While many ecommerce sellers will choose to find the right marketplace such as Amazon or eBay to sell on, others will decide to build their own ecommerce website where they are able to sell their products direct to consumers. While the shopping cart website builders space is fairly crowded and more coming out all of the time, we wanted to provide you a list of the top 5 shopping cart website builders that are out there so that you are getting started on your ecommerce journey you pick the right platform that will give you the most tools you need to be successful.
Top 5 Shopping Cart Website Builders
Shopify – Shopify is typically the most recognizable ecommerce platform in the space and has earned this by being one of the most secure platforms that feature on ecommerce features across the board from their shopping cart, to the point of sale and now everything from digital marketing to order fulfillment. Shopify is a pretty easy to use and offers a free trial so you can get a feel for it before you start to pay. The main disadvantage of Shopify is that while it is a powerful platform and offers a free trial and low entry point, you need to be prepared to be pay a lot more over time. Many features are gated which requires you to upgrade to higher prices. Additionally the base Shopify platform only comes with a few themes so you will typically need to pay more for a theme than most shopping cart website builders that allow more do it yourself. They have an app store which expands their features but again most come with additional charges. Shopify is a great getting started platform and has the capabilities to supporting growing ecommerce companies but they come with a high price tag to continue to use as you grow.
BigCommerce – Similar to Shopify, BigCommerce will have all of the capabilities an ecommerce business will need to create and grow an online presence. They have shopping cart website builders which can be used to start with a theme and design it yourself. They have the primary core capabilities you would need and are fairly easy to use with good support model. The major drawback on BigCommerce however is their pricing. They have decided a few years back to price themselves out of the small to mid sized business space and try to go upstream to larger ecommerce businesses owners. As a result, they are powerful but typically out of the price point of most mid sized to small ecommerce companies trying to get started.
WooCommerce – Of all of the players in shopping cart website builders space, Woo is the largest because it is powered and part of WordPress. This means anyone today using WordPress to power their website for their blog can easily add Woocommerce and start selling off of their blog products with limited to no additional costs. Woocommerce as part of the WordPress community and ecosystem has many advantages as it is open source which means the cost to use is very low compared to anyone and any developer can contribute features called plugins to expand the capabilities. There are a good number of free themes available and anyone can update the code of their website directly. The main negative is that wordpress can feel overwhelming using the user interface at times and Woo can seem less intuitive then the competitors. Woocommerce assumes a small level of technical ability that for example Shopify or BigCommerce would require making it out of reach for some but the best option if you can do it yourself.
Wix – While Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce started life focusing on ecommerce, Wix started out focusing on being a website builder and helping any company being found online. Over time they invested in ecommerce capabilities and launched their own shopping cart features. As a result, the actual shopping cart website builders features and capabilities are very easy to use and perfect for new online sellers trying to get started. The problem will come in as you advance in ecommerce and need more advanced features or capabilities you will most likely graduate out of Wix and needing a more focused ecommerce platform. Wix for getting started again is easier to use and cheaper to a great option to get started.
GoDaddy – GoDaddy joined the shopping cart website builders space over the last few years through a number of acquisitions which took their core offerings of domain and hosting and now allowed them to play in the website builder space. As a result, similiar to Wix you get a website builder with core capabilities at a lower price point which makes it easy to get started but they do not have the depth to keep ecommerce sellers as they expand or if they have already worked in the space and looking to upgrade their existing shopping cart. Like Wix they are a really good option for that new seller working on their first shopping cart and trying to establish an online presence. If you are an experienced online seller or looking to invest and grow quickly in your brand and online presence you will likely outgrow GoDaddy in short time.
As you can see there are a number of great options for shopping cart website builders out there and it really depends where you are on your ecommerce journey to pick the best one. Additionally, it will come down to how much you are willing to spend month to month, how quickly you expect to see growth and what you want to get out of your website to determine which of the top shopping cart website builders would be the right fit for your specific business.