Choosing ecommerce software is one of the first real business decisions a new merchant makes, and it’s harder to reverse than it looks. Product catalogs, customer data, and payment integrations get tangled up in a platform quickly, so switching a year later usually means more work than picking carefully now. This guide walks through ten platforms that small business owners actually use, with a look at how each handles pricing, growth, and day-to-day usability.
What to weigh before you pick a platform
Before comparing individual tools, it helps to know which factors matter most for a small store:
- Total cost of ownership — the monthly subscription is rarely the whole story. Payment processing fees, app or plugin costs, and theme purchases add up.
- Ease of use — how much can be done without hiring a developer, and how steep is the learning curve for someone running the business solo?
- Scalability — can the platform handle more products, more traffic, and more complex operations like wholesale or multi-currency selling as the business grows?
- Ownership of data and design — hosted platforms trade some flexibility for convenience; self-hosted options offer more control at the cost of more maintenance.
Shopify
Shopify remains the most widely recognized name among the best ecommerce platforms for small business owners, and for good reason. It’s a fully hosted platform, meaning Shopify handles security, uptime, and updates, so store owners don’t need technical knowledge to launch. Its plans scale from a basic tier suited to a single-person shop up to Shopify Plus, used by larger retailers with high order volumes.
The App Store is one of Shopify’s biggest strengths, offering integrations for shipping, email marketing, and accounting that plug in without custom code. The tradeoff is that Shopify charges additional transaction fees on top of subscription costs unless a merchant uses Shopify Payments, so it’s worth checking that math against expected sales volume.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce competes directly with Shopify but takes a different approach to fees: it doesn’t charge extra transaction fees regardless of payment gateway, which can matter for merchants who want to keep an existing payment processor. It also includes more built-in features out of the box — like product filtering and multi-channel selling — that might require a paid app on other platforms.
One thing to watch is that BigCommerce plans have annual sales thresholds; exceeding them can push a store into a higher tier automatically. For a growing business this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s worth understanding upfront.
Squarespace
Squarespace built its reputation on design-forward templates for portfolios and blogs, and its commerce features have matured to support small retail and service businesses. It’s a strong option for merchants who care deeply about visual presentation and don’t need heavy customization of checkout or backend logic.
The ecommerce toolset is less extensive than Shopify’s or BigCommerce’s when it comes to advanced inventory management or third-party app integrations, but for a small catalog with straightforward needs, that simplicity is often an advantage rather than a limitation.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress, which makes it attractive to anyone already comfortable with WordPress or running a content-heavy site alongside a store. Because it’s open source, there’s no platform subscription fee — but store owners are responsible for hosting, security, and updates, either themselves or through a managed WordPress host.
This makes WooCommerce more flexible than most hosted platforms, since almost every part of the store can be modified, but it also means a steeper learning curve and more ongoing maintenance responsibility than a fully hosted solution.
Wix
Wix started as a general website builder and has added a capable ecommerce layer on top. Its drag-and-drop editor is arguably the most beginner-friendly of any platform on this list, which makes it a reasonable starting point for someone building their first online store without technical help.
Wix works well for small catalogs and service-based businesses. Store owners planning rapid growth or complex product variants may eventually find its ecommerce tools less robust than Shopify’s or BigCommerce’s, but for many small businesses it never needs to become an issue.
Square Online
Square Online is a natural fit for businesses that already use Square’s point-of-sale hardware in a physical location, since inventory and sales data sync between online and in-person channels automatically. It offers a free plan with basic storefront features, funded by Square’s payment processing fees rather than a subscription.
For a retail business that sells both in a shop and online — a bakery, a boutique, a market stall — this unified approach to inventory can save real time compared to reconciling two separate systems.
Ecwid
Ecwid, now owned by Lightspeed, takes a different approach by letting merchants add a shopping cart to an existing website, whether that site runs on WordPress, Wix, or plain HTML. This makes it a good option for a business that already has a website it likes and just needs commerce functionality bolted on rather than a full rebuild.
Its free tier is genuinely usable for a small number of products, and paid tiers unlock more advanced features like abandoned cart recovery and multi-channel selling to marketplaces like Amazon and Instagram.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel was built specifically for artists, makers, and small creative businesses selling a limited number of products. Its feature set is intentionally lean compared to Shopify or BigCommerce, but that simplicity keeps costs low and the setup process fast for someone with a small, curated catalog.
It’s not the right choice for a business planning to scale into hundreds of SKUs, but for an independent artist or small studio, it does exactly what’s needed without extra complexity.
Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop (formerly 3dcart) offers a free plan for merchants who process payments through Shift4’s own payment processing, which can make it one of the more affordable entry points on this list for the right kind of business. It includes a fairly comprehensive set of built-in ecommerce features, including SEO tools and multi-channel listings, without requiring as many paid add-ons as some competitors.
The interface feels less modern than Shopify’s or BigCommerce’s, and the learning curve is a bit steeper, but the feature-for-price value is worth considering for a cost-conscious small business.
Weebly
Weebly, now part of Square, offers a simple website and store builder aimed at very small businesses and side projects. Since Square’s acquisition, its ecommerce features increasingly overlap with Square Online, and new merchants comparing the two should check which one currently offers the better fit, since Square has been consolidating features between them.
Weebly remains a reasonable low-cost option for a business that needs a simple storefront without extensive customization.
Matching the platform to the business, not the other way around
For a solo maker or small catalog
Big Cartel, Ecwid, or Squarespace tend to offer the right balance of low cost and simplicity for a business selling a small number of products.
For a business planning fast growth
Shopify and BigCommerce offer the clearest paths to scale, with more third-party integrations and infrastructure built for higher traffic and order volume.
For a retailer with a physical storefront
Square Online and Weebly make the most sense when in-person and online inventory need to stay in sync.
Conclusion
There’s no single best ecommerce platform for small business owners in every situation — the right choice depends on catalog size, technical comfort, and how fast the business expects to grow. Testing a free trial or free tier before committing is usually worth the time, since the day-to-day experience of managing orders and inventory matters just as much as the feature list on a pricing page.