6 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses in 2023

	Free Trial	Free POS App	Payment Processing Fee	Transaction Fees
	✓, 3 days*	✓	2.9% + 30 cents**	0%–2%
	Visit Shopify
	✓, 15 days	✕, requires third-party	Varies	0%
	Visit BigCommerce
	No trial for paid plans	✕, requires third-party	Varies	0%
	Visit Ecwid by Lightspeed
	30 days for paid plans	✓	2.9% + 30 cents**	0%
	Visit Square Online
	✕	✓	2.9% + 30	0%
	Visit Wix
	✓, 14 days	Through Square integration	Varies	0%–3%
	Visit Squarespace

×

	Free Trial	Free POS App	Payment Processing Fee	Transaction Fees
	✓, 3 days*	✓	2.9% + 30 cents**	0%–2%
	Visit Shopify
	✓, 15 days	✕, requires third-party	Varies	0%
	Visit BigCommerce
	No trial for paid plans	✕, requires third-party	Varies	0%
	Visit Ecwid by Lightspeed
	30 days for paid plans	✓	2.9% + 30 cents**	0%
	Visit Square Online
	✕	✓	2.9% + 30	0%
	Visit Wix
	✓, 14 days	Through Square integration	Varies	0%–3%
	Visit Squarespace

*Try Shopify Basic for $1/month for first three months

**Lower rates available with higher-level plans

• One-click checkout option via Shop Pay: Shop Pay works across all Shopify stores that have Shop Pay enabled to give shoppers a seamless one-click checkout. For example, if a customer purchased an item in one Shopify store, all their purchase details are saved in the system so that when they buy something from another Shopify store, they can literally check out with just one click.
• Abandoned cart recovery in all plans: Abandoned cart recovery is included with all online store plans. This is a feature only Shopify offers across all tiers, compared to other ecommerce platforms that offer it only in their higher-priced plans.
• Free integrated email marketing: Shopify Email, its native email marketing tool, is also included—with 2,500 emails per month and additional emails priced at $1 per 1,000. Shopify has the best built-in email marketing tools, allowing you to segment customers based on their purchase history, geography, and other variables (third-party apps may be required).
• Shopify Shipping: Shopify’s built-in shipping tools make it easier to fulfill orders right from your home. Display real-time shipping rates for your customers at checkout, and receive discounts of up to 88% on shipping labels, which you can purchase and print right from the Shopify dashboard.

• Product management: Shopify has a three-limit variant on its products, with only up to 100 variant combinations. Digital product downloads and custom order fields, such as personalized items, would need a separate app. BigCommerce has nearly unlimited product variants and a built-in custom work order feature.
• Compatibility with big marketplaces: If you plan to sell items in marketplaces like Walmart Marketplace and PriceGrabber, BigCommerce would be a better fit.
• Drag-and-drop site builder: Shopify’s recent rollout of Online Store 2.0 provides more flexibility than it had in the past, including some basic drag-and-drop functionality. It’s a good balance of being able to customize your online store while also not being able to break it. However, if you’re looking for a true drag-and-drop editor, consider Wix.
• SEO: While Shopify has decent features, you can’t customize product metadata or easily change product-specific URLs. For more robust SEO tools, look to BigCommerce and Wix.

• Fully customizable themes, including checkout pages: What’s noteworthy about BigCommerce’s themes is their capability to display an extensive catalog of products. You can customize your website using Store Design, its page builder visual editor, and access fully customizable themes, checkout customization tools, and WordPress integration.
• Most robust product management out of all platforms in this guide: BigCommerce’s most significant advantage over Shopify is its product variant management feature. BigCommerce lets you have up to 250 product options and auto-generates SKUs for all combinations of variants you set up. Its limit on product variants is 600, a big jump from the 100 limit of Shopify and Squarespace.
• Sell multiple types of products and services: BigCommerce lets you sell physical, digital, and service-based products without having to use a third-party app (often at a cost). Subscriptions, however, require an app.
• Multicurrency and multilanguage capabilities: Accept over 100 currencies and offer local payment options with your preferred gateway. You can also localize your store’s front-end according to your market’s language.
• Advanced SEO features: Features such as automated image optimizer, on-page SEO capabilities, sitemap generation, and site speed enhancers are advantageous for SEO. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is also implemented on all BigCommerce themes. Unlike Shopify and Squarespace, you can customize your store products’ metadata, header tags, and titles and create and change product-specific URLs easily.

• Variety in its free website themes: While BigCommerce offers free website templates, they look similar and don’t provide the same flexibility and options that Shopify and Squarespace offer. When you create your store on BigCommerce, be prepared to invest in a paid website template.
• Built-in email marketing: BigCommerce still has yet to offer a native solution that lets you send emails to your customers, something Shopify rolled out with Shopify Email.
• Discounted shipping rates: While BigCommerce offers live shipping rates across its plans, discounted rates are still unavailable unlike with Shopify.

• Sell anywhere: You can sell either online—through Ecwid’s storefront, an existing website, social networks, on mobile—or in person by connecting your store to a POS platform. Also, you can manage sales channels through Ecwid’s control panel, which automatically syncs data, like orders and inventory.
• Buy buttons: Additionally, its buy button feature can be added to any web page and directly links your product. It automatically adapts to the website’s colors and style without the need for coding knowledge.
• Customer-friendly storefront experience: Ecwid makes it easy for your customers to buy products by providing a drag-and-drop “add to cart” feature, an easy option to “checkout without creating a store profile,” a customer address book, and the ability to save favorite products.
• Dynamic multilingual capabilities: Language is easily detected and can be translated to over 45 different languages, and real-time shipping rates are adjusted based on the customer’s IP address.
• Mobile app for managing your business on the go: Ecwid provides a store management app (iOS and Android) for paid subscribers. You can update inventory, manage orders, and receive notifications.

• Multiple website pages: Since Ecwid is primarily designed as an add-on to existing sites, it only offers a single-page Instant Site that can act as your homepage or landing page. If you want a full-blown website, Shopify, Squarespace, and BigCommerce are better choices.
• Native POS: If you plan to sell in person, you’d need to be on Ecwid’s Business or Unlimited plan to connect a POS like Square, Clover, or Vend.
• SEO: Ecwid doesn’t offer SEO capabilities on its free plan, and even with paid plans, its capabilities are limited. Shopify and BigCommerce are better options.
• Free plan limitations: The free plan only allows for 10 products, lacks abandoned cart emails, and doesn’t allow you to sell on Facebook or Instagram. If you need these tools for free, consider Square Online.

• Streamlined website builder: Square Online allows you to build a full-blown website with multiple pages, contact forms, an email sign-up, and much more. The website can be custom-branded with your logo and colors, and you can choose which features you want to appear—and in what order. Square will automatically set you up with a theme based on your business type, which you can then customize.
• BOPIS, click and collect, local delivery fulfillment: Set up click-and-collect options (like curbside pickup or buy online, pickup in-store), specific pickup hours and order windows, order prep times, customer notifications for when their order is ready, and whether or not shoppers can schedule pickup times.
• Analytics: Square Online provides a range of sales reports, including sales by category, discounts applied, and tax collected. Paid versions of Square Online also provide some basic website analytics—like page views, search terms, and referring sites.
• Multichannel sales: One of Square’s strongest features is the ability to sell on multiple channels (in-store and mobile) and social media platforms. Plus, Square manufactures some of the best card readers for small businesses.

• Several payment options: Square Online’s payment integration is limited to Square, although it also supports PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. If you want the freedom to choose your payment processor, we suggest you consider BigCommerce.
• Shipping calculators: You must be on Square Online’s highest tier ($72/month) to get real-time shipping calculators. Shopify offers stronger shipping tools.
• Advanced inventory management features: Square Online doesn’t have barcode, supplier, or purchasing features. If you handle various products that require bundling, kitting, or cross-location inventory tracking, BigCommerce is a better fit.
• Fully customizable website: You cannot fully edit the layout of your Square Online store (like you can with Wix) or add integrations as easily as you can with Shopify.

Overall, Lack of customization options and counterintuitive ecommerce inventory management tools prevented Square from getting a higher score. If your main goal is to drive online sales, you likely won’t be happy with Square, but it is a great choice for brick and mortar businesses.

• Drag-and-drop site builder: Wix features a true drag-and-drop editor with hundreds of pre-made content blocks and a helpful grid tool to line up the elements on your site with precision. You can create a truly custom site without a single line of code.
• SEO tools: Wix SEO Wiz offers step-by-step instructions for optimizing your online store to get it ranking on Google. Wix’s SEO tools include editing page URLs, setting meta descriptions, creating title tags and alt text options, the ability to set keywords for different pages, and more.
• Wix Owner app: Wix’s mobile app lets you manage your online store on-the-go. Manage products, upload photos, chat with customers, create and send blog posts or email campaigns, and more right from the app.
• Selling subscriptions: Wix has dedicated features for selling and managing subscription boxes and recurring product orders. You get a notification each time a subscription payment renews. Customers can login to their account, view orders, and manage their payment methods and subscriptions.
• Integrated print-on-demand sales: Wix has white-label print on demand dropshipping tools through Modalyst. This works well for creators wanting to sell branded merch or items from AliExpress suppliers.

• Inventory and order management: Wix lets you categorize inventory as “in stock” or “out of stock” but otherwise lacks detailed product tracking tools. Its order fulfillment and shipping workflow is also not as streamlined as what you’d find in Shopify, which has more shipping label and discount options.
• Too much creative freedom: If you are not confident in website design, the Wix builder can be overwhelming. And, it’s easy to make “mistakes” like text that is hard to read. The benefit of opting for a more templated site builder like Shopify or Squarespace is that it is hard to break it. However, Wix also has an alternative version of its web builder, Wix ADI (short for Artificial Design Intelligence), that is better suited for beginners.

• Excellent, easy-to-use website builder: Squarespace is one of the least complicated website builders to use and, thus, one of the hardest to mess up. Its highly acclaimed website templates are among the most stylish and best designed.
• Tools for custom products: A unique feature worth noting is that Squarespace lets you set up forms for products, so you can request additional information from customers when they make a purchase.
• Merchandising features: Upload product videos, add product photos for each variant, and show shoppers related products.
• Sell anything: In addition to physical products, Squarespace has native tools for selling services, digital goods, subscriptions, memberships, and courses.
• Advanced SEO tools: Squarespace guides you through an SEO checklist and has built-in tools for keyword research, analyzing traffic, optimizing page titles and descriptions, local SEO management (like Google My Business), and more.

• Extensive integrations: Squarespace doesn’t offer many third-party integrations, limiting your options, especially if you plan to expand your online store. Shopify offers thousands of integrations in its app store. If you need a feature that isn’t offered in Shopify, chances are you will be able to find one in its app marketplace.
• Advanced ecommerce features: Product categorization, more dropshipping options, and advanced inventory management are just a few things that are lacking in Squarespace. If you plan on scaling, we recommend you start with Shopify’s basic plan and upgrade as needed.
• Pricey add-ons: Squarespace’s ecommerce plans are pricier than most competitors for similar features. We find Shopify and BigCommerce offer better values.
• No revisions or backups: When building our demo store, we learned that switching Squarespace templates would require repeatedly setting up the Commerce portion. This was a bit frustrating at the start. Still, we realized that Squarespace templates are the most fluid among the ecommerce website builders we have reviewed because we can easily customize the look and feel of the website without needing to switch templates.

The following retail and ecommerce experts contributed to this article:

	Meaghan Brophy is a resident retail and ecommerce expert at Fit Small Business with over 10 years of retail experience and 7 years of experience delivering actionable content to independent retailers. She has spent the last 4+ years at Fit Small Business testing retail and ecommerce software.
	Agatha Aviso is Fit Small Business’ resident ecommerce software expert. She has spent years testing and evaluating different platforms and building online stores.
	Brigitte Hodge is a retail specialist at Fit Small Business with several years of experience managing a retail store. At Fit Small Business, Brigitte deep-dives into retail software like Square and Shopify to find the best solutions for small businesses.