Ecwid Review & Pricing: Best Free ECommerce & Dropshipping Platform

In this thorough Ecwid review, we’ll go through every feature the platform offers as well as its advantages and disadvantages.

We’ll also compare Ecwid with Shopify – the most popular eCommerce platform – to give you a better idea of who it’s for and when to use it.

What is Ecwid?

Ecwid is a free eCommerce platform to help you create an online store and start selling in minutes.

The platform provides you with everything you need, from organizing products, customizing your storefront, managing orders, accepting payments to marketing and analytics.

Additionally, you can integrate Ecwid seamlessly into Facebook, Instagram, and other websites, helping you sell products on multiple channels at once.

Ecwid is now used by merchants in 175 countries and ideal for small and medium-sized businesses.

How Does Ecwid Work?

Ecwid is a cloud-based web application, meaning that all you need to do is to sign up for an account and start building your online store right on your web browser. The platform will automatically take care of the rest, from installing, maintaining to upgrading all of its tools and services.

Some powerful Ecwid features are unlimited bandwidth, instant online store builder, order & customer management, sales channels setup, marketing automation, mobile store management, advanced analytics, secure payments, and an extensive third-party app market.

Ecwid Vs. Shopify Review

Shopify is the most widely used eCommerce platform on the internet. Let’s see how Ecwid holds up against it.

Criterion	Ecwid	Shopify
Ease Of Use	Straightforward and beginner-friendly.	Easy to use but need a little bit of time to get used to.
Design & Customization	Clean and elegant design. No options to add custom pages.	Beautiful design. Can add custom pages.
Themes	Has no themes but comes with 70+ design blocks.	Hundreds of themes to choose from.
Performance	Good performance on the homepage but low on product pages.	Average performance.
Flexibility	Sell everything from physical to digital products to gift cards.	Same as Ecwid.
Scaling	Unlimited bandwidth and number of orders (on the highest-paid plan).	Similar to Ecwid.
Domain Name & SSL	Free store address & SSL certificate. Can connect custom domain names on paid plans.	Same as Ecwid.
App Market	Hundreds of third-party apps and still growing.	Has the biggest app market among eCommerce platforms.
Product & Order Management	Easily manage, import, export products, and fulfill orders.	Same as Ecwid.
Payment Providers	Connect with over 50 providers to accept payments in more than 200 countries.	Connect to Shopify Payments and other 100 payment providers.
Discount Codes	Powerful discount system.	Same as Ecwid.
Shipping	Advanced shipping setup.	Same as Ecwid.
Tax Settings	Advanced tax settings.	Same as Ecwid.
Checkout	Many options to customize the checkout page.	Very detailed checkout setup.
SEO	Basic SEO functionality.	Better than Ecwid but still not too good SEO functionality.
Blogging	No blogging features.	Basic blogging features.
Marketing	Automated notifications and email marketing.	Same as Ecwid.
Advertising	Connect to Google Ads and Facebook Ads.	Same as Ecwid.
Reports, Tracking, & Analytics	Basic reports & analytics. Set up tracking with Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Pinterest Tags, Snapchat Pixel, and Google Ads Tags.	Detailed reports & analytics. Set up tracking with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel.
Sales Channels	Buy Button, Google Shopping, Facebook Shop, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Shopping, Amazon, and eBay.	Buy Button, Google Shopping, Facebook Shop, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Shopping, Amazon, Handshake, and wholesale channel.
POS	Supports advanced POS.	Same as Ecwid.
Connect to other websites	Blend seamlessly into WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Joomla, RapidWeaver, Squarespace, other CMS or site builders, and custom sites.	Cannot connect to other websites.
Tutorials	Help center, courses, YouTube videos, podcasts, and blog.	Same as Ecwid.
Support	Live chat, emails, and phone calls. Fast support.	Same as Ecwid.
Community	Smaller than Shopify but still very active.	Big and active community.
Pricing	Free to $99/month.	$29/month to $299/month.

Overall, Ecwid starts out to be a more affordable or even free eCommerce solution for basic needs. However, for advanced users, Shopify is still the better choice since its cheapest plan ($29/month) provides most features that you have to upgrade to Ecwid business plan ($35/month) to access.

Ecwid Store Design Overview

Ecwid has a clean and elegant design out of the box. Since the platform is an instant site builder, it provides you a handful number of page types by default: A homepage, a product page for each product, category pages, a search page, a shopping cart & checkout page, an account & order tracking page, and legal pages.

Here’s how the store homepage looks like.

The product page also goes with a simple design.

Below is the shopping cart & checkout page.

The search page and category pages have similar appearance like the image below.

And, here is the account & order tracking page.

Finally, the legal pages are as follows.

One weakness of Ecwid is that it doesn’t provide you with the option to create custom pages. So, for example, if you want to add a separate help center page to your online store, you cannot do so.

Ecwid Features Review

To help you have a closer look at Ecwid and decide if it is worth the money, let’s review all features that the platform has to offer.

Ecwid Setup Process

Right from the get-go, Ecwid guides you through a straightforward setup process asking for basic information about your business and a name for your online store.

That’s all. The platform will then automatically set up your storefront with sample products, which you can immediately visit to see how things look. It’s just that quick and simple!

Ecwid Admin Panel Interface

Ecwid interface contains a tab menu on the left-hand side and the content of each tab shown on the right.

It also displays a nice little to-do list showing you steps to take to get your store ready and start selling right away.

In our opinion, the Ecwid interface is clear, easy to use, and super beginner-friendly.

Ecwid Domains & SSL Certificate

By default, Ecwid gives your store a free domain name under .company.site with a secured SSL certificate. You can change the address part as many times as you like by going to the “Domain” section in your “Website” tab.

We really love this feature. Rarely that there’s an eCommerce platform that allows you to change this free domain address.

To connect your own custom domain to Ecwid, like clothing.com, you will need to be on a paid plan.

Ecwid Instant Site Builder

The Ecwid instant site builder is available in any plan, giving you the ability to quickly customize your store homepage’s looks and feels with no coding skills required.

It’s important to note that although Ecwid said it has more than 70 themes, they don’t really exist.

In a traditional definition, themes are templates to determine your store’s looks and feels. You can quickly switch between them to instantly change your store design.

On the contrary, Ecwid uses the word “themes” to refer to its pre-designed blocks, which is a little bit misleading. It’s not a big deal, but we want to mention it to avoid confusion.

You can freely add, remove, or reorder design blocks. Additionally, you can also change your store logo, typography, colors, and images.

Compared to other platforms, we still feel the lack of variety in customization we can do with the Ecwid instant site builder. 70 design blocks are OK for basic needs but not enough to truly personalize your store.

Ecwid Site Content Design

The Design tab allows for more fine-grain customization of your Ecwid store, including image size, image aspect ratio, product card details and layout, category name position, storefront navigation, and sorting options. It also lets you change some parts of your product pages, such as the layout, image gallery thumbnails, and sidebar.

For advanced users, Ecwid offers a CSS code panel to let you further tweak the look of your store.

Ecwid Custom Pages & Navigation Bar

Like we have already mentioned, one big weakness of Ecwid is that it doesn’t let you create custom pages. It also doesn’t provide any easy way to add a menu navigation bar to your store.

A way to solve these problems is to embed Ecwid into another website, then create custom pages and set up your store navigation there. We’ll talk about this in the later section.

Ecwid Catalog Management

The “Catalog” is where you manage all of your products and categories.

You can add, duplicate and remove products easily with a click of a button. Ecwid also allows you to import products to your store using CSV, Xcart, or LiteCommerce files.

Clicking on each product will show you all of its settings. They include the product name, description, images, SKU, weight, price, attributes, options, and related products. The description employs an HTML editor. Therefore, you can style the text inside it however you like.

If you’re on a paid plan, you will be able to customize some more advanced features, including the product compare-to price, bulk discount pricing, pay-what-you-want pricing, ribbon, subtitle, inventory tracking, and product variants.

Next, we’ll review the Ecwid product categories. These are groups of products to show on your front page to help customers easily find items of the same type they’re interested in. With the help of root categories and subcategories, you can create a nested and complex category structure.

Overall, Ecwid does a great job providing you with detailed product and category settings and a lot of additional sales-boosting features.

Selling Digital Products & Gifts Cards On Ecwid

If you subscribe to a paid plan, you have the ability to sell digital goods and gift cards on your online store.

For digital goods, just create a new product like a regular physical one, then go to the “Files” tab and upload your files. The limit is 25GB per file.

To start selling gift carts, go to the “Gift Cards” tab to create a new one. Ecwid allows for various settings of your gift card like a usual product. In addition, you can set its amounts, visibility, and expiration date.

Ecwid Sales Management

Like any other eCommerce platform, Ecwid lets you manage your store orders, abandoned carts, and customers.

The first one to review is the Ecwid order management system. When your customers purchase a product, it will appear inside your “Orders” tab.

Each order comes with its current payment status, fulfillment status, shipping details, and customer information.

Ecwid allows you to print order invoices or export orders into a CSV file or Google Sheets if you need to keep a record of your sales activity.

It’s important to note that you can only change the payment status and fulfillment status of an order on the free plan and set its tracking number. To edit details such as shipping address, you need to be on a paid plan.

The abandoned carts feature is also only available on paid plans, allowing you to see which customers don’t purchase your products for what reasons.

On the “Customers” tab, you can manage all of your customers, filter them based on name, email, order count, or export their information.

Ecwid Staff Management

Starting from the Business plan, you can create staff accounts with different levels of permissions.

The process is quick and easy. You just need to send an invitation via email, and your staff can start working on your store after they accept the invitation.

Ecwid Marketing & Advertising

One strength of Ecwid is its marketing and advertising capabilities. After integrating the platform with Google Ads, it automatically optimizes your ad listings and campaigns for conversion through artificial intelligence.

Besides, you can easily connect your Ecwid store with Facebook to get your products in front of billions of Facebook users.

Ecwid Discounts Setup

The next feature to review within the Ecwid marketing stack is the ability to set up discounts for your online store.

Ecwid has 2 main types of discounts, including discount coupons and automatic discounts.

Discount codes are secret codes that customers can enter manually on the checkout page to get a discount when making their purchases. You can either choose from dollars off, a percentage off, free shipping, or a combination of multiple options.

On the contrary, Automatic discounts automatically apply to customer’s orders as soon as they qualify for a specific promotion, such as “Free shipping for cart value over $99.99.” Available options are discounts based on order amount, customer’s group, or a combination of both.

In addition, you can apply discounts to only specific products or customers, limit their usage, or set duration.

Overall, the Ecwid discount system is versatile and powerful for a wide variety of use case scenarios.

Ecwid Emails Marketing

Ecwid provides you with a robust email marketing system. You can connect your store to MailChimp – a leading email marketing service – to automatically sync store data and send personalized newsletters, retargeting emails, and more.

For other mailing services such as Klaviyo, you can install the Klaviyo app from the app market or export email contacts manually and import them into your favorite email marketing service.

With Ecwid automatic emails, you can send relevant emails automatically to your customers based on their behaviors or specific occasions to bring them back to your store.

Ecwid Email Notifications

The final worth-reviewing feature on the Ecwid marketing stack is the email notifications. These notifications are sent immediately to customers, informing them about the order status and progress.

You can customize any email notification to fit your store branding, such as changing the logo, editing the email subject, content, and email layout.

Store admins can also receive notifications about new orders, products with a low stock limit, weekly stats, and copies of all customer notifications.

Ecwid Reports, Tracking, & Analytics

On your “Dashboard” tab, Ecwid shows you a snapshot of your store sales stats and reports, including the number of visitors, product views, added to carts, started checkouts, orders, conversion rate, and revenue.

By looking at the stats, you can pinpoint where your customers drop out and optimize accordingly.

If you demand a more versatile reporting and analytics dashboard, you can install a third-party app such as Kliken Stats or MoneyData for your online store.

Moreover, you can effortlessly integrate tracking from Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Pinterest Tag, Snapchat Pixel, and Google Ads Tags to measure how customers interact with your store and how your ads drive sales.

Ecwid Sales Channels

You can connect your store to various sales channels, giving you the opportunity to reach customers everywhere they shop.

Supported sales channels include Facebook Shop, Instagram Shopping, Facebook Messenger, Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, and Buy buttons.

After connecting, Ecwid will automatically upload and sync your product catalog to these sales channels. All customer orders are still managed from your Ecwid admin panel.

Ecwid Integration With Other Websites

The ability to add your online store to any website is what makes Ecwid stand out. With some simple setup steps, you can blend the platform seamlessly into WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Joomla, RapidWeaver, Squarespace, other CMS or site builders, and custom sites.

Ecwid also makes it easy for you to add a category navigation menu, product cards, an additional shopping bag, or a product search box to your website, essentially helping customers navigate your site faster.

If you’re looking for an eCommerce solution for your existing website, Ecwid is definitely a great choice.

Ecwid POS

Ecwid POS helps you accept payments both online and in person. A use case of this would be that you set up a barcode scanner, receipt printer, and payment terminal for your brick-and-mortar store to accept cash, credit cards, EMV, and Apple Pay.

4 POS systems to choose from are Square, Colver, Vend, and Alice.

After integrating Ecwid with a POS system, your products, inventory, and orders will stay synced automatically.

Ecwid Payment Providers

Another strength of Ecwid is the number of payment providers you can integrate with the platform. Besides common providers such as PayPal and Stripe, other options are Square, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, Afterpay, Clover, Payeezy, Bitpay, Klarna, and many more. In total, Ecwid supports over 50 payment providers in more than 200+ countries in the world.

Ecwid also allows you to set up manual payment methods such as cash on delivery, bank transfers, or checks.

If you do not see the desired payment gateway in the supported list, you can develop a custom one using Ecwid Payment API (advanced users only).

Ecwid Shipping & Pickup

The next one to review is the Ecwid shipping & pickup settings.

You can select between 3 methods to get your products to your customers: Shipping, Local Delivery, and Self Pickup.

The first method is used when you ship products to customers through shipping carriers such as U.S.PS., UPS, FedEx, or a custom carrier.

With Local Delivery, you can limit shipping to only certain cities or suburbs within your local area. You can also set up limited delivery by order subtotal and business hours when you’re available to ship products.

The final method is Self Pickup, which helps your customers schedule a pickup date for their orders and go to your brick-and-mortar store to pick them up on their own. It’s also possible for you to modify the detailed instructions or change the pickup label displayed on the checkout page to “Curbside” or “Drive-through” if you support those pickup options.

As of now, Ecwid provides 5 main shipping rate options: Automatically Calculated Rates, Free Shipping, Conditional Free Shipping, Flat Rate, and Custom Rates.

Each option comes with customization for the shipping name at checkout, shipping regions, shipping rates, description for customers, estimated delivery date, and availability.

Altogether, Ecwid provides you with a very robust shipping system covering pretty much every scenario we can think of.

Ecwid Cart & Checkout Settings

Ecwid gives you the ability to customize your cart & checkout page. For instance, it’s possible to require a phone number at checkout, open bag when customers click “Add to Cart,” ask for a company name, add a custom tracking code at checkout, add order comments, or allow customers to keep a wishlist of their favorite items.

Ecwid Regional & Language Settings

The regional & language settings help define currency format, price display format, currency symbol, weight unit, dimensions unit, time zone, and your store’s main language.

If you’re on a paid plan, you have access to the localization feature, allowing you to build a multilingual product catalog.

Ecwid Store Profile Settings

Alongside your store name, store URL, business email address, and company email address, you can specify your social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest) to encourage customers to connect with your store wherever they are.

Ecwid Taxes Settings

Next, let’s review Ecwid Taxes settings.

On the free plan, the platform allows you to manually configure taxes such as sales taxes in the US, VAT in Europe and Japan, or GST in Canada for your store. You can set up the tax name, applied method, affected shipping zone, and rates per zone.

You can also go to the product setting page and enable or disable taxes for each product.

On a paid plan, you can set up automatic taxes for your store and let Ecwid do the rest of the tax calculation.

Ecwid Legal Settings

To comply with basic laws when selling online, Ecwid helps you add necessary legal pages and policies to your storefront, informing your customers about your store activity.

These pages include Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, Shipping & Payment Info, Return Policy, and About Us. The platform doesn’t provide you with a template beforehand, so you have to write them from scratch or use the ECommerce & Dropshipping Legal Pages Generator tool to quickly create one for your store.

For email marketing, you have the option to display a checkbox at checkout asking your customers to subscribe to promotional emails. Customers who agree are automatically flagged as “Promo emails allowed” inside your “Customers” tab.

In case you track your customer activity, you need to display a GDPR cookie consent banner. Visitors who opt-out of being tracked still count in statistics gathered by Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, but their personal data is not collected.

Ecwid also provides you with a data management tool, allowing for retrieving or deleting customers’ personal data if requested.

Ecwid Invoice

Invoices serve as printable records and describe the parties involved, items ordered, shipping & billing information, taxes, and costs of orders.

You can personalize your invoices by uploading your logo or modifying the template to change the look and information your customers see on invoices.

Additionally, Ecwid allows you to automatically send invoices to customers as attachments through the order confirmation email.

Ecwid Customer Groups

Customer groups give you the ability to categorize your customers, which can help you create targeted and advanced promotions. For example, you can offer discounts to customers who frequently shop at your store.

Ecwid Product Types & Attributes

Product types are groups of products that share the same attributes, which are extra detail fields shown on your product pages to offer your customers additional information on the products.

For example, you might want to add attributes such as gender, material, age group, or season to your clothing products.

You can also keep some information hidden from your customers for internal uses only by selecting the “Do not show” option beside each attribute.

Ecwid Product Filters

Suppose your store has a large number of products. You can enable the product filtering feature to let customers quickly sort and filter products based on prices, categories, stock levels, promotions, keywords, product options, and attributes.

The filters are pre-configured and updated automatically as there is any change in your product data.

Ecwid Store Labels

The store label editor allows you to change the text of your store buttons, links, forms, and any other element. For example, you can change the checkout button from “Go To Check Out” to “Check Out Now!”

This is a really nice feature to further personalize your store.

Ecwid SEO

As bloggers, we aren’t quite happy with Ecwid SEO features, although they’re still at an OK level.

First, Ecwid is a JavaScript application, and such applications are usually not indexable by search engines. Hence, the platform has to use special URLs to request search engines to index your store page.

As a result, Ecwid doesn’t allow you to change the product page URLs. Although this probably doesn’t affect your store ranking, it doesn’t look the most pretty.

Secondly, Ecwid automatically generates ALT tags for your images with the same text as product titles. This is a great feature, but you cannot customize the ALT tags if you want to do so.

Thirdly, it doesn’t provide you with blogging functionality – one of the most important elements to build your store ranking. Although you can integrate Ecwid into a blogging platform to solve this problem, it would be nice if Ecwid has one already built-in.

Regarding other SEO features such as page titles, meta description, sitemap, site verification, and product page schema, they’re good.

Ecwid App Market

Ecwid has an extension app market with hundreds of apps to extend your store functionality, ranging from marketing, product review, store design, accounting to customer support and rewards.

It doesn’t require any advanced knowledge to install new apps. You just need to click on the app you’re interested in and hit the installing button.

Although the Ecwid app market is not as big as some of the other eCommerce players, we think it grows at a fast rate and will soon be on par with its competitors.

Ecwid Dropshipping

If you want to start dropshipping on Ecwid, you can easily do so with the help of the Spocket, Syncee, and Wholesale2b app.

Spocket connects you with US and EU suppliers, allowing you to sell high-quality US/EU-based products from trustworthy dropshipping partners.

With Syncee, you can connect with local dropshipping suppliers from all over the world for fast shipping.

Meanwhile, Whosale2b contains more than 100 companies and 1 million dropshipping products.

All dropshipping apps help you import products into your store and fulfill your customer orders with a click of a button.

You can also check out our detailed guide on Start dropshipping for free with Ecwid here.

Ecwid Print-On-Demand

At the moment, the only print-on-demand app available on the Ecwid app market is Printful.

Printful is the biggest print-on-demand service on the internet, featuring a wide variety of items in many categories, from clothing, jewelry, device cases to pet products.

You simply add a product with your own design to your store and start selling. The platform handles the rest, from warehousing, fulfilling, and shipping products.

Ecwid Mobile Apps

If you want to manage your store wherever you go, the Ecwid mobile app can help you with that. With it, you can customize your entire store, add new products with a snap of a picture, fulfill orders, accept payments, see important stats, and more right from your smartphone.

The app is available on IOS and Android devices.

Ecwid ShopApp

The final and also most noteworthy feature we would like to review is the Ecwid ShopApp. It’s an IOS and Android app that your customers can download to access your online store right on their mobile devices. Basically, you have your own branded and professional mobile app to showcase your store without building it.

The ShopApp has all the necessary features for your customers to shop your store with ease, including your full product catalog, business information, the ability to buy products via Apple Pay, and more.

It’s important to note that you have to be on the annual Unlimited plan and apply to the ShopApp program before the Ecwid team starts building your store mobile app.

Ecwid Performance Review

To test how fast Ecwid loads, we’ll use Google PageSpeed Insights – an analysis tool that helps measure the performance of any website. It’s important to note that we’ll use the default Ecwid store, meaning that there’s no third-party app installed.

Ecwid’s average homepage speed scores on mobile and desktop are 80 and 90, which are fairly high. For reference, Shopify’s average homepage speed scores are around 65 and 80.

However, Ecwid product pages load pretty slowly. Specifically, the scores are only around 40 and 60 on mobile and desktop, which are lower than other eCommerce platforms.

Although this slow loading performance is not too noticeable by visitors, we think Ecwid still needs to put in some serious work to fix the problem.

Ecwid Referral & Affiliate Program Review

The Ecwid affiliate program allows you to earn a 20% lifetime commission by referring people to use the platform.

You can withdraw your commissions every month if the sum reaches $100 in total earnings. If the monthly payout is less than $100, you can withdraw it the following month.

You also have access to an advanced affiliate dashboard to track all your referrals and earnings.

Ecwid Developer Program Review

If you are a developer, consider joining the Ecwid App Market Partner Program to start making money by creating and monetizing your own apps to over 1 million merchants.

The platform provides you with comprehensive API Docs to make the development process a lot easier.

Ecwid Reseller Program Review

With the white-label reseller program, you can resell Ecwid under your brand and set your own price. It simply means that you have your branded eCommerce platform without building it.

There’re 2 reseller plans for you to choose from.

The $299/year Silver membership gives you access to the basic partner dashboard and a 30% discount on all your clients’ active paid plans.

Meanwhile, The $899/year Gold membership allows for priority support, an advanced customizable dashboard, and a 45% discount on store subscription plans.

Ecwid Tutorials Review

Besides comprehensive articles on the Ecwid help center and Ecwid guides, Ecwid also creates detailed videos showing you every step you need to successfully set up your online store. Furthermore, the Ecwid Updates and Ecwid YouTube channel regularly publish new tips and tricks about the eCommerce & dropshipping business.

Ecwid Community Review

The platform is backed by pretty strong and active communities. Besides the Ecwid blog, Ecwid podcast, and the official Ecwid forums, YouTube and Facebook are 2 other channels to find and connect with other Ecwid users.

Ecwid Support Review

Depending on your plan, Ecwid provides you with different levels of support.

Specifically, on the free plan, the only way for you to contact Ecwid is by sending an email through the support page. You typically get a response within 24 hours.

With the venture plan, you can directly chat with the support team, while the business plan also lets you get help by phone calls. Finally, the business plan lets you enter the priority support queue.

In our own experience, the Ecwid support team is fast and very helpful.

Ecwid Pricing Review

Ecwid has 4 pricing plans. All come with the instant site builder, unlimited bandwidth, the ability to add your store to any website, advertising platform integration, mobile responsive site, one-tap checkout, GDPR compliance, tax invoices, and free transaction fees.

• Free Plan: You can add up to 10 products to your online store and have limited access to advanced features.
• $15/month ($12.50/mo paid annually) Venture Plan: Connect your own domain name, sell up to 100 physical products, 25GB per file of digital goods, gift cards, and set up discount coupons. You can also integrate your store into other sales channels, including Facebook Shopping, Instagram Shopping, Buy Button, and mobile point-of-sale. Additionally, You have access to automated tax calculations, live chat, inventory tracking, and advanced SEO tools. Finally, you can install apps from the app market and manage your store on mobile devices with the Android and iOS store management app.
• $35/month ($29.17/mo paid annually) Business Plan: Add up to 2500 products and sell on 2 additional sales channels, which are Amazon and eBay. With this plan, you can also set up email marketing automation, create product variants, scheduled order pickup, generate multilingual catalogs, and manage staff accounts.
• $99/month ($82.50/mo paid annually) Unlimited Plan: Sell an unlimited number of products, access to POS, and have your own branded IOS and Android shopping app.

Compared to other eCommerce platforms, Ecwid provides fair and affordable plans for all types of users.

Who Should And Shouldn’t Use Ecwid?

Ecwid is the best choice for you in these situations:

• You want to start a totally free eCommerce & dropshipping business: The free version of Ecwid offers everything you need to start selling and accept payments with no transaction fees.
• You don’t have much technical knowledge: You can set up a fully functional online store fast without doing any bit of coding. On top of that, the extensive app market helps you extend your store functionality with a few simple clicks.
• You are finding an eCommerce solution for your blog or website: Ecwid supports integration with any website built on WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Joomla, RapidWeaver, Squarespace, any other CMS, and even custom sites.
• You would like to sell on multiple sales channels: You can easily set up your store with Facebook Shops, Instagram Shopping, Amazon, eBay, and POS. Your customers can now see your products on multiple channels and buy directly from them.

You shouldn’t use Ecwid if:

• You want to build a highly personalized and customized store: Ecwid only supports around 70 design blocks, which you’ll quickly find the lack of customization you can do with them. On top of that, you cannot add custom pages, making the design process even more limited.
• You need built-in blogging features: Ecwid has no built-in blogging functionality. That said, you can solve this problem by connecting the platform with a blogging website.
• You obsess about speed: Ecwid has low performance on some pages, and you have little way to fix the problem at the moment.

Ecwid Alternatives

The first alternative to Ecwid that we have mentioned in this review is Shopify. It’s the most popular and versatile eCommerce & dropshipping platform on the internet. You can also have a look at our detailed guide on How to start dropshipping with Shopify here.

Another alternative to Ecwid we recommend is Wix. It’s super beginner-friendly with a drag-and-drop page builder to create a highly personalized online store.

Our third recommendation is ShopBase – an eCommerce platform built specifically for dropshipping and print-on-demand. You can read our ShopBase review here.

Others to have a look at are WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento.

Ecwid Review – Conclusion

Based on our thorough review and our own experience using Ecwid for quite some time, we think Ecwid is definitely a solid free alternative to Shopify (up to 10 products). If you need more, Ecwid easily accommodates that with its paid plans, allowing you to sell from 100 to an unlimited number of products (digital goods included), access advanced features, and extend your store functionality with an extension app market.

However, if personalization, performance, and blogging are your things, Shopify is still a better option.