6 Best Ecommerce Website Builders (2024 Updated)

E-commerce
Updated on: 23 Oct, 2024 19:15 PM

Introduction

Check out this blog to learn the list of the best e-commerce website builders to set up a reliable website for your e-commerce business.

It’s 2024, and the world of e-commerce continues to evolve and expand every single day. It offers you a wide range of platforms for the best online shopping experience, from the biggest industry giants to all the latest start-ups. E-commerce websites are demonstrating cutting-edge technologies. In this era of digital marketing, shopping has become the most convenient form of activity, from wherever you want or when you want. We are just one click away from the best e-commerce platform to avail the best experience from our own comfort space.

Let’s get started with the top Six e-commerce website builders for 2024. In this article, we will discuss in detail each website, its price, advantages and disadvantages, and more.

6 Best E-commerce Website Builders for 2024

1. Shopify
2. Square
3. Ecwid by Lightspeed
4. BigCommerce
5. WooCommerce
6. Wix

1. Shopify

Shopify is a name that has been big in the market for more than a decade with a major market share of 16.36% and with more than 4 million stores developed via this platform, it's almost impossible to find another best option for almost all the small businesses that are in the process of getting their stores set up online so they can run quickly and efficiently.

Free trial version

You can sign up for a free 3-day trial, during which you can get a chance to explore and decide what's best for you and how important it is for you to have your business on this platform. In this trial, you can explore how you can add your products, the look of the store, how you like it, and more.

Advantages of Shopify

1. User Friendly

It’s not important to have hands-on experience to get started with Shopify; it is user-friendly, and very clearly labeled, and every click on the platform will give you the right direction on why it was created, as it is very comprehensive.

2. Free Themes

Shopify gives you all you want, especially the themes. You have free themes and 100+ paid themes, which are priced at a very nominal price, but as Shopify is almost everywhere, this brings you more than 1300 themes, which are also available on Theme Forest.

3. Career map

You can also become a professional designer and make custom themes for your clients, as this brings a lot of opportunities to designers who are passionate about this field.

4. Community and resources

There are more than 4 million stores developed on this platform, which gives you a huge opportunity to make connections with the community. This will help you with extensive documentation and resources to get the most from the platform.

5. Scalability and SEO-Friendly

Shopify scales your business level and offers you the best suitable option, which can be worth your time and money. It is also SEO-friendly, as it offers you all the essential tools and features an SEO would need to get your store ranked in a good position.

Disadvantages of Shopify

1. Monthly Costs

Yes, this can be a little difficult as it’s a monthly subscription module, which means you have to keep paying every month to avail of its services. This may come up as an additional cost if you are already paying for other tools or if your sales are high.

2. Transaction fees

Its limitation to country-wise usage is a challenge; you get charged on every single sales transaction where Shopify payments are unavailable, in addition to the payment processing charge.

3. Dependency on Shopify’s services:

Your activities are tied to Shopify’s services, which means you will have less control over hosting and all other optimizations.

Shopify price

1. Free for the first 3 days as a trial pack and can be availed for $1 for the first 3 months.
2. $105/Month, for a basic plan.
3. $399/Month, for advanced Shopify.

Now with all the above features, we also have Shopify Plus, which is another great platform filled with features that will make things much faster with higher conversion rates, yes this may be expensive than the basic and advanced plan, but the features justify it all:

• It costs $2000/Month, for Shopify plus.
• You can sell more here and get up to 18% higher conversion with shop pay and a 60% faster checkout.
• Future-proof with built-in AR, video, and 3D media on product pages.
• Deliver localized shopping experiences with multiple stores, currencies, and languages, for B2B and DTC.
• Customize your checkout and offer advanced discounts and shipping rates.
• Find high-intent buyers, improve paid ad performance, and decrease conversion costs with Shopify Audiences.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Shopify and Shopify Plus are some of the most powerful and popular e-commerce platforms with lots of advantages; it’s also essential to consider disadvantages too, but ultimately, what matters is the specific business needs; if that ticks, then nothing matters. By evaluating all these options, you will surely be able to come up with a conclusion on how Shopify can make a difference for your site.

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2. Square

If you are looking to organize both your online and offline orders in a single dashboard, you are on the right platform, Square, which will let you sell both in-person and online. This means no jumping between apps as everything is organized on one platform. With a 29.70% share in the market, Square has evolved as one of the biggest competitors.

Advantages of Square

1. Simple setup

Even without any technical knowledge, you can use Square, which is super user-friendly and allows you to run and function all your business activities.

2. Inventory Management

It provides inventory tracking and comes with the best management tools, which will help you keep a close eye on your business stock and its issues.

3. Customer engagement

Square provides you with the best customer relationship management (CRM) tools, which are essential to maintaining the right amount of engagement between you and your customers.

4. Pricing Transparency

The price structure is very clear and pretty straightforward; it has no hidden fees or any contracts, which makes it very appealing to small businesses.

5. Point of sale system

Square offers the best point-of-sale system, which comes with hardware options that include card readers and registers, which will make all you’re in-person transactions seamless and completely safe.

Disadvantages of Square

1. Hardware costs

White Square's offers are very affordable, but its initial purchase for card readers and registers will add up for projects that will need multiple devices or have unique hardware requirements.

 2. Data portability

Transitioning from Square is one of the pressing challenges, as it takes a lot to move or transfer your data away from Square. This will surely be a disadvantage when you plan to switch to a different platform.

3. Customer support

There has been news on how some users had mixed experiences with the support team, with a longer waiting period for a response, which has led to users not getting their issues resolved.

Square Price

1. Square can be used for free with services which include

• website building.
• Sync with Square POS and more.
• Pickup, local delivery, and shipping.
• Sell on social and accept multiple payment types.

2. Then there is a plus plan with $29/Month with the below services.

• All free plan features are mentioned above.
• New Website themes.
• Expanded site customization and self-service (QR code) ordering.
• Customer accounts, personalized ordering, advanced item settings, and PayPal.
• Subscriptions and Free domain for 1 year.

3. There is a premium plan which is at $79/Month with services included

• All plus plan features as mentioned above.
• Lower processing fee rates and real-time shipping rates.
• Premium customer care support
• Waived in-house delivery fees.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Square is one of the most versatile platforms for both online and in-person sales, largely appealing to small and medium-sized projects. Careful consideration of the above-mentioned factors will help you determine why you need Square for your business.

3. Ecwid by Lightspeed

Ecwid by Lightspeed was founded in 2009 and has 1.45% of the market share in the e-commerce platform category. It is a robust E-commerce business platform that empowers all sizes of organizations to run their online stores with absolute ease. It's backed by the Lightspeed brand, which is very unique and renowned. Ecwid offers user-friendly solutions to stakeholders, small businesses, and established retailers who are looking to expand their digital presence overall. With a wide range of features, Ecwid has proven to be versatile and reliable, which helps you reach a global customer base and continue growing your business successfully.

Advantages of Ecwid by Lightspeed

1. Integration flexibility and user-friendly

Its seamless integrations with its existing websites and popular CMS platforms like WordPress and others allow you to develop and add an online store to your website easily. That is how the interface is designed to be user-friendly, which can be accessed by both beginners and experienced e-commerce entrepreneurs.

2. Mutlichannel Selling

You can get opportunities to expand your reach and sell on multiple platforms, which include social media, your websites, and marketplaces, which can all be managed by a single dashboard. It is also mobile-friendly, which assures you of a smooth shopping experience for customers on many devices.

3. Inventory Management

It helps you forget all the catalogs and helps you track your inventory. You can not only track that but you can also get notified when the inventory is low and needs your attention. This will help your smooth functionality without any wastage of idea time.

4. Global shipping

It has multiple shipping platforms across the globe, which allows customers to access and avail of the service at their convenient location from anywhere in the world, which helps you expand your business worldwide.

5. Customization

Ecwid lets you customize the look and feel of the online presence you are looking for in your store, which works well with your brand's aesthetics and offers you a wide range of design options accordingly.

Disadvantages of Ecwid by Lightspeed

1. Complex Tax Handling

Handling complex tax scenarios is challenging in Ecwid, for which you may require additional plugins and workarounds, which will add a little.

2. Transaction fees

This truly depends on your chosen payment method, as it charges a fee for the transaction made, which can impact your overall profit margins in the end.

Ecwid by Lightspeed Price

1. Free for standard features
2. A venture plan for professional features starting from $15/month.
3. Ecwid business plan at $35/Month.
4. Ecwid unlimited plan at $99/Month.
5. Transaction fees depend on the payment destination 

Conclusion

Overall, Ecwid by Lightspeed is a very comprehensive and dynamic e-commerce platform that truly stands out for its user-friendly features, versatility, and most importantly, integration capabilities. It doesn’t matter if you are new or experienced in the inline retail world; the tools and support are in such a way that they can be accessed by everyone in the digital marketplace.

4. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the leading e-commerce platforms, with more than 150 stores worldwide and a loyal customer base of about 60,000 active users who are enjoying its great features and benefits. With a powerful and flexible set of tools, BigCommerce lets entrepreneurs and established brands create and manage their online stores seamlessly. It offers you a robust and scalable path to growth and success.

Advantages of BigCommerce

 1. Scalability and Robust Features

BigCommerce is designed in such a way that it grows how your business grows, whether small or large. It is there with you and will accommodate itself with changing needs as and when you expand. It also provides a great range of features that are built in, which include multichannel selling, the best inventory management, and customizable templates, assuring you of never having a third-party plugin.

2. Mobile optimization

It is designed and interfaced in such a way that it can be accessed via a mobile phone, which automatically increases the number of users and shoppers, as nothing gets better than shopping from your convenient spot.

3. Secure and Reliable

BigCommerce is very particular with its security; it has features like SSL certificates and hosting, which eventually provide absolute peace of mind for both customers and yourself.

4. Abandoned Cart Recovery

Here, you have nothing to worry about losing your sales conversions, as BigCommerce adds tools to help you recover your sales from abandoned cards, which will help boost your conversion rates at their best.

5. Analytics and Reporting

On this platform, you are offered in-depth analytics and reporting tools that will help you track and optimize your store's online performance. It is also very SEO-friendly, as the platform is well-equipped with SEO tools that will help you improve your store's search engine visibility.

Disadvantages of BigCommerce

1. Availing abandoned data

In comparison with other BigCommerce competitors, you have to pay quite a lot to avail of abandoned cart functionality. It may sound like a lot, but in the end, it's also worth it, as this will also help you boost your conversion rates.

2. Limitation

Certain limits are placed on annual online sales, and when that exceeds them, you’ll have to upgrade to a more expensive monthly plan, so that can be a little bit of a challenge financially.

Price of BigCommerce

The price is divided into plans, as mentioned below.

1. For the BigCommerce Standard plan, the price is $39/month.
2. For the BigCommerce Plus plan, the price is $105/month.
3. For the BigCommerce Pro plan, the price is $399.month.
4. Last but not least, for BigCommerce Enterprise, there is nothing fixed as this depends on your business requirements.

Conclusion

Overall, we can safely say BigCommerce provides the best e-commerce functionality at a reasonable price point. Its entry-level plan offers more robust built-in features than many competitive products in comparison, and many other features that let you build multiple stores using just one account, give you a platform that represents particularly good value for your money, and more.

5. WooCommerce

WooCommerce, a leading e-commerce platform with close to 3.9 million online stores, is changing the look and feel of the online retail store business, which also has a 20.1% market share. WooCommerce is an open-source and very flexible software solution that is exclusively built for WordPress-based websites. It’s mostly used to create online e-commerce shops. Also, with this software solution, you can turn their regular website into a fully functioning online store, complete with all the necessary e-commerce features. WooCommerce also allows users to manage their online stores conveniently. It offers setting up your product displays and taking care of orders.

Advantages of WooCommerce

1. Flexibility

One of the key reasons why WooCommerce is so popular is because business owners can use it to sell a variety of products. You can sell any physical items, from furniture to skin care products, and download products like novels or any digital-based e-learning and products like Amazon affiliates. It has high scalability, which allows your businesses, which could be of any size, to successfully set up shop.

2. Unlimited customizations

WooCommerce helps you build a platform that is specific to the type of products you will offer. It gives you infinite free plugins. The number of themes offered here is very impressive. Even if you are unable to find a theme that is not to your taste, you can straight away select something from many that is quite close and customize each of its sections, from the header to the overall look.

3. Professional Aesthetic

One of the main advantages is that you get access to the warehouse when you can easily track the whereabouts and function accordingly, which also helps your customers go smoothly. Also,  the tools make it look very authentic right from the beginning, so customers also get access to track their orders.

4. Security

WooCommerce, like every professional organization, is very particular with its security and its features, which provide absolute peace of mind for both customers and yourself. The winning point is that being one of the most popular platforms, hackers are always around to get things compromised, but having the right secure gateways assures no issues.

Disadvantages of WooCommerce

1. Full Control of your data

It’s always risky to have your data with any third party; this way, you might have chances of losing your data too when things don’t end well on their end, but with WooCommerce, you are assured of backup just in case anything happens. This will not be a loss to either of the parties.

2. Should be a WordPress User

One of the drawbacks is that it can only be accessed on WordPress sites. Yes, it may come as a presumption, but this is the truth, as the plugins are exclusively designed to be worked on WordPress and are not compatible with non-WordPress sites, unfortunately.

3. Lower Market Share

As compared to the other major e-commerce websites, WooCommerce is a little less popular, which can affect the outcome to some extent.

Conclusion

With this, we can fairly say that it won’t be fair if you are deciding based on popularity. As WooCommerce has a lot to offer, you need to look at the features and characteristics of the platform that will benefit your company. So, if you are looking for great speed and access, then this could be the right platform that optimizes well with WordPress.

6. Wix

Wix is one of the most versatile and user-friendly website-building platforms, which empowers all individuals or organizations to create and develop stunning websites, especially those who are not well-versed in coding. One of the key features of the platform is that it has over 200 million users who avail of its services and has empowered more than 7 million websites so far. There are also over 5.5 million premium users on the platform, with 4.5 stars as its rating, holding 43% of the e-commerce platform market share in the US.

Advantages of Wix

1. User-friendly platform

The procedure for creating a website on Wix is simple. Someone who is not well versed in technology can develop and launch a professional website at the earliest, which is a key feature to look for when picking between multiple ranges of platforms. The usage is very easy and understandable, as the Wix platform outperforms many other platforms, especially for web design purposes. If you’re developing a content-focused site that needs small e-commerce integration or has a limited range of products with no plans to expand, Wix may be the best choice.

2. Templates

Its attractive templates are very useful, and you will like all the offerings from it. Yes, sometimes it may not be the exact match, which can be a little bit of an inconvenience, but the pre-made templates and the wide range, which are fresh, modern, and very professional, will leave you impressed as they are well-made and scaled accordingly with lots of research. This is very quick and saves a lot of time too.

3. SEO Support

Just a website is not the end game today; you need to make sure that you have the right traffic at your store, Wix helps you with solutions by getting you the right help to maximize the visibility to grow sales by keeping it an SEO-friendly website, which will lay the groundwork to develop a robust lead-generating funnel for increased sales ultimately.

4. Integrations and Tools

Developing a website via Wix gives you access to many other useful options. You get integrated payments, which are available with almost every business and e-commerce plan. Wix also has a tool to help you quickly create a business logo. It's also important to keep in mind that some capabilities of Wix sites depend on the plan level you choose, but having said that, all the plans come with a comprehensive catalog of resources and tools to build professional websites.

Disadvantages of Wix

1. Lack of flexibility

As mentioned earlier, Wix does provide a lot of customization, but it also comes with certain limitations at the same time, which can get a little tricky, like not being able to change the templates once you have built your website. This can lead to your business not having the right scalability for the long term.

2. Limitations with Monetizing

With a basic plan, you cannot avail of certain features like multi-currency sales and selling on marketplaces, but if you want to avail of features like subscriptions, drop shipping support, and advanced shipping, you will have to upgrade yourself to the Business Unlimited plan, which will cost you $32/month.

Wix Price

1. It has a free plan.
2. Light plan, which costs $16/Month.
3. Core Plan, which costs $27/Month.
4. Business plan, which costs $32/Month.
5. Business elite plan, which costs $159/Month.
6. At last, the enterprise plan can be customized accordingly.

Conclusion

If you plan on having Wix for your business, I suggest that you get the right security and privacy features. It could be policies for your privacy that comply with regulations, as it is very important to be informed and keep informed for good clarity.

To Wrap Up

In the rapidly evolving landscape of online commerce, the six best e-commerce website builders for 2024 offer unparalleled versatility and user-friendly interfaces. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or an established business, these platforms empower you to create stunning, functional, and secure online stores. With features ranging from customizable templates to robust payment options, these e-commerce website builders provide the essential tools for success in the dynamic world of digital retail. Elevate your online presence and drive sales with these top-tier solutions.

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