The 4 Best Ecommerce Website Builder for Beginners - Handpicked - Start Selling Stuff

The 4 Best Ecommerce Website Builder for Beginners – Handpicked

best website builder for beginners

Do you want to sell a product online? Are you looking for a website builder that’s quick, easy and reliable?

Look no further!

While there are tons of website builders out there, in this article, we’ll only cover 4. We’ve hand-picked and narrowed down your choices to only the BEST ecommerce website builders. So, you can skip all the unnecessary hassles of choosing one that’s worthwhile.

Why You Need A Website Builder

No matter how big your business is, if you’ve been wanting to build a website, having a website builder is perfect if you don’t want to hire developers. It’s cheaper. It’s faster. The only challenge is making your website different (which isn’t really a big deal).

The only challenge left is to find the best website builder.

This can actually be very tricky for beginners. With so many website builders out there, how do you know which is the right one for your business? How will you know if it’s the right fit for you?

Well, let’s find out.

What You Need To Know Before Choosing A Website Builder

No matter what you want to do with your website, what goals you have and what features you would like to see, there are a few things every website builder must have.

  • Fair Pricing –nobody wants expensive sites, right? That’s the reason why we aren’t talking about developers in the first place. For a website builder, price should be as low as possible while all other things are high (quality, customer service, etc.)
  • Many GOOD Features – you need options. Lots of it. You want your site to look great and be great, and if the site has lots of features, you can make that possible. Plus, this is how you differentiate your site from others’.
  • SEO – Want more eyes to your store? SEO is a great way to do so (other than paid traffic like Facebook Ads, Instagram Shoutouts, etc.). If you’re going to use Shopify, then you need to learn what Shopify’s best SEO apps are.
  • FREE Trial – If you just want to try every website builder, go ahead. There are some that offer a free trial for you to get to know the site. We’ll be covering that.
  • Simple – You don’t want to build a site that would take you 1 month to finish. You want to be able to build a site in less than 1 day. Some apps offer this. How? With easy-to-use website builders.
  • Good Customer Support – this is the key to success for every business. Not kidding. Unfortunately, not all them offer “good” customer support. Do this right and you’re sure to succeed long-term.
  • Transparency – Nobody likes hidden fees. Nobody. But believe it or not, there are a lot of companies doing this. Not only website builders.

Now that we got that list covered, it’s time to choose your website builder.

Here’s the list of the 4 best Website builders in no particular order – with a detailed description for each.

Weebly

Weebly is another easy-to-use website builder with tons of designs ready for you to use. It includes a beautifully crafted page builder which allows you to edit your website without learning any coding skills. The only challenge with Weebly is when you want to do customization. Altering layout designs is easy, but customizing them is hard. This means you’re limited to your design choices. You have to be sure that you get all the features and the design layout you want upfront.

Why Weebly?

  • A lot of great features available on their product pages.
  • Their standard templates let you upload multiple images or videos and cool sales features
  • There are integrations for marketing tools and social media.
  • Plenty of payment options to give your customers flexibility in how they pay (although not as plenty as Shopify).
  • Fully hosted platform (no need to install and manage any software)
  • It comes with dozens of fully editable website designs with the live page editor
  • It comes with a built-in support system for ecommerce.
  • Most importantly, if you make your site on Weebly, it instantly has built-in features for contact forms, photo galleries, free designs and more.

Weebly works well for small business owners who wwanta site quickly and doesn’t need to do a lot of customization. You are limited to the features they offer since you can’t hire a developer (which is good if you don’t want to spend a lot of cash, but bad if you want to grow) to add new functionalities to your website.

Pricing

Weebly’s business plan costs you $25 a month. With $25, you now have a free domain and a $100 AdWords credit. This is a really good up-front and short-term offer help new businesses get out to the world.

Check out more of the prices here.

Wix

Wix is another popular all-around website builder… but not as popular as Shopify (even though they’re both around as long). The best thing about Wix is it’s really easy to use. It contains a set of features to help you easily build your website. Wix is another website builder that don’t need you to code anything and they’ve got hundreds of templates available to get you started. So…

Why Wix?

  • Fully hosted platform and free SSL protection with all pricing plans
  • These templates are visual-heavy, so if you’re looking for an ecommerce website builder that’s full of visuals, this one’s for you
  • They have Wix ADI which creates a website that includes a custom text for you. This gives you something unique for you to stand out from your competitors (and it’s absolutely free)
  • 10+ apps that you can use to functionality and features to your website
  • 100+ customizable drag and drop templates to choose for your web design
  • It also has 100+ FREE plugins that can improve the functionality of your site.
  • 12 payment processors (and growing)
  • Shipping and Tax calculator
  • Ability to create independent product pages with reviews
  • Most  importantly, Wix has a fully integratable and continuously growing app marketplace for help with social engagement, marketing and all your business needs

What I don’t like about Wix is their customer support. You can send a support ticket or request a call during business hours, but there’s NO 24/7 live chat. This can be extremely stressful when something goes wrong (might cost you hundreds of dollars). Also, in order to be able to accept online payments beyond $300, you need to have a premium plan on Wix. Let’s look at their pricing.

Pricing

If you choose Wix, definitely go for their top plan ($25 a month) since it gives you priority support and unlimited bandwidth. Wix offers monthly and yearly plans but what it does not show you is how much you stand to save. By choosing an annual plan, you can save between 18%-37%.

Want to know more? Click here. 

Shopify 

You’ve probably heard about this one. Shopify is a website builder made specifically for online stores or ecommerce businesses. With over 500,000 active stores on Shopify platform, and store owner has processed $40 billion worth of sales! There’s no doubt they’re the best… but even if they are, there are still a few “negatives”. Let’s cover the features of Shopify.

Why Shopify?

  • 50+ different payment processors to help you serve customers all over the world
  • All-in-one hosting (with unlimited bandwidth, free SSL protection, etc.) included at all price levels
  • 100+ mobile friendly and customizable themes. Not all of them are free, but most of them are.
  • You have a “weird” business? Shopify still has themes for those!
  • A true 24/7 customer support. They’re that good.
  • Has a lot of apps making it very flexible in meeting your needs
  • You can use coding or not, up to you. Shopify gives you the freedom to choose.
  • Offer members a free training course for their users
  • Has a drag and drop interface making it really easy to create your store
  • Hassle free ecommerce website builder – Shopify takes care of everything else for you
  • Integrates Shopify into WordPress, allows you to use both of them at the same time.
  • Lastly, Shopify also offers full inventory management, with unlimited products (Oberlo) and easy marketing solutions.

Shopify caters to a super broad range of industries – art, fashion & accessories, electronics, intimate products, toys & games and many many more! No matter what you sell, Shopify can help make selling online easier and quicker for you.

Pricing

Shopify’s pricing might be a little high, but they have the right to charge as much. Shopify’s basic plan will cost you $29 per month. You can upgrade it to Shopify for $79 per month or advanced Shopify for $299 per month.

Click here to see what you get with each service plan

Click here to get 14-days FREE trial 

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is another online store builder you can trust.

It works just like Shopify letting you build your ecommerce site effortlessly and plenty of customization themes so you can finish it quickly too. It also has a wide variety of integratable apps that you can use to grow your business in the long-term.

The interface, like Shopify’s, is exceptionally intuitive. It’s designed to take you step-by-step through online store creation. No essential features are buried away.

This makes not only set up but long-term management easy, because everything is easily found from the left side navigation bar.

Why BigCommerce?

  • Shipping and tax calculator for worldwide calculations
  • Great coupon creator
  • SSL Protection
  • Product review pages for ALL your products
  • Easy processes for returns and refund payments
  • 28 payment processors
  • Free auto reminder emails
  • 100+ fully customizable templates and themes

(Yeah, it’s really like Shopify…)

The thing I like most with BigCommerce is that they DON’T charge transaction rates, and it only costs $29.95 per month! This is something most website builders can’t or don’t want to do. If you’re interested…

Learn More about their prices here!

So Which Website Builder Do You Think Is Right For You?

All these website builders are great options… but have you found what you’re looking for?

Here’s a quick recap on each platform – and where they’re really good at.

  1. BigCommerce is highly similar to Shopify. It has more features upfront but doesn’t costs as much.
  2. Weebly is quite limited and I don’t recommend this to people who want to build an eCommerce store and grows it really fast. It’s self-hosted and good for beginners who want things easy and simple. It would probably be best for small businesses.
  3. Wix is the best drag-and-drop website builder. If you want to build a site from scratch doing the things you want to do, then this is the way to go. The best part? Plans are cheaper than other ecommerce platform options and start at $17 per month.
  4. Shopify is probably the best platform for eCommerce businesses. It’s probably the easiest to use and the simplest to customize as well. It’s a total ecommerce platform that’s perfect for beginners.

Final Thoughts

While there are lots of website builders out there, it’s important to know what you want out of your website.

Find the one with the features you want to have and test it out (free trial). You must think long-term and see if the website builder is easy to maintain, doesn’t require a lot of effort long-term (so you can focus on more important stuff) and most importantly, it fits you and the brand you’re trying to create.

So, what website builder are you planning to use? Let us know in the comments!

Enjoyed this article about website builders? Click HERE and receive daily emails about how to make money with dropshipping from James Holt, the founder of Start Selling Stuff.