You are an entrepreneur, who wants to start your own business with an online store or a successful small business owner who wants to digitally expand the business, and in search of how to build a website at low cost and minimal effort.
Here comes the solution: With one of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses, you can do that.
After all, a website from scratch can be an expensive mission due to hiring an internal team, buying third-party tools, hosting costs, etc. But with easy ecommerce platforms, there is no need for this.
This blog will explore the seven best ecommerce solutions for small businesses to help you develop your site, build online brand integrity, and turn visitors into sales prospects.
Let’s begin!
Factors to Consider When Choosing an Ecommerce Platform in 2025
First, let’s consider the factors that impact business owners when choosing ecommerce platforms in 2025.
- Affordability: Creating a website from scratch requires a high cost and covers startup costs, transaction fees, and ongoing maintenance, especially for e-commerce websites. Keep in mind these costs and align them with your budget level.
- Customization Options: You need to show brand identity in your ecommerce store. So, pick an ecommerce platform that offers lots of customization options. These can be multiple design features, third-party integrations, and much more.
- Mobile Optimization: Make sure to pick those ecommerce platforms that offer multiple features for mobile optimizations. Google prefers mobile-friendly Ecommerce sites for small businesses more than any other factor— a significant percentage of sales come from mobile devices.
- SEO & Marketing Features: Keep in mind that pick those ecommerce platforms that have Built-in SEO tools, email marketing integrations, and social media support. Although most platforms do offer, still check which offers the most SEO-friendly features.
- Customer Support: Check your selected eCommerce builder has customer service options, such as chat, email, or phone support. Although almost all ecommerce builders offer this, check which one offers advanced features such as a chatbot. It will help you in providing instant assistance to your customers, reducing response times.
- Ease of Use: Lacking a team or not having enough skills to create and maintain the website by yourself, an easy-to-use ecommerce platform is the right path. Magento is highly complex, while others are relatively easy to use, so make sure to pick the one that fits your business needs.
Scalability: Though you are a startup or SME, you want your business to grow, which ultimately requires additional features within the website. For this reason, make sure the e-commerce platform you pick is flexible enough to scale your online business store as it grows.
Scalability: Though you are a startup or SME, you want your business to grow, which ultimately requires additional features within the website. For this reason, make sure the e-commerce platform you pick is flexible enough to scale your online business store as it grows. A great way to ensure your store can handle growth is through customized themes, like those in our shopify theme development guide, which can help you design a store that evolves with your business.
Top Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses in 2025
1. Shopify
Overview: Shopify is an all-in-one software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform with a strong reputation in the e-commerce market. You will explore everything in it—it acts as a shipping/fulfillment provider, email marketing service, and multiple payment gateways while being an e-commerce builder or the best e-commerce platform. Shopify is known for its ease of use, mobile-friendly design, and wide range of customizable features.
Why it’s Great for Small Businesses:
- Offers the most dropshipping integrations
- Extensive app marketplace.
- User-friendly interface.
- Highly customizable themes.
- No transaction fees
Best For: Shopify is the perfect platform for small business owners and hobbyists in search of getting started with a simple ecommerce store and, with time, can optimize it after business expands.
Price: Shopify has three pricing versions:
- Standard: $39/month
- Plus: $105/ month (the price begins at $2,300/ month but increases as your business grows)
- Pro: $399/ month
If you’re planning to build your store on Shopify, consider our web design and digital marketing expertise to ensure optimal setup.
2. WooCommerce
Overview: An open-source WordPress plugin with inventory and tax management, shipping integration, and secure payments. You can use it to build and maintain your fully functional ecommerce stores with a certain level of flexibility. WooCommerce’s main features include multiple channel options, which means you can integrate your website with multiple sales channels like Facebook, Amazon, and even with the point of sale (POS) (if you have a physical store). Other features are it offers advanced SEO features and multiple payment options.
Why it’s Great for Small Businesses:
- Ability to fully customize your website
- Offers access to big extension stores and applications
- Cost-effective, especially for businesses with an existing WordPress site.
Best For: Small businesses already using WordPress.
Price: Entirely Free to set up and use, but hosting and add-ons may charge extra costs as $3.95/month exceeding to $5,000.
Already using WordPress? Our web development team can help you integrate WooCommerce seamlessly.
3. Wix eCommerce
Overview: Another SaaS ecommerce platform or website builder appreciated for its intuitive user interface capable of crafting any ecommerce site for small businesses. However, it is not destined to create an ecommerce website as a main goal. Still, in the near future, most entrepreneurs or startups will use it as an e-commerce website builder. The reason for this is that it acts as a gateway to creating a simple online store with minimal effort and cost. This is due to its easy design capabilities and low maintenance. Wix eCommerce provides abandoned cart renewal, omnichannel selling options, dropshipping integration, and much more.
Why it’s Great for Small Businesses:
- Easy-to-use interface
- Drag-and-drop builder for easy design
- All-in-one POS structure with staff management, inventory tracking, and more
- Highly scalable with different plan options for all-size business
Best For: Small businesses seeking an all-in-one website and ecommerce solution with minimal technical skills required or prefer the cheapest ecommerce for very few items.
Price: There are four planning options:
- The basic plan starts at $29
- Shopify plan starts at $79
- Advanced plan starts at $299
- Plus plan starts at $2,300
With all these prices, you can also get certain shipping discounts.
Using a platform like Wix? Our UI/UX design services ensure your website is optimized for users across all devices.
4. BigCommerce
Overview: A cloud-based ecommerce platform or website builder that uses a multichannel website-building technology. As it allows for smooth cross-channel ecommerce, BigCommerce appeals mostly to mid-market and small businesses with high growth potential. BigCommerce allows easy integration with other applications, extensions, or marketplaces, along with flexible customization and multiple SEO features.
Why it’s Great for Small Businesses:
- Easily integrate with other top marketplaces (e.g., Amazon, eBay).
- Zero transaction costs
- More than 65 payment options
- Strong SEO features
Best For: BigCommerce is best for those brands who emphasize less on developing website while wanting to sell across multiple channels.
Price: BigCommerce has four big pricing plans:
- The standard starts at $39, with 4 inventory locations and 3 storefronts.
- Plus, starting at $105—5 inventory locations and 5 storefronts.
- Pro starting at $399—8 inventory locations and 8 storefronts.
- Enterprise—a custom pricing.
5. Squarespace
Overview: If you prioritize ease of use and aesthetics, Squarespace, one of the best e-commerce platforms, deserves attention in your online store. Its main features cover the intuitive website templates that you can customize through a drag-and-drop functionality and a simple editor. Apart from selling products, Squarespace lets you sell digital downloads, subscriptions, and services as well.
Why it’s Great for Small Businesses:
- Stunning, customizable design templates
- Built-in ecommerce tools such as Intuitive drag-and-drop editor
- No-code editing capabilities
- Free domain with yearly plans
Best For: Businesses from creative industries such as fashion, photography, or home decor.
Price: Its pricing structure is based on three plans:
- Personal start at $23— Free custom domain, free invoices transfer, and templates
- Business starts at $33—Access to advanced website analytics and checkout on your domain.
- Commerce Basic starts at $36—No transaction fee, and offers advanced analytics and powerful merchandising (e.g., product variations, coupon codes, etc.)
6. Weebly (Owned by Square)
Overview: Apart from being an affordable ecommerce site builder, it provides you with a suite of business tools powered by Square, gift cards, Point-of-sale (POS), Square Pay, and online checkout.
You don’t need to do coding to develop an online store—start trading right away. Once you have picked your site theme, you only need to upload items and set up payment methods. After a while, Weebly will automatically make an online store with its CSS/HTML control and editing.
Moreover, you can monitor inventory or different variants of a product (e.g., sizes and colors).
Why it’s Great for Small Businesses:
- Easy set-up procedure
- Simple drag-and-drop interface.
- Free ecommerce hosting
- In-built shipping and tax calculator
- Integration with Square for payment processing
Best For: Small businesses that want an affordable, easy-to-manage store with integrated payments.
Price: Weebly has four pricing methods:
- Free version with unlimited items, integration of Instagram feed, an inventory management tool, and coupons.
- Personal items start at $13, including digital goods, a custom domain connection, and shipping labels.
- Professional starts at $16 with a free custom domain, shipping/tax calculator, no Square Ads, and pop-up notifications.
- Performance starts at $29 with an additional payment method, advanced ecommerce insights, and product reviews enabler.
7. Magento (Open Source)
Overview: Now Adobe Commerce, is an open-source platform that allows you to host your site on your own data center (or on premise) or via cloud called Adobe Commerce Cloud as a platform as a service (PaaS).
Because Adobe Commerce is open source, you can modify the platform as per your website development and marketing needs through source code and data. To develop and maintain the website, you need external help with strong technical expertise —designers, developers, QA testers, etc. Otherwise, you might feel left out of product updates and not supported because there’s no help with planning, managing projects, or regular check-ins.
Why it’s Great for Small Businesses:
- Freedom to fully customize it
- Access to a strong partner network
- Let’s create Multiple stores
- Advanced features for B2B clients
Best For: Small businesses that have in-house website development resources for a highly customized website and a high volume of products.
Price: Free for open-source, but hosting and customization costs apply. Its premium version starts at $22,000, while Adobe Commerce Cloud costs $40,000 or more.
How to Choose the Best Ecommerce Platform for Your Small Business
All these builders somewhat offer the same features with minor differences—claiming we are the best—which makes it difficult for many to pick the ideal one. To get you out of this, we have arranged a session where we call big design and development experts to get some insights on website management, costs incurred, and much more. Below are the advices they put on the table for selecting the best ecommerce platform for small businesses:
- Consider Your Budget: Budget is key to selecting the right e-commerce platform. Finalize the budget first, keeping in mind all ongoing and upfront costs covering transaction fees, hosting fees, plugin integration costs, and any other additional fees related to website creation.
- Evaluate Your Business Needs: Now, identify whether you need an easy-to-use platform with a lot of customization options or a more complex website with advanced features.
- Understand Your Growth Plans: If you plan to expand quickly, look for a platform with scalability. Although at first you prefer an easy-to-use website, when your business grows, you handle increased traffic and sales volume, for which advanced features are required, such as analytics and reporting, SEO support features, and other system integration.
- Measure Your Technical Skills: If you’re not technical or you feel hiring internal staff is too costly, opt for a platform with a drag-and-drop builder and good client support. But remember, if you intend to grow your business quickly with new service categories, you need to hire technical staff to manage your platform.
- Look for Platform Support and Resources: Bear in mind the platform you pick has active user communities, supportive tutorials, and strong customer service.
Pros and Cons of the Top Ecommerce Platforms
Platform
Shopify
WooCommerce
Wix
BigCommerce
Squarespace
Weebly
Magento
Pros
User-friendly, 24/7 support, tons of integrations
Customizable, free plugin, ideal for WordPress users
Easy to use, affordable, great for small stores
Great for growth, strong SEO, multichannel selling
Sleek designs, all-in-one, simple to use
Affordable, easy to use, integrated with Square
Highly customizable, ideal for large catalogs
Cons
Monthly fees can add up
Requires hosting and add-ons for full features
Limited ecommerce features for scaling up
Slightly higher price points for small stores
Limited payment options and ecommerce features
Limited scalability and design flexibility
Requires technical expertise and resources
Conclusion
No matter which e-commerce platform you pick, it all depends on your online store goals, needs, and budget level. Whatever you prioritize (no. of features, level of customization, or security) in selecting the ecommerce sites for small business, there’s the right opportunity out there for you.
Once you’ve made the decision to pick the best ecommerce platform for small businesses, it’s time to build a migration and launch plan. This is where the excitement starts since this is what will convert your successful ecommerce dream into action.
If you’re still in doubt about which ecommerce platform is right for you, get in touch with the Crescentic Digital team today! Our IT experts can help you choose and set up the perfect one per your business needs. Let us guide you to success!
Frequently Asked Questions:
Small Business teams need to identify the budget level, business goal and needs. After that, they can identify which one fits their small business.
Yes, Shopify is the best ecommerce platform for beginners. It has an intuitive interface, comprehensive features, and extensive support resources, making it the best new in the market.
Yes, you can migrate your store from one platform to another. Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce offer the complete migration. Squarespace and Weebly provide limited migration support compared to the others. But Magento require development resources for a smooth migration.
Shopify offers the most customization with a comprehensive set of features and tools.
The best e-commerce platforms for small businesses: 1. Shopify 2. WooCommerce 3. Wix eCommerce 4. BigCommerce 5. Squarespace 6. Weebly (Owned by Square) 7. Magento (Open Source)