The 10 Best eCommerce Website Builders for 2023 Compared

The best eCommerce website builders let you build purposeful websites with several templates and brand element options, plus heaps of guidance so that you can create the website you envisioned. An online store with hundreds of products, a robust payment portal, easy inventory and shipping management, and detailed analytical reports are all made possible with a capable website builder.

However, choosing one from a plethora of options is challenging. That’s why we’ve done some intensive research and dug out the 10 best eCommerce website builders based on criteria like affordability, customization options, integrations, customer support, and loads more. Dig in to find out why website builders like Wix, GoDaddy, and Webador are among the best in the industry,

The 10 Best Solutions to Build an eCommerce Website

Wix stands out as the best eCommerce website builder owing to its comprehensive nature, dedicated free plan, and ease of use. However, the choice was far from easy. Here’s a sneak peek into our list of the best eCommerce platforms:

1. Wix — Overall, the best ecommerce website builder with over 900 templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, plus it helps you get more customers with the Smile.io loyalty program.
2. GoDaddy — One of the very best for security, with malware scanning and removal, and equally desirable for seamless shipping at discounted rates.
3. Webador — The best budget ecommerce builder that comes with a feature-rich free plan, and all paid plans are free for a quarter of the year thanks to a class-leading 3-month free trial.
4. Squarespace — One of the few ecommerce builders optimized for different types of ecommerce sites, including service, content, and subscription-based websites, with ample templates.
5. Shopify — An automation-heavy ecommerce builder ideal for any-sized business. Along with emails and marketing, it can automate shopping processes like site localization.
6. Square — A sought-after ecommerce builder for those who want to add more functionalities and custom features without coding. Do things like flash sales, all with easy-to-use tools.
7. Ucraft — A powerful online store builder that helps you give the best rates to your customer. Its password-protected pages are great for adding a premium feel to your online store websites.
8. IONOS — The cheapest ecommerce website builder that boasts a simple drag-and-drop builder, and it offers a dedicated service where in-house experts build your website for you.
9. Weebly — Ideal for budding online stores as it’s one of the few to provide e-commerce support on the free plan. A password manager and item reviews are the cherry on top.
10. BigCommerce — Top pick for large e-commerce stores as it places no cap on the sale volume, plus offers the liberty to create unlimited individual staff accounts for your team members.

What Fеaturеs Should I Look for to Build An Onlinе Storе?

To help you find the right platform to kick-start your online sales, let’s look into some of the essential features to consider when choosing an e-commerce website builder:

• Cross-selling — This allows you to promote related products on the same page. In other words, after a customer adds a product to their cart, you can recommend or promote related products. Cross-selling, also called suggestive selling, is done during checkout based on earlier purchases.
• Payment system — A top-notch online store should offer a wide range of payment channels, including Stripe, PayPal, and, if necessary, international gateways. Verify that the online store builder you choose accepts various payment options, such as net banking, credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets, and so on.
• Templates — Pick an e-commerce website builder that offers a wide selection of themes with modern, simple designs. Additionally, avoid picking a platform with just one or two excellent choices, you want many alternatives so you aren’t stuck if you want to update or adjust your website template.
• Integrations — The best e-commerce website builders do more than just let you sell your goods; they’re great for managing client interactions, boasting features you’ll find with the best CRM software tools, letting you build customer connections with functionality like email marketing integration.
• Reports and Analytics — In-depth insight is essential for managing your store and calculating taxes and sales. This helps you understand the products that sell the best online. Find a platform that offers important data to help you track sales, traffic, and income to identify your best and least selling products to improve your store.
• Marketing Tools — If you want to supercharge your marketing operations, improve unproductive processes, and raise ROI, you need powerful marketing features in your e-commerce website builder to streamline manual activities and achieve marketing ROI quickly and cheaply whilst saving thousands on marketing.

Can I Build An еCommеrcе Sitе for Frее?

However, if you’re really looking to sell online and to establish a name for yourself, there’s hardly a better way than invеsting in a paid eCommerce website builder because the free versions don’t come with a whole lot of e-commerce support. For example, most don’t allow you to list any products, and even if some do, the option to accept payments for the sales made is absent.

Paid subscriptions, even cheap ones, are far more equipped to handle an online store as they unlock advanced capabilities such as SEO analytics, unlimited storage, collaboration with team members, stock photos, and bеttеr customеr support. Plus, these allow you to offer a more professional online shopping еxpеriеncе for your customers, as your online store will have a custom domain, a solid interface, and you can offer shipping assistance.

Compare the Top eCommerce Site Builders

Before we delve deeper into each of our top recommendations, here’s a crisp table highlighting the key differences between each of our top picks so that you can make a quick, informed decision:

Reviews of the Best Online Store Website Builders

Now that you’ve had a glimpse of what’s about to come, here are the detailed rundowns of each of our best website builders, including their best features, pros, cons, and pricing.

1. Wix – Overall, the Best Website Builder for eCommerce

Wix is the best e-commerce builder for those who want to create a unique online store. The credit here goes to Wix’s 900+ templates (easily the most on the market right now) and the liberty it offers to use any payment solution of your choice. That’s right, it doesn’t tie you down with its native payment solutions or compel you to opt for a high-end plan to take advantage of PayPal benefits.

For consultation and service-based businesses like spas or fitness centers, Wix offers unique features, including a dedicated mobile app for customers where they can book your service or talk to your team. It also offers automated reminders to customers through SMS and emails to reduce no-shows. After all, your time is valuable, and Wix doesn’t want you to waste a single second of it.

For ticket-based online platforms (say you have a movie theatre and you’re selling tickets to the show through your website), Wix comes with a dedicated ticket scanning app — Wix Owner — which speeds up the scanning and authentication process of tickets before entry.

Wix isn’t only the best e-commerce site builder, either. It also doubles up as a virtual marketing and publicity partner that helps new businesses gain footing in a competitive market. To keep customers coming back, it helps you manage a loyalty program powered by Smile.io — where you can offer points, discounts, and coupons to loyal customers.

The loyalty platform works in collaboration with KudoBuzz to help you build credibility. Basically, it allows you to collect and display positive reviews from your customers through the KudoBuzz app, which is available on Wix’s app market. You can easily add it from there and choose where you want to display the reviews on your website through its no-code site builder.

2. GoDaddy – Best Online Ecommerce Website Builder for Security + Shipping

GoDaddy is undoubtedly one of the best cheap website hosting and domain providers — plus, it comes with a stellar ecommerce building service. It collaborates with WooCommerce — one of the world’s biggest open-source ecommerce solutions — to help you build an online store.

Its ecommerce plan heavily focuses on security, a parameter that’s often overlooked by other ecommerce builders. To start with, along with the usual free SSL certificate, as with the best antivirus software solutions, GoDaddy provides daily malware scans, immediately removing anything suspicious. Assistance is also provided on repairing hacked stores and daily backups of your website to ensure that even in the unlikely event that your store is attacked by malware, the damage will be minimal.

Another major benefit of using GoDaddy for your online store is shipping assistance. While it’s true that almost every ecommerce builder provides shipping assistance, none of them is as comprehensive as GoDaddy. Let’s start with the types of shipping.

Along with the usual carrier-based delivery and in-store pickup, there’s a third option known as “Local Delivery.” Under this, you can demarcate a certain area that’s local to your business, and the shipping charges will be reduced accordingly.

Reduced shipping charges mean cheaper bills which in turn will entice more local customers to your business. And secondly, there are multiple ways to calculate your shipping charge, for example, you can: a) charge a flat fee for all orders, b) a fixed percentage of the price, or c) charge based on the product’s weight.

You can also leave the calculation of shipping charges to a third-party provider like USPS (United States Postal Service) or UPS (United Parcel Service). But wait, there’s more: on some products, you can also provide free shipping. This benefit will be available to all customers buying that product, regardless of their region.

If you want to appease the customers paying for shipping, you can also create discount coupons for them under the Marketing Tools section. So, as you can see, you have a lot of options, and although you’ll find similar shipping cost options in other providers like Wix, none provide such a comprehensive, all-in-one list of options.

3. Webador – Best eCommerce Website Builder for Small Business Needs

Webador is the ideal e-commerce builder for small businesses strapped for cash, as it comes with a feature-rich free plan, and although the free plan doesn’t come with ecommerce support, all of its premium plans, including the ones ideal for e-commerce are free to use for the first three months thanks to the massive free trial.

What’s more, it doesn’t charge any commission on your transactions. Many other e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify, charge a certain percentage of your sales, which varies from plan to plan. However, with Webador, you keep 100% of the profit from each sale.

On each plan, you also get access to free stock images — a carefully curated database of over 100,000 images that you can use for product listing or promotional activities. Webador is a top choice here, as without this, product and marketing images can easily cost you thousands of dollars. Plus, it’s not just a financial benefit, but it’ll also save you the hassle of scheduling shoots.

Unlike the common industry standard of providing free hosting for a year, Webador comes with free hosting support on each plan that’s available for as long as the plan is active. A rare and noteworthy addition that’s certainly worth mentioning.

That said, one minor issue you might face is product listing limits. On the Pro plan, you can only list 10 products at once – none in the Lite plan. However, if you upgrade to the Business plan, which only costs $9 more, you can add unlimited products at once. This is another significant benefit of using Webador because platforms like Wix and GoDaddy limit your listings to 50K and 5K, respectively.

4. Squarespace – Tons of Templates for Different Types of E-commerce Sites

Squarespace is one of the easier e-commerce website builders, ideal for beginners or growing websites that need a lot of professional help but can’t afford to hire experts. To start with, when building a site, you’ll need to choose the right template. Squarespace’s templates have been optimized to work with different types of e-commerce stores – product-based, service-based, you name it.

However, how do you know what template to choose? Squarespace gives you 20+ industry filters and 14 goals/purposes to pick from. The purposes are diverse; you could want a site to sell online courses, take donations, or sell memberships. This helps you narrow down your options so that you quickly find the perfect design. And, of course, you can then edit it to match your brand’s theme.

If you’re looking to set up a service or content-based e-commerce store, you’ll require a few extra features. For instance, your customers may need to talk to you before they book a session. In that case, you can use Squarespace’s online appointment booking feature, which lets you integrate your calendar with your website.

This way, your customers can see your available dates and book a meeting with you directly – no unnecessary email threads or back-and-forth required. Just like GoDaddy, Squarespace also helps you spread the word about your products through its built-in marketing and SEO tools.

For email marketing, Squarespace provides you with templates that you can use to customize to reflect your brand’s overall theme. Editing these is super easy, too. Like on the website, you get a drag-and-drop builder that lets you add text, buttons, and images. The option to directly drag and link your best-selling products from the listings to the email is a nifty add-on.

5. Shopify – Dedicated eCommerce Builder With Lots of Automation Options

The Shopify website builder is the most popular platform for building and running online stores, and rightly so. Over 1.7 million businesses have made over $200 billion in sales from their Shopify websites alone. Not much more needs to be said, but let’s take a closer look at what’s noteworthy about Shopify.

The Shopify Flow stands out — it’s a low-code editor that lets you create custom automation processes to streamline daily mundane tasks. For instance, to minimize fraud, you can create a process that automatically notifies you if the shipping and billing names and addresses don’t match, especially for an expensive order.

Similarly, you can create an automated process that adds a freebie or an extra discount if the final bill surpasses a certain amount. Since the Shopify Flow can be customized, the possibilities are truly endless. Beyond this, Shopify is the perfect e-commerce builder for online stores with international markets.

You’ll find features like multilingual websites on other providers like Webador, but their features are a bit scattered. Shopify provides an all-in-one toolkit that’ll help you spread out in the international market. This toolkit includes:

• An automatic optimizing tool that tweaks the pricing according to the location and imposes taxes or duties as necessary by the local laws.
• An option to add custom web addresses to pages optimized for local search queries. You can also redirect your customers from the main page of your site to these subdomains so that they can enjoy a localized buying experience.
• A built-in translation tool that detects the customer’s geographic location and gives them the option to translate your website into their local language.

There’s a lot to love about the Shopify website builder, however, it’s worth noting that transaction fees are high (0.5%-2%), and the free version lacks template options, so you may end up having a site that looks like many others using the free version, so it’s best to get your money’s worth and opt for a paid plan, of which there are many.

6. Square – Easy-to-Use Website Builder for Flash Sales and Product Drops

Square is ideal for those who don’t want to settle for a plain and boring website. Making a business successful takes a lot more than just listing your products, and Square will help you spice things up. If you want regular product listings to catch a user’s attention, the “Scheduled Item Update” feature will be your friend.

You can use this to do product drops or flash sales every once in a while. And NO, you won’t have to stay up at odd hours to execute these events – you can simply schedule them far in advance so that you can make profits while you’re asleep.

To take it a notch higher, you can also let your customers pre-order a certain product for a specific date and time in the future. Usually, these additional functionalities require complex coding, but not with Square, as the options come ready to be implemented – a few clicks is all it needs from your end.

If your products are expensive, you might want to help your customers finance the purchase. That’s why Square accepts AfterPay — a buy-now-pay-later service that lets your customers pay in four interest-free installments while you get paid right away. This is ideal for businesses that can’t afford to have outstanding payments yet want their customers to have an EMI-like option.

Coming to site design, all of the templates are mobile-friendly, optimized to fit the unique aspect ratio of mobile devices, giving your customers an app-like feeling even when they’re visiting your site via a browser.

Shipping, too, is fairly simple. Some e-commerce builders support direct shipping and some support in-store pick. But Square provides you with a comprehensive package with three options:

• You can hire a third-party shipping service, and Square will help you print the shipping labels, or
• Have your own staff deliver the product, or
• Offer in-store pick-up to the customer

The last two options cost a nominal fee, but Square makes up for that by giving you the ability to process these deliveries and track their progress on your Square dashboard.

7. Ucraft – Powerful eCommerce Builder With Password-Protected Pages

Ucraft’s biggest USP is its password-protected pages. It lets you put custom passwords on pages whose content you wish to keep private. This feature works best for high-end brands that only cater to a selected group of people.

For instance, it could be a page of limited edition products reserved for premium customers. Similarly, if you have a special product page for your employees where they can use employee discounts, you can password-protect it to keep it away from the rest of your audience.

Another way it helps you appease customers is through tax exemption. E-commerce builders like Weebly help you calculate the sales tax on each purchase. However, do customers really like paying taxes? Absolutely not. Ucraft helps you identify certain products where you can legally reduce or remove taxes for the customer. This can entice customers to shop more in your store.

When it comes to the invoice, Ucraft gives you a lot of freedom and control. You can create custom invoices for each order. Although we don’t recommend this for mass orders, you can use this feature to personalize the bill for your VIP customers. You can also add or remove handling fees or charge Reverse VAT – a system in which your customer will be liable to pay VAT, not you.

Other features are quite basic. But it’s worth noting that just like Wix and Squarespace, Ucraft too lets you sell digital products. It integrates with Printly, which offers print-on-demand services. Other than that, it also supports dropshipping, in case you don’t want the hassle of inventory management. Plus, supported marketplaces include eBay, Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram.

8. IONOS – Cheapest eCommerce Builder

IONOS is the cheapest website builder for ecommerce on our list today – its Plus plan starts at just $1/month for 12 months. Creating a store on IONOS is super easy, too, and it doesn’t require any coding knowledge to use. All you need is a vision for your online store and a little patience to learn your way around its drag-and-drop building tool so that you can make the most of it.

However, to help you beat your competitors, IONOS has joined hands with MyWebsite Now which negates the need to interact with any site-building tools – you’ll get a readymade website prepared by their in-house experts. This tool also integrates with your IONOS e-commerce account and tracks your competitor’s social media and Google activity 24/7 so that you always know what they are up to.

One of its biggest selling points is the integrated AI text generator. Text, after all, is a significant component of your site. The copy is what will get your customers hooked and help them out with queries. If you don’t have the time or expertise to write all that, consider using IONOS’s text generator.

All that you have to do is enter the type of business you’re engaged in and the topic of the page you want to create and hit “Generate.” IONOS will instantly produce uniquely curated text for your site.

Apart from that, you’ll have your own in-built site analytics tool that churns out crucial insights into your site sales performance to know which products are selling the best and understand your customers’ tastes to invest in products that better align with their needs. You’ll also get automated suggestions on how to improve your sales.

9. Weebly – Free eCommerce Builder with Tons to Offer on Paid Plans

Weebly comes with a rich free plan. Unlike other free e-commerce plans that put a limit on how many products you can list at once, Weebly is one of the few providers that lets you sell unlimited products even on the free plan. It’s geared to make you more money, as the more products you have, the more revenue you can make.

Another surprising benefit of the free plan is Weebly’s automatic tax calculator. This in-built calculator is well-versed in sales tax laws, meaning it can smartly locate your customers’ locations and add taxes to their purchases accordingly.

The only thing that might not suffice in the free plan, apart from the absence of the option to sell digital goods or accept payments via PayPal, is customer support from the Weebly team. Under this plan, you’ll get chat, email support, and access to their community forum. If you want priority or phone support, we recommend upgrading to the Personal, Professional, or Performance plans.

Needless to say, the paid plans provide more than just better customer support. You can connect your store to a custom domain to build a unique identity for your store, and they offer professionally-done shipping labels and cost calculators so that you don’t have to worry about the logistics of the deliveries. Item reviews, abandoned card emails, advanced eCommerce insights, and business password protection are a few other notable features.

10. BigCommerce – Best for Large eCommerce Stores

BigCommerce is ideal for large organizations that want their entire team onboard. That’s because it’s one of the few e-commerce builders to provide dedicated staff accounts. The difference between an owner account and a staff account is that only the store owner can access the entire control panel, whereas staff access can be limited.

You can permit them to access areas concerning their job while keeping them away from other parts of your store. Separate accounts also help you check their responsibilities and activities individually so that you can streamline the workflow better.

Another reason why we recommend BigCommerce for large businesses is that it lets you create and manage multiple storefronts. In simple terms, you can manage multiple stores from the same account. Let’s take the example of the popular Indian brand Nykaa.

This company has two separate websites — one that sells clothes (under Nykaa Fashion) and another that sells makeup and skincare. If you want something like this, you can use BigCommerce’s multi-storefront feature to manage both your businesses from one place.

Along with managing your online store independently, you can also connect it to Amazon, eBay, and Walmart — some of the biggest online marketplaces in the world to tap into the global market. The best part is you won’t have to manage multiple dashboards. All your orders and shipping on these platforms can be handled directly from BigCommerce.

Important Factors to Considеr Whеn Choosing An Onlinе Storе Buildеr

Choosing the right online store builder is important for any business owner who wants to sell products online. Here we’ll walk you through the most important factors to consider when choosing an online store builder:

SEO Features 

A platform with robust SEO features allows you to optimize product descriptions, meta tags, URLs, and other critical elements that search engines use to index and rank your pages. Choose an online store builder with strong SEO to boost your eCommerce business’s visibility and attract a more targeted audience.

Online Reviews

Our reviews offer candid feedback about the builder’s usability, features, customer support, and overall performance, helping you make an informed decision that aligns with your business needs.

We bring a transparent picture of a platform’s reliability and effectiveness to help you understand each one’s strengths and weaknesses to accurately anticipate how well it’ll suit your eCommerce aspirations.

Use Cases

When choosing a platform for your online store, it’s important to consider your specific needs. Some platforms are better suited if you’re after the best website builder for small businesses, as these are designed for niche markets, while others are designed for larger enterprises.

By evaluating how you plan to use the platform, you can ensure that it provides the necessary tools for your product range, target audience, and growth goals. This will also help you anticipate any challenges or opportunities that arise as your online store expands.

Hosting

Some builders, like Webador, are hosted solutions, meaning your store is hosted on the platform’s servers, while others allow self-hosting, giving you full ownership of your data and the ability to scale as needed.

Ease Of Use

An intuitive and user-friendly platform simplifies setting up and managing your online store, eliminating the need for extensive technical expertise. This means you can focus more on growing your business, curating your products, and engaging with customers rather than grappling with complex coding or design tasks. A user-friendly interface also facilitates quicker updates, additions, and modifications, ensuring your store remains dynamic and responsive to market changes.

Pricing 

The costs associated with building and maintaining an e-commerce website can vary widely based on your chosen platform, the features you require, and any additional services you might need. It’s not only about the initial investment but also about understanding the potential costs as your business grows.

Hidden fees, transaction charges, or limitations on product numbers could impact your bottom line. Choose an online store builder with affordable pricing that meets your needs for a successful e-commerce venture.

How to Build a Professional eCommerce Site

Creating an eCommerce website may seem overwhelming, but it’s a breeze with Wix. It’s a simple and user-friendly website builder that lets you build a stunning and practical online store. This step-by-step guide will teach you how to build eCommerce website using Wix.

Step 1 — Sign Up and Choose a Plan

Go to the Wix website and sign up for an account. Wix offers various pricing tiers with different features and capabilities. Run through each and choose a plan that suits your eCommerce needs.

Step 2 — Sеlеct a Tеmplatе

After signing up, you’ll be prompted to choose a template for your online store. Wix provides a range of eCommerce templates that you can customize — simply browse the templates and select the one that best suits your brand and style.

Step 3 — Customizе Your Tеmplatе

After you’ve picked your template, it’s time to change it to match your brand and style. Make it special using the Wix Editor to change colors, fonts, images, and layouts.

Step 4 — Add еCommеrcе Fеaturеs

Click on the “Add” button in the left sidebar and select “Online Store” to add eCommerce functionality to your website. Set up your store settings, including currency, shipping options, and tax rules.

Step 5 — Add Products

Navigate to your dashboard and click on “Products.” Add your products by providing details such as title, description, price, and images. You can also organize products into categories.

Step 6 — Sеt Up Paymеnt and Shipping

Configure your payment options. Wix supports various payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe, amongst others. Define your shipping options, rates, and delivery methods.

Step 7 — Dеsign Your Product Pagеs

Customize your product pages to showcase your items effectively. Add images, product descriptions, and any other necessary details. Build essential pages like your About Us, Contact, and FAQs page to offer more information to your customers.

Step 8 — Connеct Domain and Publish

Choose a domain name for your store (you can purchase one through Wix or connect an existing domain). Once satisfied with your website, click the “Publish” button to make it live.

Conclusion | What is the Best eCommerce Website Builder On the Market in 2023?

Our list of the best eCommerce website builders includes everything — from easy drag-and-drop builders for basic online stores to more complex and complete professional website builders. There are free, affordable, and even premium options if your memo is a readymade website for a reasonable price.

However, Wix is a no-brainer when it comes to picking the best of the lot. With several unique features for service industries, Wix also serves as your virtual marketing and publicity partner. You can also build a loyal customer base with its Smile.io loyalty program — there’s just so much on offer. Try Wix now with the free plan and 14-day free trial.

еCommеrcе Wеbsitе Buildеr FAQs