Ecommerce Site Builders: Here are the Top 11 Ecommerce Website Builders
You’ve heard how ecommerce business owners are swimming in dollars. You’ve also heard that you don’t even need an inventory to get started. And now you are thrilled to start one of your own. That’s awesome – if you ask me.
But there is one tiny problem; you don’t know which ecommerce site builder to use. Believe me when I tell you that the success or failure of your online store depends on the ecommerce website builder you use. There are multiple options on the market, and all of them purport to be outstanding.
So, how do you pick the best one?
It’s easy. First, you have to look into what kind of business you will be doing, your financial capability and many other things. Rather than drivel on, why don’t I take you through some of the top options worth trying?
Drumrolls, please…
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The Best Ecommerce Website Builders on the Market
The Best Ecommerce Website Builders on the Market
Here are the best ecommerce site builders worth recommending. By the way, each platform has its own unique advantages. Therefore, don’t put too much importance on the numbering.
1. Site123
If you don’t like “complicated,” then Site123 is the best option. This newbie-friendly ecommerce site builder makes it possible to create a website in three simple steps. You don’t need to have coding or design skills to get along.
The first section will require you to pick a website type-blog, online store, photography, health, and wellness, etc. Once you make a choice, the next step is to upload your content and finally publish it. If things go smoothly, your website should be live in an hour or less. Super simple.
All their websites are not just mobile-friendly but can load swiftly on any internet-enabled device. Additionally, there is a satisfactory pool of SEO tools that you can use to improve your site’s visibility on search engines. Website creation is handled by their CMS, and it’s free. However, be ready to part with $10.8 per each month for connecting a custom domain.
Plugins are essential for a profit-making site, and Site123 provides you with a good number of them so you can collect statistics and run promotions. Here is the best part; this platform allows users to register as many websites as they can and administer them under one account via a single username. I noted they have a reasonable number of beautiful templates.
Top Features
- Simple website editor
- A large pool of SEO tools
- Free web hosting
- Custom domains (charged)
- Mobile-friendly sites(they do that for you)
Advantages of Site123
- Multicurrency feature
- An adequate collection of SEO tools
- Responsive templates
- Access to a wide variety of third-party services via the App Market
- Faster download times
- Newbie-friendly
- A large collection of videos, images, and fonts
- It’s possible to track site conversions
Cons of Site123
- Not ideal for professional users
- A limited number of templates
- Customer support is wanting
Any starter out there who is grappling with ecommerce web design should give Site123 a try. It makes the whole process simple and hands over the rest to you. They store their websites on CDN servers worldwide to allow for faster loading times. It’s not ideal for advanced businesses, though.
2. 3dcart
3dcart is an all-inclusive ecommerce website builder with multiple features that guarantee the success of an online store. Let me be clear a little more. When you sign up to this platform, you will be able to create a business-ready website with all the useful features like a blog, themes, payment processors, and a shopping cart.
The websites created are heavily customizable. This will allow you to tweak anything you want according to your customers’ preferences. The level of personalisation extends a bit to clients by allowing them to add, remove or edit their shopping cart as they see fit.
The success of an online store is directly proportional to its market size. With 3dcart’s synchronized system, you get a chance to access multi-vendor marketplaces, social media and other channels that can bolster up your conversions.
Security is a vital factor for the success of any online businesses. 3dcart understands how essential that is and that is why they secure your site through HTTPS protocol, 2-factor authentication, PCI certification, and other anti-fraud tools. With this level of protection, you can sleep peacefully knowing your customers’ credit card info is safe. When you inspire trust, you will make crazy sales.
Top features
- 100+ payment channels
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 24/7 tech support
- 50 mobile themes
- Secured through HTTPS and other anti-fraud tools
- Scalable
Pros of 3dcart
- User-friendly platform for both new and experienced marketers
- Latest SEO and marketing tools
- Possible to market via social media sites
- Several checkout options
- Removed bandwidth limitations
- Scalable enough to grow with you
- Reliable speed and checkout processing
Cons of 3dcart
- There are a few areas of improvement in their customer service
- It can be time-consuming to learn all their features
3dcart’s multiple features offer ecommerce individuals a chance to create successful stores. Besides having a lot of plugins and services, this site builder expands to accommodate third-party entities. It could be your perfect weapon to dealing with abandoned carts given its sufficient number of payment processors and shipping experts as well. However, you need a lot of time to understand how everything works on the platform.
3. WooCommerce & WordPress (ideal for small to medium businesses)
WooCommerce is an open-source software offered by WordPress for launching an ecommerce website. Unlike most options in this article, this one requires one to get their own domain and hosting services. You need to have some knowledge of code as well to run this platform effectively.
Put simply, WordPress provides you with an avenue to create a website and then WooCommerce is the key to upgrading the site’s functionality for business. WordPress has widespread use thanks to its security, responsiveness and existence of multiple themes.
There is so much you can do with WooCommerce. You can create a catalogue of your products, set up categories, control user registration, add search filters, accept orders, activate several payment channels, track your sales, monitor visitor behaviour and other analytics. Any site built with WooCommerce is mobile responsive.
This platform comes with an SEO toolkit that will help you improve your rankings on some of the common search engines. Security wise, WooCommerce is almost flawless. They provide DDOS protection as well as the ability to blacklist certain IPs.
Top features
- WordPress-focused platform
- Has both inbuilt and external analytics
- Multiple payment processors
- Geo-location support
- Allows the use of external extensions
Pros of WooCommerce
- Unlimited customisation
- Free to download and install
- Rich marketplace
- Flawless performance
- Multiple payment channels
- Expandable software
- Robust security
Cons
- They don’t offer free hosting
- Basic coding knowledge required
WooCommerce is a reliable platform to partner with for your ecommerce project. They give you the power to sell anything through a secure website. And when it comes to plugins and features, they are pretty stocked to the brim. Since the platform is open-source and adaptable, you can bend a lot of things to create a website that appeals to your business.
4. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a prominent project that is widely known for domain registration services. Having won the hearts of millions of users, the company decided to take a step further by launching an ecommerce page builder called GoCentral Online Store.
GoCentral provides ecommerce individuals with a simpler way to create business websites within a very short time. Their store consists of over 300 professional-looking theme templates that you can choose from. You can play around with all of them and preview on mobile and desktop devices before deciding what you will integrate on your site.
Is the platform easy to use? Yeah, it’s simple to use. The arrangement of their tools makes it possible for one to cluster products into categories, add descriptions and upload up to ten images for each of your products. I love their shopping cart and shipping recovery features. These features can help you follow up with customers who have abandoned their cart and help them complete the purchase.
GoDaddy operates in a way that slightly mimics WordPress (but without the complexity of the latter). Everything you need to run your site is within the system-including the plugins. Almost all the credit cards and online payment methods are supported.
You should worry less about mobile responsiveness as GoDaddy’s system automatically makes your website adaptable to all web-enabled devices. Tech support is offered through the Page Help as well as through traditional customer care tickets. When compared to other platforms reviewed already, GoDaddy’s monthly fee of $19.99 is not a deal breaker.
Top features
- Supports Over 5000 products
- Each product can have up to 10 images
- Built-in shipping methods
- Abandoned cart alerts
- Builds a mobile-ready website
- Over 300 professional-looking templates
Pros of GoDaddy
- Numerous nifty templates to work with
- Easy to use
- Supports many products
- Supports social media marketing
- All the common payment channels are available
Cons
- Switching between themes could result in content getting lost
- Offers a very basic design
- There is not a lot of creative freedom
GoDaddy is ideal for those running small businesses. It offers all the necessary tools you may need for a fruitful ecommerce franchise. Despite their ability to help online ventures take off successfully, you’ll still need to put in some more effort to get the best out of this platform.
5. Weebly
Weebly has been around for a very long time. It’s amongst the first ecommerce website builders to get into the game and thus pretty laden with useful features. When you are getting started, this platform will help you create a professional site in just a few hours. They offer 100% customization, and this should give you a chance to play around with your own plugins or those from other markets.
Once your website is live, you can use convenient features like drag and drop and CSV files uploading to add products on your store. Other features that can springboard your business to success includes orders and purchases tracking, search filters, simple management, and multiple safe payment options.
One of the hardest chores of ecommerce individuals is marketing. Weebly can help you spread the word out through automated email campaigns and Facebook ads. It doesn’t end there. There is an option to track the results of your campaign to know what is working and what isn’t. By the way, you can segment your visitors into different groups and target each with a different message to increase engagement.
Top features
- Search filters
- Integrated blog and shopping cart
- Numerous SEO tools
- Enabled social media marketing
- Fully customizable
Pros
- Safe payment options
- Integrated shopping cart
- Adequate tracking tools
- Stocks plenty of marketing tools
- Simple to upload products through CSV files
- Advanced search filter
- Fully customizable designs
Cons
- Could use some more templates
Weebly is an ecommerce site builder that is ideal for small-to-large enterprises with a huge demand for creative freedom. Everything you might need to run your shop from numerous payment methods, marketing tools, to tracking metrics is available. Their pricing plans are pocket-friendly.
6. Wix
If you don’t want to take chances with your business but want to give it the best, Wix is the go-to site builder. This platform will help you create and publish a highly professional online store with minimal problems. For the past couple of months, their subscriber list has been expanding at a faster rate. What does that indicate? Many people like their services.
Wix consists of an inherently built ecommerce engine that is loaded with numerous customizable features. These will enable you to upload products easily, create categories, set up payment methods, choose shipping options, export/import products, launch promotions and manage your activities.
Other features that deserve mention include drag and drop options, mobile optimization, secure shopping process, niftily structured product galleries, and 24/7 customer support. About their customer support, it’s offered in several languages. This allows members from other parts of the world to run their stores in their own language/the one they prefer.
Wix’s templates are versatile and of better quality. This means they can be run in both the mobile and desktop version. The mobile version of your site can be managed through the mobile editor without affecting the desktop type. However, any changes you make through the desktop mode can be reflected in mobile mode. That is super convenient.
One of the best ways to convert a visitor is by communicating with them. Thanks to Wix’s forum app, you can hold conversions on your site and improve conversion rate. Other ways to market your store include social media, blog, and email.
Top features
- All-in-one website builder
- Social tools for social media marketing
- 200 inbuilt apps (some are free, and others paid)
- Mobile-friendly
- Wix ADI ( Artificial Intelligence)
Pros
- Multiple customization options
- Exceptionally easy to use
- Supports
- Free web hosting
- Stunning templates
- Affordable pricing
Cons
- Lacks multiple sales channels
- Basic reporting and analytics tools
- Template cannot be changed once published
Wix offers a lot of features for small to medium businesses. Their pricing is competitive, their designs are flawless, and their customer support is nothing short of excellent. Unfortunately, their systems are not scalable enough to accommodate large businesses.
7. Magento
This is a unique platform that differs a lot from all others. To begin with, Magento is an open-source (self-hosted) software that requires you to download first and install on your domain (which is hosted on another service). As such, you don’t need to pay for anything.
But there is a catch.
You need to have a lot of coding knowledge to be able to build upon this software. Remember most of the options in this article will only require you to specify a few things and they go ahead to create an online store. This doesn’t happen on Magento. There is no support to call in case of updates and glitches. You will need to shoulder all the responsibilities.
I know you are probably wondering why I included it in this list. Well, let me explain. With adequate knowledge and resources, you can create anything on Magento-including enterprise level ecommerce sites. You can take advantage of the limitless freedom they offer to configure your website to suit your customers.
Magento offers both free and paid themes. There is also the third option where you can design yours from scratch. Their market is rife with extensions that can be used to fine-tune the performance of your business.
Top features
- It’s an open-source software that’s free to download and use
- Availability of both free and paid themes
- Massive extensions
- Written in PHP
Pros
- Full creative freedom
- Useful for creating something a bit specific
- Plenty of free and paid themes with an option to upload custom made
- It’s free to use
Cons
- It’s written in PHP and thus you need adequate knowledge to make the changes or hire a professional
- The Cloud version is pricey
- The many features it has makes it resource hungry. You will need to invest a lot of time and money in optimization
If you are a newbie with zero to inadequate coding skills, you may be better off with other options in this article. Magento is ideal for folks with sufficient technical skills, a huge budget and an idea to create something specific that other platforms do not offer.
8. Volusion
This is a cloud-based e-commerce site builder with unlimited functionalities. Its biggest vantage point is the presence of multiple professional tools for creating, launching and marketing an ecommerce store. They even offer the option of hiring a professional web designer for a super-customized store.
The platform’s interface is intuitive, and you don’t need special knowledge or the help of webmasters to get along. The builder’s main services include CRM system, Google Analytics, native fulfilment options, loyalty programs, subscription options, comprehensive site search and many more. It integrates with most of the common payment options.
Some of the channels you can use to market your Volusion-based store include social selling, eBay/Amazon integrations and through SEO. Unfortunately, this platform doesn’t offer blogging capabilities.
Volusion gallery stocks some of the most attractive themes, albeit it’s fewer. Beside each product, you have the option to add videos, audio, ratings and reviews. The service supports any business from small, medium to enterprise level. Here is a screenshot of the pricing plans available:
Top features
- Responsive themes
- Rich content editor
- Homepage slideshow
- CSS editor for expansion
- Navigation editor
- Powerful SEO tools
Pros
- Impressive website templates
- Easy to manage products
- Simple interface
- A wide variety of functionalities
- Adequate SEO capability for better ranking
- Frequent website backup to avoid unnecessary headache
Cons
- No blogging capabilities
- Fewer add-ons compared to Bigcommerce and Shopify
Volusion is the best option for creating a visually attractive store with stunning product presentation. Like some, it offers a wide range of sales features and functionalities that are vital for the success of an e-store. A few issues are likely to crop up, but thankfully, their customer support provides a prompt response.
9. Squarespace
Squarespace started as a platform for building websites through drag and drop. With time, they rolled in ecommerce tools to support the growth of online businesses. As of today, the service is almost completing its transition into a full-fledged ecommerce site builder.
Some of the key services you will get include inventory management, multiple shipping options, product variants, product show windows and many more. You will also be able to add videos, manage prices and implement loyalty programs for repeat customers.
The tools you can use to market your business include social media, SEO tools, blogs, email and abandoned cart checkout recovery. For improved security, the SSL socket is naturally included on your store. Check the shot below for Squarespace pricing plans.
Top features
- Over 40 design templates
- Free unlimited hosting
- Numerous marketing tools
- Multiple e-commerce functionalities
Pros
- Easy to use
- Stunning website designs
- Elegant templates that are mobile responsive
- Free, unlimited hosting
- Top-level security
- Around-the-clock support
Cons
- Integrates with very few payment channels
- Lacks many other sophisticated features for bigger enterprises
- You cannot expand your site/customize it through a code
Squarespace stands out as the best when it comes to elegant themes. Its polished nature and more focus on design make it the perfect option for those dealing with products that need high-quality images – mostly artists and designers. But that doesn’t mean other individuals can’t try it.
10. Bigcommerce
As one of the most preferred online store builders, Bigcommerce is powerful, versatile and nothing short of marvellous. It stocks a lot of beautiful website templates that work efficiently with small, medium and enterprise level businesses. I’m absolutely positive that you’ve heard about this platform for some time now. Let’s see what you can get if your store is built off of it.
Bigcommerce offers virtually anything you need to run an online business successfully. The tools it stocks allow for customization despite their almost flawless performance. And here is the juicier part; all business niches are supported-from weight loss, clothing, pet to anything you can think of. This explains why the platform commands a lot of attention from online entrepreneurs.
The site builder gives you so many avenues that you can sell your products to like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon; you name it. Other services that can help to catapult the success of your e-store includes automated email marketing, ad banners, product import/export, use of CSV files, exchange/return processes, creating gift cards and much more.
For better web performance, BigCommerce integrates with many external applications. This makes selling a breeze as you can tap into any market that is likely to buy your goods. For your information, the sites created via this platform are extremely responsive on both desktop and mobile devices. The platform charges a minimum of $29.95/month to a maximum of $249.95 per month depending on your plan.
Top features
- Multiple integrations including WordPress
- Mobile optimization
- Full-blast SEO features
- Theme customization
- Storefront conversion kit
- Numerous marketing channels including social media
- 40+ payment channels
Pros
- Multiple external integrations
- Extremely responsive templates
- You can sell anywhere you want
- Numerous payment methods
- Advance tools that support customization
Cons
- Limited free templates
- Their advanced features are costly
There is no limit to what you can do with BigCommerce. They know what it takes to run a productive online store. Whether you want a small, medium or enterprise level store, they can get you sorted out. Unfortunately, most of their advanced features must be paid for. After all, good things come at a cost, right?
11. Shopify
Ladies and gents, it’s time we look at statistical data a bit. Research has it that over half a million shops are currently running on Shopify and they have collectively made profits of up to 40 billion in sales! There is a reason why this platform always tops most of the online reviews about the best ecommerce platforms.
Let’s keep going.
Design-wise, Shopify is unmatched. It has a huge stock of attractive website templates that also happen to be mobile responsive and editable to a great extent. Its market holds virtually any app you can think of to improve the look and performance of your store.
While other ecommerce builders are busy limiting their marketing tools, Shopify grants you the freedom to sell anything through any platform be it Amazon, Instagram, Facebook or Google. For those with both online and brick and mortar stores, this service can help you set up a physical point of sales and manage everything through one platform.
Awesome, right?
The product listing tool offers a wide variety of categories. Additionally, you can back up each of your products with as many photos as you want or can get. You can play around with customer data to discern what exactly they’ve been looking for so you can target them effectively.
It could cost you a minimum of $9 per month and a maximum of $299/per month to run your store on Shopify.
Top features
- Web-based site builder
- Has blogging capabilities
- Highly responsive themes that support many brands’ image
- Seamless UX
- Personalized domain
- Integrated payments
Pros
- Simple to use
- Great design options
- Excellent sales and reporting tools
- Remarkable themes that are fully customizable
- Excellent customer support
- Supports all the major payment methods
Cons
- Their enterprise level services are steeply priced
- Charges transaction fees
Shopify is an appealing choice for any person because it can cater to businesses of all calibres without being too simple or overly complicated. All the common payment methods are there, the plugins are limitless, and you can market anything anywhere. Above all, you don’t need special knowledge to tag along. However, be ready to cough out a bit more dough for their premium plugins and services.
Wrapping it all up
I have taken you through some of the best e-commerce site builders you can use to set up your online store. Let’s just recap a few things. When you want the simplest service for your e-store needs, the best options would be Site 123, Weebly and Wix.
For those who want flexibility and a chance to be able to expand on a platform, the most customizable options would be Shopify, WordPress & WooCommerce, Magento, SquareSpace and BigCommerce.
If you have a special idea that you must work on by yourself (and your designer), WordPress & WooCommerce should be your top choice. Other unmentioned options fall in between and therefore great for those with specific needs.
When you are choosing a site builder for your online business, some of the core things to look for include multiple plugins, marketing tools, an abundance of themes, the number of payment options, pricing and ease of use. Once again, each platform offers a unique advantage. Therefore, knowing your business needs can help you make the right choice.
Which of the ecommerce site builders listed above is your favourite? Let us know your answer in the comment section below.