Ecwid review

If you already have a website that you’re happy with, but want to add ecommerce features to it, you might be considering Ecwid — a solution that promises to turn any website into an ecommerce store. But how good is it? Well, in this Ecwid review, I explore how Ecwid works, what it gets right, and where there’s room for improvement.

Let’s begin with a brief overview of the platform.

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A quick overview of Ecwid

‘Ecwid’ is short for Ecommerce Widget — and this name does a pretty good job of explaining how it works.

The platform gives you a small piece of code (a “widget”) that you can add to an existing website. Once in place, this displays your store’s product catalog.

More recently, Ecwid a new ‘Instant Site’ feature — and this lets you build a standalone store using Ecwid itself. However, as I’ll explain shortly, the ecommerce features you get from this are considerably more basic than those provided by more established ecommerce platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.

So is Ecwid any good? Well, first I’m going to look at the reasons to use it, and then I’ll move on the reasons you might want to give it a miss.

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The key reasons to use Ecwid

1. It’s cheaper than competing solutions

Ecwid gives you one of the cheapest ways to start selling online: its ‘Starter’ plan costs just $5 per month, which compares very positively with the entry-level ecommerce plans provided by key competitors Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy (which costs at $29/mo, $16/mo and $20.99/mo respectively).

Now it has to be said that this plan is really basic in terms of functionality. For example…

• You can only sell five products with it.
• It doesn’t let you use any point-of-sale (POS) features.
• It doesn’t let you connect your ‘Instant Site’ to a custom domain (yoursitename.com etc.).
• It prevents you from syncing your product catalog with third-party services like Amazon and eBay.

But it does let you embed your product catalog on an existing store easily, and it’s a good way to test the ecommerce waters.

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2. It’s easy to use and set up

If you’re new to ecommerce, Ecwid’s interface won’t intimidate you. It’s intuitive, clean and doesn’t come with a particularly steep learning curve.

To install Ecwid on your site, you simply:

1. Grab a short code snippet from your Ecwid dashboard.
2. Paste it into your website’s code.
3. Add any products you want to sell via the Ecwid dashboard.
4. Start selling.

The Instant Site version of the platform is straightforward enough to use too — if you’ve got basic computer skills, or have experience with any modern content management system (CMS), you should be fine with it.

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3. It gives you a full suite of ecommerce tools

Ecwid might seem lightweight at first, but under the hood, it actually provides a pretty decent feature set, including:

• Abandoned cart recovery
• Real-time shipping rates
• Automatic tax calculation
• Multi-currency support
• POS (Point of Sale) tools

While there are more sophisticated versions of all these features available from other platforms, it means that Ecwid gives you a log of bang for your buck, and can be used in quite a few professional selling contexts.

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4. It’s good for selling internationally

Unlike several competing platforms (including Squarespace and BigCommerce), Ecwid lets you translate your store into multiple languages without the need to insall expensive add-ons.

It lets you automatically translate your storefront into over 36 languages, meaning that you can serve many customers in their own languages — and increase your international conversion rates.

Some multicurrency features are also available — although as I explain later, these could do with a bit of improvement.

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5. Instant Site gives you a fast, no-fuss store builder

If you don’t yet have a website, Ecwid’s ‘Instant Site’ builder lets you get one live quickly — and very affordably.

This gives you:

• A range of attractive templates
• An easy-to-edit site structure
• Product display tools

That makes it a cost-effective starting point for online selling — even if it doesn’t match the power of a full website builder (more on which shortly).

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Key reasons to avoid Ecwid

Now, let’s turn to where Ecwid underdelivers — and what might make you consider an alternative ecommerce solution.

1. Its SEO features could be better

Ecwid has made improvements to SEO in recent years, but there are still some notable limitations:

• You can’t edit product URLs on all plans — which is frustrating if you want to make use of clean, keyword-optimized links.
• If you’re using the embededd (widget) version of Ecwid, URL redirects aren’t facilitated, which makes managing broken links or updating product paths difficult.

These are fairly significant omissions, especially if search traffic is a big part of your marketing strategy.

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2. Store visitors can’t check out in their own currency

While Ecwid can show prices in local currencies (via a currency converter app), the checkout always displays product prices in your store’s default currency.

This can:

• confuse international customers
• reduce trust
• lower your conversion rates.

This omission is a shame, given that Ecwid’s other international selling features (i.e., its multicurrency features) are pretty good.

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3. Product variants are restricted on cheaper plans

Ecwid’s $5/mo ‘Starter’ and $25/mo ‘Venture’ plans don’t let you sell product variants.

So, for example, if you’re selling T-shirts in lots of different sizes or colors, you’ll definitely need to pay for one of Ecwid’s more expensive plans. Many competing platforms let you work with multiple product options on their cheapest tiers.

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4. You don’t get access to many apps or integrations

While competing platforms like Shopify, Wix and BigCommerce give you access to thousands of apps and integrations, Ecwid’s offering on this front is more modest: only a few hundred are available.

To be fair, several key services are catered for by these (for example, Ecwid integrations are available for Mailchimp, Google Ads and Facebook) but if you’re looking to extend your store’s functionality in very specific or advanced ways, you may find your options limited.

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5. Instant Sites aren’t very scalable

Although it’s great as a quick-start option, Ecwid’s Instant Site has big limitations:

• Your site can’t contain many pages.
• Although a workaround involving product categories is technically available, there’s no proper blogging feature provided by Ecwid (making content marketing fairly difficult to do).
• Design customization options are fairly limited.

So while Instant Site is handy for side projects or MVPs (minimum viable products), you’ll likely outgrow it quickly if you’re serious about ecommerce, and want to scale your store.

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6. There’s no free trial

Remarkably, there’s no free trial for Ecwid. This puts it at odds with key competing ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce and Squarespace — all of which offer generous free trials.

Although Ecwid is considerably cheaper than these solutions, it feels odd that there’s no way to try before you buy it.

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User ratings and reviews

What do real-world users think of Ecwid? We looked at data from leading user review sites to find this out. Based on our research, it scores an average score of 4.4 out of 5 (see data table below for more details).

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Ecwid review: the verdict

Ecwid is a flexible and affordable ecommerce solution — especially for:

• website owners who want to add a store to an existing site
• beginners looking for a simple, code-free way to start selling
• merchants needing solid selling features on a tight budget.

There is room for improvement however when it comes to:

• multi-currency features — your store visitors can’t check out in their own currency
• SEO — the features on offer are pretty basic
• apps and integrations — there aren’t a huge number of them on offer.

Ultimately Ecwid is a good starting point for sellers, but if you’re aiming to build a large-scale, content-driven store — or if SEO and deep customization are key to your strategy — platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce may suit you better.