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 am familiar with their unique strengths and challenges. In this article, NextSky will 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. 

Shopify vs Ecwid: An overview

What is Shopify

Launched in 2006, Shopify was designed to help businesses build their own independent online stores on custom domains. The platform enables the creation of stores from scratch using professional templates, manages products and inventory, integrates with major carriers such as DHL and UPS, and expands functionality through a rich app ecosystem. With approximately 5.54 million active websites as of 2025, Shopify is the ideal choice for businesses seeking to establish a unique brand and full control over the online shopping experience.

Read more: What is Shopify? All Information About The Platform from A-Z

What is Ecwid

Launched in 2009, Ecwid was created to allow users to sell products directly on existing websites via a simple snippet of code, true to its name, "ecommerce widget." It enables seamless sales integration, efficient product and inventory management, advertising tools, and even standalone store building when needed. With over 221,000 active websites in use and owned by Lightspeed, Ecwid is a suitable solution for those who want to quickly deploy e-commerce on an existing site without building a new full website.

1. Best pricing - A Tie

Ecwid

Currently, Ecwid offers four pricing plans in the US market:

• Starter - $5/month
• Venture - $30/month
• Business - $55/month
• Unlimited - $130/month

Paying annually saves about 16%, but in many countries, Ecwid prices are significantly higher—for example, up to 32% more expensive in the UK compared to the US. A significant drawback is that Ecwid does not offer a free trial, whereas Shopify provides a 3-day free trial and a promotional offer of just $ 1 per month for the first three months for new users.

The main differences between Ecwid's plans stem from product limits:

• Starter: 5 products
• Venture: 100 products
• Business: 2,500 products
• Unlimited: Unlimited products

The Starter plan also does not support social media selling, making it less competitive than Shopify's Starter plan. Advanced features, such as abandoned cart recovery, gift cards, POS, or expansion support, are only available when upgrading to a higher plan. However, all plans allow embedding products into an existing website or creating a simple sales page via "Instant Site."

Shopify

Shopify features five flexible pricing plans:

• Starter - $5/month
• Basic - $25/month or $19/month billed annually.
• Grow - $69/month or $49/month billed annually.
• Advanced - $399/month or $299/month billed annually.
• Shopify Plus - $2,300/month

All plans allow unlimited product sales, unlimited collections, and POS support. However, differences between plans include:

• Transaction processing fees
• Number of staff accounts
• Real-time shipping features
• Shipping discounts
• Global selling capabilities
• Check the checkout performance and load capacity

Shopify also offers a 3-day free trial and is currently testing a promotional deal of just 3 months for $1, allowing users to explore the platform comfortably before committing to a long-term plan.

2. Ease of Use - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify excels in user-friendliness for beginners, designed to enable anyone to create a website without prior coding knowledge. The intuitive dashboard, combined with stunning templates, lets you launch a store in just minutes. If you want personalization, you can build a site from scratch. While it's easy to use, achieving a fully functional store requires more time—but the superior features and customization options more than make up for it compared.

Ecwid

Ecwid features a clean, easy-to-navigate dashboard with a setup wizard that guides you through the quick creation of a store. The "Instant Site" feature allows instant creation of a basic website, and if you already have an existing site, integrating the store with Ecwid takes just minutes. The process is simple and seamless, but the store features are more limited than those of Shopify.

Verdict: Shopify is ideal for those wanting a comprehensive store with rich features. Ecwid suits users needing quick integration into an existing website with convenience and simplicity.

3. Design and template - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify offers over 985 themes, including both free and paid options, with modern designs that are mobile-optimized and feature unique elements such as sticky menus, quick views, age verification, and EU auto-translation. Most paid themes range from $100 to $500, but you can easily filter, preview, and switch them without losing your store data.

Ecwid

Ecwid offers over 40 free themes, which are sufficient for basic stores but limited in terms of features and variety, categorized into eight main categories. The interfaces are simple, featuring standard navigation bars, which are suitable if you don't require many standout elements.

Verdict: Shopify excels in flexibility and user experience, while Ecwid is well-suited for quick, budget-friendly solutions.

Read more: Shopify vs Weebly: Which Platform Should You Choose?

4. E-commerce features - Shopify

Product limits and options

• Shopify: Allows unlimited product sales, but each product supports a maximum of 3 options. For more complex options, you'll need apps or code interventions.
• Ecwid: Product limits vary by plan (Starter, Venture, Business, Unlimited), but there's no limit on product options. Adding supplemental info or attachments for customers is simple and intuitive.

Product categories

• Shopify: Stands out with smart collections that automatically categorize products based on names, tags, prices, or weights—highly convenient for stores with many items.
• Ecwid: Supports product filtering and bulk editing, allowing assignment to multiple categories at once, but lacks Shopify's automation features.

Product variants

• Shopify: Supports up to 100 variants per product across all plans, offering flexibility for combining different options.
• Ecwid: Only supports variants from the Business plan upward, limiting lower-tier plans.

Digital selling

• Shopify: Allows selling digital products via the Digital Downloads app, with a 5GB file limit (expandable via paid apps), and also supports NFTs for content creators.
• Ecwid: Digital product sales begin with the Venture plan, which supports files up to 25GB without additional apps—ideal for larger files.

5. Online selling tools

Dropshipping

• Shopify: Supports dropshipping through over 700 apps like Spocket, DSers, Printify, and Printful. Setting up and starting a business is quick and straightforward, making it ideal for print-on-demand as well.
• Ecwid: Supports dropshipping via 14 apps such as Wholesale2B, Syncee, Spocket, and NextsChain. While there are fewer options, they are still sufficient to get started, although print-on-demand choices are more limited.

Read more: Shopify Dropshipping Guide: Step-by-Step for Beginners

Point of sale (POS)

• Shopify: Built-in POS that's easy to install, with the ability to purchase hardware directly from Shopify in many countries. Unlocking full POS features requires the POS Pro add-on ($89/month), which enables staff management, order processing, and comprehensive sales analytics.

• Ecwid: POS is based on Lightspeed Retail and requires either the Business or Unlimited plan to be used. It can connect to third-party solutions like Square, Clover, or Vend, but the supported countries are fewer, and costs may be higher.

Abandoned cart recovery

• Shopify: Sophisticated abandoned cart recovery feature that allows automated emails based on various triggers, creating personalized customer journeys. Available on all plans.
• Ecwid: Only available on Business plans and higher, with fewer customization options, and less flexible than Shopify.

Multi-currency selling

• Shopify: Automatically displays prices in the local currency when using Shopify Payments, allowing customers to pay in their preferred currency right on the store.
• Ecwid: Requires a currency conversion app ($4.49/month), which only displays local prices but doesn't process payments in that currency.

Multi-language selling

• Shopify: Supports up to 20 languages through Shopify Markets, which manage currencies, domains, and payments for each market. User-friendly and perfect for international stores.
• Ecwid: Supports automatic translation for 36 languages and browser language detection. However, some content requires manual translation. For integration with multilingual WordPress sites, additional plugins, such as WPML or Polylang, are needed.

Automated tax calculation

• Shopify: Automatic tax calculation for multiple regions, covering both physical and digital products, compliant with EU VAT MOSS.
• Ecwid: Similar to Shopify, it supports automatic tax calculation in many countries, meeting the needs of both digital and physical products.

Shipping options

• Shopify: Supports real-time shipping rates with major carriers, offering up to 88% shipping discounts on higher-tier plans.
• Ecwid: Supports real-time quotes via USPS, UPS, FedEx, Royal Mail, and other shipping services. However, maximum shipping discounts are capped at 50%, with fewer options available compared to Shopify.

Read more: Shopify Shipping: Complete Guide to Fast and Easy Delivery

Verdict: Shopify is a powerful, flexible, and comprehensive platform, ideal for businesses looking to scale, sell across multiple markets, and handle dropshipping. Ecwid is low-cost and straightforward, making it suitable for beginners, but it has limitations when expanding or integrating various apps.

6. Integrations and apps - Shopify

Shopify

The Shopify App Store offers over 12,000 apps (both free and paid), allowing you to expand store functionality from dropshipping and reporting to pop-ups and integrations with key business services. Broad integration capabilities make it easy to connect with the most popular tools.

Ecwid

Only about 330 apps, significantly more limited than Shopify. Ecwid still integrates with essentials like FreshBooks, Shipstation, and Printful, but the Starter plan doesn't support app connections. You can use Zapier for custom integrations, but this incurs additional fees and setup time.

Verdict: With a diverse range of apps and flexible integration options, Shopify clearly has the edge when it comes to expanding store capabilities.

Read more: Shopify vs Printify: Which Is Best for Print-on-Demand?

7. Marketing features - Shopify

Shopify

• Provides a robust marketing toolkit, including built-in email marketing (Shopify Email) for creating professional campaigns with custom logos, fonts, and colour schemes.
• Supports integration with multiple sales channels: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, and Etsy, making product syncing effortless.
• Comprehensive SEO tools: URL redirects, sitemaps, meta titles/descriptions, hreflang tags, and image alt text, optimized for multiple languages.

Ecwid

• No built-in email marketing, you can only connect to Mailchimp on Business plans and higher.
• More limited multi-channel integration: Easy to add products to Facebook, but TikTok and other platforms require plan upgrades.
• Weaker SEO tools: URL customization, redirects, metadata, and image alt text are only available on Enterprise plans, limiting optimization.

Verdict: Shopify has a clear advantage in marketing and SEO, while Ecwid suits basic needs but lacks flexibility.

Read more: Webflow vs Shopify: Which Is Better for Your Website?

8. Reporting & analytics – Shopify

Shopify

Provides a comprehensive reporting system with over 90 built-in report types available from setup. These cover sales, customers, marketing, search data, financials, abandoned carts, and more. Everything is accessible directly in the "Analytics" section of the dashboard, allowing you to track store performance in real-time without installing any third-party apps.

Ecwid

Only offers basic metrics: visitor count, orders, and total revenue. For deeper reports, you must install third-party apps (many of which are paid), making advanced data collection more complicated and costly.

Verdict: Shopify far outperforms in reporting capabilities, enabling better management and faster, data-driven business decisions. Ecwid is sufficient for tiny stores that don't need detailed analytics.

9. Customer support – Shopify

Shopify

• Instant AI-powered live chat with average response times under 10 seconds.
• Extensive Help Center packed with guides, videos, and resources.
• Active community forums for peer-to-peer help.
• Chat can instantly switch from bot to human agent when needed.

Note: Phone and priority email support are reserved for higher plans (mainly Shopify Plus); lower-tier plans rely on chat and self-service resources.

Ecwid

• Free plan: support limited to email tickets only
• Live chat and callback phone support are unlocked only on paid plans (Venture, Business, Unlimited)
• Live chat: Monday–Friday, 24 hours
• Phone callbacks: Monday–Friday, 5:00–16:00 UTC

Verdict: Shopify takes a clear lead with lightning-fast live chat, a rich Help Center, and a vibrant communitydelivering a far more complete and responsive support experience. Ecwid's support is solid, but it is heavily gated behind paid plans, making Shopify the better overall choice for reliable, anytime assistance.

Read more: Shopify vs Shift4Shop: Which Platform Wins for E-commerce?

Shopify vs. Ecwid: Which platform will you choose?

Who is Ecwid best for

Simple shops with small budgets that don’t need extensive customization or third-party integrations.

• Businesses with an existing website who want to embed a full storefront without adjusting DNS records, subdomains, or domain forwarding.

Who is Shopify best for?

• Medium to large businesses that need advanced POS features and more customization options.
• Companies willing to invest in technical setup to unlock enterprise-level growth, knowing it comes at a higher cost than most eCommerce platforms.