Ecwid vs Shopify: Price, Features & What’s Best in 2023

Ecwid does not have built-in payment processing but connects with more than 70 payment gateways, including PayPal and Stripe. Compared to Shopify, it does not charge transaction fees or markups on top of the payment provider’s processing fees.

Lightspeed’s acquisition of Ecwid in 2021 has allowed for some sort of “baked-in” payment processing through Lightspeed Payments (US businesses only), helping to provide subscriptions and accept Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Financing options can be offered by third-party integrations Klarna and Afterpay.

As of this writing, Ecwid doesn’t provide a one-click checkout option for customers—where customers’ payment information is saved when they buy from your store, which allows them to checkout “in one click” the next time they place an order.

Shopify allows you to choose between using its built-in payment gateway, Shopify Payments, and other third-party providers as your payment solution. The only catch with using a third-party processor is that Shopify will charge an additional fee ranging from 0.5% to 2% per transaction, compared to Ecwid’s zero transaction fees.

Shopify has integrations with PayPal Express Checkout and Amazon Pay, along with more than a hundred payment providers. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) options like Klarna, crypto payments, and many international payments are included under its alternative payment methods.

When you decide to go with Shopify’s built-in payment provider, you also gain access to the one-click checkout feature called Shop Pay. Shop Pay allows customers to save their payment details between all Shopify stores for faster checkout. It’s similar to Apple Pay or Google Pay in that shoppers can complete orders in one click.

A customer-facing checkout page with Shop Pay enabled (Source: Shopify)

Ecwid’s site themes pale in comparison to Shopify’s in terms of design options and customizations. As of this writing, you have access to 70 free site themes to build your Instant Site with Ecwid. Although all are mobile-responsive, they provide very limited customization.

Ecwid has weak SEO features, not being available for access under the Free tier and limited customizations even under paid plans. Aside from being able to set up meta descriptions for your product pages, you are not able to set up specific product URLs. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is also not activated for an Ecwid store.

Even blogging isn’t easily done in Ecwid. It doesn’t provide a blog section where you can easily add content, but provides a workaround by creating a category page for your blog and setting up blog posts as sub-categories underneath it.

As of this writing, Shopify provides 11 free themes and more than 110 paid themes starting at $180, all of which include multiple styles and are mobile-commerce ready (if not mobile-first.)

An example of Shopify’s latest theme, Sense, which is mobile-first.

A Shopify store also comes with a content management system (CMS). This lets you set up website pages such as about, contact, and blog pages.

If you are familiar with how WordPress works, Shopify’s blogging system is similar. You have a WYSIWYG editor to create blog posts and can further optimize it by setting up SEO, tags, and blog categories, as you can see from the images below.

Shopify’s WYSIWYG editor for blog posts and website pages

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You can easily organize your blog posts through tags and categories, and set up SEO for a particular post.

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Ecwid’s main drawback is the enforcement of product limits on each plan. You only unlock the ability to sell unlimited products on the highest plan ($99/month), compared to Shopify, where you get this feature even on the basic tier ($39/month).

However, Ecwid provides unlimited product variants, has a bigger file size limit for digital goods (up to 25GB), and provides custom fields on its checkout pages. Shopify has limits on these features, but workarounds are available with the help of an app or third-party extension.

Setting up product categories isn’t as intuitive as with Shopify, as you need to set them up in a different section of your Ecwid dashboard instead of product pages. While it does let you assign products to categories in bulk, we still find Shopify’s smart categories easier to deal with.

You can set up custom checkout fields in Ecwid in the form of radio buttons, dropdown menus, date and time pickers, checkboxes, text fields, and selection buttons. (Source: Ecwid)

Facebook and Google, popular marketing platforms, are natively and easily accessible through the Marketing tab on Ecwid’s interface. You can create ad campaigns in just a few minutes. You can also create discount coupons and issue gift cards. There are marketing apps like Mailchimp in Ecwid’s App Market, but it is in no way comparable to the extensive choices available in Shopify’s App Store.

Ecwid has a free built-in feature that lets your store support over 50 languages and do automatic translation based on a site visitor’s IP address. It only translates default store elements such as the buy button and social media shares—you need to take care of the product description.

A native multicurrency feature is unavailable but can be done with the help of a third-party integration. Note, though, that these features are available on the Business and Unlimited plans only.

Shopify’s a great option if you want to sell an unlimited number of products. Product categories can also be set up using smart tags, helping you to easily segment products into categories. However, Shopify loses to Ecwid when it comes to setting up product options and variants—you can only configure up to three product options and 100 product variants on your products. You also need to use an app (such as Digital Downloads, which is free) to be able to sell digital goods. Custom checkout fields are also not built in and would need an app to be enabled.

What Shopify lacks in product management features, it more than makes up for with its marketing tools. Shopify has built-in marketing tools that are accessible even on its first-entry level plans, such as the abandoned cart saver. Shopify Email, its native email marketing program, lets you send up to 10,000 free emails each month. These features are commonly available either as a paid extension in Ecwid and other ecommerce platforms or can only be unlocked on higher paid plans.

Shopify’s plans (except the Starter plan) allow you to sell in up to 20 languages from a single Shopify store. When you add another language to your online store, Shopify creates unique URLs for each translated page in your store by adding language code. For example, if you publish two additional languages, French (fr) and German (de), then your store URLs will change to shop.com/fr and shop.com/de.

Multiple currencies can be done by opting to go with Shopify Payments, Shopify’s built-in payment processor.

When you create your free Ecwid account, the interface walks you through the critical steps necessary to get your store up and running. If you pay attention to the prompts and follow the instructions, there’s no reason you can’t build and launch your store within an hour. Getting to know the rest of the back end happens naturally just by clicking around the interface.

Ecwid provides a to-do list that gets ticked off as you complete each step when you create a new account. See our guide on how to set up an Ecwid store.

Ecwid’s Help Center has hundreds of articles that cover every subject, from getting started and setting up your accounts to managing, promoting, and personalizing your store. However, the amount of personal support you get is directly proportional to how much you’re paying.

If you have a free account, Ecwid does not offer customer support. If you have the Venture or Business Plans, you get access to live chat. Phone service is available to Business and Unlimited subscribers, while Unlimited customers get prioritized support for your issues. However, users must request a scheduled call-back in the user control panel rather than contacting customer support 24/7.

All of Shopify’s tools are accessible within a few clicks on the main interface, and the workflow is meant to be as intuitive as possible. This makes the platform quite user-friendly, even for those who have never used Shopify. If you ever do have a problem with one of Shopify’s tools, it’s easy to find a full and detailed explanation of every feature in Shopify’s Help Center.

Shopify provides a similar set-up wizard like Ecwid, with helpful prompts in the form of callout buttons and boxes that open up to help articles.

Shopify’s Help Center encourages you to try and look for answers to your questions by searching its articles and tips before handing you over to support staff. You can reach them directly via live chat, email, and phone. We also appreciate that Shopify’s customer support button is displayed prominently throughout its website. When we tried to reach out to its support team via chat, we encountered professional and competent support staff that were patient in addressing our concerns and were helpful with just about any issue.

Shopify’s Help Center has different categories that lead to different articles and guides on how to set up and manage a Shopify store. (Source: Shopify)

As ecommerce software experts, we have tried, tested, and experienced more than a dozen ecommerce website builders and have found Ecwid to be one of the most intuitive platforms to work with. Even non-techies won’t find it hard to manage the store’s backend. Front-end customer experience is also smooth and hassle-free. See more in our guide to setting up Ecwid.

While Ecwid offers a robust set of sales and product features, you need to be subscribed to a higher-level plan to unlock certain features that you can get for a more affordable plan with Shopify.

Ecwid is loved by its user base for being intuitive and reasonably priced. While users note that the free and lower-priced tiers are limited, they shared that the platform is good for those who aren’t as web savvy as many Shopify users. The general theme among reviewers was that it was an imperfect but worthy discount alternative to Shopify.

Check out our Ecwid review to read more about what users think about the platform.

Shopify turns out to be our top ecommerce platform every time we evaluate ecommerce website builders. The platform continuously updates, upgrades, and introduces new features beneficial to business owners (such as the new drag-and-drop website builder, more social shopping with YouTube and TikTok integrations, and Shop Pay). Its recent price increase came with more than a hundred new features and enhancements worth more than the price increase.

We built a Shopify demo store and were able to develop a full website with no challenges. If you want to grow your business, you can easily add an app from its extensive Shopify App store or go with its built-in email marketing tool like Shopify Email.

We can’t say it enough—if you are serious about your online business, Shopify is going to be the best launching ground for you as it can support your business’ growing needs and yet still be affordable if you are just starting.

The majority of Shopify user reviews we found online comment on how easy the service is to use. In fact, the platform’s ease of use—even for those without tech expertise—is one of the primary points of praise among reviewers. One of the more common complaints is that Shopify is harder to customize on the back-end than other ecommerce platforms.

For real Shopify user feedback, visit our Shopify review.

Overall, we find Shopify better because of its full standalone online store, multichannel sales, and built-in management and marketing. However, Ecwid is better if you need to add ecommerce functionality to your existing website or blog.

Yes, Ecwid is more affordable because it offers a forever-free plan. Note, though, that you will end up spending more if you need certain features. Shopify’s paid plans provide better value for money.

Yes. Both Shopify and Ecwid are user-friendly and can be used by people with little to no technical knowledge or coding. You don’t need to use custom codes to build online stores on their platforms.