The 9 Best Ecommerce Website Builder Picks (2021)

Starting an online store may seem like a daunting task, but it can be rewarding and insanely profitable when done right. 

A good ecommerce website builder can help you tackle the hassles of ecommerce and get you set up with a beautiful online store, fast. That way, you can impress customers and start making sales immediately.

There are many easy-to-use website builders for online stores that can help you stand out.

In this guide, we’ve compiled a list of the best ecommerce site builders from around the web. Since you have specific needs for your business, we’ve also given a rundown of each website builder’s most useful features. 

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9 best ecommerce website builders

Browse this list of online storefront builders you can use to start your ecommerce business:

The best ecommerce website builder for small businesses looking to grow

Shopify is the easiest and most reliable way to bring your business online. As an ecommerce platform, Shopify makes it simple to build an online store without any coding skills or a big budget. Shopify powers over one million businesses and is known for its affordable pricing, beautiful designs, and helpful marketing tools. 

If you want to create a Shopify store, you can choose from over 100 professional templates with built-in features, such as SSL certifications, domain hosting, abandoned shopping cart recovery, and other powerful tools to help you find customers, make sales, and manage your day-to-day operations. You can sell unlimited products through your ecommerce store and across multiple marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy through Shopify’s native partner integrations. 

Additionally, Shopify Payments makes it easy to take payments online. You can integrate with over 100 payment gateways from around the world, including bitcoin, PayPal, and Shop Pay. There are also over 4,000 free Shopify apps you can use to extend your store’s functionality and sell more online.

Features include: 

Price: Try Shopify free for 14 days, no credit card required. Paid plans start as low as $29/month.

Best ecommerce website maker for brick-and-mortars

3dcart is a simple shopping cart for retailers who want to sell online. Its features aren’t as extensive as other site builders like Shopify or Wix, but with an attractive price, good sales reporting, and mobile-responsive themes, it’s a go-to builder for store owners needing to get online fast.

While 3dcart has some good ecommerce features, you don’t have much creative agency over your stores. Templates are limited, and the builder can be hard to use. 

Features include:

Price: 15-day free trial. Paid plans start at $19/month.

Best free online ecommerce builder for small businesses

Weebly is a basic online storefront builder powered by Square. It’s ideal for small to medium-sized businesses that want a small online store but don’t want to do much maintenance. If you’re a beginner user who doesn’t want to get lost in any technical elements, Weebly’s a good option for you. 

Anyone can build a website on Weebly for free. But you won’t be able to use your own domain name (or get rid of the annoying ads) until you buy a plan. The free plan offers a few solid features, like real-time shipping and coupons, but if you want to grow beyond that, you’ll have to upgrade. 

Business owners who use Square for payments can also check out Square online. Similar to Weebly (and owned by the same company), you can build a professional ecommerce website with no frills in minutes. 

Features include: 

Price. Free. Paid plans start at $6/month.

Best ecommerce website creator for creatives

The next ecommerce site builder on the list is Squarespace. Its drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to use with little technical knowledge. Similar to Wix, it was a traditional website builder first, not an online selling platform, so there can be a small learning curve on the back end when setting up an online store. 

Squarespace offers well-designed templates to start designing your store. Once you choose a template, you can customize the colors, text, and images to align with your brand. However, you can’t sell anything online until you upgrade to a paid plan.

When using Squarespace as your ecommerce solution, you can only accept payments through Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Afterpay. You can sell gift cards and subscriptions when you sign up for the Commerce Advanced plan. 

If you don’t want to deal with setting up Squarespace ecommerce functions, you can always turn your basic website into an online store. For just $9/month, you can add the Shopify Buy Button (a small embedded piece of code) and get access to over 100 payment options, sales and growth tracking, simple shipping integrations, currency support, and more.

Features include: 

Price: 14-day free trial. Basic Commerce plan starts at $26/month. 

Best ecommerce website building software for big companies

BigCommerce is an online storefront builder for enterprise-level companies. It offers web hosting and tons of customization options for tech-savvy business owners who want to scale. You can’t register your domain name through BigCommerce, so you’ll need to buy a domain name elsewhere and connect it to your store. 

BigCommerces advanced features include international selling capabilities, SEO apps and optimized stores, and multichannel sales capabilities on social and online selling sites—but these features come with more complexity. 

Retailers like Grace & Lace found the lack of flexibility and ease of use to be major drawbacks of using BigCommerce. After trying to work with the platform, Grace & Lace decided to move over to Shopify Plus, Shopify’s enterprise solution. This gave it access to powerful business tools and add-ons for its new Shopify Plus store and gave conviction for 20% year-over-year growth since migrating. 

Features include:

Price: 15-day free trial. Paid plans start at $29.95/month. 

Free: Shopify Store Trust Checklist

Shopify’s research team conducted a series of in-depth interviews with North American shoppers to learn how customer trust is formed in online stores. This checklist is a summary of their findings, created to help business owners understand what essential aspects of their online store experience creates trust among customers, along with the trust-busting mistakes to avoid.

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Best ecommerce website builder for individual sellers

Following the industry trend of ecommerce, Wix now tackles online stores through its nontechnical website builder. You can use Wix’s drag-and-drop builder to create an online store that meets your needs. Wix offers customizable templates, domain name registration, and web hosting to help you get online with ease.

The big drawback? You can build an ecommerce website for free, but you can’t sell anything until you upgrade to a paid plan. 

Wix has a few helpful tools to manage your ecommerce business. It allows you to track orders, accept online payments, sell on multiple channels, and build abandoned cart campaigns. However, Wix’s basic plan lacks some crucial inventory management features, such as low-stock alerts, tax calculators, and dropshipping capabilities. If you have a big inventory, you’ll want an ecommerce platform with more effective inventory-tracking tools.

Features include:

Price: Business Basic plan starts at $23/month.

Best ecommerce website builder for beginners 

You may know GoDaddy as a website builder, but it can also be used to create an online store. GoDaddy has a beginner-friendly build that uses artificial design intelligence to make building an ecommerce site fast and easy. It takes information you input to create a customized site in minutes.

The downside is that you don’t get much creative freedom. GoDaddy offers built-in tools for search engine optimization and email marketing campaigns but lacks depth in its features. Even though you can get up and running fast, you can only sell up to 1,500 products on a GoDaddy website. So if scalability is what you’re looking for, GoDaddy wouldn’t be the best ecommerce site builder for you.

Features include:

Price: Ecommerce plan starts at $24.99/month.

Best open source ecommerce website builder

WooCommerce is an open source platform for sellers using WordPress. It’s not an independent website builder; rather, it’s a WordPress plugin you can use to add ecommerce features to a website. You’ll likely want to work with a developer if you use this ecommerce website builder.

WooCommerce gives you flexibility to manage website features such as inventory and tax management, secure payments, and shipping integrations. Like WordPress, WooCommerce’s features can be extended with thousands of WordPress plugins and themes and different extensions built just for WooCommerce. It’s known for its large pool of developers, which you can easily access if you need to make advanced changes to your WooCommerce store.

Features include: 

Price: Free

Best ecommerce website builder for data-forward brands

Volusion is one of the pioneering ecommerce website builders. Started in 1999, it helps get your business online without any frills. Its site creation tools let you do all the basics, like create a homepage and product pages, integrate with over 30 payment gateways, and sell unlimited products. But sometimes navigating the builder can be challenging. 

What Volusion is known for is its data. You can easily access and understand inventory and analytics to see how your online store is doing and where to improve. It also sports a native “suggested products” feature in its stores. One downside is that you can’t sell digital products with Volusion. So if you want to sell ebooks, music, or art, you should consider another builder.

Features include:

Price: Plans start at $26/month. 

How to choose an online storefront builder

Whether you’re a startup or building your 10th ecommerce store, keep these elements in mind when considering a platform:

Finding the best store builder for your business

Now that you know your options for finding the best ecommerce website builder, it’s time to test them out. Each option comes with its own pros and cons, but hopefully you have a better idea of which store builder is best for your business. 

A professional ecommerce website can take your business to the next level. With all these free website builder options available, there’s no doubt you’ll find the best one to build an online store that you’re proud of, impresses customers, and makes sales for you automatically. 

Ready to create your first business? Start your free 14-day trial of Shopify—no credit card required.

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