Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses

When we tested online stores, including free ecommerce website builders, we found 👑 Shopify is the best for small businesses. But read on for more recommendations, depending on your specific needs.

We know you’re not a web design expert, and you don’t want to spend hours writing out sales tax calculations by hand.

Instead, you need a user-friendly website that sells your products plus an easy-to-manage inventory system.

That’s why we’ve done the hard work, testing and comparing the market-leading online store tools. Below, you’ll find our comparison table followed by individual reviews for each platform.

Quick comparison: Best online store tools

1. Shopify: Best for multiple inventory locations

• Subscription pricing: Mid-to-high
• Transaction fees: Fairly high
• Ease of use: 3.5/5

Suited to: Ambitious sellers with a growing turnover

Shopify is one of the most famous online selling platforms available today. The reason it appeals so widely is because it targets entrepreneurs and small business leaders with a growth mindset. If you’ve sourced your products, decided on your branding, and looking to scale up your sales, then Shopify has the toolkit you need.

This year Shopify released its AI writing tool Shopify Magic, which we found effective in crafting creative prose for our product descriptions. While Wix has a similar AI text generator, it doesn’t offer the same range of tones of voice as Shopify’s tool.

We recommend Shopify over BigCommerce for sellers with dozens of inventory storage spots. Why? Shopify can cope with up to 1,000 inventory locations (on all plans), whereas BigCommerce facilitates selling and distribution from just four, five or eight (depending on your plan). Wix, on the other hand, isn’t known for its inventory management.

Shopify pricing

In terms of costs, Shopify pricing is not the most generous on the market. Although it offers a really accessible entry price point (its Starter plan is £5 monthly), that comes with 5% transaction fees when you’re signed up to Shopify Payments.

You’ll have to pay transaction fees and payment processing fees for every sale across all plans. That’s not the case with Square or BigCommerce.

We’ve gone into more detail in our Shopify review, in case you’re still undecided. Otherwise read on for more options.

2. Wix: Best for bookings and services

• Subscription pricing: Mid-to-lower end
• Transaction fees: Just the standard credit card rates
• Ease of use: 4/5

Suited to: Services-based business leaders

Wix tops our website builder list thanks to the wide range of features, but dips into second place when we consider its sales platform. The reason is its selling features are slightly less generous – Wix limits the number of transactions with automated sales tax, for instance.

Still, we’re excited about Wix’s use of AI, such as the text generator to speed up content creation. AI assists in the set up process too, with Wix suggesting features you’ll need based on your industry.

Here are some examples:

• If you run a restaurant: table reservations, food delivery, menu listings
• Hotel managers: season-specific room pricing, list add-on services at extra cost
• Fitness enthusiast: bookings (in person or online) via Wix Fit, subscriber-only content, automated reminders
• Creative professionals: membership areas with paywall content, video streaming

Wix is better for the services industry compared to Square, because the latter isn’t set up for paid members-only pages.

Wix pricing

Wix offers a 14-day free trial period on its premium plans, of which there are three ecommerce-specific options:

Wix is very similar in pricing to Squarespace, with Squarespace Business costing £17 per month (compared with Wix Core at £14 per month). But Wix could prove cheaper as Squarespace charges 3% transaction fees on its Business plan, whereas Wix charges no equivalent fees.

We’ve created a Wix pricing page if you want to look more closely at costs.

3. BigCommerce: Lowest transaction fees

• Subscription pricing: Good range of options
• Transaction fees: None (only processing fees for debit and credit cards from 1.20% + 30p)
• Ease of use: 3.3/5

Suited to: Product retailers with a wide customer base

If your products are popular with everyday shoppers across Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Instagram, then BigCommerce is a convenient platform to manage orders from all of these streams. With Shopify, you’d need to install apps (at extra cost) to achieve the same multichannel sales set up.

But the best bonus of all has to be the lack of transaction fees (which rival Shopify charges) on top of regular card processing fees.

Another advantage of BigCommerce is the opportunity to speak with its web platform experts on its easily accessible phone line. That means it’s much easier to access customer support on BigCommerce than it is on Wix (you’d need to request a callback through a customer service ticket on the latter).

It should be mentioned that BigCommerce is really aimed at larger sales operations. Meaning if you want priority customer support and assistance with API connections, then you’ll need to be on the high price Enterprise plan. Otherwise you can turn to the community forums and online guides for basic support.

BigCommerce pricing

You get a generous 15-day free trial when you sign up to BigCommerce for the first time. Here are the price plans:

BigCommerce charges in US dollars, and its pricing is very similar to Shopify’s, although BigCommerce currently works out cheaper (at the time of writing) due to exchange rate differences. BigCommerce generally charges lower transaction fees than Shopify (if you don’t use Shopify Payments).

Still, on BigCommerce’s Standard plan, you’ll pay fees of 2.90% + 30p per PayPal UK transaction. Other payment fees apply, including Barclaycard negotiated rates from 1% + 15p.

4. Square: Best free plan

• Subscription pricing: Affordable
• Transaction fees: Industry standard
• Ease of use: 3.9/5

Suited to: Small-to-medium sellers and local businesses

You’ll likely have seen Square’s sleek white card readers at bars and stores in your neighbourhood. It’s a popular choice of payment terminal, likely due to its very low cost basic hardware. Its website builder product is affordable too – you can sign up to sell online with no monthly subscription fees on the Square Free plan.

The drawback of the Free plan is the basic nature of the editing tools. You won’t have as much design customization as you would with Square Plus. And you’ll have Square-branded adverts on your site.

But given how speedy, slick and clear Square’s free website builder is, we have little to complain about here.

Overall, though, Square’s sales features are not nearly as comprehensive as those of BigCommerce. For $79 a month you can subscribe to BigCommerce Plus, which is very close to Square Online Premium at £64 per month. But only BigCommerce stores accept payments in multiple currencies. And BigCommerce stores customers’ payment details for a faster checkout (unlike Square).

Square pricing

Square has three price plans to choose from:

5. Squarespace: Best looking online stores

• Subscription pricing: Lower end
• Transaction fees: Reasonable
• Ease of use: 4.2/5

Suited to: Artisan or specialist curators with infrequent sales

Squarespace works well as a portfolio website, showcasing the aesthetics of your brand with classy web design. Think of your Squarespace website as a virtual art gallery: lots of white space, few features, and impeccable taste.

It’s not ideal for high-volume sales or aggressive marketing. Reason being you won’t get features like abandoned cart recovery emails, real-time shipping rates or even the ability to sell subscriptions until you’re signed up to Commerce Advanced (£23 per month).

That said, editing your web design is a really pleasant experience. Unlike many website editors we’ve tested (see our GoDaddy review for comparison), you can actually move every text box or image to the precise position you’d like.

Squarespace updated its editing experience this year so that a grid appears in the background when you click and drag design elements. This makes it easy to line them up evenly with others on the page.

Squarespace Pricing

There are four Squarespace price plans to choose from, all of which are relatively low cost compared with the larger platforms Shopify and BigCommerce:

You may have noticed Squarespace pricing is similar to Wix, and they’re near competitors because of their focus on design and style. You wouldn’t come to either for complex inventory management and warehouse services, for instance.

Squarespace Commerce Basic costs £23 per month, while Wix Core costs £14 per month. Yet with Wix you’ll get 5 hours of video storage versus 30 minutes with Squarespace. You’ll also get slightly better selling features from Wix at this price point, including abandoned cart recovery emails, applying discounts automatically, and the ability to accept pre-orders.

But if you want to sell more than 50,000 products, you should choose Squarespace over Wix. And if product reviews are important to you, Squarespace is the better choice once again, as Wix limits these.

How We Ranked the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses