The 6 best ecommerce platforms for small businesses in 2024

Following our expert research and rigorous testing, we found that Wix is the best ecommerce platform for small businesses. 

What sets Wix apart is its laser focus on empowering small enterprises with specific tools tailored for success. Wix offers regular deals and discounts, streamlines sales and design for its end consumers and also addresses the unique challenges faced by small businesses – from tight budgets to limited resources.

Wix manages to shine through due to some of its more specific offerings: its intuitive design templates, seamless sales functionalities, and expansive app market for instance: a diverse array of additional integrations available to bolster and customise your ecommerce ventures.

Addressing the precise needs of small enterprises at an affordable rate, Wix excels not just in affordability, but in providing tangible solutions. But with its closest competitor Shopify only slightly behind, and four others offering differing features, which would truly be best for you? Read on to find out.

The best UK ecommerce site builders for 2024

According to the International Trade Administration, The UK has the third largest eCommerce market in the world, so it's important that as a small business owner, you have an ecommerce platform you can rely on.

To help you make this crucial decision, we've compiled a list of the top six ecommerce platforms for small businesses. Our methodology was built on our latest round of in-depth research and user testing.

Short on time? For a quick overview of our top-rated ecommerce platforms and their best features head-to-head, you can visit our free, handy 🔍ecommerce comparison tool. Otherwise, read on for a comprehensive review of each ecommerce platform.

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

BEST ALL ROUND	BEST SALES FEATURES
Wix	Shopify	Squarespace	Square Online	BigCommerce	GoDaddy
BEST FOR All-round ecommerce platform for small businesses	BEST FOR Best range of apps and extensions	BEST FOR Best for ease of use and great design	BEST FOR Best value – start selling for free	BEST FOR Best sales features	BEST FOR Creating a simple online store
Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.3	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.2	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.9
Pricing £14-119 per month, billed annually £13.50-£107.10 with code “GET10!”	Pricing £19 – £259 per month, billed annually £1/month for 3 months	Pricing £17-£35 per month, billed annually Use code “STARTUPS10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans	Pricing £0-£64 per month	Pricing $29-$299 (around £23-£240) per month	Pricing £12.99 per month (first term savings available)
Try Wix	Try Shopify	Try Squarespace	Try Square	Visit site	Try GoDaddy

But first… what is an ecommerce platform?

An ecommerce platform lets you create an entire online store with a professional-looking website, manage your stock and inventory, and sell your products or services online.

Ecommerce platforms can be built by a business of any size because they are no-code. This means that even someone with no experience using website builder software can get started.

Examples of large-scale ecommerce platforms include Amazon or eBay, while small businesses are likely to use Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, or BigCommerce.

One big advantage of an ecommerce platform is that it integrates all the business and commerce functionalities under one roof, giving you the features needed to operate and grow your store. You can also have an optimised mobile ecommerce store.

1. Wix: best all-round ecommerce platform

Our top pick: Wix

Our testing highlighted Wix as the best all-rounder for small businesses wanting to sell online. Start with a free trial today.

Free Trial Discover what it can do for your online business

Our in-depth user testing shows that Wix is the best ecommerce platform for small businesses, scoring an impressive 4.8 out of 5 overall.

Wix features

Wix's shop categories page (Image: Startups)

• Over 70+ ecommerce templates
• Industry recommendations for your website
• Best SEO features of all platforms on this list
• Drag-and-drop functionality

The ecommerce platform takes the top spot for features, design flexibility, and help and support. Its closest contender, Shopify, trails behind by only 0.2 points, partly because Wix gives you more value for money.

Back in February, Wix added SEO reports using Google Search Console to its arsenal of SEO tools. This is great as you can easily create new reports from GSC, including top search queries and top pages in search. However, keep in mind you'll need to be relatively well-versed in SEO to make the most out of this Wix feature. Therefore, it's not ideal for complete SEO newbies.

In our latest round of testing, Wix's ease of use score rose from 3.6 to 4 out of 5, as we discovered one of our new favourite features: The improved AI assistant that was announced on the 5th December. Simply answer a few questions during setup, and voila! The AI tailors your dashboard and effortlessly assembles all the essential components for your online business, saving you the hassle of figuring it out yourself. It recommends items that you should put into your website based on its type, industry, and name, too. For instance, if you're building an ecommerce site, Wix will automatically recommend you add in a chatbot. This makes the process of building a website so much quicker.

With more than 70 different ecommerce templates to choose from – each of which is highly customisable – you can create a unique online shop that’s tailored to your brand. However, you'll need to choose your template carefully because it cannot be changed once your website is live.

It also boasts the most advanced SEO features of all the ecommerce platforms we tested. One unique element of Wix's SEO offering is its exclusive partnership with Semrush, which users to access Semrush's industry-leading SEO keyword data directly through the Wix dashboard.

This will help Wix users improve their website visibility for search terms relevant to their business, and increase valuable web traffic by moving up those all-important search rankings.

Wix pricing

Wix offers incredible value for money, costing just £20 per month for its Business plan which provides everything a budding small business needs to get started. This is compared to a whopping £49 per month for Shopify's equivalent plan.

While it might not be an ecommerce-specific platform – like Shopify and BigCommerce – Wix's extensive App Market gives it the sales functionality you'll need, such as multiple payment options, secure checkout, and abandoned cart recovery – all of which will help you increase sales and grow your customer base.

While some apps are free to use, others may require a purchase or subscription for access to their full range of features and functionalities. The costs within Wix's app market can vary depending on the specific app and its features. Prices generally range from a few pounds to more substantial amounts, depending on the complexity and functionality of the app. It's advisable to review each app individually to understand its pricing structure and determine the best fit for your business needs.

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

Core	Business	Business Elite
Price £14 per month £12.60 with code ‘GET 10!'	Price £20 per month £18 with code ‘GET 10!'	Price £119 per month £107.10 with code ‘GET 10!'
Features Basic ecommerce Accept payments Basic site analytics Abandoned cart recovery	Features Standard site analytics Standard eCommerce Automated sales tax for 100 transactions per month Accept pre-orders	Features Advanced eCommerce Advanced developer platform Advanced site analytics Loyalty program by Smile.io
Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?
Try Wix	Try Wix	Try Wix

What the users said

It just looks really professional, even after adding a couple of buttons on to the homepage. It's very clean, and you can easily identify where things are and how it would appear (on your website) once published.

More

Our dedicated Wix pricing page breaks down the company's ecommerce plans in more detail, so you can work out which is the right fit for your business. All prices are shown when billed annually.

And to get the full analysis of how well Wix performs as an ecommerce platform, make sure to check out our in-depth Wix ecommerce review.

2. Shopify: best for sales-specific features

4.6 out of 5

• Website features
  4.2
• Sales features
  4.5
• Design functionalities
  3.9
• Value for money
  3.0
• Help and support
  3.8
• Ease of use
  3.5

Try Shopify for free

In our most recent round of in-depth research and testing, Shopify scores a very strong overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 due to its extensive sales features, seamless integration for both offline and online selling, and user-friendly interface, making it a top choice for businesses seeking a fuller-featured e-commerce platform. While our researchers found that creating an online shop with other ecommerce builders could be ‘overwhelming', Shopify’s user interface was described as ‘clean and refreshingly intuitive', making it easy to get the results you want.

Its customer score – the proportion of users that would be likely to recommend a platform to a friend – Shopify held onto its position as our top provider for this metric with an impressive 4.7 out of 5.

Shopify features

Shopify's products page (Image: Startups)

• Solid affiliate program for ecommerce brands.
• Shopify excels in dropshipping, customisation, and a large app store.
• Predictive website creation, tailored for customer needs.
• Inventory-first approach

Shopify's scores have remained pretty steady in our latest testing. It's held onto its position as the second-best ecommerce platform, though BigCommerce is now ahead of it for sales features. It also has a very solid affiliate program, which we've determined is the best for ecommerce brands.

Although both Shopify and Bigcommerce offer an arsenal of sales features, you can differentiate the two by comparing dropshipping functionality, of which Shopify is ahead. Moreover, Shopify is also better at customisable features and has a larger app store than BigCommerce, meaning you can have more opportunities for the specific customisation you desire.

As for Shopify's standout features, the platform pre-empts and predicts what a merchant might need when creating a website. This kind of automation is unmatched in the ecommerce space, and means small businesses can feel confident they are setting up an online store that's tailored to the needs of their customers.

Competitively priced, easy to use, and with a bevvy of great sales features, Shopify is an excellent option for ambitious, growing businesses.

Shopify pricing

You can trial Shopify's platform for free for three days here.

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

	GET 3 MONTHS FOR £1/MO
Starter	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced
Price £5 per month	Price £1 per month for 3 months Then £19 per month	Price £49 per month	Price £259 per month
Features A simple, instant storefront Unlimited product pages Fast and secure checkout	Features Unlimited products Abandoned cart recovery	Features Professional reports and analytics 5 staff accounts	Features Advanced reports Calculated shipping rates
Online card processing fees 2.9% + 30p for online sales	Online card processing fees 2% + 25p for online purchases	Online card processing fees 1.7% + 25p for online purchases	Online card processing fees 1.5% + 25p for online purchases

Visit Shopify to learn more about its pricing plans Visit Shopify

What the users said

It doesn't pretend that building an online store is simple. For ecommerce, you have to know about inventory, prices, and variants. With Shopify, it's just all there, ready to fill in, and you can run a real business if you are up to it.

More

To discover more about where Shopify excels as an ecommerce platform – and where it could do better – head to our in-depth Shopify review.

Wix may be our highest-rated ecommerce platform, but how does it compare with our runner-up Shopify? Read our full review to find out which one wins when it comes to Wix vs Shopify.

3. Squarespace: best for creative control

4.6 out of 5

• Website features
  4.3
• Sales features
  3.4
• Design flexibility
  4.0
• Value for money
  4.2
• Help and support
  3.5
• Ease of use
  4.2

Try Squarespace

Like Wix, Squarespace is a website builder that rivals ecommerce-specific platforms when it comes to creating a professional online store.

Squarespace features

An example of a Squarespace ecommerce website (Image: Startups)

• Direct import from Etsy, catering to established customer bases.
  Design-focused templates across various industries
• Editable checkout style, and theme flexibility.
• Great value for a design-centric platform

Squarespace is now our joint top platform for design functionality (alongside BigCommerce), earning an impressive overall score of 4.6 out of 5. It offers a range of beautiful and stylish themed templates for numerous industries and, unlike Wix, you can change your theme whenever you want. It even has a checkout style editor, so you can make sure your checkout page matches your site’s aesthetic.

Another feature we liked from our first-hand user testing is that you can import directly from Etsy, which is handy if you already have an established customer base there.

The editing interface itself is clean and easy to navigate, and our testers praised the creative freedom allowed. However, they found that there can be a steep learning curve for beginners.

It is also lacking in the sales features department, achieving the lowest score in the category with 3.4 out of 5. This drop in score is largely because you'll need to sign up for one of its pricier plans to access features like subscriptions (Business plan + up) and abandoned cart recovery (Commerce plan + up). Dropshipping functionality is non-existent.

Alongside Wix, it’s now our joint second-best value ecommerce platform. You'll struggle to find a more design-focused ecommerce solution, with a genuine focus on its users’ needs, for such a great price.

Squarespace pricing

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

BEST VALUE
Squarespace Business	Basic Commerce	Advanced Commerce
Price £17 per month	Price £23 per month	Price £35 per month
Features Fully integrated ecommerce 3% transaction fee Sell unlimited products	Features No commerce transaction fees Point of sale integration Customer accounts	Features Abandoned cart recovery Powerful ecommerce analytics Advanced shipping

Use code "STARTUPS10" to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans Get deal

What the users said

Its templates look incredibly professional and there was enough of a range, with Squarespace providing a description of the features each particular template had already embedded. It was really useful to base your decision on the features you wished to incorporate into your store.

More

Struggling to work out which Squarespace plan is right for you? Our Squarespace pricing page will give you the lowdown on which plans offer which features, and what sort of business each plan is best for.

Our dedicated Squarespace review is the place to go to discover much much more about what Squarespace has to offer as an ecommerce platform.

4. Square: best for selling for free

4.6 out of 5

• Website features
  4.3
• Sales features
  3.4
• Design flexibility
  4.0
• Value for money
  4.2
• Help and support
  3.5
• Ease of use
  4.2

Try Squarespace

Our expert researchers found it to be a neat, simple, and affordable online shop builder that’s partnered with an industry-leading payment system.

Square features

Square's frontend product view editor (Image: Startups)

• No limitations on products (physical, digital, services, etc.) without requiring a premium plan
• Advanced inventory control and launch planning.
• Analytics and reporting tools, even on the free plan
• Clean, user-friendly interface for basic online store setups

Square is pretty solid as there is no limitation to how many products you can feature or the type of product – be it physical, digital, donation, event, service, or even to sell as a restaurant. This is great because you can sell your products and services without having to spend money on a premium ecommerce plan, some of which can cost you over £25 a month, like Shopify and BigCommerce.

The other handy feature we found from our testing is the ‘hide category' in its inventory management, allowing you to set up a new product ahead of launch day.

Stock and inventory can be configured any way you wish, and it provides the base minimum of analytics and reporting tools that you would need even on the free plan. These can help you make data-driven decisions based on your best-selling products.

On the design front, Square Online scores incredibly low, with a score of 2.7 out of 5. This is because there’s no choice of templates and the only changes you can only make changes to the font and colours. That said, the basic online store design it offers is very clean and follows user experience best practices. This is in stark contrast to the likes of Wix and Shopify, which offer a multitude of templates and design features for you to take advantage of.

Square pricing

Square Online is the only provider among the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses that allows you to start selling products for free. This is why our researchers found it to be the best value ecommerce platform on the market.

A crucial downside of Square however is that it is also the only platform that does not allow you to waive the transaction fee, adding a 1.4% + 25p charge to every payment processed.

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

Free	Plus	Premium
Price £0 per month	Price £20 per month	Price £64 per month
Features Start selling online Sell on Instagram and Facebook SEO tools Sync with Square POS	Features Custom domain 10GB storage Customised font uploads Password-protected pages	Features Professional features Accept PayPal Abandoned basket Advanced reporting Product reviews

Check out Square Online's great ecommerce prices Visit site

More

Read our Square review for an in-depth look at how Square stacks up as an ecommerce platform.

5. BigCommerce: best for multi-channel selling

4.2 out of 5

• Website features
  3.5
• Sales features
  4.6
• Design flexibility
  4.0
• Value for money
  3.0
• Help and support
  3.9
• Ease of use
  3.3

Try BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers users the most expansive range of sales features of any platform we reviewed, supporting multiple languages and currencies. This should be your go-to ecommerce platform if you’re wanting to expand your operations overseas.

BigCommerce features

An example of a Bigcommerce website (Image: Startups)

• Quality features integrated within but steep learning curve
• Drag-and-drop builder for design flexibility
• Overtakes Shopify in sales functionality
• Evolving platform with growing ease of use

Unlike Shopify, most of its ecommerce features are built in (rather than from third parties), which means you can rely on them to be high quality. This is why BigCommerce has overtaken Shopify as the platform with the best sales features. However, based on our first-hand testing, we do think BigCommerce's sales features are more advanced than Shopify, so expect to hit a steep learning curve if you're an ecommerce beginner.

Despite being slightly difficult for beginners, BigCommerce made some recent improvements to its ease of use. Its drag-and-drop builder offers you design flexibility, so all you have to do is select a page element you like and insert it wherever you want it to go. During testing, we found that this feature wasn't super intuitive. If this is something you're after, we'd recommend looking at Wix.

BigCommerce pricing

BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial for its Standard, Plus, or Pro plans. So you can try out the platform before signing up for any of its plans, with no credit card required.

BigCommerce falls short in some pricing aspects. For one, it is easily the most expensive ecommerce platform available (scoring just 3 out of 5 in our value for money category). To put it into context, BigCommerce's cheapest plan will set you back £23 per month. When compared with Wix, which will cost you £14 per month, with similar features plus far better ease of use and customer support.

BigCommerce is not for everyone, but scaling ecommerce businesses should look no further, particularly if you have the budget to spend.

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

	Best plan for small businesses
Standard Plan	Plus Plan	Pro Plan	Enterprise Plan
Price $29 per month (around £23)	Price $79 per month (around £64)	Price $299 per month (around £240)	Price Custom
Features Coupons and discounts Reporting tools Multi-channel selling	Features Customer groups and segmentation Abandoned cart recovery Stores credit card details	Features Google customer reviews Product filtering Custom product filtering	Features Express routing, priority support, and customer success management API (application programming interface) support Custom sales limit

See what BigCommerce could offer your small business Try BigCommerce for free

What the users said

They really do think about all the extra features to make your users’ shopping experience that much more personal and enjoyable. Bigcommerce really supports this, and makes sure you as the merchant are aware of these little extra add-ons by making it easy to tick a box and incorporate a feature. Then they do the rest.

More

For more detailed information about BigCommerce pricing plans, visit our dedicated page on BigCommerce pricing. And for greater insight on what BigCommerce does well and not so well, hop over to our BigCommerce review.

6. GoDaddy: best for ease of use

3.9 out of 5

• Website features
  2.5
• Sales features
  3.5
• Design flexibility
  2.7
• Help and support
  3.3
• Value for money
  3.6
• Ease of use
  4.1

Try GoDaddy

GoDaddy is an entry-level website builder that makes starting your own ecommerce site a breeze – even if you’re not technologically inclined. It received an overall score of 3.9 out of 5 in our analysis.

GoDaddy features

GoDaddy's website builder (Image: Startups)

• Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) function for a professional look with minimal effort
• One of the cheapest ecommerce builders
• Handy ‘hide category' feature for pre-launch product setup
• Unlimited products available for sale without premium plan constraints

Our researchers rated GoDaddy the second easiest ecommerce platform to use. We found it to be an accessible, helpful editor that includes an Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) function that can save time while making your online store look slick and professional with minimal effort.

However, this very same ADI also severely limits your creative control. This isn't a problem if you just want to get up and running with a great-looking online shop, but it's less appealing if you want to create something unique. Once you've created your store using ADI, you can't change much more about it, whereas platforms like Shopify can give you the creative freedom to make changes at any time.

The GoDaddy Online Store is easy to get to grips with, even for complete beginners. It’s also one of the cheapest ecommerce website builders, and promises real business growth (not just a pretty shop front).

However it is seriously lacking website features. It only scores 2.5 out of 5 for this category in our research, the worst score of any of the providers. You will get the bare minimum with GoDaddy which amounts to basic hosting, colour and font changes, and the SEO prompts and reporting are pretty lacklustre.

GoDaddy is still a solid choice for small businesses that want to get up and running quickly and easily.

GoDaddy pricing

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

Ecommerce

Price £12.99 per month, billed annually

Features Product listings Flexible payments Flexible shipping options Discount and promotional features

Check out GoDaddy's ecommerce plan Visit site

What the users said

If you need to get online and need to sell products, it can be quite overwhelming, and you’ve still got to do all the product management. GoDaddy do something incredibly well – they take one of those areas away from you and actually, from a design point of view, do it really, really well.

More

To learn about what is included with each GoDaddy plan, head to our dedicated GoDaddy pricing page.

Our methodology: How we choose the best ecommerce website builder for small business

As you may have noticed, we used a unique scoring method throughout this article when assessing these platforms. Each platform has undergone rigorous user testing and has been ranked on the six key factors that matter most to you: including general customer score, design functionalities, help and support, sales features and value for money.

Our customer score is based on three areas of investigation: user experience (UX), ‘likely to recommend', and brand awareness (an assessment of popularity based on keyword research).

Our design functionalities score is based on several areas of investigation, including templates/themes, flexibility of design, a mobile editor, and more.

Help and support is based on restore options (whether a website builder offers the option to restore your website), customer support, and the availability of a knowledge centre.

Sales features are thoroughly assessed, considering security measures, multi-channel integration, payment and shipping options.

The value for money criterion considers the balance between features and price, free trial availability, and overall affordability across plans.

Lastly, the website features score spans a wide spectrum, encompassing the quality and extent of website features, internationalisation, marketing capabilities, SEO tools, and blogging proficiency. This comprehensive evaluation process ensures an overall view of each platform's strengths and limitations.

How does an ecommerce platform work?

An ecommerce platform is a website builder that's specifically designed to create online stores. In a short amount of time, a business owner can design and build a no-code ecommerce website using drag-and-drop functionality, so you can have complete control over what your store looks like.

On top of that, you can add third-party apps and extensions to oversee everything from managing stock, to taking customer payments.

Customers will then be able to find your products and add them to their cart for checkout via a fully-automated sales process where products are catalogued, payments taken, and shipping is managed all from one end-to-end location.

What types of businesses are ecommerce platforms suitable for?

If you want to sell a product or service online as part of your business offering, you should invest in an ecommerce platform.

Ecommerce builders are DIY software, so we recommend them to companies that don't have a complex sales cycle and need an inexpensive, simple tool to get their online store set up quickly.

If you plan to launch a dropshipping business, you will also need an ecommerce platform to sell from.

Using an ecommerce website builder, dropshippers can design an entire online shop front for customers to make a purchase. Businesses can then automate the sales process to review, process, and deliver the product straight to customer.

Final verdict

Wix is our top ecommerce platform for small businesses for 2024 because it has everything you need at an affordable monthly price.

When it comes to the best ecommerce platform, there's no one-size-fits-all approach. It all depends on what your business model is, and what you're looking for.

If you’re not sure which provider is the right choice for your business, try a free trial or free versions. With Wix, you can try the free plan, or sign up and get a money-back guarantee on your subscription if, for any reason, you change your mind. Squarespace, BigCommerce, GoDaddy, and Shopify all also offer free trials that you can take advantage of today.