2020's Best "eCommerce" Website Builder & Hosting

As shoppers, we often pay no mind to the technical foundation that allows us to experience our favorite stores virtually. We expect to be able to browse shoe selections without stepping foot in a store; we’ve grown accustomed to scoping out gifts for mom, selecting her favorite color, and letting PayPal handle the rest.

For some people, online shopping is embedded in our everyday lives. For store owners, taking a business online can unlock new revenue opportunities and expand brand reach — but they need ecommerce hosting to do that.

Payment processing, shipping, and order tracking can be rather intimidating, but the best ecommerce hosting partners connect you with all the tools you’ll need to succeed.

Here, we’ll cover the top ecommerce hosts and how they empower entrepreneurs to reach customers — whether they’re on their couch or a continent away.

Naturally, the best ecommerce services make building an online store simple and cost-effective. The top hosts for ecommerce recognize your business needs and are ready to help you market and profit from your products or services. Next, we’ll cover the top features we look for when evaluating this niche of hosting platforms:

1. Product Displays and Easy Management

First thing’s first: You need to prominently display your products. After all, an online store without stuff to buy is simply a website. We consider the best hosts in this market to be the ones that help you display, market, and maintain inventory of the products in your warehouse.

You’ll want a hosting package that accommodates the number of items you plan on marketing, including any item-specific features your potential customers may want. That starts with ample storage space, obviously, but make sure the online store software enables you to list sizing options, color choices, and quantity counts, for example.

2. Payment Processing Options

Whether you just want to throw a dozen hand-painted coffee mugs up on a page or you’re taking advantage of an unlimited product display package, you’ll want an easy means of accepting payment for your items. The top ecommerce hosts partner with leading payment processors, like PayPal or Stripe, to streamline this step in the transaction process for you and your customers.

3. SEO and Marketing Tools

Strong advertising can be a driving force behind a brick-and-mortar’s incoming foot traffic, and an online store is no exception to the marketing rule of thumb. If you want to attract shoppers, you need search engine results to be on your side.

The best hosts for ecommerce sites are ones that give you a head start on marketing and SEO with free search marketing credits. Many providers include free tools to help you optimize your online store to appear higher in Google, Bing, or Yahoo! search results.

4. Free Website Builder Included

We’re saving perhaps the most important detail for last: You want a quality, easy-to-use website builder with your ecommerce hosting package.

Business owners, especially those with younger companies or less startup capital, don’t necessarily have experience in web design or coding, and they likely don’t have the time to learn. They want their online store to reflect the professionalism of their brand but don’t necessarily have the technical chops to make it happen themselves or the funds to invest in hiring a developer.

Look for hosts with free website builders included in their ecommerce packages, and you’ll be golden. Spend time on your business initiatives, not HTML.

You don’t have to be a web hosting savant to have heard some of the foremost names in ecommerce hosting. Let’s see how some of the web’s most popular brand names in online store building stack up in our experts’ eyes.

Shopify

Shopify — the brand name screams ecommerce. The leading ecommerce platform hits the mark on all the features we discussed above: hundreds of themes for easy design, multiple transaction processing options, and customization that can be done via a drag-and-drop editor or the Shopify API.

To be clear: This is a full-fledged, fully hosted online store builder and management platform, and the pricing reflects the breadth of ecommerce functionalities it includes. This may be a financial bummer for folks who are preparing to launch an online business, but Shopify includes a 14-day trial to give business owners the chance to see if the investment is worthwhile.

Wix

Next up, there’s Wix, a world leader in WYSIWYG website design. This builder is known for industry-specific templates, code-free customization, and an inexpensive experience overall for building basic websites. You’re not going to get as dynamic or complex a site as you might with a more robust platform, but Wix is ideal for solopreneurs, freelance tradesmen, and small businesses that just need to get a foot in the door.

Volusion

Rounding out our trio of hosted ecommerce platform, Volusion is another ecommerce specialist that simplifies design and business operations. The platform features an unlimited number of products and storage from the start, with no transaction fees and online support standard, as well. Upgraded features include abandoned cart reports and help with graphic design, email marketing setup, and other consultative services to help your business grow.

The results are in: After reviewing the best ecommerce services on the web, our experts have whittled the list down to the crème de la crème of ecommerce hosts. Hands down, the best hosts for the job complement low-cost service with ecommerce-ready functionality.

The ecommerce hosts we love provide one-click installations for popular online store building software like Magento or PrestaShop. They throw in free paid advertising credits, and they’re available 24/7 to help you grow your online business.

Small- to medium-sized business owners have many financial, logistical, and staffing considerations in mind when evaluating potential web hosts for their business. Keeping cost and maintenance requirements for their customers top of mind, iPage provides the best value for small businesses to build, customize, and grow an online presence.

For business-class hardware, look no further than InMotion Hosting. With SSD-powered dedicated and virtual private servers, InMotion Hosting packs power and performance into hosting plans at a price that will align with your growing business’s goals. What’s more, the company’s team is heavily invested in network monitoring and building out security features.

Once again, we’ve saved the website builder fun for last! We paid special attention to the site design and customization features of our favorite hosts’ ecommerce offerings. Several hosts deserve special recognition for making robust, intuitive site builders a standard in their plans.

Leading the charge, iPage packages a custom site builder in all of its hosting plans, so customers can point and click to update and customize their online store sans coding. Meanwhile, A2 Hosting enables users to quickly build an online store equipped for sales. Customers can market and optimize sites for success with more than 80 software options.

Last, but most certainly not least, the InMotion Hosting team custom-built an incredible site builder that sits atop WordPress. The BoldGrid site builder was so well received, BoldGrid became its own brand and now partners with other hosting providers to evangelize the standards for intuitive site building with WordPress.

By now, you should feel much more prepared to pull the trigger on an ecommerce hosting plan after skimming through our reviews and extra information. Whether you’re a consumer or an entrepreneur, learning about the technology powering your ecommerce store can help build more effective stores and experiences. Now go out and find the deals!