Your business needs an ecommerce platform or a website builder – but which one?
The COVID-19 lockdowns brought ecommerce to the fore and showed us how important it can be for your profit margins. Depending on your business, you’ll need either a website builder or ecommerce platform to get started.
Ecommerce platforms are used specifically for building online stores, with tools designed to help you take payments and sell products online. Website builders are for creating non-ecommerce websites such as business sites, portfolios, and blogs.
To help you decide which specific platform is right for you, we thoroughly tested each ecommerce platform ourselves, first-hand. We also invited everyday users to try them out in order to give each a ‘Customer Score’, which indicates how positive the user experience was.
We critically evaluated each platform in the most important areas such as sales features, design functions, value for money, customer support, and more, scoring each platform out of five in those categories. We then used those findings to produce an overall rating for each platform, as well as giving us detailed insight into each one.
We’ll first review the UK’s best ecommerce platforms, followed by the best website builders.
The 4 best ecommerce platforms
From our independent testing, we know that the best ecommerce platforms are BigCommerce, Wix Ecommerce, Squarespace Ecommerce, and Shopify.
Ecommerce platform | Starting price (billed annually) | Best for | Overall rating /5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| £22/month | Best for scaling your business | 4.3 | |
| £13/month | Best for user-friendliness | 4.3 | |
| £22/month | Best sales-specific features | 4.2 | |
| £20/month | Best for designing your brand image | 4.1 |
BigCommerce
Would suit your business if you want to scale to new heights
Sales features /5 | Design tools /5 | Value for money /5 | Help and support /5 | Customer score /5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
4.4 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 3.2 | 3.0 |
BigCommerce is big on built-in features. It has everything you need to grow your business already available at no extra cost – unlike the other platforms, which rely on third-party apps.
We found BigCommerce’s multi-channel selling particularly impressive – enabling you to sell via social media and grow your audience with ease – and loved its SEO features, which can help your online store to appear high up on relevant search engine results pages.
What’s more, unlike Shopify, there is no transaction fee to worry about, which can help you save enormously in the long run.
While it’s the least user-friendly platform we tested (scoring 3.3/5), BigCommerce is brilliant at helping you to manage your entire business processes, not just sell products.
Pros:
- Excellent SEO features, including onsite prompts and hints when adding products
- Widest choice of in-built features of any platform on the market
- Multi-channel integration across social media
- Far longer free trial period than Shopify
Cons:
- Interface could be more user-friendly
- The only platform without a mobile app to help you build on the go
- Relatively restrictive design control
BigCommerce pricing
BigCommerce offers a generous 15-day free trial period, and three core price plans in USD, which we’ve converted to GBP:
Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | £22/month | Starting a small or medium-sized online store | Sell an unlimited number of products Multichannel selling Coupon creation Reporting tools |
| Plus | £59/month | Growing your online store | Abandoned cart recovery emails Customer loyalty programmes Store credit card payment details |
| Pro | £220/month | Scaling your business to new heights | Filter products through size and colour variants Dedicated SSL security Google reviews |
Wix Ecommerce
Would suit your business if you want a user-friendly platform
Sales features /5 | Design tools /5 | Value for money /5 | Help and support /5 | Customer score /5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
4.3 | 3.5 | 4.2 | 4.8 | 4.5 |
Wix Ecommerce is your best bet if you want total control over how your storefront looks.
While it only supports multi-channel selling through Instagram as an in-built feature, it does offer lots of creative freedom and brilliant customer support.
However, you can install the app ECWID (£0-£99/month), which unlocks your Wix store to a range of sales features – including selling via Facebook and Pinterest – that can rival BigCommerce or Shopify.
We also liked the SEO Wizard tool, which makes it really easy to improve your store’s ranking on Google’s results pages.
Pros:
- Lots of creative control to help you build your brand
- Add product videos to help improve the customer experience
- Easy to use
Cons:
- The sheer amount of creative freedom can hinder ecommerce best practices
- Only supports multi-channel selling via Instagram as an in-built feature
- Could be easier to sync physical inventory with your new Wix store
Wix Ecommerce pricing
Wix offers a 14-day free trial on its premium plans, with three ecommerce-specific plans to choose from:
Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Basic | £13/month | Small businesses looking to sell online | Accept online payments Unlimited bandwidth 20GB storage Free domain for one year Upload up to 5 hours of video Site Booster app Visitor Analytics app £75 Google Ads voucher Sales analytics and reports |
| Business Unlimited | £16/month | Growing businesses | 35GB storage Upload up to 10 hours of video Professional logo Pro ecommerce features such as automated tax sales |
| 14-day free trial | £22/month | Medium to large businesses | 50GB storage Unlimited video hours Priority response on the Wix Answers page VIP support |
Shopify
Would suit your business if you want excellent sales-specific features
Sales features /5 | Design tools /5 | Value for money /5 | Help and support /5 | Customer score /5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
4.7 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 4.6 |
Shopify places no real restrictions on how to build your inventory system – you can upload single or multiple products, receive daily revenue reports, and use its online invoice generator to make your payment collection days much easier.
It also offers superb multi-channel integration, letting you sell through Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, and other social platforms (which is more than Wix Ecommerce can offer).
However, it’s the only platform to enforce its own transaction fee (2.2% +20p on the ‘Basic’ plan) unless you use Shopify Payments. Shopify also relies on third party apps for much of its functionality, which can see your monthly costs add up quickly.
Pros:
- Excellent multi-channel integration
- Provides the best sales-specific features of any platform we tested
- Features are more customisable than on BigCommerce
Cons:
- Transaction fees imposed if you don’t use Shopify’s payment gateway
- Less creative freedom than Wix Ecommerce
- You’ll need to reformat your entire website if you switch templates after going live
Shopify pricing
Shopify offers a 14-day free trial period plus three core price plans, which we’ve converted from USD to GBP:
Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Shopify | £22/month | Starting a small online store | Sell an unlimited number of products 24/7 support 2.2% + 20p credit card rates Sell in 133 currencies |
| Shopify | £58/month | Growing your business | Gift cards Abandoned cart recovery emails Five staff accounts 1.9% + 20p credit card rates |
| Advanced Shopify | £219/month | Large online stores | Third party calculated shipping rates 15 staff accounts Sell in five languages 1.6% + 20p credit card rates |
Squarespace Ecommerce
Would suit your business if you want a stunning online store
Sales features /5 | Design tools /5 | Value for money /5 | Help and support /5 | Customer score /5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
4.0 | 4.4 | 4.9 | 3.3 | 4.1 |
Squarespace Ecommerce has the best design features of any platform we tested.
Its impressive marketing features can really help build your brand, too. It supports multi-channel selling, the ability to create and brand your Instagram story posts, and built-in social media live feeds on your website – something that costs extra on the other platforms.
Space for improvement? Sure. Squarespace Ecommerce will struggle to keep pace with Shopify or BigCommerce if you want to scale your business (for example, it only supports two payment processors compared to Shopify’s 100+ options), and it’s more tricky to use than Wix Ecommerce.
Pros:
- Excellent marketing features including multi-channel integration
- Best-designed templates of any platform
- Excellent value for money
Cons:
- More difficult to use than Wix Ecommerce or Shopify
- Supports the fewest number of payment processors (only PayPal and Stripe)
Squarespace pricing
Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial period and has two ecommerce-specific price plans to choose from:
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Commerce | £20/month | SMBs looking to sell online | Point of Sale app to help you sell in person Sell on Instagram Limited availability labels 0% transaction fees |
| Advanced Commerce | £30/month | Medium-sized ecommerce businesses | Abandoned cart recovery Sell subscriptions Advanced shipping features (including a real-time cost calculator) |
The 3 best website builders
We’ve tried and tested many website builders in our time, so we know exactly what makes a strong platform. From our independent research, we know that the best website builders are Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly.
| Website builder | Starting price (billed annually) | Free plan/trial? | Best for | Overall rating /5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | £3/month | Free plan | Best overall website builder | 4.5 |
| Squarespace | £10/month | 14-day free trial | Best templates | 4.5 |
| Weebly | £4/month | Free plan | Best value for money | 3.5 |
Wix
Would suit your business if you want a website built quickly
With over 154 million users in 190 different countries, Wix enables you to build a professional-looking website within a matter of hours, offering 510+ templates and intuitive drag-and-drop design tools.
Better yet, Wix ADI (artificial design intelligence) can generate a brand new website for you in minutes, after you’ve answered a few questions about the type of site you want.
On the downside, Wix doesn’t allow you to switch templates once you publish your website, which can be quite restrictive.
Pros:
- Huge choice of templates to help you design the website you want
- Best website builder for help and support
- Wix ADI can build a website for you within minutes
Cons:
- Cannot switch templates after publishing your website
- Adding apps can increase your monthly costs
Wix pricing
Wix has four plans that are designed for building non-ecommerce websites, starting from just £3 per month.
Wix also has a free plan, but it comes with Wix adverts on every page, plus a ‘.wix.com’ subdomain, which can make your site look unprofessional. For that reason, we’d recommend the premium plans for building your business website:
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connect Domain | £3/month | Very basic websites | 1GB bandwidth 500MB storage Connect your own domain name |
| Combo | £6/month | Personal use | 2GB bandwidth 3GB storage Remove Wix ads Free domain for one year £75 Google Ads voucher |
| Unlimited (most popular) | £8.50/month | Entrepreneurs and Freelancers | Unlimited bandwidth 10GB storage Site Booster app (worth £45) Visitor Analytics app (worth £45) |
| VIP | £18/month | Small to medium businesses | 20GB storage Professional logo designed for you (worth £38) VIP support |
Squarespace
Would suit your business if you want a beautiful website
The best website builder for design, using Squarespace is the closest you’ll get to professional web designer quality. It offers the best-designed templates on the market, and powerful design tools.
Due to this creative complexity, Squarespace is harder to use than Wix. If you struggle with tech or have little interest in spending hours – or days – designing your website, then you should try Wix or Weebly instead.
That said, you’ll end up with a beautiful website if you stick it out with Squarespace.
Pros:
- Best-designed templates of any website builder
- Offers lots of creative control through powerful design tools
- Mobile app to help you get creative on the go
Cons:
- Steeper learning curve than on Wix
- No auto-save feature while editing your website
Squarepsace pricing
Squarepace offers a 14-day free trial, and has two website builder plans to choose from:
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal | £10/month | Personal use | Free custom domain Unlimited bandwidth and storage 24/7 customer support |
| Business | £15/month | Small businesses | Professional Google account Up to £75 Google Ads credit Sell unlimited number of products Sell gift cards 3% transaction fee |
Weebly
Would suit your business if you want value for money
Weebly is another popular drag-and-drop website builder, meaning you can place elements wherever you like on each page.
It offers affordable price plans and plenty of apps to help you grow your business, as well as strong SEO features to help your website appear higher up on the search engine results pages, making Weebly great value for money.
It can’t match Wix for creative freedom, and it doesn’t have an ADI option. Also, Weebly’s templates are less impressive than those offered by Squarespace, but it’s a good option for small business owners who don’t have much technical skill.
Pros:
- Really useful SEO guides and tips
- Large app market to help you bolster your site
- Best value for money website builder
Cons:
Weebly pricing
Weebly has three website builder plans to choose from. Like Wix, it has a free plan, but that comes with Weebly adverts on each page, which can make your site look amateurish. We recommend signing up to one of these price plans:
| Plan | Cost (billed annually) | Best for | What you’ll get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connect | £4/month | Personal sites | Free SSL security 500MB storage Connect a custom domain Chat and email support |
| Pro | £9/month | Groups and organisations | Unlimited storage Remove Weebly ads Site search bar Accept payments Phone support £75 Google Ads credit |
| Business | £18/month | Small businesses and stores | Coupon codes Shipping cost calculator Automatic tax calculator Pop-up notifications |
Expert verdict
Built on the findings from our independent research, we’ve selected and reviewed the best website builders and ecommerce platforms in the UK. You already know which one is best for your business, but here’s a recap…
The best ecommerce platforms are BigCommerce and Wix Ecommerce, both scoring 4.3/5 overall in our testing. BigCommerce is best suited to fast-growing businesses, providing all the built-in tools you need to scale, while charging zero transaction fees (unlike Shopify). Wix Ecommerce is the more user-friendly platform, making it easy to build a small, brand-focussed online store.
The best website builder is Wix, ideal for creating professional-looking websites with consummate ease, closely followed by Squarespace and its beautiful templates. Though not as simple to use as Wix, Squarespace has the best design tools of any website builder we tested, helping your website stand out from the crowd.
