E-commerce software lets you track and manage product inventory, as well as fulfill and ship orders. It helps you maintain a product database, track sales, market to customers, offer discounts, maintain a loyalty program, and even create a blog to connect with potential customers. Even better, numerous turnkey bundles are available that combine custom or name-brand shopping cart solutions with e-commerce-focused web hosting services, banks and payment processors, and fulfillment and warehousing operators. The problem with such complex, do-it-all services, however, is that it’s tough to know how to evaluate them or even where to begin. Don’t worry; we’re here to lend a helping hand. We’ve thoroughly tested all of the services on this list to guarantee they are the best in the field. Shopify and Wix Stores are our Editors’ Choice winners, but they aren’t the only services we recommend, so read on to find the best e-commerce software for you.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
EDITORS’ NOTE
Editors’ Note, December 11, 2025: With this update, our lineup of recommended e-commerce software remains unchanged. The existing picks have been vetted for currency and availability.
Best for a Limitless Product Inventory
Shopify
- Unlimited products, storage, and monthly data transfer
- 24/7 customer support
- Expansive third-party app store
- Attractive themes
- Potentially overwhelming for casual users
- Lacks a free version
Shopify is an excellent e-commerce platform that provides entrepreneurs with the tools they need to run a successful online shop. Its many benefits include attractive and SEO-friendly themes; unlimited storage, inventory, and bandwidth; and 24/7 customer support should you run into a problem at an unusual hour.
Do you anticipate lots of traffic and purchases? Shopify doesn’t place caps in important store areas, making it ideal for online shopkeepers who expect to move a large volume of product.
Learn More
Shopify Review
- Easy to use and understand
- Many customization options
- Supports dropshipping
- Stellar uptime
- Massive stock photo library
- Doesn’t let you switch templates
- Only compatible with pricier Wix tiers
Have a vision for your e-commerce site? Wix Stores lets you tweak your online shop until you achieve your design goal. It doesn’t let you easily switch themes, but you can customize one using a deep stock photo catalog and robust third-party app marketplace.
Wix Stores combines ease of use with an e-commerce-focused CMS for selling digital or physical products online. It’s good for anyone who values simplicity.
Learn More
Wix Stores Review
Best for E-Commerce Newbies
BigCommerce
- Unlimited products, file storage, and bandwidth with all plans
- More than 100 free and premium themes
- Robust search options
- 24/7 live agent support
- Free 15-day trial
- Dashboard has a mild learning curve
- Lacks an integrated point-of-sale system
BigCommerce gives your online shop plenty of room to grow via unlimited storage, inventory, and bandwidth. In addition, you can integrate FreshBooks for invoicing, Mailchimp for email marketing, QuickBooks for accounting, and SurveyMonkey for customer surveys.
BigCommerce is best for e-commerce newcomers. It has the most extensive tutorial and support system among e-commerce software services we’ve tested, with a comprehensive knowledge base, webinars, video tutorials, an active community forum, a responsive social media presence, and a detailed design guide.
Learn More
BigCommerce Review
- Good-looking sites on desktop and mobile
- Unlimited storage and monthly data transfers
- Great marketing and SEO tools
- More than 100 templates that you can swap with ease
- Excellent uptime and customer service
- AI tools
- Free tier
- Limited layout customization
- E-commerce option not available with all tiers
GoDaddy is the face of web hosting due to its long-running advertising push online and on TV. So, it makes sense that the company’s e-commerce offering excels in the marketing and SEO arenas with many useful promotional tools.
GoDaddy is good for people who want to spread the word about their online shop. Depending on the plan, GoDaddy Websites + Marketing has tools for creating and placing social media ads and sending 100 to 100,000 marketing emails per month.
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GoDaddy Websites + Marketing Website Builder Review
- Lets you sell digital and physical products
- Intuitive dashboard
- Lacks transaction fees
- Supports multiple admins
- Robust email marketing and SEO tools
- 14-day free trial
- Relatively expensive
- Lacks a built-in point-of-sale system
- Could use more website themes
PinnacleCart is an e-commerce platform designed for large online shops that need multiple administrators. It lacks transaction fees, helping you save money on each sale.
PinnacleCart is ideal for businesses that require many administrators. With it, you don’t need to worry about hitting an administrator cap because the service lets you add an unlimited number.
Learn More
PinnacleCart Review
- Simple, intuitive setup
- Lets you sell physical and digital goods
- Supports POS systems
- Unlimited storage and monthly data transfers
- Useful video tutorials
- Free service tier
- 24/7 customer support is walled behind the most expensive tier
- Mobile app only available for iOS
Square Online is a worthwhile service for its unlimited storage and bandwidth, and compatibility with the company’s POS terminals. Its free tier is the icing on the cake.
Square Online is good for business owners on a tight budget. A free tier is unusual in the e-commerce world, so it’s a feather in Square’s cap that the service has a no-cost entry point bundled with SEO tools and the ability to sell items on social media.
Learn More
Square Online Review
Best for Easy Barcode Creation
Ecwid
- Integrates with third-party websites
- Useful website creation tools
- No transaction fees
- Supports Square POS systems
- Lets you create barcodes using the mobile app
- Not all tiers let you list products in Amazon or eBay marketplaces
- Phone support is locked behind Business and Unlimited tiers
- Low number of themes and third-party integrations
- Extremely limited free tier
The Ecwid e-commerce platform makes it easy to create an online store and export it to popular marketplaces, such as Amazon and Google Shopping. However, the service stands out from the pack due to its mobile apps, which let you quickly generate barcodes using your phone.
Ecwid is good for e-commerce novices who don’t want to jump through hoops to open up shop. Just steer clear of Ecwid’s free tier, which is far too limited for most people.
- Highly customizable site builder
- Zero transaction fees if you use Volusion Payments Powered by Stripe
- Strong marketing and SEO tools
- Useful tutorials
- 14-day trial, no card required
- Annual revenue limits
- Phone support is paywalled behind higher tiers
- Lacks weekend phone support
Volusion has a few quirks but makes up for it with tight Google integration. With it, you can create pay-per-click ads and your store can integrate with Google Shopping, so your items appear at the top of search results.
Volusion is best for online business owners who want to leverage the power of Google.
Learn More
Volusion Review
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The Best E-Commerce Software for 2026
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Buying Guide: The Best E-Commerce Software for 2026
Who Needs to Use E-Commerce Software?
Before we talk about what to look for in an e-commerce service, you may be wondering why you need one. As mentioned earlier, many web hosting services now offer e-commerce packages as part of their hosting plans, using built-in tools or integrating with open-source tools. It boils down to just how much extra work you, as a small business owner, want to put in to manage your store from scratch. It’s just another set of hoops through which to jump if you have to set up your own merchant account and payment gateway. Plus, everything is on the web now: If you make your customers place an order and then call you with their credit card information, you are going to lose a lot of sales.
A PayPal button on your website is a good first step, but if you want to operate an attractive, modern online storefront from which people can shop day or night, then you really are better off using a full-featured e-commerce platform instead of trying to glue all of the separate parts together on your own. E-commerce services streamline the relationship between buyers and sellers by handling multiple payment methods, collecting tax, and calculating shipping costs. A straightforward shopping experience means buyers get the product faster, too. A happy customer is just good business, after all.
How Much Does E-Commerce Software Cost?
It’s difficult to choose an e-commerce platform strictly based on price. Some offer advanced features but impose restrictions on transactions or monthly data transfers; others limit a plan’s features by price. Most e-commerce tools offer templates (also known as themes), but some may exclude popular ones from their premium packages. That means you must pay more money for an attractive website. A website builder is useful for customizing templates.
Some services may have a low monthly cost but charge fees for transactions and for add-ons that let you integrate with third-party tools. Depending on your requirements, you can expect to see prices as low as $9.99 and as high as thousands of dollars per month. As always, it pays to read the fine print.
There are two types of transaction fees to keep track of when evaluating e-commerce services: the ones charged by the shopping cart and the ones charged by the payment gateway. You can’t avoid the payment gateway fees; whichever service you select will charge a certain amount per credit card transaction. That’s the fee from Authorize.Net or PayPal, for example.
Some e-commerce platforms charge an additional transaction fee for using the service regardless of the payment gateway. This means you pay your shopping cart vendor a certain percentage per transaction before the payment gateway collects its fee. Consider this scenario: A customer came to your store and paid $100 via PayPal. Your vendor will collect $3.20 for that transaction, and PayPal will collect $3.20 (the actual amount will vary based on your PayPal account type). E-commerce platforms typically offer bandwidth restrictions if they don’t charge transaction fees.
Many services have tiers based on how much monthly data you need. If you expect high traffic volumes and sales, then you should look at unlimited plans or at least something more generous than the typical 1GB of bandwidth. Others restrict storage, which limits the number and size of product images you can display. Cheaper plans have smaller storage capacity, so if you have a fairly large product database or plan to have multiple images per product, then you will have to think about how much you need. Otherwise, that monthly bill with overage fees is going to be a surprise.
Monthly data is consumed whenever visitors swing by your website. If you list several images for a single product or you have a long slideshow, then that will eat up data. In that case, you’ll need a generous data allotment. Think carefully about what you want from your store to determine if bandwidth limits or transaction fees make sense for you.
What Are the Most Important E-Commerce Features?
Some e-commerce services are better suited for selling physical goods, while others support digital and virtual products, such as ebooks and services. As a result, you need to think about the types of products you want to sell before selecting a service. Some e-commerce companies let you migrate data from an existing service. They handle bulk, product database uploads, as well as moving customer and order history. If you aren’t setting up a brand-new storefront, then you really need to look for e-commerce tools to help with the move.
Look for plans that let you organize inventory and maintain a customer database. If there aren’t any built-in tools, see if you can integrate your cart with a third-party service. If you plan to send emails from your e-commerce website, then MailChimp, for example, might integrate with your service tier. See if you can issue discounts and gift certificates and run sales.
You want search engine optimization (SEO) tools to help your storefront rise up in search results. You should consider integrating Google Analytics (GA) into the dashboard to understand who is coming to your store and what they are doing. You won’t need GA if the shopping cart provides its own website metrics, but it’s still a good tool to consider using with your store.
Recommended by Our Editors
Don’t rely on documentation, tutorials, and forums for customer support. Those are great resources, but ideally, you should be able to get someone on the phone or in a web chat, at least. Ideally, the support should be available at any hour of the day. You don’t know when things will go wrong, so why should you have to wait for normal business hours to get help?
Many e-commerce tools offer trial periods. Take advantage of the trial to learn how to work with the shopping cart dashboard. If you find it annoying to see the placed orders, enter products, or fulfill orders, move on to a shopping cart that fits into your workflow.
Finally, think about security. While many of your customers will shop while using a virtual private network (VPN) service, there are still plenty who won’t. To protect them, make sure your online store and its underlying web hosting provider either offer a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate or can accommodate a third-party certificate you purchase from someone else. In addition, make sure to invest in a dependable website monitoring tool to stay on top of any security or performance issues in real time.
Mike Williams contributed to this story.
