Ecommerce & web platforms
How to choose an ecommerce platform: look past the plan price
Quick answer
Compare what a sale costs, not just the monthly plan. Entry plans run from $0 to $39 a month, but Squarespace Basic adds 2% to every online sale, Shopify Basic adds 2% if you use another processor, and BigCommerce, Volusion and Sellfy cap yearly sales. Check the card rate, any platform fee, sales and product caps, and whether the plan includes your own domain, discounts and abandoned-cart emails.
The plan price is the number every store builder puts first, and it is rarely what decides your costs. Every online sale pays card processing, some platforms add their own fee on top, and several cap how much you can sell or list before you must upgrade. This guide sets out what we weigh, why, and the traps we found on the ten platforms in our ecommerce platform ranking, all read from their own pages in late September 2026.
What we weigh, and why
We score each platform on its entry plan: the cheapest plan that can take payments online. The full method shows each formula.
- Fees per sale (30%). The biggest weight, because it recurs on every order. We price a $50 US online card sale: the card rate, plus any fee the platform adds. At 2.9% + 30¢ that sale costs about $1.75; with a 2% platform fee on top it is about $2.75.
- Plan price (25%). The monthly price, with annual prepay counted, before promotions. For WooCommerce we add the hosting it needs.
- Included (20%). Five things a small store needs on day one: unlimited products, abandoned-cart recovery, discount codes, inventory tracking, and free SSL with your own domain.
- Using another payment provider (15%). Whether the platform charges extra if you keep your own processor.
- Free trial or free plan (10%). A way to build before paying.
The price range you'll see
Entry plans run from $0 to $39 a month:
- $0: Big Cartel Gold, Square Free and the WooCommerce plugin, though WooCommerce needs hosting that Woo puts at $25 to $350 a month for most stores.
- $5: Ecwid Starter.
- $19 to $39: Squarespace Basic ($19 billed annually), Shopify Basic and BigCommerce Core ($29 billed annually, $39 monthly), Wix Core ($29 on a yearly plan), Volusion Personal ($35) and Sellfy Starter ($39 monthly).
The cheapest plans are cheap for a reason. The traps below are where the real cost sits.
Traps our research found
A fee on every sale. Squarespace Basic charges a 2% online store transaction fee on every online sale, with any processor, on top of card fees. Its Core plan drops it.
A fee for keeping your processor. Shopify adds 2% on Basic if you use a provider other than Shopify Payments. BigCommerce charges 2.0% on Core, but only for providers outside its embedded list; Stripe, PayPal Braintree and Adyen carry no fee. Volusion charges 1.25% on Personal with gateways it doesn't prefer. WooCommerce, Ecwid, Sellfy and Big Cartel say they charge none.
No choice at all. Square sets up every Square Online site with its own processor, and we found no published way to use another.
A higher rate on the free plan. Square Free charges 3.3% + 30¢ online, about $1.95 on a $50 sale, against 2.9% + 30¢ on its paid plans.
Sales caps. BigCommerce Core moves you to Growth once trailing-12-month sales pass $30K. Volusion Personal auto-upgrades past $50K a year. Sellfy Starter covers up to $10k a year, and Sellfy may charge a 2% overage fee above it.
Product caps. Big Cartel Gold allows 5 products, Ecwid Starter 10, and Volusion Personal 100.
A missing card rate. Volusion doesn't publish the rate for Volusion Payments, so you can't price a sale before signing up.
Entry plans that leave things out. Big Cartel Gold, Ecwid Starter and Square Free can't connect your own domain. Squarespace Basic and Ecwid Starter have no discount codes. Abandoned-cart emails aren't on BigCommerce Core, Sellfy Starter, Ecwid Starter or Big Cartel below Diamond.
Trials and free plans that can't sell. Sellfy's 14-day trial has checkout switched off. Wix's free plan builds a site but can't take payments; its cheapest plan that can is Core.
Two prices on one company's pages. Sellfy's pricing page and help centre disagree on Starter ($29 vs $39 monthly). Wix's eCommerce FAQ says plans start at $27, while its pricing page says $29. We use the higher figure in each case.
Checklist before you pick
- Work out the fee on a typical order: card rate plus any platform fee. Use your own average order, not ours.
- Ask whether you'll keep an existing processor, and what the platform charges for that.
- Compare your expected yearly sales with any sales cap, and your product count with any product cap.
- Check the entry plan includes your own domain, discount codes and abandoned-cart emails, or price the plan that does.
- Check annual versus monthly billing; the gap is often $10 a month or more.
- Use the free plan or trial to build, but check whether you can take a real order during it.
- If you sell to businesses, check for price lists, customer groups and net payment terms on the plan you'll buy.
Where to go next
See the ecommerce platform ranking, the per-sale costs side by side in platform fees compared, and our list for B2B and wholesale, which ranks only platforms that publish B2B features. If you're weighing WooCommerce, see hosting for WooCommerce.