A first step in creating a successful online shop is to ask which eCommerce website builder fits the business needs most effectively. With the plethora of choices out there, the best also relies on necessary features and available budget. Does it have enough scalability? Can you create an amazing website with it? Add new functionality? Build a site without years of coding experience? Does it offer the biggest bang for the buck?
Given the reach and functionality required, one solution will be best to create eCommerce site for you. Today, we explore the costs, upsides and downsides, and features of the highest quality CMSs of 2019.
The Best Website Builders
If you’re in the field, you’re acquainted with the common eCommerce site builders: Squarespace and Shopify. Then there are the less well-known builders like BigCommerce, Volusion, and WooCommerce. Finally, an article on this topic would be incomplete if it did not mention a favorite CMS of ours: Magento®.
Before we start, let’s refer to the statistics. According to BuiltWith, the most demanded platforms that are used the most by businesses are:
The statistics are based on the total number of websites existed on the entire Internet. Now, we’ve got the understanding of which platforms businesses prefer over others to build a store, and we move on to the review of the best website builders.We’ve considered the worldwide popularity, functionality, pricing plans and overall usability and benefit for eCommerce business. The sections that follow will delve deeper into each to help you choose right from the start.
Magento
Magento is a premier CMS solution for eCommerce. It can be challenging to use, but it’s completely customizable, scalable, and adaptable. Plus, even with this versatility, it requires less intense coding knowledge than some of the other CMS solutions with similar capacity.
If you are looking to scale your business further than look towards Magento. It is a promising platform with huge support, emerging technologies implemented into the latest extensions and functionality available on Magento 2 versions.
Magento Features
- Stock multilingual support
- More than 5,000 ready-built extensions
- Web service API
- A wide range of payment options
- Customer groups
- Customer service
- Order processing
- Solutions for managing inventory
- Gifts
- Shipping charge extensions
- Extensions for coupons
- Easy Site management
- Marketing tools
- Newsletter features
- Product bundling options
- Mobile-Optimized
- Excellent stock of SEO features
Pricing
- Open Source: This version is free. Simply download, install, and begin implementation immediately.
- Commerce: Here’s where you’ll be paying more for the advanced features list. Pricing is based on customization and site needs. On the lower end, it’ll cost about $15,000 annually. On the highest end, expect around $50,000 annually. This package provides supreme customization, dedicated hosting, and all you could imagine wanting in your website.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Loaded with features | Experience- and time-Intensive due to coding |
| Fully scalable | Dedicated hosting requires higher initial and per-month investment |
| User-friendly admin | Maintaining, developing, and supporting the site will cost more |
| Constant development and support of the platform by community |
WordPress with WooCommerce
WordPress powers about 33% of sites on the Internet and remains one of the simplest and most powerful ways to create your own site or blog. WooCommerce is WordPress’s answer to eCommerce, a way to turn your WordPress site into a lucrative online store. Support is one of the most challenging aspects of a WooCommerce store. However, the pricing is competitive, and it’s loaded with features.
So, if you know how to use WooCommerce, you’ll find yourself set up with a high-performance website at a great value.
WooCommerce Features
- Unlimited products
- Unparalleled options for B2B WooCommerce
- Product reviews and ratings
- Categories, tags, and attributes make products easier to find
- 400 stock extensions
- Unlimited galleries and images
- Product filtering and sorting
- Customizable by location
- Open development
- WordPress-built
- Checkout, product, and more can be embedded on all pages
- Unrestricted customization
- Blogging is built-in
- Different themes available
- Documentation
- REST API for order and product management
Packages Pricing
- Starter Package: $13.99/mo
Web space limited to 100 GB. - Plus Package: $17.99/mo
Unlimited space. - Pro Package: $31.99/mo
The advanced backup feature included.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Fully loaded with Advanced Tools and Extensions | Additional features can incur hidden costs |
| Accounts for Administrators and users | No central support – Support for each extension and plugin is through separate channels |
| A rich selection of designs and themes | Requires experience for easy use |
BigCommerce
So what is BigCommerce? It’s a CMS that focuses on creating customizable, responsive sites. BigCommerce websites are created on the principles of mobile-optimized omnichannel access, easy migration, and supreme ease of online selling in all its aspects. The design is centered on conversions, the key to success for any eCommerce site.
A huge benefit to working with BigCommerce is that it’s unmatched in both scalability and SEO.
BigCommerce Features
- Huge range of sales features
- Conversion optimized for tablet, mobile, desktop shoppers
- Multi-channel syncing to increase sales across all channels
- Easy management for inventory and orders
- Various payment portals
- More features than any other CMS
- BigCommerce control panel lets you run the entire business from one portal
- Top-of-the-Line Launch assistance for new sites and site optimization
- Allows easy migration for stores and importation of products
- Focus on selling with a hosted eCommerce website
- Features a hosted, PCI compliant eCommerce website
- Fully customizable
- Offers lightning fast eCommerce templates
Pricing Options
- Standard plan: $29.95/mo (annual billing)
- Plus Plan: $71.95/mo (highest value for small businesses)
- Pro plan: $224.95/mo (increased scalability)
- Enterprise plan (custom pricing and features)
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Fantastic SEO tools | Lacks a mobile app |
| Allows multi-channel sales | Requires a strong understanding of tech terms |
| Outmatches competitors for scalability | Some text |
Volusion
A Volusion website shines in sales, but website building is complicated, especially for those without extensive experience. However, Volusion provides loads of features and tools to manage business operations. With a Volusion web store, it’s simple to showcase products with videos and manage product inventory.
Volusion eCommerce is ideal for products that need a strong visual presentation. Plus, you can expand customer engagement with the ‘Suggest Product’ option. However, one thing to keep in mind is that Volusion is only suitable for physical goods or services.
Volusion Features
- CSS Editor
- Logo Favicon upload
- Homepage Slideshow
- Search Functionality
- Customizable Product Category Pages
- Excellent Navigation Editor
- Custom Domain for Easy Site Access
- Rich Content Editor to Update your Site without Coding
- Mobile-Friendly Responsive Themes
- A wide range of payment platforms with no transaction fees
- Seamless integration with third-party apps
- Excellent stock mobile app for managing business operations
Pricing Packages
- Mini: $15/mo
- Plus: $35/mo
- Pro: $75/mo
- Premium: $135/mo
- Business: $299/mo
Volusion also offers a discounted price of $13.50 monthly for annual payments. However, you’ll need to buy an SSL for any plan you pick.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Mobile app | Extra cost for SSL certificate |
| A wide range of payment methods | No blogging function |
| Excellent analytics tools | Only good for physical products or services |
Squarespace
So, as eCommerce site builders go, is Squarespace good? A key to answering this question is which version you opt for. The editing interface for earlier versions of Squarespace was complicated and unwieldy. However, this has been addressed with the improvements of version 7. It comes with excellent tutorial documentation which fully describes all features and tools.
Squarespace is an excellent website builder, a feature which even some more expensive solutions lack. Another benefit for programmers and software engineers is that the Squarespace salary for these roles is highly competitive for the field.
Squarespace Features
- Announcement Bar
- Pop-Ups for Promotions
- Stock integration for Zapier
- MailChimp integration in the Newsletter and Form Blocks
- Menu Block
- Donation Block
- Customer Accounts
- Commerce and all online store features
- Per-page and site-wide code injection
- Information Bar mobile-optimized
- OpenTable Block
- Amazon Block
- ChowNow integration
- Code Block for iframe code and JavaScript
- Facebook Pixel
- Developer Platform
- Acuity Block
Though this list describes only Basic Online and Business packages, they’re ideal for any small organizations and businesses. The Advanced Online package is best if you’re after scalability.
Pricing
- Personal Package: $12/mo
This solution is excellent unless you need an online store. - Business: $18/mo
3% transaction fee and stock online shop. - Basic Online Store: $26/mo
Zero transaction fee for online sales. - Advanced Online Store: $40/mo
Advanced eCommerce features included.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 24/7 live chat customer support | Lacks Preview Mode (makes larger updates more challenging and leads to website downtime) |
| eCommerce with customer login options | SEO (low page speed and unable to edit page title in blog posts) |
| Extensive choice of high-quality templates, mobile-optimized | Single sub navigation option (not good for more complex sites) |
Shopify
One great thing about Shopify is it’s been created entirely with eCommerce in mind. Shopify is excellent for all forms of selling, from products to services, digital or physical, locally or worldwide. Shopify business benefits include product organization or tracking, and the capacity to customize or scale an eCommerce website as needed. Add an app or adjust the cart system easily even without complicated coding. It has fast load times alongside loads of ready-made eCommerce stores, adjusted as necessary.
Shopify for sale is completely integrated eCommerce, giving you a single portal to handle every aspect of eCommerce operations.
Shopify Features
- fraud analysis
- excellent customer support
- online storage and bandwidth are unlimited bandwidth
- Shopify point of sale
- overview dashboard
- finance reports
- orders can be created manually
- no limit on products
- multiple selling channels
- discount code extensions
- allows private accounts for staff
Pricing Options
Shopify is a middle option in terms of pricing. It isn’t the cheapest available, but even the basic package offers omnichannel solutions and no limits on products. Plus, there are loads of apps that let you tailor your site as needed.
- Shopify Lite – $ 9/mo
(Allows you to sell through a website and social media channels) - Basic Shopify – $29/mo
(Credit card fee – 2.9% $0.30, Transaction fee – 2%,) - Shopify – $79/mo
(Credit card fee – 2.6% $0.30, Transaction fee – 1%) - Advanced Shopify – $299/mo
(Credit card fee – 2.4% $0.30, Transaction fee – 0.5%)
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Add-ons for scalability | Apps must be bought separately |
| Abandoned Checkout Recovery helps to increase sales | Hosting must be bought separately |
| 100+ payment options supported globally | Limited customizability |
| High performance and loading speed | Advanced features must be bought separately |
| Multi-channel sales | |
| Easy CTA “Buy Button” | |
| Shopify POS integration | |
| Extensive self-help documentation | |
| Digital and Physical sales supported |
Now you have all the platforms’ characteristics, and you can consider creating the store using one of the best website builders listed above to succeed online.