Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Ecwid, PrestaShop and Cartly compared on what they cost once transaction and payment fees are counted. It includes a worked example for a $10,000-a-month store, the drawbacks of each platform, and which one fits your situation.
The best ecommerce platform for you depends on what you sell, how much of it, who builds the store and where your customers live. This guide compares nine platforms on what they cost once every fee is counted, on their strengths and drawbacks, and on how hard each one is to leave.
We make Cartly, one of the nine. Each price we quote was checked on the vendor’s own website (where a vendor does not publish one, we say so). Each platform gets a plain “best for” and its real drawbacks, and Cartly comes last, weak spots included. Prices are as of October 2026, in US dollars, for the US, before tax, and on monthly billing unless we say otherwise.
We looked at what a store pays and what it gives up:
Best for: most new and growing stores that want a quick start and the widest choice of apps.
Price: Basic $27, Grow $72 and Advanced $399 a month, or $19, $54 and $299 billed yearly. Plus starts at $2,300 a month. New stores get 3 days free, then $1 a month for 3 months.
Strengths. The Shopify App Store has over 16,000 apps. You can sell online, in person and in AI chats from one admin. Every plan includes B2B catalogs (up to three below Plus, unlimited on Plus). Developers get the Storefront API and the Hydrogen toolkit, with Oxygen hosting, for custom front ends.
Drawbacks. With a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a fee on each order: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus. Shopify Payments is available only in certain countries, and showing prices in local currencies requires it. A fully customizable checkout is a Plus feature. Apps are billed on top of your plan at their developers’ prices.
Best for: stores already on WordPress, content-heavy brands, and teams that want to own and change every part of the software.
Price: the plugin is free, with no monthly subscription. WooCommerce estimates hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, and extensions at $29 to $299 a year each.
Strengths. Open source, with no platform fee and no revenue share; card fees go only to your payment provider. You choose your host and keep full access to the code and database.
Drawbacks. Someone on your side has to choose hosting and keep WordPress, WooCommerce and every extension up to date. Paid extensions add up, and support is split between your host and each extension’s vendor.
Best for: beginners building a small-business website that also sells.
Price: Wix shows prices that vary by location, for yearly plans paid in full up front, and its page gave us no US price, so check it for your country. To accept payments you need the Core, Business or Business Elite plan; Light cannot take payments.
Strengths. A drag-and-drop editor, thousands of templates, and bookings for services alongside the store. Business Elite adds an advanced developer platform.
Drawbacks. Ecommerce is one part of a general website builder, and its depth is tiered: basic ecommerce on Core, standard on Business.
Best for: creators, service businesses and design-led brands with a modest catalog.
Price: Basic $19, Core $27 and Advanced $36 a month, or $12, $17 and $25 billed yearly, with a 14-day free trial. Squarespace’s help center also lists a Plus plan between Core and Advanced.
Strengths. Every plan has unlimited products, and every plan has point of sale for selling face to face in the US and UK. Core and Advanced charge no online store transaction fee.
Drawbacks. Basic charges a 2% transaction fee on online store sales. Digital content and memberships carry their own fee: 7% on Basic, 5% on Core. Squarespace Payments works only in a list of countries.
Best for: growing brands with larger catalogs that want a hosted platform without being tied to one payment provider.
Price: Core $39, Growth $105 and Scale $399 a month, or $29, $79 and $299 billed yearly. Performance is custom, from $1,499 a month billed annually. Core and Growth have sales caps measured over the trailing twelve months: pass $30,000 on Core or $100,000 on Growth and you are moved up a plan automatically. Scale adds a 0.9% fee on sales above $33,333 in a month and moves you to Performance once trailing-twelve-month sales reach $2 million.
Strengths. No extra fee with its Embedded Payment Providers, including BigCommerce Payments, PayPal, Stripe, Adyen and Klarna. More than 100 currencies on every plan.
Drawbacks. The plan follows your sales, so the subscription rises with revenue. Providers outside the embedded list cost 2.0% of order value on Core, 1.0% on Growth and 0.6% on Scale. Customer groups with group pricing start on Growth, but SKU-level Price Lists for business customers are only on Performance.
Best for: large B2B and B2C businesses with their own developers or an agency.
Price: Adobe Commerce is sold through Adobe’s sales team, with no self-serve price list. Magento Open Source is free and open source on GitHub; you pay for hosting and development.
Strengths. A full B2B toolset: company accounts, shared catalogs with company-specific prices, quick order, negotiable quotes, purchase order approvals and requisition lists. Two GraphQL APIs support headless storefronts. Adobe Commerce runs as SaaS (Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service), on Adobe’s cloud infrastructure, or on your own servers.
Drawbacks. You need developers to build and run it. Each release has a fixed support window (standard support for 2.4.7 ends May 31, 2027; 2.4.8, May 31, 2028; 2.4.9, May 31, 2029), so budget for upgrade projects. B2B is an Adobe Commerce extension, which Adobe lists for Adobe Commerce only; it is not part of Magento Open Source.
Best for: adding a store to an existing website, or a small catalog on a tight budget.
Price: Starter $5 (up to 10 products), Venture $35 (100 products), Business $65 (2,500 products) and Unlimited $149 a month, or $5, $29, $49 and $119 billed yearly. No setup or transaction fees, and plans run month to month.
Strengths. You can add an Ecwid store to any site. Business adds wholesale pricing groups, a multi-language store and abandoned cart recovery.
Drawbacks. Lower plans limit how many products you can list. Staff accounts start on Business, which has two, and only Unlimited has unlimited staff and the point-of-sale integration.
Best for: merchants who want open source outside WordPress, with a large module marketplace.
Price: the Classic edition is a free download you install and host yourself. A Hosted version exists; its price is not on the PrestaShop homepage.
Strengths. Open source, with thousands of modules and themes, and payment options including PrestaShop Checkout, Stripe and Klarna.
Drawbacks. On Classic, hosting, updates and development are yours to arrange and pay for.
Best for: merchants who want a hosted platform, their own payment processor with no platform fee, and B2B, headless or custom checkout rules without an enterprise contract.
Price: Starter $19, Growth $49 and Pro $199 a month, or 20% less billed yearly; Enterprise is priced on request. Cartly takes 0% transaction fees on every plan; your payment provider’s fees still apply. The 7-day trial runs on Starter and needs no card (see pricing).
Strengths.
Drawbacks.
The example store makes $10,000 in online sales a month from 200 orders of $50, all paid by card, monthly billing, no apps, themes or domain. For Shopify Payments and Squarespace Payments we use their published rates; everywhere else we use 2.9% + 30¢ per order, Stripe’s standard US rate for domestic cards: 2.9% of $10,000 ($290) plus 200 × $0.30 ($60) is $350 a month. Your real rate depends on the processor you use, and international cards cost more.
Wix is left out because its page gave us no US price, and Adobe Commerce is priced by quote. Yearly billing lowers the subscription lines.
Processing is the largest cost almost everywhere, so platforms differ most through per-sale fees, sales-based plans and card rates. Some platforms lower the card rate on higher plans, which is why Squarespace Advanced comes out cheapest here. At this size a 2% per-order fee costs $2,400 a year, and unlike a flat subscription it grows with every sale.
Before you commit, check that you can download your products, customers and orders yourself as CSV. Expect to rebuild your theme, because themes rarely move between platforms. And plan redirects from every old product and collection URL to keep your search traffic. On Cartly you can export products, customers and orders as CSV files from the admin, and migration to Cartly is free on the Pro and Enterprise plans.
In most cases a hosted one, so the vendor runs servers, security and updates. Shopify is the usual pick. Squarespace and Wix suit businesses whose website matters as much as the store, Ecwid suits very small catalogs, and Cartly suits stores that want their own payment processor without a platform fee.
By sticker price, Ecwid’s $5 Starter plan and the free WooCommerce plugin. By total cost it depends on your sales and your card rate. In our $10,000-a-month example, Squarespace Advanced came out lowest at $346, because its lower card rate saves more than its higher subscription costs. Cartly Starter, Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments, Squarespace Core, Ecwid Venture and WooCommerce on low-cost hosting all landed between $369 and $385 a month.
WooCommerce if you use WordPress, Magento Open Source for large catalogs with developers on hand, and PrestaShop as a standalone option. The software is free; hosting, extensions and maintenance are not.
WooCommerce, Ecwid and Cartly charge no platform fee on sales. Squarespace charges none on online store sales on Core and Advanced, BigCommerce none with its embedded providers, and Shopify none with Shopify Payments. Your payment provider’s processing fees apply everywhere.
Shopify if you want the vendor to run everything and value its app store; WooCommerce if you have a WordPress site, want full control of code and data, and can handle hosting and updates. Weighing Shopify against Cartly? See our Shopify alternative comparison.
Run the same test on every platform on your shortlist: add one real product, place one order through checkout with your payment method, and issue one refund. If Cartly is on your list, start a 7-day trial without a card, set up your store email, connect your own payment provider, and run that test.