Website builders are visual design tools for creating websites without code or previous technical experience. Most website builders are proprietary, meaning you must buy hosting from the company that made the website builder. The company then handles all maintenance of the server your site is hosted on and the website builder itself, leaving you to focus on the creative side of site creation.
Our Picks
Shopify is the best e-commerce website builder thanks to its narrow focus on store creation. Shopify’s especially powerful if you’re selling physical products, as the shipping discounts and tools make it easy -- and affordable -- to send products to your customers.
Pros
- Excellent product and inventory management features
- Shipping calculation tools
- Tax calculation and tracking tools
- Robust security
- Email marketing tools included, with unlimited contacts and monthly emails
Cons
- Template library is rather limited
Wix is the best website builder for e-commerce products focused on digital products, gated content and content subscriptions.
Pros
- Huge template library
- Website builder is remarkably easy to use
- Robust security
- Customer service available through phone as well as live chat
Cons
- E-commerce tools not available on most affordable plan
- Limited storage on lowest-tier e-commerce plan
- Lack of automated sales tax calculation on lowest-tier plan
- All plans limit the number of transactions that receive automated sales tax calculations
- Limited inventory management and shipping tools
Hostinger is the best website builder for starting an e-commerce store with a limited range of products on a shoestring budget.
Pros
- Great server performance
- Excellent introductory discount
- Email hosting for up to 100 email addresses
- Low long-term pricing
Cons
- Must sign up for a full four years to get the best introductory discount
- Inventory management only applies for up to 500 products
- No two-factor authentication or 24/7 security monitoring
Squarespace is great for businesses heavily focused on aesthetics because its designer-made templates make it easy to build a beautiful website. You should also choose Squarespace if you want to use AI, as the collaborative AI site generator is the best I’ve tested.
Pros
- Beautiful site templates
- Collaborative AI site generator
- Robust security
Cons
- High transaction fees on lowest-tier plan
- Poor customer service
Ionos is your best bet if you expect to need a lot of support, as the customer service is the best in the business.
Pros
- Excellent customer service
- Significant introductory discount
- Professional email address
Cons
- Price increases significantly after the first year
- Lacks two-factor authentication and 24/7 security monitoring
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Many website builders offer specialized tools for creating an online storefront, managing inventory and even calculating sales tax. These tools simplify both the initial creation and the long-term management of your e-commerce store. I’ve tested several of these website builders to help you choose the best e-commerce website builder for building your business.
What is the best e-commerce website builder in 2025?
Shopify is the best e-commerce website builder thanks to its specialized tools for automated sales tax calculation, product and inventory management and similar features. It also offers good site-building tools, excellent server performance and robust security.
Best e-commerce website builders
Pros
- Excellent product and inventory management features
- Shipping calculation tools
- Tax calculation and tracking tools
- Robust security
- Email marketing tools included, with unlimited contacts and monthly emails
Cons
- Template library is rather limited
Who it’s best for
Shopify is the best e-commerce website builder thanks to its narrow focus on store creation. Shopify’s especially powerful if you’re selling physical products, as the shipping discounts and tools make it easy -- and affordable -- to send products to your customers.
Why we like it
Shopify is an e-commerce-focused website builder with advanced tools for essential business tasks like product/inventory management, shipping calculations/labels and sales tax management. You’ll also get fantastic marketing tools, including a robust email marketing system with unlimited contacts.
Shopify performed well in most areas of my hands-on testing, with the best server performance of any host I’ve benchmarked, moderately intuitive site-building tools and fast customer service via live chat.
Shopify’s robust security tools include secure socket layer (SSL) certification that encrypts your customers’ data, firewall protection to keep malware away from your site and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection to prevent your site from being overwhelmed by malicious traffic. The Shopify team also performs 24/7 security monitoring. You can further protect your account by setting up two-factor authentication.
Another benefit of Shopify is the shipping discounts, which can go up to 88% for USPS, UPS or DHL Express. You’ll also get access to Shopify’s point of sale, or POS, system for accepting payments at in-person markets. These benefits are available on all plans.
Shopify’s Trustpilot ranking is low, with over 2,000 one-star reviews, mostly citing issues with customer service. However, this number is low compared to the 5.5 million sites using Shopify, and my own experience suggests that Shopify provides a reliable service.
Pricing
Shopify’s Basic plan costs $29 a month, billed annually. This plan includes full access to the store builder, inventory and shipping management tools, and tax calculation and management tools. Storage and bandwidth are unlimited. You’ll also get Shopify’s email marketing software, including abandoned cart recovery, with unlimited contacts and unlimited monthly emails.
The company offers its Shopify plan for $79 a month or Advanced plan for $299 a month, both billed annually. These plans let you create additional staff accounts and access higher shipping discounts.
Enterprise businesses can access Shopify Plus for $2,300. Shopify Plus includes more advanced store customization, warehouse management and international selling tools.
Pros
- Huge template library
- Website builder is remarkably easy to use
- Robust security
- Customer service available through phone as well as live chat
Cons
- E-commerce tools not available on most affordable plan
- Limited storage on lowest-tier e-commerce plan
- Lack of automated sales tax calculation on lowest-tier plan
- All plans limit the number of transactions that receive automated sales tax calculations
- Limited inventory management and shipping tools
Who it’s best for
Wix is the best website builder for e-commerce products focused on digital products, gated content and content subscriptions.
Why we like it
Wix has the biggest template library of any website builder I’ve tested, with over 800 specialized templates for websites and e-commerce stores in various industries. Wix also performed well in my hands-on testing, with easy-to-use tools, good server performance and solid customer service. Wix has a 4.6 out of 5 star ranking on Trustpilot with almost 18,000 five star reviews, suggesting that my experience isn’t an outlier.
Wix offers comprehensive security, including SSL certification, firewall protection, anti-DDoS protocols and 24/7 security monitoring. You can also enable two-factor authentication to protect your site.
The Wix AI site generator was the one major disappointment. Both of the sites I built with it looked like they had come right out of the early 2000s, with clunky design and irrelevant header images. If you want to use AI, you’ll want to avoid Wix.
Pricing
Wix’s e-commerce features aren’t available on the lowest-tier plan, so you’ll need to buy the Core plan for $29 a month (billed annually). Core includes enough storage for at least 500 pages, unlimited bandwidth and tools for creating an e-commerce store with up to 50,000 products. Discount creation, abandoned cart recovery and loyalty program creation are also included. However, you won’t get automated tools for sales tax calculation.
The Business plan, priced at $36 a month (billed annually), offers automated sales tax calculation, but it only applies to 100 transactions per month. This is a severe limitation you won’t encounter with other e-commerce website builders.
At the high end, there’s Business Elite for $159 monthly, which includes unlimited storage space, 100 site collaborators and advanced e-commerce as well as marketing tools. You’ll also get automated sales tax for up to 500 transactions per month -- a lot more than the 100 transactions of the business plan, but still a notable limitation.
Pros
- Great server performance
- Excellent introductory discount
- Email hosting for up to 100 email addresses
- Low long-term pricing
Cons
- Must sign up for a full four years to get the best introductory discount
- Inventory management only applies for up to 500 products
- No two-factor authentication or 24/7 security monitoring
Who it’s best for
Hostinger is the best website builder for starting an e-commerce store with a limited range of products on a shoestring budget.
Why we like it
Hostinger received top marks in my hands-on review with easy-to-use account management, stellar server performance and great long-term value. Moreover, Hostinger’s 4.7 out of 5 star ranking on Trustpilot, based on over 34,000 five-star reviews, shows that I’m far from the only person to have such a positive experience.
In terms of site design, you’ll get 150 designer-made templates plus the Hostinger AI site generator. You’ll also get inventory management tools for up to 500 products, discount creation and compatibility with multiple payment processors like PayPal and Stripe. Hostinger further simplifies the sales process by letting you set regional sales taxes and shipping prices, which will automatically be applied to purchases.
All Hostinger sites are secured with SSL certification, firewall protection and anti-DDoS protocols. This is better than the security of most traditional web hosting plans, but you won’t get the 24/7 security monitoring or two-factor authentication offered by website builder companies like Shopify and Wix.
Pricing
The e-commerce website builder plan from Hostinger starts at $4 a month and rises to $14 a month on renewal, based on a four-year contract. This plan includes unlimited bandwidth, enough storage for at least 2,000 pages and inventory management for up to 500 products. Unfortunately, there’s no higher-tier plan for stores selling more than 500 products, so you should only choose Hostinger if you plan to keep your product lines small.
Pros
- Beautiful site templates
- Collaborative AI site generator
- Robust security
Cons
- High transaction fees on lowest-tier plan
- Poor customer service
Who it’s best for
Squarespace is great for businesses heavily focused on aesthetics because its designer-made templates make it easy to build a beautiful website. You should also choose Squarespace if you want to use AI, as the collaborative AI site generator is the best I’ve tested.
Why we like it
Squarespace impressed me with elegant site templates and good server performance. I was pleasantly surprised by the collaborative AI site generator, which lets you make creative choices around elements like fonts to build a site customized for your brand.
Squarespace offers a suite of security tools similar to those provided by Shopify or Wix. These include SSL certification, firewall protection, anti-DDoS protocols, and 24/7 security monitoring. You can also set up two-factor authentication to protect your site.
Unfortunately, I struggled to contact customer support, and Trustpilot reviews suggest that many other people have faced these problems. However, I’ve only had to contact customer support a handful of times in over 10 years of hosting my own websites, so these issues may not have a major impact on your experience using Squarespace. The 1,000 negative reviews are also insignificant compared to the 7.6 million Squarespace sites, so the issues may not be common.
Pricing
Squarespace starts at $16 a month, billed annually, for unlimited storage and bandwidth. You’ll also get inventory management for unlimited products and tools for selling gated content and digital subscriptions. However, you’ll have to pay a 2% online store transaction fee on regular sales and a 7% fee on all digital content or subscription payments. These fees are charged in addition to the regular payment processing fees, so you’ll be losing 5% total for regular sales and 10% total for digital content unless you raise your prices to account for these fees.
You can eliminate Squarespace’s online store transaction fees by springing for the Core plan at $23 a month, billed annually. This plan also provides carrier-calculated shipping, shipping labels and more advanced analytics. However, Squarespace still applies a 5% transaction fee on payments for digital content and subscriptions. You’ll need to spring for the Advanced plan at $99 a month (billed annually) to get rid of the digital content fees entirely.
Pros
- Excellent customer service
- Significant introductory discount
- Professional email address
Cons
- Price increases significantly after the first year
- Lacks two-factor authentication and 24/7 security monitoring
Who it’s best for
Ionos is your best bet if you expect to need a lot of support, as the customer service is the best in the business.
Why we like it
I tested Ionos’s shared hosting and enjoyed its fast, reliable customer service available through both live chat and phone. This service was miles ahead of what I’ve experienced with most other hosts and especially other companies offering website builders.
Ionos offers a variety of templates for e-commerce stores, an AI site builder plus specialized tools for product page creation. Integration with popular payment processing tools, shipping tools and marketing platforms further simplifies building your site with Ionos.
Sites using the Ionos website builder are secured with SSL certification, firewall protection, anti-DDoS protocols and malware scanning. While these security measures are above average for traditional web hosting companies, they don’t quite hold up to the security provided by Wix or Shopify, so you might want to choose one of those companies if security is your primary concern.
Pricing
Pricing is where the Ionos store builder falls short. You can technically start using Ionos’s eCommerce Store Builder for $1 a month in the first year, but this plan (Plus) costs $30 a month on renewal. You can save money with the Starter plan, priced at $6 a month for the first year and $24 a month after, if you’re selling 500 physical products or less.
It’s also worth noting that product limits and page storage limits are separate. You can have 500 products with individual product pages on the Starter plan, but you can only have 10 other pages for things like your contact information. On Plus, you’ll be able to create 5,000 products -- complete with product pages -- and 50 other pages. You’ll probably only need a few non-store pages -- a homepage, an About page, a Contact page and a Subscribe page -- so these limits aren't a big deal, but they’re worth paying attention to.
Factors to consider in an e-commerce website builder
Hosting type
Most website builders use shared hosting or cloud hosting.
Shared hosting splits the storage, bandwidth and other resources of a single web server between many websites. This means your site’s resources will be limited, but your cost will be limited as well. Shared hosting often starts at $2 to $5 a month, rising to $10 to $20 per month on renewal. Shared hosting is a great choice if you’re on a tight budget or you plan to keep your store small.
Cloud hosting uses a network of interconnected web servers to store data, often in multiple geographical locations. This makes it easy for your hosting to grow with your site by pulling resources from multiple servers as needed. Cloud hosting can also provide better uptime, as your host can pull website data from a secondary server if the primary server is compromised. Cloud hosting often costs $17 or more per month. Cloud hosting is a great choice if you plan to sell many products or expect rapid growth.
Some companies, like Hostinger, may also make their website builders available for other types of hosting like virtual private server -- VPS -- hosting.
Templates
Website builders use templates to provide a starting point for site design. While you can change most aspects of the design after selecting a template, your template will dictate some aspects of your site’s appearance, so it’s important to find a website builder with a template you like. Most website builders let you search their template libraries before you sign up so you can find one you like before you make a purchase.
AI tools
Many website builder companies offer AI site generators that build a whole site for you, complete with custom imagery and text, in a few minutes based on your business’s name and industry. These tools vary widely in quality -- working with the Squarespace AI is a dream, but using the Wix AI is a nightmare -- so you’ll want to read reviews or watch tutorials of how the AI you’re considering works before you commit to a specific website builder.
You also need to consider the general issues with AI usage. Many AI tools are trained by scraping content from the web without permission from -- or compensation for -- the original creators. This raises ethical concerns for many people and has resulted in multiple lawsuits, including a notable class action suit against Stable Diffusion. Completely AI-generated content is typically also ineligible for copyright, at least within the US, with some rare exceptions.
AI also uses massive amounts of power and water, a major concern in an era of rapidly accelerating climate change. You may want to avoid AI to minimize your carbon footprint.
Ease of use
Website builder tools may not require code, but they’re not always intuitive either. We also all have different brains -- what feels easy to me might not feel easy to you. I recommend testing the website builder you’re considering through a free trial if one is available. This can help you decide if it’s the right tool for you before you spend a lot of money.
Flexibility
Your website builder should let you customize all aspects of your site’s design, from the simple aspects like content placement to overarching design elements like fonts and color schemes. You may also want to consider extensions for things like marketing and integrations with other business tools like your tax software.
E-commerce and monetization tools
Your website builder should offer intuitive product and inventory management, shipping calculations and payment processing tools. Many also provide sales tax calculation and collection tools for purchases made from the US, Canada, the UK and other countries where online shopping is popular. Some website builders offer additional monetization options, like the ability to create gated content/digital memberships.
Many website builders restrict e-commerce tools to higher-tier plans. Wix, for example, reserves all e-commerce functionality to the Core plan and above. Squarespace doesn’t have this limitation, but it does charge transaction fees (on top of the payment processors’ fees) to people on the lowest-tier plans. Make sure the plan you’re considering has the e-commerce features you’ll need and that you fully understand all of the associated fees before you sign up.
Storage
Storage determines the number of files (like images and videos) you can host on your site. You can generally store 10 large pages (like product pages with several high-resolution images) or 100 small pages (like blog posts with one or two images) per GB. I’ve seen estimates saying you can store as many as 1,000 pages on 1GB, but I use the lower numbers because it’s better to have extra storage than to run out and be forced to upgrade your plan mid-contract.
Some website builders, like Squarespace, offer unlimited storage. Others, like Wix, have strict storage limits. I’ve listed storage limits for the lowest-tier e-commerce plan of every builder on this list. You can see the storage limits of higher-tier plans on the pricing pages of most website builders or ask customer support about them.
Bandwidth (data transfer)
Bandwidth measures how quickly data can be sent from a server to the internet, expressed as gigabits per second (Gbps). However, most website builder companies use the word "bandwidth" to describe data transfer, the total amount of information your site can transmit in a month.
Like storage, bandwidth is often unlimited on website builder plans. Some companies, like Hostinger, list a specific number of monthly visitors your site can handle (like 25,000).
On rare occasions, bandwidth may be expressed as a number like 10GB. You can generally assume that 1GB is enough for 1,000 monthly visitors, so 10GB is enough for 10,000 monthly visits.
Speed tools
Site speed matters because people are 32% more likely to leave your site after only viewing one page if your site speed goes from one to three seconds. The best website builder companies use top-of-the-line hardware to ensure good server speeds. Many also use advanced protocols to improve site speed, such as:
- Caching: A data storage system connected to the server’s CPU. Visitors’ devices can retrieve information from this specialized system, which is often faster than pulling data from the RAM traditionally used for storing website data.
- Content delivery network or CDN: A method of storing data in connected servers in different geographical areas. This allows visitors’ devices to pull data from the server closest to their location, which can be faster than relying on a server on the other side of the globe.
Uptime
Uptime is the percentage of time your site spends online. Most web hosting companies offer 99.9% uptime, which means your site won’t go down for more than 10 minutes per week due to server issues. Some web hosting companies guarantee 99.99% uptime, which means your site won’t experience more than two minutes of downtime per week due to server problems, or even 100% uptime.
Security
Your website builder plays an important role in your site’s security. At a minimum, it should use the following security protocols:
- Secure socket layer -- SSL -- certification: A protocol that encrypts data sent to and from your site, like your customers’ payment information. SSL signals that your site is safe, reducing its chance of being blocked by browsers and VPNs. Google also uses SSL as a ranking factor, making it more difficult for sites without this certification to rank well.
- Firewall: Filtration software that scans traffic to your site and blocks malicious traffic, including malware. This software won’t always catch everything, but it can protect your site from many common threats.
Many website builders offer additional security services, like distributed denial of service -- DDoS -- protection to prevent your site from being overwhelmed by malicious traffic and 24/7 security monitoring.
Customer service
Customer service should be available 24/7 through your preferred method of communication, whether that’s live chat, email or phone. Representatives should also be quick to respond and helpful with various issues.
Price
Website builder companies like Squarespace and Shopify use a straightforward pricing model where you pay the same fee every time your contract renews. Traditional web hosting companies use a more complicated pricing model, starting at a discounted rate for the first contract term and rising by 50% or even more one renewal.
There are a few things you’ll need to understand regardless of the payment model your website builder company uses:
- Contract length: You can often save money by paying for a full year up front. Traditional web hosting companies may require you to pay up front for an even longer time period -- up to four years -- to get the best discount.
- Domain registration: Most website builders offer a free domain for your first year of hosting. After that, you’ll have to pay an annual fee -- typically $20 to $30 -- to renew your domain registration. You can save money on domain registration by using a domain registrar.
- Additional services: You may need to buy extensions for things like email marketing.
When calculating your overall website cost, be sure to include all of these costs, including the renewal pricing if you’re using a traditional web host.
How we test website builders
My testing process starts with analyzing each company’s website builder features, plans and pricing to determine its value. If the plans seem to offer good value, I check the company’s Trustpilot reviews and Better Business Bureau page to get a feel for its reputation and how responsive it is to complaints. I also vet reviews to ensure their relevance (for example, if a review on the Shopify Trustpilot page complains about an individual shop rather than the Shopify service, I consider it irrelevant).
I then purchase a plan and start hands-on testing, using our framework for testing web hosting services to assess:
- The quality of the template library and AI site generator
- Ease of use, from the purchase process to the site editor
- Performance (site speed and uptime)
- Customer service
- Value
Each website builder receives an overall ranking based on how well it performed in all of these categories.
Other website builders
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a popular web host that performed reasonably well in our hands-on testing, with good server performance and fast customer service. I performed separate tests on the website builder and found it intuitive, but rather limited in its template selection and design flexibility.
The website builder starts at $10 a month ($17 a month on renewal) for the Basic plan when you choose a one-year contract. This plan includes access to the website builder’s content/design tools, SSL certification, 100 marketing email sends per month and storage for up to 5,000 products.
