Top 3 Ecommerce Storefronts Reviewed Ecwid, Shopify, BigCommerce...

May 2021 Review:
We review the top e-commerce storefront builders and rank them based on functionality, ease-of-use, customer service & price.

SPOLIER ALERT: We review each platform's pros & cons. After review, Ecwid ranked #1, read our review to see why.

#1 - Ecwid Overview & Costs

As you’ll see below, not all store builder platform’s are equal. Ecwid ranked number 1 in a crowded & competitive space, let us outline why below;

WHAT WE LOVED (MOST)

FREE FOREVER – Ecwid has a “free forever” program vs Shopify’s limited 14 day or BigCommerce’s 30 days free trials. This is great because, personally, I need more than 14-30 days to get my business humming. (note, Ecwid’s free plan doesn’t require credit cards, nice).

STORE SETUP – Ecwid make it super easy to import from your existing stores or, build a new one. Just download your customer & product lists and upload into Ecwid. Setup shipping, payment & tax and you’re ready to go. We found it much easier than Shopify or BigCommerce.

BEST PRICE – Ecwid is a clear winner in the market, not only are the packages cheaper but they also offer a free package for sellers with under 10 products. The pricing is even cheaper than Shopify & BigCommerce, not on the face monthly fee, but when you consider transactions fees that both Shopify/BigCommerce have and apps fees needed to sell on instagram, facebook and other channels then Ecwid is much cheaper.

NO TRANSACTION FEES – oh, and Ecwid don’t charge additional transaction fees like Shopify or BigCommerce do, yes. This is big.

SELL & PROMOTE EVERYWHERE – Ecwid has all the features built in to sell and promote your products across Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, eBay, and many more, no need to install paid 3P apps or integrations (like on Shopify, for example). This is probably Ecwid’s major strength and what we liked it, ALOT.

OTHER THINGS WE LOVED

EASIEST STORE SETUP & MANAGEMENT – Ecwid was the easiest to set up products and your catalog. Ecwid’s dashboard and onboarding flow are the best we’ve seen, very logical on the backend when it comes to categorizing products, no apps required. Also allows for physical, digital and service types of products, not all do that without adding applications.

VERSATILE ORDER MANAGEMENT – Easily the best we’ve seen Ecwid allows you to bulk edit order and bulk print or export. But, on Shopify, you cannot bulk print orders.

BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE – Ecwid makes it easy to find customer support on the right-hand side navigation panel (call, live chat, email).

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

DESIGNS – Ecwid makes it easier than Shopify to edit your web store layout so you can personalize that way, no coding required. However, Shopify clearly have more designs and templates to choose from. That said, if you need to do anything custom to a Shopify store you’re going to need a developer.

Comparision Pricing Chart

Watch And Learn

#2 Shopify

WHAT WE LIKED

GREAT DESIGNS – Shopify clearly are amazing for store design, just so many options.
SEO TOOLS – Great for setting up SEO on your site, which can help with organic lead gen.
APP STORE – literally thousands of apps that plug into whatever you need, most cost money though.

WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE

PRICE & TRANSACTION FEES – if you don’t use Shopify Pay then you get charged 2.4% to 2.9% + 30c per transaction. Ecwid has none of these and was free forever.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT – while it is good, it took us a while to find it, hidden behind multiple clicks and help topics.
MULTIPLE MARKETPLACE SELLING – while you can get apps to sell on other marketplaces there is a learning curve. Other platforms made it easier to sell across Amazon, FB, Instagram etc.
ORDER MANAGEMENT – couldn’t bulk print orders, which, i think is necessary for SMB’s.

#3 Shopify

WHAT WE LIKED

SCALABILITY – You’re unlikely to outgrow this platform, for a cost, you can scale it up with tons of tools
NO TRANSACTION FEES – But you do have transaction limits on the plans.
WEB BUILDER – uber comprehensive web store building tools

WHAT WE DIDN’T LOVE

TURNOVER LIMITS – The way they get you is by forcing you up a plan (and cost) by having annual transaction limits. Tricky.
SLOW PERFORMANCE – Page load times were twice as long as some others. No one wants to wait for your store to load.

Ecwid Customer Reviews

"For a free software it comes with great tools, email messaging to payment and so on."

"Ecwid was recommended to me by a friend and it was the best decision I ever made in terms of an eCommerce solution."

"Ecwid has always been the perfect fit for me since I started using it several years ago, and now it just got even better."

Our Conclusion

Out of the three we would recommend starting with Ecwid, they offered the best in functionality, ease of use and setup, customer support and pricing. Shopify and BigCommerce are better known (great marketing), but when you actually weight up the sites pros & cons Ecwid came out on top. We especially liked how you can sell and manage sales across so many other marketplaces on Ecwid, none of the others did that without a fair bit of development of your store.

So, if you’re starting out or you’re migrating an existing site then give Ecwid a try first. Afterall, its free (forever).