Ecwid vs Shopify – which platform is better for your online store?
If you’re new to the online business scene, you’ll initially consider Shopify as your first option for an online store builder. But it’s best to consider other options that might suit your needs. Your chosen ecommerce platform determines what features you get, how you can build your standalone online store, and how to market it against your competition. Remember, you’re building not just any website, but you want to sell online.
Your online store is going to be where your customers go to buy your products. Make sure you choose a reliable ecommerce platform for your online business.
Ecwid and Shopify are two options we’re discussing in detail today. Be sure to take notes, especially in the most important areas, to pick the best to build a successful online store.
Shall we get started?
Article Overview:
Ecwid and Shopify: Overview
Shopify vs Ecwid: Comparison
1. Pricing
2. Design and Customization
3. Ecommerce Tools
4. Ease of Use
5. Customer Support
6. Marketing & SEO
When to Choose Ecwid
When to Choose Shopify
Shopify vs Ecwid: Final Thoughts
Ecwid and Shopify: Overview
What are Ecwid and Shopify? The short answer is that these tools facilitate the online selling process for entrepreneurs by enabling them to build an online store.
It’s called an ecommerce platform. With ecommerce platforms such as Ecwid and Shopify, you can create an online store without coding knowledge. In fact, you can build an instant site as it takes hours, even without existing website design knowledge or skills.
Ecwid is an ecommerce plugin that integrates ecommerce functionality into an existing website. The website was founded in 2009 and has been highly successful. It has generated total revenue of $5 billion across its merchants.
On the other hand, Shopify is an ecommerce platform that makes it easy for aspiring store owners to create their own website or online storefront. It was founded a little earlier than Ecwid and is one of the go-to options for an online store solution with ecommerce features and functionalities.
In this Ecwid vs Shopify comparison, you will learn about each platform’s overlapping features and functionalities. You will get more detailed information about the essential features that will help you decide which is the right fit for your needs.
Shopify vs Ecwid: Comparison
In this Ecwid vs Shopify comparison, we’ll focus on the most important areas that will impact your decision when building an ecommerce store.
1. Pricing
Before delving into the features of Shopify vs Ecwid, it’s important to know if you can afford the online store solution in the first place. So, how much does it cost to use each of these ecommerce platforms?
Ecwid offers four pricing plans to choose from, and one of the Ecwid pricing plans is completely free!
- Free – Yes, Ecwid offers a free plan for store owners. The free plan is an ideal choice if you want to test out how the online store solution from Ecwid works and if it’s the right one for you before you commit to a paid business plan.
- Venture – The Venture Ecwid pricing plan is available at $14.08 per month (for an annual subscription or $19 monthly). It has everything you can get from the free plan, but you can list up to 100 products and sell them on social media.
- Business – The Business plan on the Ecwid pricing scheme is available for $29.08 per month on an annual subscription (or $39 monthly). This plan allows you to list up to 2500 products and integrate Amazon and eBay. You can also get two staff accounts.
- Unlimited – The Unlimited Ecwid pricing is available at $82.50 monthly for an annual subscription (or $99 monthly). You can list unlimited products on your online store via this plan, and you can get additional features not available in the cheaper plans.
Shopify pricing plans offer four options and an enterprise-grade solution for ecommerce business owners. You can get a free trial account for 14 days, giving you the opportunity to test out the features before you commit to subscribing to this ecommerce platform.
- Starter – The Shopify Starter plan is available for $5 per month, which enables you to sell products through social media and messaging apps.
- Basic – The Basic Shopify plan is available for $25 per month (or $19 per month annually). It offers up to 1,000 inventory locations, basic reporting, and two staff accounts.
- Shopify – The Shopify plan is available for small businesses at $65 per month (or $49 per month annually). This Shopify plan offers professional reporting, 1,000 inventory locations, and five staff accounts.
- Advanced – The Advanced Shopify plan is available at $399 per month (or $299 per month annually) and is recommended for medium to large online businesses. You can access a custom report builder, 1,000 inventory locations, and 15 staff accounts with the Advanced Shopify plan.
For Shopify and Ecwid, you can access more features and capabilities with the higher-priced plans. Unlike Shopify, Ecwid offers a completely free plan, but the former has a free trial period that you can use to test out the platform’s features. Even if the trial period is short, you can upgrade your Shopify plan to $1 monthly for three months.
Shopify and Ecwid are similar in that they offer discounts if you choose the annual subscription option.
2. Design and Customization
While pricing is important, it’s not the sole deciding factor in choosing between these two ecommerce platforms. Another crucial factor to consider is the design flexibility and customization in creating an ecommerce store.
As a store builder, Ecwid and Shopify allow you to choose themes that will determine the look and design of an ecommerce store.
If you choose to set up an Ecwid store, there is a set store design. The store design integrates with existing websites, which enables you to maintain consistent branding in your online store design. For example, you can stick with the branded colors for existing websites.
When you set up a Shopify store, you’ll begin by choosing which theme to use. You have free to paid themes available that cover various industries, such as food and beverage, fashion, and more. Once you pick a theme, you can tailor the design of your ecommerce store according to your specific needs and branding efforts.
Designing a Shopify store starts with the theme, and you tweak the design. But with Ecwid, your design will be based on the existing website design, and you can add specific design elements after.
However, Ecwid store has limited customization options. Some elements you can edit include navigation, color palette, product layout and descriptions, and product images. While these customization options are predetermined, you can only tweak elements based on the available options. If you want to enhance the customization abilities for your Ecwid store, you have to do some CSS coding.
For your Shopify store, you have more control over the design of your entire e commerce site and its look. The website builder enables you to edit every element of your theme. You can also tweak your website design for mobile. Therefore, you have ultimate control, while Ecwid has limited options.
3. Ecommerce Tools
Setting up your ecommerce store is only the first step. The fun part is running and managing your store to increase visibility and boost sales!
It’s where the distinction lies between Ecwid vs Shopify. Having access to ecommerce tools enables you to support your store’s long-term growth while also ensuring its scalability. There are lots of ecommerce tools to cover, so advanced ecommerce features help to distinguish one platform from the other.
Ecwid ecommerce tools simplify how you run your online business. Here are the tools you can use for selling online:
- Inventory management
- Product options & variants
- Listing physical and digital products
- Promos and discounts
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Shipping options
- Multi sales channel
- POS integration
- Unlimited bandwidth
On the other hand, Shopify offers advanced ecommerce features as part of the website builder to ensure you can hit your sales targets.
- Listing physical and digital products
- Calculated shipping
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited products
- Inventory management
- Dropshipping
- Customer accounts
- Various shipping
- Tax handling
- Multi sales channel
- Abandoned cart recovery
- POS integration
- Multi-currency selling
4. Ease of Use
The purpose of choosing an online store builder is to simplify the process of creating an ecommerce store. These ecommerce platforms are suited for online businesses and store owners that don’t have coding knowledge or skills. These platforms make building an instant site possible with just a few clicks and a drag-and-drop store builder functionality.
According to the Ecwid website, building your online store “is just a few clicks away.” The website stays true to that promise because it literally takes only a few clicks to create an ecommerce store. You do not have to worry about hosting, coding, or installing software. The entire process of building a store with this plugin is easy and straightforward. It also integrates well with an external website builder like Wix, WordPress, GoDaddy, and Squarespace.
With Shopify, setting up an online store is also easy, but more commitment will be involved. But once you start the process, you’ll soon realize how easy it is because it is so intuitive. Like Ecwid, there is no need for hosting or coding. The structured setup makes creating a new online store from scratch relatively easy.
While Shopify is easy to use, Ecwid has a slight advantage because it requires fewer steps and is faster to build an instant site.
5. Customer Support
Understanding the level of support you can get is critical in choosing between Ecwid vs Shopify, especially if you encounter any issues with using the platform.
Shopify support wins this one because it offers a wider range of support options, such as phone support, live chat, email support, help center, and social media support. There are also plenty of video tutorials and resources on the website to find the information you need. Moreover, Shopify support is available on a 24/7 basis.
With Ecwid, you will still get email support, but phone support and live chat feature are only available in the premium plans. For additional support, you can turn to the help center and community forum.
Shopify support is more reliable, especially since it is available 24/7, making it suitable for online business owners globally.
6. Marketing & SEO
Marketing is vital for an online business because you want to gain a competitive advantage over other sellers online. Shopify offers an impressive array of marketing and SEO tools, such as its in-house email marketing system, email marketing apps, and social media integrations.
SEO is critical for any business because the higher your store ranks, the more visibility you get. And when you have more visibility, you can also get more sales. With Ecwid, you can get marketing tools, but your options are limited and not as comprehensive as what Shopify offers its customers.
For these two, you can utilize a market and product research tool to conduct competitor analysis and keyword research. A product research tool helps you identify opportunities for selling online and exploit customer product demands. You can also use this tool to make data-driven decisions based on your competitors’ performance. And since SEO is vital for promoting your online store, you need keyword research to optimize your product listing titles, descriptions, and images.
When to Choose Ecwid
So, why should you choose Ecwid? Well, it’s got a totally free plan available if you want to test it out before making a big commitment.
It also enables you to transform existing websites into a fully-featured standalone store. Once your store is set up, you won’t need to pay any transaction fees for using third-party payment gateways. And there are no limits placed on product options.
When to Choose Shopify
With Shopify, it is an excellent choice for store owners that want more visually appealing stores. The advanced ecommerce features from Shopify give you access to multi-currency selling, enhanced POS features, and abandoned cart recovery. It truly is the ideal choice for ecommerce store selling!
Shopify vs Ecwid: Final Thoughts
Ultimately, your choice between Ecwid vs Shopify varies according to your needs. Ecwid has some perks, especially if you want to simplify online selling. But Shopify’s advanced ecommerce tools and features, full selling capabilities, and reliability make it a solid pick for many store owners.
Take the information available here to help you make the best choice to put your online selling journey off to the right path.
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