The best e-commerce platform for U.S. small businesses

Shopify includes hosting on every plan and applies all of its platform updates automatically, and casual in-person selling comes with each paid plan. Those two facts, with Shopify Payments available in the United States to eligible businesses, are why we name Shopify the best e-commerce platform for a U.S. small business buying a hosted store with payment processing and in-person selling. It is also first among these three platforms in both U.S. tracker tables dated October 2, 2026: BuiltWith lists 3,841,985 U.S. websites using Shopify, and Store Leads lists 1,186,833 U.S. Shopify stores.

WooCommerce, a free WordPress plugin, is the better pick for a business that is keeping its WordPress site and wants to choose its own hosting and payment services. Wix is the better fit if what you are buying is a website-builder plan with basic ecommerce, hosted and updated by Wix.

What should a U.S. small business weigh in an e-commerce platform?

The FTC advises small businesses to settle who will manage a website after it is built, and to ask whether the web host keeps the software updated or leaves that work to the business. Store software keeps changing after launch, so the answer decides whether updates arrive on their own or become a recurring task for someone on your team. Fit Small Business, in its guide to choosing an ecommerce platform, describes hosted services as the ones where the provider handles platform updates and self-hosted setups as needing more owner time and technical skill. A self-hosted store runs the update routine or pays a managed host to cover named parts of it.

The same Fit Small Business guide advises budgeting for add-on apps and payment processing on top of the subscription, and checking for an added platform charge when you use a third-party payment gateway. Entry prices are quoted on different billing terms, so price the plan you would buy and the payment method you would use on the same billing term for each platform.

NerdWallet's retail POS guide says an in-person system should connect to the online store, and Fit Small Business tells sellers to check that a platform supports point-of-sale hardware and syncs inventory across channels. Check the card reader and the payments service together before you commit to either.

Each of the three runs its own add-on marketplace, and NerdWallet warns buyers to check which integrations are included at the tier they would pay for. A catalog's existence does not settle whether your accounting or shipping tool connects on your plan. Name the tool you need, then ask what it covers and what it costs on the plan you would buy.

BuiltWith tracks the technology signals a website gives off, and its U.S. table counts websites. Store Leads counts stores and assigns each to its country of operation, with some stores left without a country. Neither U.S. country table breaks its count down by business size, so the two figures show how widely a platform is installed among U.S. sites and say nothing about what it costs or who maintains it.

Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix for a U.S. small business

Shopify: a hosted store with payments and casual point of sale included

Shopify's hosting page says hosting is unlimited on every plan and that all Shopify updates are automatic. The feature table on its U.S. pricing page marks a custom domain and a free SSL certificate as included on each plan.

Basic is the lowest-priced plan card on that pricing page: $29 a month billed yearly, or $39 a month if you pay monthly. With Shopify Payments, the standard online card rate on Basic is 2.9% plus $0.30, and the page lists separate rates for premium and international cards.

Shopify's Help Center lists the United States among the countries where Shopify Payments works. Eligibility also depends on the business category, and a store in an unsupported category has to use a third-party provider.

Casual in-person selling comes with every paid plan, according to Shopify's point-of-sale pricing page, with limited staff access and returns at the original purchase location. The minimum setup is a smartphone or tablet plus a Shopify card reader. POS Pro is a separate upgrade per location, priced as a monthly equivalent billed yearly, and it adds staff roles and inventory management.

Add-ons come from the Shopify App Store, where Shopify says each app passes a review. Designs come from the Theme Store, which carries free and paid themes.

WooCommerce: a free plugin for the WordPress site you already run

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, and its pricing page says the core is free, with no monthly subscription and no platform fee or revenue share. You choose the host, and Woo's hosting page presents recommended providers. One of them is WordPress.com, whose Commerce plan is that host's own offer and one option among the hosts Woo recommends.

Woo's update guide puts the work in the store's maintenance routine: a backup and a staging test before WooCommerce is updated from the WordPress admin, with extensions, themes and payment gateways updated too. A managed host takes on named tasks, and WordPress.com says it manages WordPress core updates and lists backups and malware protection by plan.

Woo adds no fee of its own when you use a third-party payment provider, the pricing page says, and the processor's fees still apply. The plugin's WordPress.org listing names Stripe, PayPal and Square among its payment gateways. WooPayments is Woo's optional service: its U.S. fee table lists domestic online cards at 2.90% plus $0.30, with no setup or monthly fee for online payments and separate rates for other methods.

WooCommerce POS is free software inside the Woo mobile app, per its product page, and runs on an iOS or Android tablet for stores whose address and currency match an eligible country, the United States included. Cards go through WooPayments or Stripe at the processor's standard rates. Woo's POS documentation covers simple and variable physical products, and the U.S.-only M2 card reader requires WooPayments and carries a service charge of $5 a month per active reader. A separate Square connection syncs products and inventory with Square's own point of sale.

The Woo Marketplace groups its catalog into extensions, themes and business services. BuiltWith's row for the platform is WooCommerce Checkout, which it defines as a WooCommerce website with a checkout page, at 1,726,274 U.S. websites, and Store Leads lists 500,005 U.S. WooCommerce stores.

Wix: a website-builder plan that adds a basic store

Wix's pricing article lists Core at $29 a month on a yearly subscription paid in full and names it the starting plan for a store that accepts payments, with basic ecommerce included. Light, the plan below it, is an ordinary website plan.

A published Wix site is hosted and operated on Wix servers and cannot be hosted with another provider, Wix's hosting article says; a connected domain can stay with another registrar. Wix sets up the hosting automatically and applies software updates and feature releases itself, with SSL and security monitoring included.

Wix Payments charges U.S. sellers 2.9% plus $0.30 on standard credit and debit cards, with a different rate for American Express. Connect a third-party provider and Wix adds no transaction fee of its own, its online-store guide says; that provider's processing fees still apply.

Apps come from the Wix App Market, which is organized by category and includes store apps. BuiltWith's Wix Stores row counts 2,763,345 U.S. websites, and Store Leads lists 424,887 U.S. Wix stores.

Wix POS Register covers in-person and online selling in the United States, with one catalog and inventory across both channels and card payments processed through Wix Payments. It needs a tablet and a card reader from Wix's compatible hardware, and a POS plan is required to accept cards. Cash-only sales run without that plan.

Which e-commerce platform should a U.S. small business choose?

Shopify is our pick for a U.S. small business that wants a hosted store with payment processing and in-person selling. Both U.S. tracker tables list it first among these three, which we count as adoption context and weigh below the product facts.

We give the most weight to who applies the software updates: Shopify does that work itself, and Woo's guide leaves the routine with the store or its host. Wix applies its own updates too, so what separates those two for this buyer is in-person selling. Casual point of sale comes with a paid Shopify plan, and Wix documents a separate POS plan for taking cards.

Shopify's pricing page sets a 2% charge on Basic when a store uses a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, separate from that provider's own fees, and neither WooCommerce nor Wix adds a platform charge in that case. If you have a processor you intend to keep, that policy favors either alternative. We weigh it below hosting and point of sale for this buyer because the charge is tied to using an outside provider, and Shopify Payments is open to eligible U.S. businesses.

WooCommerce is the better pick when the business is keeping its WordPress site and wants to choose its hosting and payment services. The core plugin is free and installs on a host you select. Woo adds no platform charge for an outside processor, and its update guide gives you the routine for keeping the store current, part of which a managed host takes on.

Wix is the better pick when you are choosing a website-builder plan with basic ecommerce and want Wix to host it. Core is the first tier in its pricing article that accepts payments, and Wix runs the hosting and the software updates. A U.S. seller who later sells in person has a documented route in POS Register, and a third-party payment provider brings no added Wix transaction fee.

Other e-commerce platforms