If you’re serious about starting and growing an ecommerce store, Shopify is truly one of the best website builders available. With nearly two decades of experience, Shopify sets the gold standard for online sales—from fast, secure checkout to built-in tools that help you scale. If you haven’t explored it yet, I highly recommend taking a look.
If you’ve already considered Shopify and found it’s not for you, don’t worry—I’ve got several excellent alternatives worth checking out.
The Best Ecommerce Website Builders in 2025
Shopify is hands down the best ecommerce platform for most people. It’s built for long-term growth with the essentials baked in—secure payments, fast checkout, multi-channel selling, and an enormous app ecosystem—so you can launch quickly and keep scaling without replatforming.
The only downside? It can cost a bit more up front than basic site builders. But you’ll usually save time and third-party add-on costs later, which keeps total cost of ownership competitive.
If you’re not a fan, that’s perfectly fine—preferences vary.
There are plenty of fantastic tools I don’t prefer for reasons unrelated to their functionality. So if Shopify isn’t your cup of tea, here are a few other excellent options I strongly recommend:
- Hostinger — Best if you’re on a budget
- Wix — Best if you want extensive drag-and-drop customization
- BigCommerce — Best if your store features thousands of products
- Squarespace — Best if you use imagery and video to drive sales
If you’re considering other platforms, you can likely ignore them. Between these options, you’ll find something that fits your needs perfectly.
Cheaper solutions like Square Online, Weebly, or Shift4Shop are fine for simple or hobby projects. For a serious ecommerce business, you’ll want the flexibility and scale of the options above.
Shopify – Best for Most Ecommerce Stores
Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms—and for good reason. It’s my go-to recommendation for launching a store quickly and scaling it confidently.
Shopify is a true plug-and-play solution for building an online store. It’s equally ideal if you’re switching from another platform and want a more robust setup with fewer workarounds.
One of the main reasons I recommend it so highly is that, no matter how large your business gets, you’ll never outgrow it.
If you’re just starting out, Shopify’s ease of use is hard to beat. Even if you’ve never built a website, it’s quick to get comfortable with. From choosing a theme and adding products to configuring shipping and payments, the interface is intuitive and streamlined.
Shopify offers over 100 free and paid themes, and you can customize everything with its drag-and-drop editor—colors, fonts, images, layouts, sections, and more—so your storefront matches your brand.
The Shopify App Store lets you add features like advanced marketing automation, reviews, subscriptions, B2B tools, and dropshipping in a few clicks. You can keep things simple at the start and layer on functionality as you grow.
Shopify Payments is built in, so there’s no separate payment gateway setup required—just turn it on and start accepting cards and wallets. Prefer something else? You can also integrate with 100+ third-party processors.
Beyond that, core ecommerce features come standard—mobile-optimized storefronts, fast checkout with Shop Pay, abandoned-cart emails, customer accounts, discounts, analytics, SEO-friendly URLs and redirects, and automatic structured data for products.
If you sell in person, Shopify POS syncs your catalog and inventory across online and retail locations so stock stays accurate and operations stay simple.
Shopify’s pricing typically starts around $39/month for the entry plan, with savings on annual billing.
Hostinger – Best if You Want Something Cheaper
Hostinger‘s website builder is an extremely affordable way to launch an online store. Long-term plans can drop pricing to just a few dollars per month, which is a fraction of what many platforms cost.
However, there are meaningful trade-offs.
Hostinger caps stores at up to 500 products. That’s fine for small catalogs, but variations (sizes, colors, designs) can eat into that limit quickly.
You’ll also miss out on advanced features you’d get with Shopify, such as native POS, deeper inventory controls, and a large app marketplace. Hostinger covers the basics but feels more limited as you scale.
On the plus side, you get 150+ free templates and an AI-assisted site builder that can generate a starter store in minutes. It won’t be perfect out of the box, but it’s a fast way to get moving.
Customization is more constrained than Shopify’s flexible editor. If you care about fine-grained control over product pages, quick views, or checkout flows, you may find those limits frustrating.
If you’re more technical, Hostinger’s shared hosting lets you run WordPress + WooCommerce for maximum control. You’ll gain flexibility, but setup and maintenance take more effort.
Bottom line: it’s a great budget option to validate your idea or run a tight product line; just be aware of the ceiling.
Wix – Best if You Want More Drag-and-Drop Customization
Wix is one of the few true drag-and-drop builders—you can place elements exactly where you want instead of working within strict rows or columns.
If freedom and creative control appeal to you, you’ll enjoy Wix. If you prefer a guide-rail experience that “just works,” the flexibility can feel overwhelming and may lead to inconsistent design if you’re not careful.
Wix has grown into a capable ecommerce suite, not just a site builder with add-ons. You’ll find essentials like abandoned-cart recovery, coupons and discounts, online orders and deliveries, reservations and appointments, and even ticketing.
Trade-offs: the entry ecommerce plan typically doesn’t include automated sales-tax calculations, and higher-tier plans cap monthly automated tax transactions. If you sell across many states, those limits matter.
On lower tiers, you also miss advanced shipping, product reviews, multi-currency, and some dropshipping tools. Accessing those usually requires upgrading—often making Wix pricier than Shopify once you enable everything you need.
In short: Wix offers tremendous creative freedom, but expect to upgrade as you grow. If you want fewer plan jumps, Shopify may be the steadier path.
BigCommerce – Best if You Have Thousands of Products
BigCommerce shines for stores with large catalogs. It’s built for scale with strong wholesale/B2B features like customer-specific pricing, quotes, and bulk discounts.
Native integrations cover Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Shopping, eBay, Amazon, and popular POS systems—more than most competitors at the entry level.
Its tooling makes bulk updates, stock management, and large product imports easier, which matters when you’re managing hundreds or thousands of SKUs.
BigCommerce Enterprise adds multi-storefront, headless commerce, internationalization, and advanced wholesale capabilities—great for complex operations.
Downsides: important features like abandoned-cart recovery, robust reviews, and advanced filtering aren’t on the cheapest plan. And each plan enforces an annual revenue threshold (for example, around $50,000 on Standard) that triggers an automatic upgrade.
If you don’t need the enterprise-leaning features, Shopify is typically simpler with fewer upgrade surprises.
Squarespace – Best if Imagery and Videos Help You Sell
Squarespace is renowned for beautiful templates that spotlight imagery and video—clean layouts, modern typography, and strong media handling—making it ideal for visually driven brands.
If your brand wins on visuals and you want a professional look without heavy customization, Squarespace delivers a polished storefront quickly.
It’s also easy to connect social channels, with built-in tools to design and schedule posts for Instagram and Facebook.
On the ecommerce side, you can sell physical products, services, courses, and subscriptions (subscription selling typically requires a higher tier). It’s a great fit for creatives who want to diversify revenue streams.
Limitations: compared with Shopify or BigCommerce, Squarespace’s inventory options and product configurability are more basic. Some advanced features—like abandoned-cart emails, richer discounts, related products, and social selling—are available only on top plans.
For add-ons, Squarespace now offers an Extensions marketplace for one-click integrations. It’s improving, but selection is smaller than Shopify’s App Store; for niche needs you may still rely on custom code or embeds.
What Matters When Reviewing Ecommerce Website Builders
Choosing the right website builder is crucial, and long-term fit matters—migrations are painful. That’s why I often recommend Shopify: it scales without forcing you to duct-tape features later.
That said, evaluate platforms against the criteria below so you can pick what best fits your store today and in 12–24 months.
Easy to Use (Without Sacrificing Quality)
Building and managing a store shouldn’t require a developer for routine tasks. Look for a clean editor, sensible product management, simple shipping/tax setup, and fast checkout. If the platform slows you down, it costs you growth.
Great builders keep the workflow simple while still providing the growth tools you’ll need—abandoned-cart recovery, discounts, analytics, SEO controls, and performance-optimized storefronts.
Depth of Customization
Ensure you can tailor both design and commerce: product variants, shipping rules, taxes, payments, checkout, and post-purchase flows. A robust app/extensions marketplace is a plus—so you add features without custom builds.
Cheaper builders (like Weebly or Square Online) can be fine to start but often limit customization as you grow. Prioritize the controls you’ll need next, not just today.
Template Quality
Template quantity matters less than fit and flexibility. Choose a theme that suits your brand and is easy to customize—especially product pages and checkout. Mobile performance and accessibility should be non-negotiable.
Different platforms lean into different aesthetics. Preview multiple themes on mobile and test a sample product page before committing.