shift4Shop offers an unlimited plan for free to US users of its payment processing. This allows you to set up a shop with unlimited products, unlimited staff users, unlimited bandwidth, no revenue caps, and an integrated blog. Other users can select from three plans from $29/mo. to $229/mo. Shift4Shop Enterprise also offers a custom eCommerce platform for high-volume online stores.
