The Top Ecommerce Site Builders

Wix is one of the best choices for creating a smaller online store, as it is very easy to use, and has quite competitive prices. Even if you have never created any kind of website before, you will quickly and easily find your way around. Even more than that, your store will look as professional and serious as if you are an experienced website builder yourself.

Now, as mentioned, Wix does not offer all the features that large stores might need, like many different sales channels. But, with that said, the company did work to improve its service, and it came up with a lot of new useful features and improvements, such as the Ascend, which is an all-in-one business solution which lets you control and automate numerous business functions.

Further, it offers many different design options, and the price is more than affordable, which makes it perfect for new online stores.

Then we have Shopify, which is the option perfectly suited for those looking to launch a large store. Unlike Wix, it offers many different sales features and payment channels, which is one of its strongest attributes. It is nearly unmatched in the industry when it comes to sales channels, and you will be able to track pretty much anything sales-related via its Shopify Payments system.

It is great for managing your sales, accounting, inventory, and everything else — all through a single platform. It is also among the top website builders in terms of different designs that it offers. You will spend hours looking through different website templates, trying to pick the best one, which may prove quite difficult due to such a great offering. It’s a good kind of difficult, so don’t let that discourage you. We should also mention that all of the templates are mobile optimized as well, so you won’t have any problems there.

It also has a great price for its e-commerce plan, with only $29 per month, while its most expensive plan is $299 per month. While this does seem a bit expensive, remember that this is a solution for large stores, which are likely to see a lot bigger profits. It is a small price to pay in exchange for running a large, successful business, so we advise you to consider it.

Next, we have BigCommerce, which is probably the main competition to Shopify when it comes to creating large stores. While it is a close second, it should by no means be ignored, as it offers some excellent features. Its biggest drawback, which is also something that allows Shopify to be a slightly better platform, is its limited customization options set.

With that said, it is every bit as capable as Shopify when it comes to acting as a sales platform. It has top sales analysis and reporting tools, there are numerous sales channels that you can integrate, and it features a top product inventory detail. In addition to that, there are no transaction fees, which is actually an area where BigCommerce beats Shopify at. Another downside which you should be aware of is that it will place a cap on the value of sales that you can make, although you can expand the cap by choosing a more expensive plan.

In terms of prices, it pretty much matches Shopify, with the cheapest plan being $29.95, while the most expensive one is $50 cheaper than what Shopify offers, coming at $249.95.

In the fourth spot, we have Squarespace, which comes as a great solution for those on a budget. Its cheapest e-commerce plan will only cost you $26, while the priciest is only slightly above that, at $40. To be clear, Squarespace does have quite a few drawbacks when compared to others, but that is hardly surprising since its primary function is to act as a website builder, and not an e-commerce platform.

But, what you might not have known is that Squarespace actually holds the potential to act as both, and it does the e-commerce part quite well. It features a product and inventory management that can match all the industry leaders, and in great detail, too. Further, you can use it to easily stock all kinds of different products and services.

Of course, this is where the drawbacks enter the picture, as payment and accounting options are quite limited. So is the ability to go international, as the language settings can be quite tricky, not to mention shipping issues. It can still be used for small, relatively local stores, so if that is what you had in mind, and you don’t want to pay a lot of money to achieve it — definitely consider it.

Finally, we have Volusion, which features the prices similar to BigCommerce and Shopify, but it is also quite great as an e-commerce platform, so the prices are justified. It should be noted straight away that it is not as intuitive as the others, meaning that it may not be the best option if this is your first time creating an online store.

But if you can deal with that, you will find that Volusion offers quite a lot of excellent sales features, including a great inventory and product management system, with a lot of details. This might not seem like a huge benefit right at the start, but if you plan to make a large store with lots of products, this will be a lifesaver once your business goes big.

Further, it offers excellent website templates which work with mobile as well, and that is always useful in the era of smartphones. So, if you think that you can handle a bit tougher navigation, this is just as good a choice as any for large stores. If you run into issues, however, it also has quite a great customer support which will be able to help you out.