Ecwid vs. Shopify: Which is Better for Ecommerce Merchants? 

Grow global sales and build a loyal customer base with the ecommerce solution that fits your business.

You’ve heard of Shopify, but could Ecwid be the better ecommerce solution for you? While Shopify is one of the top names in ecommerce, Ecwid can also be an excellent choice for merchants hoping to integrate selling capabilities into their existing website.

Here we explore the costs and pricing, the merchant experience, features and the customer/ user experience for both platforms.

Ecwid vs. Shopify: Which is Better for Ecommerce Merchants?

Ecwid vs. Shopify Get to Know the Platforms

Ecwid is an ecommerce platform and store plugin that lets merchants integrate selling capabilities into their existing website. Even the name ‘Ecwid’ comes from combining the words ‘ecommerce’ and ‘widget’ together. Unlike many other ecommerce solutions, Ecwid integrates into your existing site with detailed, customized metrics and clear insight into e-commerce KPIs.

Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform or essentially an online store site builder that makes creating an online store easy, without any coding. Shopify is home to over 1,700,000 online retailers and lets you set up your online store using customizable templates. They help to streamline the ecommerce process and locate all your analytics in a single hub.

Both companies have gained overlapping capacities in recent years. Now you can embed a Shopify product catalog or payments feature on an existing site or use Ecwid to build a standalone online store. However, this article will be focused on the primary offerings of each company.

Comparing Pricing and Costs: Ecwid vs. Shopify

Ecwid Costs

Ecwid has an alluring cost structure: free. However, the features and number of products you can sell on the free version are minimal. Choosing one of Ecwid’s paid plans will be a better choice for most merchants. These include:

• Venture Pricing option at $15/month with extra tools to manage your online store
• Business Pricing at $35/month, with even more advanced e-commerce functionality
• Unlimited Pricing option for $99/month for handling online and offline retail sales

These tiers are determined by the number of products sold at 10 products (Free), 100 (Venture), 2500 (Business) and Unlimited. Ecwid offers somewhat more affordable pricing relative to Shopify, although this pricing can vary slightly by country.

Shopify Costs

With Shopify, you can select a monthly plan or pay annually for a discount. Shopify offers three tiers of plans ranging from $29 to $299 a month.

The higher-level plans have more features. Unlike Ecwid, all Shopify plans let you sell an unlimited number of goods — the main differences are in the number of user accounts available, along with access to professional reporting and real-time carrier shipping information, and other features.

Shopify plans also include features such as international domains and pricing and reduced transaction fees from both Shopify payments and their third-party payment solutions.

Payment Gateways and Transaction Fees

Ecwid and Shopify work with an extensive range of payment gateways. However, you can only use Shopify Payments if you are selling from certain countries. If your country isn’t on the list, you will need to use a third-party payment gateway.

User Experience: Ecwid vs. Shopify Comparison

Here’s a quick overview of what it’s like to use these platforms as a merchant.

Using Ecwid as a Merchant

Ecwid easily plugs into your existing website, and they make it simple to understand the steps needed for full integration. While this setup will require some developer support, the convenience of integrating into an existing website can be a far better option than building a new ecommerce site from scratch. Ecwid does offer some templates, but because Ecwid was designed for those already with websites, their templates options are very limited.

One clear plus of Ecwid is the ease of selling digital goods like ebooks, PDFs, video files, and other large digital file products or doing bulk product imports and updates.

However, one limitation to consider is Ecwid’s constrained plugin availability. While Shopify can support over 6000+ plugins, Ecwid can only support a couple hundred. So be sure to review their supported integrations before signing up if plugin integration is a crucial component of your ecommerce strategy.

Using Shopify as a Merchant

It’s easy to navigate Shopify’s interface, even if you’re not particularly tech-savvy. You can easily change the features of your store with a ‘drag and drop interface, so you won’t need a web developer to keep your Shopify store up to date. Customizing your store is easy with Shopify’s free and 60+ paid themes.

Shopify will host your online store and maintain your site, ensuring that it runs smoothly. And if you know some coding basics or have developer support, you can easily navigate your store’s front-end and back-end to improve your appearance and performance.

Customer Support for Merchants

You can contact Shopify any time by phone or through live chat. Help is typically fast. You can also ask the Shopify community questions about common issues — many have been covered before.

Unlike Ecwid’s Business and Unlimited plans, their free plan offers email support only. They do have phone support available to Businesses and Unlimited plans and live chat available to Venture plans and above and are known to be very responsive.

With both ecommerce options providing solid support, Shopify’s myriad of support options only narrowly beat Ecwid’s responsive customer support.

International Language and Localization Support

In the case of Shopify, you can make different versions of your store in up to five different languages for most plans or 20 additional languages with ‘Shopify Plus’.

The Ecwid storefront, on the other hand, is professionally translated into 53 languages. They automatically detect what language a user’s browser is working in and translate key components of your site. This lets you more efficiently manage inventory, add products, fulfill orders, and accept payments in your preferred language.

With either Shopify or Ecwid, it’s easy to go global and grow into new markets or do business in multilingual countries. However, you’ll need to be sure to localize your customers’ checkout experience with the payment options and local and alternative payment methods they prefer. An international payments plugin will do this for you and help you to satisfy cross-border customers. Rapyd provides payment plugins for Shopify and Ecwid and other ecommerce sites to help merchants expand globally.

The Final Verdict: Which is Better Ecwid or Shopify?

Shopify will be easier for merchants who don’t already have a website and are looking to use pre-existing templates with simpler, all-inclusive pricing and don’t want to rely on a developer. It’s also a strong choice for those seeking an easy-to-navigate dashboard, countless plugin integrations, and to have a fully functional online store ready to go after account activation.

However, an Ecwid online store can be an excellent, more affordable option for smaller and medium-sized businesses looking for a long list of features and a low price tag. It’s a partially good option for merchants looking for an affordable ecommerce platform or those primarily selling digital goods.

Go Beyond the Default with a Better ​Solution for International Ecommerce Payments

Finding the payment gateway that best suits your business means making more sales through accepting your global customers’ preferred and local payment methods, integrated fraud protection, and minimizing fees.

Rapyd’s Ecommerce plugins let you accept hundreds of payment methods, including local and alternative payment methods from all over the globe, giving more customers access to your business. Serving over 50 countries and with local settlement in whatever currency you choose, it’s one of the most comprehensive options available to merchants using both Shopify and Ecwid.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio for Pexels.