Dropshipping serves as the most popular way to start an e-commerce business. The global market size was $225.99 billion in 2022 and is projected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 23.4% during the period from 2023 to 2030. Based on estimates, it is expected that the dropshipping market will grow to $351.8 billion by 2024. This kind of model lets sellers offer products without handling inventory, reducing upfront costs and risks. Success depends on the choice of an appropriate website builder. It affects the ease of store setting, management of orders, and a smooth customer shopping experience. The right platform will also help the entrepreneur exploit this fast-growing market, attaining its maximum business potential. Now, let’s discuss the best dropshipping website builders:
1. Shopify
Shopify is a top e-commerce platform known for its easy usage and powerful functionality. Since its inception in 2006, it has grown to power more than 1.75 million businesses around the world across more than 175 countries. Shopify accounts for about 10% of the global share of online commerce platforms. In the US, Shopify dominates about 29% of the market share in e-commerce platforms. The early year 2024 market value of the company was $104.63 billion. That is the reason why every new and professional online seller uses Shopify. The key features of Shopify dropshipping suppliers are:
- User-Friendly Interface: Shopify is easy to use with drag-and-drop. Anyone can design and manage their online store with it without the requirement of technical skills or knowledge.
- App Store: Shopify has an extensive app store with many integrations. Apps like Oberlo and Spocket help with dropshipping and make adding products to your store seamless.
- Customizable Themes: There are many themes and templates to make your store special. All of these themes are highly customizable for various niches, including fashion, electronics, beauty products, and more.
- Payment Gateways: Shopify hosts a large number of payment options. This software has also integrated secure payment gateways and checkout processes to ensure the security of transactions.
- Analytics and Reporting: Shopify contains in-depth and detailed analytics and reporting tools. These help measure sales, customer behavior, and other key business metrics.
Drawbacks:
The monthly subscription fees that Shopify charges can add up over time, especially if you have many paid apps. In fact, it is then that these fees become a big cost for small businesses. Also, except when using Shopify Payments, you will be charged for every transaction on every sale. This can cut into your profit margins, making it important to consider extra costs like these when planning your budget.
2. WooCommerce (WordPress)
Woo Commerce is a very powerful e-commerce platform and does well with WordPress. Launched in 2011, it has risen to include the highly competitive rankings of e-commerce solutions and is powering over 6.6 million online stores. Its open-source nature allows for extensive customization, making it a favorite among tech-savvy users and businesses looking for maximum control over their online stores. WooCommerce features include:
- Highly Customizable: WooCommerce provides a large number of plugins and themes, which allows owners to create stores that meet their specific needs. It can be used for virtually any niche, from digital products to niche physical goods. This flexibility makes it possible to create unique shopping experiences.
- Open-Source Platform: Since it is open-sourced, there is an enormous community of developers behind WooCommerce to make continuous improvements and provide extensive support.
- Flexible Product Management: In addition, WooCommerce offers robust product and inventory management tools to help retain inventory levels and make efficient order processing.
- SEO-Friendly: WooCommerce is built on top of WordPress, inheriting its strong SEO capabilities, which have helped numerous stores rank higher in search results.
- Dropshipping Integrations: WooCommerce will integrate with several dropshipping plugins, including AliDropship, which make it easy to add and manage products from suppliers.
Drawbacks:
Setting up and maintaining a WooCommerce store requires significantly more technical knowledge than some of the other platforms and may prove quite challenging to a first-timer. Another drawback to using WooCommerce is that you are responsible for your hosting and security, raising the degree of complexity and cost associated with running a WooCommerce store. You have to care about things like managing your servers and shielding your site from threats, which can often be difficult and time-consuming.
3. Wix
Wix is a multifunctional web-building system founded in 2006. It has grown with ease of use and flexibility. Having grown so much, Wix nowadays hosts over 238 million websites worldwide, just proving its popularity and reliability. Wix has a 3.6% market share among content management systems, proving to be the best choice for many users when thinking about creating a professional yet customizable website. Its user-friendly interface and wide range of features cater to both beginners and experienced web designers.
- Intuitive Drag-and-Drop Editor: Wix comes with a drag-and-drop editor that allows any user to easily plan their website without needing any coding.
- Customizable Templates: Lots of templates are available which can be edited to fit your brand and style. It can be tailored for niches such as handmade crafts, art, and boutique stores.
- Wix App Market: You can get dropshipping apps like Modalyst inside the app market to help you add products in only two steps.
- SEO Tools and Marketing Integrations: Wix provides full support for built-in SEO tools and marketing integrations that increase exposure for a website.
- Mobile Optimization: Wix-built websites are mobile-optimized so that they run on all kinds of screen sizes with excellent user experiences.
- Affordable: It comes in different pricing plans, which are affordable for small to medium enterprises. Hence, it is very approachable to many users.
Drawbacks:
Wix may not be the best choice for very large online stores because it has limited scalability. As your store grows, Wix cannot handle the increased demands. Additionally, some advanced features require extra apps, which can increase your costs. This literally means that Wix is perfect for small and medium businesses but might be different when speaking about very large stores needing more robust capabilities.
4. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a robust e-commerce platform designed with scalability in mind. It was established in 2009, after which it attained great popularity among enterprises that like to grow bigger. With over 60,000 online stores across more than 150 countries, BigCommerce has been greatly effective and reliable. Its ability to handle large volumes of sales makes it ideal for medium—to large businesses. Among its many features, BigCommerce offers a reliable solution for businesses to extend their online presence, making the efficient management of growing demands possible.
- Built-in Dropshipping Integrations: BigCommerce comes with dozens of built-in integrations with top dropshipping apps, which makes it quite easy to set up products within stores and skip the hassle of inventory management.
- No Transaction Fees: Unlike many other platforms, BigCommerce does not charge any transaction fee on any plan. This can save businesses a lot of money.
- Advanced SEO and Marketing Tools: BigCommerce offers advanced SEO tools to keep your store on top of search engines. It also offers a bundle of marketing tools to help you make more sales.
- Multi-Channel Selling: With BigCommerce, you can sell products on multiple channels, including Amazon and eBay, without ever leaving your store. It can handle niches that require extensive product catalogs, such as automotive parts or home goods.
- Robust Security Features: BigCommerce has strong security features that are PCI-compliant, hence customers’ data is safe.
Drawbacks:
BigCommerce can be more complicated to learn than some of the other website builders. It may take time to get used to, which can be a challenge for beginners. Also, while the basic plans are relatively cheap, the price significantly shoots up for advanced plans with more advanced features. These high prices for advanced plans may become a burden for businesses in tight budgetary conditions; the expenses for these need to be planned accordingly.
5. Squarespace
Squarespace is an extremely popular website builder, noted and celebrated for its beautifully designed, professional templates. Founded in 2003, Squarespace has grown to power millions of websites worldwide and seems particularly popular among creative professionals and small businesses because of its focus on the aesthetic appearance and ease of use of a website. It is suitable for niches like photography, design, and personal branding. Squarespace combines impressive design tools with integrated e-commerce features, turning it into a versatile choice for building visually stunning online stores.
- Stunning Templates: Squarespace offers a variety of professionally designed templates, which are very nice to view and basically very modern. These templates allow easy customization to produce unique websites without requiring design skills.
- Integrated E-commerce: Squarespace has inbuilt e-commerce features, thus allowing any individual to create an online store with much ease. It includes inventory management, treatment of orders placed, and safety measures for making payments.
- Marketing Tools and SEO: Squarespace has built-in, at its core, marketing tools and SEO features to get better visibility of a website before its customers. These range from email marketing and social media integration to SEO settings.
- Inventory Management: The platform has quite a strong inventory management tool, which makes tracking stock, orders, and shipping easy.
- 24/7 Customer Support: Squarespace provides customer support round the clock to ensure users can get support at all times.
Drawbacks:
Squarespace has fewer third-party app integrations than some other platforms, which can limit its functionality for users who need specific tools. Additionally, while Squarespace is great for basic customization, it offers less flexibility for advanced customizations. This can be a drawback for more advanced developers who want to make more complex changes to their websites.
Conclusion
Want to know how to build a successful online store? It will all come down to choosing the right dropshipping website builder. From Shopify to Wix, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and WooCommerce, these e-commerce website builders offer different features and benefits targeted at diverse business needs and levels of technical expertise. Only when you choose a platform that best fits your business goals and budget will you be able to run your store effectively, attract customers, and finally succeed in this fast-growing dropshipping market.
