Once you have decided on your product niche and industry for your eCommerce business, the next step would be to build a robust eCommerce site – this is where you need an eCommerce website builder.
The best eCommerce website builder provides you will all the essential tools and features to build, manage, and grow your eCommerce site. From designing the pages to sales and marketing, you can start an eCommerce business within hours rather than weeks and months.
Some platforms are simple and basic, whereas others are advanced, for which you may need technical skills to build your eCommerce site. And that’s the beauty of this growing eCommerce space – you have many options to consider.
However, finding the perfect eCommerce website builder among hundreds of options can be overwhelming. That’s why we did the leg work for you and picked some of the best eCommerce site builders you can use to build your online store.
Keep reading till the end, and I’m sure you will find the perfect site builder you are looking for.
How to choose an eCommerce website builder?
An eCommerce website builder makes it super easy to build your online store from scratch. Whether you want to sell physical products or digital downloads, you can launch a fully functional storefront with minimal effort.
However, while choosing an eCommerce website builder, you must keep in mind the following factors –
- Technical skills: Whether you have to simply drag-and-drop elements or need coding skills to build the site.
- Design & Customization: The level of freedom that the eCommerce website builder gives you in modifying colors, buttons, fonts, content, layout, header, footer, and navigation.
- Product Catalog: The eCommerce website builder must be flexible enough to handle your product catalog based on its size.
- Mobile-responsive: No matter what device your customers use, your website should be fast and highly responsive
- Budget-friendly: Check whether the platform fits within your budget. With the platforms’ pricing plans, you may have to consider the cost of developing and managing the site.
- Integrations: Ability to seamlessly integrate payments, shipping, and inventory to enhance customer experience.
Now, before you decide on the best eCommerce site builder for your business, make sure you have a clear idea of what you want from the platform for your eCommerce site.
Top 10 Ecommerce Website Builders
Based on the above-mentioned factors, here are our top 10 picks –
- Shopify – Overall best eCommerce site builder
- WooCommerce – Best free eCommerce Site builder
- Wix – Easy eCommerce site builder
- Squarespace – Best eCommerce builder for artists
- BigCommerce – Best Scalable eCommerce site builder
- Weebly – Affordable eCommerce website builder
- Ecwid – Free eCommerce site Builder
- Square Online – Best eCommerce site builder for offline stores
- Webflow – Advanced Website Building Platform
- Hostinger – Cheapest eCommerce website builder
Want to dive deeper? Let’s get started.
1. Shopify
By empowering more than 1M eCommerce businesses, Shopify is the most popular eCommerce website builder built upon the WYSIWYG content management system.
With access to a fully-featured CMS, you can take complete control over whatever you build with the platform. Starting from website navigation, content pages, and design to uploading products and managing payments, its drag-and-drop builder will set up all the things for you within minutes.
It also helps in improving the overall functionality of your online store via its 3900+ free and premium applications in its app store. These apps help elevate your store’s marketing aspects, and search engine ranking, target abandoned carts, and map your customer journey. I’ve mentioned, just to name a few!
On the whole, Shopify enables anyone to sell anything on the vast sea of the internet without needing any technical knowledge. Besides, with the pool of stunning Shopify themes, you don’t have to worry about the store design as well – just install, customize, and be ready to go live!
Key Features –
- 100+ customizable free and premium themes
- Assign inventory to wherever you store your products
- Free SSL certificate
- Built-in mobile commerce shopping cart
- Integration with 100 payment gateways
- Takes care of your hosting needs
- Sell on multiple marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy
Limitations –
- Incurs transaction fees
- Lacks in-built features – extra costs on 3rd-party app subscriptions.
Pricing Plans – Shopify offers a 3-day free trial and after that, you just have to pay $1/month for 3 months. The Paid plans start at $29/month and extend up to $299/month. It also places transaction fees of 2.0%, 1.0%, and 0.5% on its plans.
Further reading –
2. WooCommerce
If you want to transform your WordPress site into a full-fledged online store, there’s no better option than WooCommerce. It is a free, open-source, customizable plugin that provides numerous functionalities to create a robust online store.
You can quickly integrate the WooCommerce plugin into your WordPress site and build your online store.
You can sell whatever you want, manage payments securely, configure shipping, and promote your products via Facebook Ads, Google listings, and third-party marketplaces like Amazon, Pinterest, and eBay.
To improve the existing functionality of your online store, you have access to thousands of free and paid WooCommerce-compatible plugins – page builder, payment methods, inventory management, you can find plugins for everything!
Since WooCommerce is built on a REST API, it is highly scalable, extensible, and has the potential to integrate with any software or tools you need for your store. If you’re a WordPress expert, setting up all these things with WooCommerce will be a hassle-free process.
Key Features –
- Complete control over design and customization
- Highly WordPress friendly
- Improve conversions with carts and checkout blocks
- Access to WooCommerce Payments – a fully integrated payment solution
- Easily manage orders via the WooCommerce dashboard
- Multichannel selling and POS integrations to seamlessly grow your business
Limitations –
- It might get complex due to arduous coding
- If you integrate more plugins, it impacts your store’s loading speed.
Pricing Plans – WooCommerce is entirely free to use. However, you will have to bear the cost of hosting services, plugins, and themes you will use for your site.
Further Reading –
3. Wix eCommerce
Wix is primarily a website builder catered to bloggers and small businesses. But with the gradual development, it has now stepped into the eCommerce space and has been helping small business owners to build attractive storefronts without touching a piece of code.
With Wix, you can get started in two ways –
- Flexible page editor – Customize product pages, signup forms, cart, thank you pages, and transitions.
- Wix ADI – An artificial design intelligence solution that automatically builds the website within minutes upon answering a few questions
You can choose either of the ways to launch your eCommerce website. So it’s no surprise that the entire process is quick and beginner-friendly.
An added bonanza here is that you can access 500+ customizable templates in many categories like fashion, jewelry, arts, electronics, and many more. It also has a dedicated mobile editor, so your site looks stunning across all device types.
Wix’s simplicity makes it shine as one of the best eCommerce website builders. To be more precise, if you’re looking for an accessible and affordable website builder for your online store, then Wix should be your pick.
Key Features –
- Manage all crucial tasks directly from the dashboard
- Built-in SEO capabilities
- Recover lost sales by sending automated emails
- Free domain for one year
- Unlimited bandwidth and products
- 256-bit SSL encryption
- Increase revenue by selling on social channels
- Tons of integrations via the Wix App Market
- Hassle-free product uploading process via its store builder
Limitations –
- Scalability is limited
- Unlimited video streaming is available only on VIP Plans
- Suitable only for small product catalog
Pricing Plans – Wix offers a 14-day free trial. The Paid plans start at $23/month and scale up to $49/month. It also comes with a money-back guarantee.
Further Reading –
4. Squarespace Commerce
If you want to build a prosperous and captivating online store with more emphasis on design with creative aesthetics to the site, then Squarespace Commerce is your go-to eCommerce website builder.
It is widely known for its award-winning templates as they are crafted by the world’s leading designers. With its easy-to-use page editor, you can customize the theme by managing the style settings, product items, social icons, CTAs, and many more with no web development experience.
It also comes with integrated SEO capabilities to optimize your store’s visibility. It enables you to modify page titles/descriptions, improve site content for rich snippets, manage Google My Business from the dashboard, and automatically create a sitemap to submit to the Search Console.
Bottom line, Squarespace is an easy-to-use eCommerce site builder with stunning pre-made templates that enable you to design beautiful websites and help you grow your business with in-build SEO and marketing tools.
Key Features –
- Build mobile-optimized websites
- Access to premium integrations and blocks
- Complete customization with CSS and Javascript
- Built-in marketing tools
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Sell unlimited products and gift cards
- Fully integrated eCommerce functionalities
- Showcase products with rich merchandising tools
Limitations –
- Transaction fees on the basic plan
- No unlimited video storage
- Limited shipping and payment solutions
Pricing Plans – Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial. The Paid plans start at $33/month and go up to $65/month. A transaction fee of 3% is charged on the basic plan.
Further Reading –
5. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another popular eCommerce website builder best suited for large product catalogs. You can customize your entire site via its no-code page builder or use the advanced customization framework to build a custom online store with CSS or HTML.
What more could you expect? You can also build a personalized site using a flexible modular codebase and conditional logic. Driving more sales is now easier with BigCommerce.
It offers enterprise-grade security and 99.99% uptime, so your website can seamlessly handle peak traffic. Also, with its built-in Google AMP, your web pages tend to load 10x faster on mobile devices, which significantly improves user experience.
Since all the BigCommerce themes have integrated faceted search, you can enable advanced product filtering on your site. The results will dynamically adjust based on selection, allowing your customers to sort and filter the attributes that matter most.
So BigCommerce’s eCommerce website builder is feature-packed, extensive, and optimized for high scalability potential.
Key Features –
- Add unlimited products by specifying product info, storefront details, fulfillment, and SEO
- Sell on Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, Pinterest, eBay, and Amazon
- Enterprise-level security and high uptime
- Streamlined order management system
- Advanced API support to improve functionality
- No transaction fees
- Unlimited products, file storage, and bandwidth on all plans
Limitations –
- Limited mobile support for store management
- Some of the paid themes seem to be expensive
Pricing Plans – BigCommerce offers a 15-day trial. The Pricing plans are based on the sales cap limit. The Paid plans start at $29.95/month and go up to the Enterprise plan.
- Further Reading – BigCommerce review
6. Weebly
Weebly is basically a website builder for starters and non-professionals. Like Wix, it has also stepped into the eCommerce game and helped small businesses grow their online selling in the digital space.
You just have to put only minimal effort as its drag-and-drop page builder will take care of all the processes. You can showcase featured products, categorize items, customize fonts, and define photo display options to attract more eyeballs to your store.
As an eCommerce store owner, you must try to shorten the customer journey and increase sales. Weebly makes this possible by letting you build a one-page checkout process for easy transactions. Further, you can instantly grab attention by adding badges and leveraging social proof by displaying authentic reviews.
Key Features –
- Advanced inventory management tools
- 24×7 management via mobile app
- Free eCommerce hosting
- Create rich product descriptions with slideshows and videos
- Automated abandoned cart emails
- Branded digital gift cards
- Integrated shipping labels
- Increase AOV with coupon codes
- Unlimited storage
Limitations –
- Lack of advanced features
- Automation capabilities can be improved
Pricing Plans – Weebly’s paid pricing plans start at $12/month and extend up to $38/month.
7. Ecwid
Ecwid is a free eCommerce website builder helping 1.6M businesses kickstart their online business. You can promote across various social platforms, improve mobile checkout conversions, and manage everything on the fly via its Android & iOS mobile app.
Another clever way of benefiting from Ecwid is using its plug-and-play store widget for almost every popular website builder.
This means you can add your Ecwid store seamlessly to your existing website and convert it into a fully functional online store within seconds. It works well with WordPress, Joomla, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Adobe Muse, Tumblr, and other CMS and website-building platforms.
Altogether, Ecwid is all about leveraging the peak of simplicity for customizing and launching your online store. It is effortless to use as you can design the store and control all the critical aspects of selling directly to your customers right from the dashboard.
Key Features –
- Zero transaction fees
- Ability to sell simultaneously on multiple sites
- Access to the app market with extensions
- Advanced SEO tools
- Engage with social followers via FB Messenger live chat
- User-friendly eCommerce website builder for novice users
Limitations –
- The free plan allows only up to 10 products
- No customer support on the free plan
- Very simple customization abilities
Pricing Plans – Ecwid’s pricing plans are based on the number of products you can sell in your online store.
It has a free plan that allows only up to 10 products with access to limited features. The Paid plans start at $15/month allowing up to 100 products and go up to the Unlimited plan which lets you sell unlimited products with complete access to all the features.
Further Reading –
8. Square Online
Square is best known for its robust POS system for offline retail stores. However, it also provides an eCommerce website builder that lets you take your offline business online and generate more sales.
With its no-code website builder, you can build your dream storefront without hassle. Also, thanks to its built-in SEO tools, you can reach the right set of target audiences to improve your credibility and trust.
You can highlight your top-selling products, and new items and drastically expand your presence by selling on different channels like Instagram, Facebook Shop, and Google Product listings. This eventually paves the way for higher profit margins and optimized cash flow.
On the whole, Square Online is a fantastic solution for both online stores and those who want to leverage their physical presence into the digital space.
Key Features –
- Allow customers to buy now and pay later via Afterpay
- Automatic sync of online and in-person orders, items, and inventory
- Connect custom domain
- Integration with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Square Pay
- Print shipping labels directly from the Square dashboard
- View all your customer details in one place
Limitations –
- Transaction fees on all pricing plans
- There are no analytics and reporting on the free plan
Pricing Plans – Square Online offers a free plan that lets you sell on social media, manage multiple sites, fulfill orders, and accept donations. The Paid plans start at $12/month and increase up to $72/month. A fee of 2.9% + 30¢ is applied for processing online payments and 2.6% + 30¢ separately on the Premium plan.
9. Webflow
Webflow is an advanced website-building platform that allows you to build eCommerce sites. Its eCommerce website builder is perfectly optimized to create high-end customer experiences and on-branded purchase flows to boost your store conversions.
From featuring your product details to customizing your cart, homepage, and gallery pages, you take complete control with zero coding. You can even upload your logo and modify colors to send branded transactional emails.
An added advantage is that Webflow enables you to build custom landing pages for your campaigns, product launches, coming-soon previews, or advertisements. So you can direct visitors smartly to achieve a specific goal and convert them into potential customers.
Moreover, with dynamic embeds, you can automatically generate SEO titles, and descriptions for product pages, blogs, and other pages, making it an SEO-friendly platform.
In a nutshell, Webflow is an all-in-one eCommerce website builder focused on crafting unique shopping experiences for customers. It is ideal for growing businesses that want out-of-box commerce functionalities.
Key Features –
- Provide custom delivery options
- Create a checkout flow tailored to your product’s type
- Accept payments from over 200+ countries via PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Google Pay
- User-friendly dashboard to track and manage orders
- Easily place all your tax calculations on autopilot
- Discounts and listed sale prices to run promotions
- Built-in social integrations to boost online selling
Limitations –
- Not suitable for small businesses
- Incurs a transaction fee of 0-2%
- Lack of mobile store management
Pricing Plans – Webflow’s entry pricing starts at $29/month when paid annually. However, you need to contact their sales team regarding the complete pricing package.
10. Hostinger Website Builder
Being a new entrant in the website builder space, Hostinger is a hosting platform with a versatile eCommerce website builder with the cheapest pricing plans. It is a new platform but has won the trust of over 2,50,000 entrepreneurs in building and scaling their business ideas.
With its drag-and-drop editor, you can easily include the features, and drag and edit them in the easiest way possible. Alternatively, you can say this as a “What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get” way of building your eCommerce website.
It comes with 100+ customizable and designer-made templates. Whether you want to create a full-fledged online store or a simple one-page website, this set of template collections will suit you the best.
One outstanding aspect is that Hostinger offers access to powerful AI tools to move your eCommerce business to the next level. They are –
- Business Name Generator
- Slogan and Content Generator
- AI Heatmap
- Photo Resizer and Background Remover
- Logo Maker
In general, if you want a beginner-friendly eCommerce website builder loaded with simple to advanced functionalities at the most attractive pricing options, then you can blindly select Zyro.
Key Features –
- Free domain for one year
- Free web hosting
- Messenger and Whatsapp Live Chat
- Access to 70+ payment options
- Send automated marketing emails
- Sell on Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and eBay
- Create remarketing lists on Google and Facebook
Limitations –
- Cannot sell unlimited products
- An application fee of 1% on the Starter plan
Pricing Plans – Hostinger provides website builder with hosting at just $2.79/month
Wrapping Up
Ecommerce website builders simplify the process of building an online store. Rather than starting from scratch with coding and designing every element of the site, you just have to drag-and-drop components, customize pages, integrate apps, and you’re set to hit the consumer market and generate sales online.
I hope this article helped you pick the most suitable eCommerce site builder for your online store. If you are looking for product-specific eCommerce platforms, you may want to check these articles next –
- Best eCommerce platforms for digital products
- Best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping
- Best platforms to sell online courses
