How we compare e-commerce platforms
We list 7 e-commerce platforms sold to US merchants, and a published rate card exists for 7 providers. Where a vendor quoted instead of publishing, we would show a quote rather than invent a figure on its behalf.
The calculator is driven by monthly online revenue, average order value and how many products you list, because those are the axes this category is actually priced on. Ranking is arithmetic on the published rate at the figures you enter. Commission never moves a provider up or down the table, we do not sell placement, and the cheapest row is whatever the arithmetic returns.
Two limits are worth stating plainly rather than burying.
The first is BigCommerce. Its real US pricing is gated on trailing twelve month revenue, so a store moves up a tier as sales grow rather than by choosing to. Our cost engine has no revenue axis, so BigCommerce is stored as a single flat plan at its published entry price of $39/mo (Core). That figure is the vendor's own and it is correct, but the estimate built on it does not track the revenue tiers above it, and its products allowance of Unlimited is not a stand-in for them. Read our BigCommerce figure as a floor if your sales would place you above the entry tier.
The second is that a plan price is not a store's running cost here. Two other bills sit alongside it, and each gets a section below: the cut some platforms take from each sale, and the apps.
Prices are what each vendor publishes to a US buyer. Some are billed monthly and some are the monthly equivalent of a year paid up front, which is why Webflow reads $29/mo (Standard, annual) rather than a plain monthly figure.
Shopify or a challenger: what separates the e-commerce platforms US buyers shortlist
Search demand here is dominated by two head-to-heads: Shopify against Squarespace, and Shopify against BigCommerce. That is a useful shape, because Shopify is the reference point almost everyone measures against, and the real question is what a challenger gives up and what it gives back.
Start with what does not separate them. Entry pricing clusters tightly: Shopify lists $39/mo (Basic), BigCommerce $39/mo (Core), Wix $29/mo (Core) and Squarespace $19/mo (Basic). Hosting, a custom domain and a mobile-responsive storefront are table stakes. Picking on the monthly figure alone means choosing between numbers that barely differ.
Four rows do the separating.
How much you can bolt on later. The marketplace is the single largest structural difference here, and it is what the Squarespace comparisons are really asking about. Shopify lists 10,000+ apps, BigCommerce 1,000+ apps, Wix 500+ apps, WooCommerce Thousands and Squarespace 40+ extensions. A marketplace answers a question no feature list can: whether the thing your business needs in eighteen months will exist without a developer.
Who can log in. Seat allowances differ far more than prices do. Shopify lists staff accounts as 2 (Basic), Squarespace 1 to 2 and Webflow 3 (Standard) to 15 (Advanced), while BigCommerce, Wix and WooCommerce all list Unlimited. A part-time helper who only packs orders still needs a login on most of them.
How much of the checkout you own. BigCommerce lists Yes (Checkout SDK) and WooCommerce Yes (fully customizable), where Shopify lists Limited (Plus only for full) and Squarespace No. Most small stores never touch this. Subscription boxes, B2B pricing rules and unusual shipping logic run into it immediately.
How much you have to know. Shopify, Squarespace and Wix all list required technical skill as None, Webflow as Basic (design skill) and WooCommerce as Basic to Developer. WooCommerce also stands alone in listing hosting as No, at ~$15/mo (managed), so its free software carries a bill and an administrator that the hosted platforms absorb.
Squarespace deserves a fair reading rather than a dismissal. It lists API access as Limited and webhooks as No, which closes off automation, and gives back design: 100+ free templates and a built-in blog. For a brand-led store with a modest catalog that is a trade, not a compromise.
Bring your own gateway, and the extra cut an e-commerce platform takes
There is a fee in this category with no equivalent in most software. Some platforms charge a percentage of every sale on top of whatever your payment processor charges, purely because you did not use their own checkout. It is a platform fee, not a processing fee, and the two are constantly confused.
Read the transaction fee row that way. Shopify lists 2% (Basic), Squarespace 3% (Basic), 0% (Core+) and Webflow 2% (Standard), 0% (Plus+). BigCommerce, Wix, Square Online and WooCommerce all list 0%.
Two patterns are visible in those rows. Some vendors charge the fee and step it down as you climb the plans, so a higher plan can pay for itself out of the fee it removes once sales are large enough. Others never charge it at all, and BigCommerce makes that the center of its pitch.
It matters more than its size suggests because it scales with revenue while the plan price does not. A store that grows into a good year grows the fee with it. Put your actual monthly online revenue into the calculator rather than reasoning from the plan page.
The related row is how much choice you have in the first place. Shopify and WooCommerce both list 100+, Wix 70+ and BigCommerce 65+. At the other end, Squarespace lists Stripe, PayPal, Webflow Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay and Square Online Square only. Square Online is the clearest version of the bargain: its store price is $0 (Free), and the processor is the product.
What each processor actually charges you, and how to compare those rates against each other, is a different question with its own page. Our payment processing comparison handles it. The only thing to settle here is what the platform adds on top, and whether it lets you bring a processor at all.
Apps, themes and the running cost an e-commerce platform never quotes you
US buyers ask about app marketplaces repeatedly, and the reason is that the second half of the bill lives there.
Typical app spend runs $40 to $150/mo on Shopify and $15 to $80/mo on BigCommerce. Wix, Webflow and WooCommerce all list $0 to $40/mo, Squarespace lists $0 to $25/mo and Square Online lists $0.
Read those ranges against the marketplace sizes above and the relationship is clear: the deeper the marketplace, the more of what you want exists, and the more of it arrives as its own monthly subscription. A thinner marketplace is not automatically cheaper, since you either do without the capability or pay a developer once for it, but it does mean fewer recurring line items and a plan price closer to the true cost.
Themes work the other way and are widely misread. Shopify lists ~13 free and BigCommerce ~14 free, against Wix at 900+ and WooCommerce at Thousands. A small free library is a weak argument against a platform: a premium theme is a one-time purchase, where an app is a bill forever.
Check which capabilities arrive in the plan and which arrive as a purchase. Abandoned cart recovery is the usual example: Shopify lists it as Yes (all plans), where BigCommerce lists Yes (Growth+), Squarespace Yes (Core+) and Square Online Yes (Plus+).
The method is to write down the jobs your store must do that the platform does not do natively, price those apps on each candidate, and add the total to the plan. That comparison frequently reads differently from the one the pricing pages imply.
Sales tax at the checkout your e-commerce platform builds
This is the American problem in this category, and it has no counterpart in most of the world.
There is no single national sales tax rate. States set their own, and counties, cities and special districts layer on top, so the correct amount depends on where the buyer is rather than where you are.
Economic nexus is the part that surprises people. Selling into a state can create an obligation to register and collect there once you pass that state's threshold, with no office, staff or inventory in it. Thresholds are set per state, usually in sales dollars, in order count, or in either.
We do not carry a sales tax row, so do not read the table as evidence either way. Ask each vendor directly and get the answers in writing:
Does the storefront calculate destination-based rates at checkout, or apply a single rate you type in? A single rate is fine while you sell in one state and quietly wrong the moment you do not.
Is that calculation included, or is it an add-on with its own monthly bill? Automated tax services are commonly sold separately, which puts them in the app costs above rather than in the plan price.
Does anything file the returns? Calculating tax and remitting it are separate jobs. Most storefronts do the first and none of the second. Filing belongs to your accounting software, a dedicated tax service, or your accountant.
Take the registration question itself to a CPA rather than a help center. The rules differ by state and they change, and getting them wrong costs more than any subscription on this page.
Marketplaces, social selling and the channels around your e-commerce platform
Very few US small stores sell in a single place any more, and the channel row is where this table stops looking uniform.
Shopify lists its channels as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok, Pinterest and BigCommerce as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Walmart. Those lists are not the same, and if Walmart Marketplace or TikTok is central to your plan that difference settles the question on its own. Wix lists Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon (via apps), Square Online Facebook, Instagram, Google and WooCommerce Via plugins (Google, Amazon, Facebook). Squarespace lists Limited (social sharing) and Webflow No native, which is a deliberate product decision in both cases rather than an oversight.
Selling in person is the same story. Shopify lists POS integration as Built-in (Shopify POS) and Square Online as Built-in (Square POS), where Wix lists Via Wix POS, BigCommerce Via apps and Squarespace No. With a counter as well as a website, a built-in register means a single stock number instead of a nightly reconciliation.
Shipping is a channel cost that does not appear as a row here, and it deserves the same treatment as tax. Ask whether the platform prints carrier labels at a negotiated rate or hands you to a separate service with its own subscription; whether live USPS, UPS and FedEx rates at checkout sit on the plan you intend to buy or the one above it, since rate lookup is commonly gated upward; and whether it connects to whoever actually ships your orders, be that a third-party warehouse, Amazon, or you on a Tuesday night.
If you sell across the border, the currency row narrows things fast. Shopify and BigCommerce both list multi-currency as Yes, Webflow lists Yes (Plus+), WooCommerce Yes (via plugins), Wix Limited and Squarespace No.
Dropshipping, digital goods and matching an e-commerce platform to how you fulfill
Dropshipping shows up explicitly in what US buyers search for, and precision helps, because "supports dropshipping" means three genuinely different things across this table.
Built into the product. Shopify lists Native (DSers, Oberlo legacy), so supplier connection is a first-party feature with first-party support behind it.
Delegated to the marketplace. BigCommerce lists Via apps, Wix Via apps, Squarespace Via extensions and WooCommerce Via plugins. The platform does nothing itself and a third party does the work, which is workable and is also another monthly subscription plus another vendor to chase when an order sticks.
Not offered. Square Online lists No and Webflow No.
So the dropshipping comparison people search for is mostly an app marketplace comparison in disguise, which is why the marketplace sizes above matter more than any dropshipping row.
Digital goods are the easier case: every platform here sells them, and only the arrangement varies. Webflow lists digital products as Yes (via Memberstack), a third-party dependency rather than a native feature, and worth confirming before you build a membership business on it.
Catalog size resolves the same way. Most of this table lists products allowed as Unlimited, so the ceiling is not a real constraint for a small store. Webflow is the exception, at 500 (Standard) to 15,000 (Advanced), and because our calculator takes a product count as an input, its estimate moves with your catalog where the flat-priced rows do not. Enter your real number and watch which rows change.