What's the best ecommerce website builder?

I talked to 944 real-life, verified users of ecommerce website builders and asked them one simple question: do you recommend the ecommerce website builder that you're currently using?

I used their responses to calculate a customer satisfaction rating for the top 19. Here's what I found out.

My work is supported by affiliate commissions when readers choose an ecommerce website builder based on this guide.

Shopify
The best ecommerce website builder. People like it because it's easy to use and has a huge app store that lets your store be super powerful. Shopify also has a point of sale system for selling offline. You really can't go wrong with using Shopify— 97% is a really high customer satisfaction rating.
97% Reviews (77) Try Shopify

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a Wordpress plugin— so it runs on Wordpress websites. One user explained it well: "If you use Wordpress, WooCommerce is the best e-commerce option out there. If you have never used Wordpress before, setting up an e-commerce site using WooCommerce and Wordpress can be tricky."
94% Reviews (32) Try WooCommerce

Squarespace
Squarespace is a really popular and excellent website builder— a couple years ago they launched their ecommerce features and have been building it up. I'd recommend it if you want a website that mixes in some ecommerce— rather than simply just an ecommerce website.
92% Reviews (61) Try Squarespace

Jumpseller
Almost Jumpseller users all mentioned the same thing: They use Jumpseller because they live in Chile and Chile has unusual conditions for asking credit cards— which Jumpseller supports.
91% Reviews (45) Try Jumpseller

Ecwid
Ecwid is unusual. All the builders in this guide lets you build a website— but Ecwid let’s you add ecommerce onto an existing website. Basically you add their embed code to a website and it puts ecommerce onto your website. So if you have an existing website and need to upgrade it in order to have ecommerce, you might want to try Ecwid first.
90% Reviews (94) Try Ecwid

Prestashop
One user summarized Prestashop best: "Prestashop is a generic e-commerce platform that can be adapted with the addition of modules— but it is quite complex."
86% Reviews (35) Try Prestashop

Big Cartel
Big Cartel is simple. But like I mentioned with SupaDupa, being simple has upside: it's easy to use and great for stores just starting out but it also has downside: it's limited.
84% Reviews (50) Try Big Cartel

Wix Commerce
Wix is a website builder and Wix Commerce adds ecommerce to your Wix website. I'd recommend it for existing Wix users but otherwise you're better off with different ecommerce software.
84% Reviews (37) Try Wix Commerce

Americommerce
Americommerce has had a weird history. It was bought by Capital One, changed it's name to Spark Pay. Then Capital One sold it back to the original owners who changed the name back to Americommerce. Users kept mentioning that customer support is very prompt.
83% Reviews (42) Try Americommerce

Supadupa
SupaDupa is simple. Being simple has upside: it's easy to use and great for stores starting out but it also has downside: it's limited.
81% Reviews (53) Try Supadupa

GoDaddy Online Store
GoDaddy Online Store was best summarized by one user: "I would recommend it as a basic site with essential functionality that’s easy to use and fairly priced. It [just] lacks some of the luster and functionality of other stores builders."
77% Reviews (75) Try GoDaddy Online Store

Core Commerce
Core Commerce users were unsatisfied with the poor customer support and limited functionality.
76% Reviews (55) Try Core Commerce

BigCommerce
BigCommerce has a lot of flexibility— it even has it's own app store that lets you add new features to your online store. Unfortunately users complained that it can be clunky and difficult to use.
76% Reviews (54) Try BigCommerce

Zoey
Users kept mentioning that Zoey gets expensive: for example: “We have move to Shopify [which] costs 25% of Zoey.” and "Zoey’s prices go up fast and you can only use important things if you use the Power which is $500.00 a month"
74% Reviews (31) Try Zoey

Magento
The 27% who weren’t satisfied with Mangento found it was difficult to use.
73% Reviews (30) Try Magento

Volusion
Volusion has the same problem. It’s an older company— users complained it's buggy and outdated.
70% Reviews (67) Try Volusion

3dcart
One user summarized 3dcart well: "It was fine 15 years ago when we first opened our company. [But we're moving to a new platform.]" Basically 3dcart is outdated.
69% Reviews (64) Try 3dcart

Ubercart
"it's a outdated and deprecated project at this point. It's was and still is a decent project, but, you would be stupid to build a new website with it." - Anonymous
64% Reviews (22) Try Ubercart

• Categories of Ecommerce Website Builders

  While customer satisfaction tells an important story, it's not the whole story. For example, depending on what you're looking for, a certain category of ecommerce website builders might be most useful:

  Category	Examples	Hosting	Who is it for?	Cost
  Full SaaS	Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, Magento	Included.	Small - large stores.	Monthly fee.
  Simple SaaS	Big Cartel, SupaDupa	Included.	Small stores.	Monthly fee.
  Website Builder	Squarespace, Wix.	Included.	Small stores.	Monthly fee.
  Open Source	Prestashop, Ubercart, WooCommerce	You have to host it.	Medium - large stores.	Free but often with paid extensions.

  So depending on your needs, certain categories may be more appropriate.

  For example, is important to you that you are running your own host? You may want to try an Open Source ecommerce website builder.

  Are you just starting out in ecommerce and want a simple platform to try selling a few products? A Basic SaaS company or Website Builder will be a simple, easy place to start.

  Note: Open Source scored the lowest in customer satisfaction (if you calculate aggregate customer satisfaction per category).

• An App Store is Critical

  One thing I repeatedly heard from Shopify users is that they loved the Shopify app store:

  "Shopify has any feature under the sun- if you think you need it, someone already created an app."

  "there's heaps of third party apps you can integrate easily that I believe are essential to growing a business"

  "so many third party apps, templates that other platforms aren't popular enough to have"

  Ecommerce is deceptively complex. You may not realize it, but mature online stores need to cover a wide variety of uses: taxes, automatic inventory, email notifications, shipping integrations and much more.

  Packing all of these features into the core software will make it bloated and complex quickly. But an app store fixes this problem by allowing for a simple core that can be extended through apps.

  

  Ecommerce website builders with app stores (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce) are much better situated for the future than ecommerce software without it.

• Be Wary of Confusing Interfaces

  I've published guides to both website builders and photography website builders and the world of ecommerce website builders seems especially plagued with confusing interfaces.

  Many users complained that their ecommerce website builder was difficult to use. (While the companies that users found easy to use almost always had high a customer satisfaction rating).

  So when looking for the right builder, avoid feature and price shopping. Remember to consider confusing and difficult interfaces. You don't want to get stuck with a clumsy, frustrating editor.

• You Can Use a Website Builder for Ecommerce

  Five years ago, it wouldn't have made sense to include Wix and Squarespace in this list. They're all website builders that, at the time, didn't offer serious ecommerce functionality- other than partnering with a 3rd party provider (such as Ecwid) or offering embeddable Paypal buttons.

  But that's changed. In the last few years Wix, Weebly and Squarespace have aggressively built out ecommerce solutions integrated with their website builder.

  Mostly website builders offer solutions for the low-end of the market- while more sophisticated than their past efforts, their ecommerce solutions tend to be still quite limited- but for users already using a website builder, it might be worth it for them to stick with the website builder for ecommerce.

  

  The Weebly product editor.