Shopify vs Ecwid: Which Platform Is Better For Your Business?

Choosing the right e-commerce platform can be a game-changer for your online business. Having worked with both Shopify and Ecwid, I understand their unique strengths and challenges. 

In this Shopify vs Ecwid comparison, I'll share my insights to help you decide which platform is the best fit for your needs, whether you're starting from scratch or enhancing an existing website. Let's dive into Shopify vs. Ecwid and find out which one suits your business goals.

Shopify vs Ecwid: Which One Should You Choose?

If you already have a website and want to add e-commerce functionality, Ecwid is often the better choice, especially if you're on a budget, thanks to its free plan. Ecwid allows you to easily integrate full selling capabilities into an existing site.

However, if you're starting an e-commerce site from scratch, Shopify is recommended. Despite Ecwid's 'Instant Site' feature for building standalone stores, Shopify offers more comprehensive functionality, particularly for point of sale, drop shipping, and print-on-demand needs, providing more professional results.

Choose Shopify if:

• You want to create a fully functional standalone online store.
• You want to have advanced eCommerce features to grow and scale your store.
• You want a great POS system to manage your inventory for both your online and offline stores.
• You want more drop shipping and POD features.

Choose Ecwid if:

• You already have a website and would like to turn it into an online store.
• You just want to use the free plan that Ecwid has.
• You don’t want to pay extra charges for third-party payment gateways.
• You sell mostly digital products.

Now if you want to know more details, head below for the full Shopify vs Ecwid comparison.

Shopify vs Ecwid: A Quick Glance

Shopify and Ecwid are both very useful tools that will help you sell your products online. Both are very easy to use, allowing users to create and manage their online store without any coding knowledge. Of course, when you look closer, they do have some quite glaring differences.

Shopify was initially built as a tool to create a full-fledged online store with its own domain. Shopify was launched in 2006 and there are currently around 4.8 million stores built using Shopify (View details).

Ecwid was launched in 2009 and it is currently hosting 897,000 websites. Ecwid’s initial purpose was to help people sell products on existing websites by adding a snippet of code to it. You can think of it as a widget or addon. However, Ecwid has been acquired by Lightspeed, a POS solution company. Now, you can also use Ecwid to build a standalone online store.

Shopify vs Ecwid: Pricing

Shopify pricing

First, I would like to clarify that the Shopify Starter plan is basically Ecwid. It doesn’t let you create your own store, but put your products on different platforms. 

Apart from that, the other 4 plans allow you to own your own online store with unlimited products, and categories, along with a POS system.

Higher-tier plans will offer you improvement on: 

• credit card fees
• the number of user accounts you can have
• access to professional reporting
• real-time carrier shipping features

Also, higher-tier plans will upgrade your benefits in all other aspects as well.

Shopify doesn’t have a free plan. Instead, it offers a free trial, followed up by a $1 deal for the first month. This is a decent amount of time for you to try out all the features of a Shopify plan before deciding to invest real money in it.

Ecwid pricing

Among Ecwid’s 4 plans, the most notable difference is the product limits. The more money you pay, the more products you can add.

On the free plan, you can add up to 5 products. The next tier lets you add up to 100 products, and the tier after that lets you add up to 2,500 products. The final “Unlimited” tier, as its name suggests, lets you add an unlimited number of products.

Apart from that, more expensive plans offer you more features such as abandoned cart saving, gift cards, and so on.

All Ecwid plans let you embed your products on another site or create your own site. Note that Ecwid’s free plan won’t let you embed your product on major social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram.

Shopify vs Ecwid: Embed Products Capability

As I mentioned above, Ecwid was initially a tool for selling products on an existing website. Apart from adding products to a site, Ecwid also lets customers search for products, use filters, and sort products, along with many other eCommerce features.

Meanwhile, the Shopify Buy Button only displays products or collections on a site. When customers click on it, they will be navigated to a Shopify checkout page.

All in all, Ecwid still comes out ahead in terms of embedding products on a different site. 

Shopify vs Ecwid: Website Building Capability

As for building a new full-pledged eCommerce website from the ground up, Shopify is clearly the winner.

It features 13 free themes along with 184 paid themes, all are carefully tested to ensure high performance and speed. There are a content management system, blogging features, variety of apps. All those features will let you create a professional online store that can scale however you want.

Ecwid also has the Instant Site features, which lets you quickly create a basic online storefront with your products and information about your business. If you are a beginner, who just wants to put things together quickly then this is a great option.

However, an Ecwid site cannot replace a proper eCommerce website with the necessary functionalities.

We are going into more detail in the section below.

Shopify vs Ecwid: Detailed Comparison

Ease of use

Ecwid and Shopify have similar content management systems, with main features accessible from a left-hand menu and product management on the right. Ecwid excels in image management by allowing a global application of image ratios, saving time compared to Shopify's requirement for uniform aspect ratios before uploading.

Both platforms offer mobile apps for iOS and Android, enabling order fulfillment, inventory management, and customer support on the go. The main apps are well-received, with iOS versions scoring 4.6 out of 5 and Ecwid's Android app slightly outperforming Shopify's. Overall, both platforms are user-friendly with a modest learning curve.

Product Features

Shopify lets you add as many products as you want while Ecwid limits the number of products based on its plans. you are limited to 5 products on the free plan; 100 on its $25 per month ‘Venture’ plan; 2,500 on its $45 per month ‘Business’ plan; and unlimited products on its $105 per month ‘Unlimited’ plan.

However, Shopify only lets users add up to 3 product options while Ecwid allows you to add as many product options as you want. There are many ways to work around this Shopify limitation by getting an app that removes the limitation or by creating separate products, but it is quite a hassle.

Both platforms let you create a product collection fairly easily. But Shopify has an edge over Ecwid with the way it allows you to create product categories. 

Based on the information you input for your product, Shopify can create categories automatically based on that information, including names, sizes, prices, tags, weights, and so on. This is especially useful for businesses with a huge number of products.

SEO

Shopify excels in search engine optimization (SEO) with strong features for tweaking headers, page titles, URLs, and metadata. It allows easy creation and modification of clean, SEO-friendly URLs and supports redirects from old URLs to new ones, which is crucial for maintaining search engine indexing. Shopify also has tools and third-party apps that help meet Core Web Vitals requirements, which can improve search performance.

Ecwid performs well in SEO for paid plans but has limitations compared to Shopify. URL creation in Ecwid is based on product titles and may require technical adjustments for SEO-friendly URLs on custom-built sites. Additionally, the plugin version of Ecwid lacks the ability to change existing product URLs or create redirects. Ecwid users might need manual steps and coding to meet Core Web Vitals standards. 

Overall, while Ecwid can be optimized for search engines, Shopify offers a more robust and user-friendly SEO experience.

Intergrations and apps

Shopify boasts a vast app store with over 13,000 apps, providing extensive options for integrating a wide range of well-known apps and services. This abundance of apps offers greater flexibility and ease in enhancing store functionality.

Ecwid has a more limited app market, with around 325 apps available. While it includes important integrations like Freshbooks, Shipstation, and Printful, the selection is significantly smaller than Shopify’s. However, Ecwid users can use Zapier to connect additional services, though this involves extra fees and configuration time.

Overall, Shopify’s extensive app store and greater integration flexibility make it the superior choice in this aspect.

Customer Support

Ecwid offers multiple support channels, including live chat, email, and phone support, with phone support available on the $45 per month 'Business' plan or higher. Ecwid’s free plan includes live chat support for the first 30 days, after which users can rely on online support materials and video tutorials. 

Additionally, Ecwid provides 'customization hours' for personalized support on higher-tier plans, giving two or six hours of assistance for 'Business' and 'Unlimited' plans, respectively.

Shopify provides email and live chat support for most subscribers, with phone support reserved for users on the $2,300+ 'Shopify Plus' plan. Shopify's live chat starts with an AI chatbot, which, while effective, might be seen as an inconvenience by some users. Shopify supports over 20 languages, compared to Ecwid's seven, offering broader linguistic support.

However, due to easier access to phone support and the added benefit of 'customization hours,' Ecwid has a slight edge in the support department.

Analytics and reports

Both Ecwid and Shopify provide basic sales statistics out of the box, such as visitors, orders received, and total revenue. However, for more detailed performance insights, Ecwid requires the installation of third-party reporting apps, which may not always be free. 

Shopify also offers basic stats in the ‘Analytics’ section of the control panel, but full, professional reports are only available on plans costing $105 or more. Additionally, both platforms allow integration with Google Analytics for comprehensive tracking of traffic, behavior, and sales, though some configuration is necessary. 

Conclusion

If you're a small business building an e-commerce site from scratch, Shopify is the ideal choice due to its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features for creating an elegant standalone online store. Although Ecwid’s ‘Instant Site’ feature allows for standalone site creation, it doesn't match the depth of functionality offered by Shopify.

However, if you already have a website or prefer using a specific platform, Ecwid is the more suitable option. It seamlessly adds full selling capabilities to existing websites with minimal hassle and is particularly well-suited for Wix and WordPress users due to its smooth integration. While Shopify’s ‘Buy Buttons’ offer basic selling on existing sites, they lack the full online store experience that Ecwid provides.

Check out more Shopify comparison article from Nextsky:

• Shopify vs. Weebly: Which Is Best for Your Business?
• Lightspeed vs.Shopify: Which One Is The Better POS Platform?