Did you know the German ecommerce market is projected to reach $108.80 billion by the end of 2023?
…pretty impressive, right?
So, if you want to get in on that action, you might be wondering:
Which are the best eCommerce platforms in Germany?
If that sounds like you, don't worry; you're in the right place.
Here, I'm exploring precisely that. Hopefully, by the end of this round-up, you'll better understand which eCommerce platform is best for your new business venture.
There's lots to cover, so let's dive straight in!
What are the Top Ecommerce Platforms in Germany?
- Shopify – Best Overall
- Wix – Best for beginners
- Squarespace – Best for Creatives
- Square Online – Best for Small Business
- BigCommerce – Best for Large Business
- WooCommerce – Best Open Source Ecommerce Platform
- Zyro – Best for Ease of Use
- Weebly – Best for Startups
1. Shopify – Best Overall
Arguably, Shopify is the most famous eCommerce solution in the world – and for a good reason. It provides entrepreneurs from around the globe with everything they need to sell products, services, dropshipping items, and POD wares.
At the time of writing, there are around 72,755 live German Shopify stores, and in 2023, German Shopify store creation increased by 67% (year-over-year).
The bottom line: Shopify is gaining popularity among German entrepreneurs!
It's also worth highlighting that one of Shopify's offices is based in Berlin, and German users can access Shopify Payments, enabling you to accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro, and UnionPay debit and credit cards. You can also accept Bancontact, iDEAL, Klarna Pay Later, and Sofort payments.
You can also change your admin language to German and translate and localize your store within your Shopify admin panel. Plus, you can modify your Shopify theme's language by installing Shopify's Translate & Adapt app, a CSV export/import, or another third-party app.
In addition, you'll find self-help resources within Shopify's Help Center specifically for German customers. This includes a guide to selling in Germany and recommended articles that cover topics such as EU tax and additional resources for German merchants.
On top of everything already mentioned, there are many reasons we've crowned Shopify ‘the best overall eCommerce platform.' Not least because it's intuitive to use, its customer support is reportedly excellent, and you can download thousands of apps from the Shopify App Store.
Shopify also boasts the following features:
- A POS app
- Social selling functionalities
- Robust inventory and order management tools
- Reporting and analytics features
- Discount code generation
- An in-built email marketing tool
…and more.
Pricing 💰
Pricing for German users is listed in EUR. There are three plans, with prices starting at €36/mo for the Basic plan, rising to €105/mo for the Shopify plan and €384/mo for the Advanced program. In each case, you get a three-day free trial, and your first three months are €1 / month.
Pros 👍
- It's easy to modify currency and language settings
- You can offer customers plenty of payment options.
- You can sell unlimited products on all plans.
- There's a massive range of apps available.
- Shopify is easy to use
- Shopify supports cross-channel and social selling.
Cons 👎
- Premium themes and apps can be expensive.
- German phone support is unavailable; phone lines seem limited to the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia.
Who is this best for ✅
Shopify is an excellent choice for German entrepreneurs looking to sell physical, dropshipped, and/or POD products worldwide.
It's also a good option if you have a brick-and-mortar store, as Shopify's POS system is available in Germany. So, you can quickly marry your online and offline operations for more seamless business management.
👉 For more information about how Shopify works, read our Shopify review. For prices, please take a look at our Shopify pricing guide.
2. Wix – Best for Beginners
At the time of writing, there more thank 11k live Wix stores in Germany, with the number of German Wix stores increasing by 51% year-over-year in 2023 Q2. So, again, Wix seems to be enjoying a surge in popularity within the German market.
Wix takes the crown for our ‘best for beginners' category. Namely because its drag-and-drop editor is effortless to use, and its interface is incredibly intuitive.
On top of that, you'll find hundreds of valuable resources in Wix's Help Center (all available in German). Plus, German phone support is available!
Where Wix's interfaces are concerned, both the Wix Editor and Editor X are available in German. You don't have to configure this; these editors automatically adopt whichever language you've installed on your computer's operating system.
Wix users can also benefit from its ADI website builder. You just answer a few questions about your vision, and within minutes, Wix creates a site for you! Simple, right?
German users can offer their customers a long list of payment providers, including Wix Payments, Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, and SumUp.
Wix boasts over 800 themes and an abundance of SEO features, including its SEO Wiz (a step-by-step checklist that’s easy to follow).
Other noteworthy features include:
- A mobile app is available for managing your site on the go.
- You get access to secure web hosting (including advanced security monitoring and SSL certificates).
- Access to a logo maker – this entitles you to one free design, but only if you’re a Business, Business Elite, or Enterprise plan subscriber.
- Wix provides everything you need to sell physical products, operate a scheduling system, take online orders/reservations, take bookings, etc.
- Wix supports cross-channel sales, including Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and eBay.
…and more
Pricing 💰
Designing your website is free; you don’t pay until you publish it. After that, there are five plans to choose from (all prices are in GBP):
- Lite: £7.50/month
- Core: £14/month
- Business: £20/month
- Business Elite: £119/month
- Enterprise: Custom quote
Pros 👍
- There’s lots of self-help and in-person support available in German.
- Accessing Wix's interfaces in German is easy.
- Wix is incredibly easy to use
- There are over 800 themes to choose from
- Wix is reasonably priced.
- There are over 300 apps available on Wix’s App Market.
- Showcasing prices in different currencies via a currency converter drop-down menu is easy.
Cons 👎
- You can’t switch templates once you’ve built a site.
- Apparently, not all of Wix's themes are fully responsive.
- You can only purchase a domain with a .de extension from Wix if you're based in Germany; you can't transfer a .de domain to Wix.
Who is this best for ✅
Wix is best for anyone looking for an intuitive drag-and-drop and/or ADI website editor, with plenty of self-help and in-person support available.
Also, thanks to its scheduling software and all-in-one restaurant website builder, it’s an excellent choice for selling services, appointments, and bookings.
👉 For more information on how Wix works, read our Wix eCommerce review and our guide on optimizing Wix SEO.
3. Squarespace – Best for Creatives
At the time of writing, there are around 1,510 German-based Squarespace stores, with Squarespace’s German user base growing quarter over quarter by 14.8% in 2023.
A German version of Squarespace is available, and thanks to its heavy emphasis on image-led website templates, it’s a clear winner for creatives. Not only that, but there’s also a range of templates explicitly designed for creative niches, including home and decor, fashion, jewelry, art, and many others.
Squarespace also has plenty of self-help resources for German users. For example, tips on localizing your site for Germany, enabling tax on product prices, converting to metric measurements, and more.
Other key Squarespace features include:
- Blogging tools (creating blog excerpts, tags, categorizing posts, enabling comments, pushing posts to social media, and more)
- SEO tools (edit SEO page titles and descriptions, clean URLs, mobile optimization, automatic markup, and more).
- Reporting and analytics tools
- A good choice of payment processing options including Stripe, PayPal, Square, AfterPay, and ClearPay
- You can edit your Squarespace website via an app.
Pricing💰
There’s a free 14-day trial. After that, there are four plans, each with the option of paying monthly or annually. If you pay annually, there’s a discount, starting from 14% to 29%, depending on which plan you’re on.
Monthly prices are as follows:
- €15/mo paid monthly for the Personal plan
- €17/mo for the Business plan
- €24/mo for the eCommerce Basic plan
- €36/mo for the eCommerce Advanced plan
Pros 👍
- Squarespace’s templates are stunning and easy to customize
- A range of price plans is available to suit varying budgets and needs.
- You get a free domain (for a year) on all plans.
- You get a free SSL certificate.
- Access to 24/7 email and live chat support is available on all plans.
- You can list as many products as you want on all plans besides the Personal program.
- On Squarespace’s website, you can change your language settings from English to German and currency settings to EUR at the bottom of the home page.
Cons
- There are only 36 app extensions, much less than other platforms on this list.
- In the last few months, there has been an influx of customer support issues reported.
👉 For more information, read our Squarespace review, and to find out more about prices, look at our guide to Squarespace prices.
4. Square Online – Best for Small Business
Square is best known for its POS solution. But, as well as that, it offers a service called ‘Square Online,’ which provides the tools you need to build an online store.
If you want to sell to a German audience, you can use Square Online’s integration with Weglot to translate your site. Weglot supports 100+ languages, including German.
The platform is aimed at various businesses, including online retail, beauty, restaurants, professional services, and more.
More specifically, Square Online allows you to:
- Track customer data, including sales history
- Sync online and in-store inventory
- Integrates with Square POS to efficiently manage online and in-person sales
…and more.
According to its website, you can launch your Square Online site for free in just minutes using its mobile responsive website templates. You can customize these themes using Square Online’s drag-and-drop tools to change fonts, colors, and images to suit your brand.
Once you’ve created your online store, you can add your products (or sync them from your Square POS system) and start selling.
The free plan has no monthly fees, just a payment processing fee when you make a sale. However, if you want to use a custom domain, you must be on one of its paid plans.
Other features include:
- SEO tools (you can edit meta titles, descriptions, permalinks, etc.)
- Social selling features
- You can accept Google Pay, Apple Pay, Afterpay, and ClearPay payments.
- Order and fulfillment features – for example, order status text alerts for customers, shipping label printing, in-store and kerbside pickup options.
- Basket and checkout tools, including access to an automatic tax calculator on all plans and abandoned cart emails on paid plans.
- Marketing tools, including vouchers and discounts
- Analytics tools
It’s worth noting that the features you can access depend on your plan.
Pricing 💰
There are three plans:
- Free: €0
- Plus: €25 excluding VAT/month, billed annually
- Premium: €64 excluding VAT/month, billed annually
These costs don’t include payment processing fees.
Pros 👍
- Square Online’s templates are pretty attractive
- The drag-and-drop tool is easy to use
- You can build your store for free
- You get a free custom domain (for a year) on the paid plans
- Social selling features are available on all plans.
- All plans seamlessly sync with Square’s point-of-sale.
Cons 👎
- You can’t remove Square’s branding or use a custom domain until you upgrade to a paid plan.
- Although you can translate your Square Online site into German via Weglot, this app costs extra.
- We couldn’t find any German-specific information on Square Online or elsewhere.
Who is this best for? ✅
Square Online is best for businesses already using Square’s other tools, such as its POS and hardware, and want to set up an online store quickly and simply.
👉 To learn more about Square Online, read our review or get more price information with our Square Online pricing guide.
5. BigCommerce – Best for Large Business
BigCommerce doesn’t seem as popular with German users. However, it’s worth a second glance – especially if you want to scale your brand. Not least because you get unlimited:
- File storage
- Product listings
- Bandwidth
- Staff accounts
…on all pricing plans.
Plus, BigCommerce provides the majority of tools (in-built) you could ever need to launch, manage, and grow an eCommerce business, so there’s a good chance you won’t need many plugins to extend BigCommerce’s base functionality.
You can create an attractive store with one of BigCommerce’s free themes, of which there are 15 plus 120+ paid ones. Templates are organized into various categories, including fashion, home and garden, and jewelry.
To enable customers to shop in their native currency and language, you can create multi-language and multi-currency stores. There is a guide on how to do this in the BigCommerce help center. Also, you can customize product catalogs, place them in categories, and add pricing and promotions for your target regions.
You can translate BigCommerce's self-help resources into German by clicking the German flag in the top right corner of BigCommerce’s homepage.
The following payment gateways are supported for German users:
- Adyen
- Authorize.net
- BlueSnap
- Checkout.com
- CyberSource
- Klarna Payments
- MyVirtualMerchant
- NMI
- Paymetric
- PayPal powered by Braintree
- PayPal Express Checkout
- Sage Pay/Protx VSP Direct
- SEPA Direct Debit
- Stripe
Other noteworthy BigCommerce features include:
- BigCommerce supports omnichannel selling, including major platforms like Facebook Shops, Google Shopping, Instagram Shopping, and more.
- Headless commerce is available.
- Multi storefronts (three on the Standard plan, rising to a custom amount on the Enterprise plan)
- Reporting tools are available on all plans that can, for example, help with visitor metrics, identify order trends, and more.
- A built-in blog
- Real-time shipping quotes
- BigCommerce doesn’t charge fees to use leading payment gateways, including Stripe and Apple Pay.
- Single-page checkout is available.
…and more
Pricing 💰
BigCommerce has four pricing plans. You can opt for monthly or yearly billing, with annual billing boasting a discount. At the time of writing, BigCommerce offered a free 15-day trial for all customers, including those in Germany.
Prices below are based on yearly billing:
- Standard: $29 a month
- Plus: $79 a month
- Pro: $299 a month
- Enterprise: custom quote
Pros 👍
- BigCommerce’s features suite is extensive, even on its cheapest plan.
- Multi-currency selling is a breeze
- There are over 1,500 apps available in its library
- BigCommerce’s cookie consent feature is excellent for German users, as it makes meeting GDPR requirements much simpler
- BigCommerce doesn’t charge commissions or transaction fees on any of its plans
- BigCommerce’s drag-and-drop site builder is pretty intuitive
- BigCommerce’s reporting and analytics functionalities are pretty robust.
Cons 👎
- If you exceed Bigcommerce's annual sales thresholds, you’ll have to upgrade to a more expensive plan.
- Some users complain that BigCommerce's free templates look too similar.
👉To find out more, read our complete guide to BigCommerce.
Who is this best for ✅
BigCommerce is best for larger businesses that want to scale their operations because it offers multi-store support and makes international and omnichannel selling a breeze. Not to mention, its extensive suite of in-built features is very impressive.
6. Zyro by Hostinger
Of the 150,000+ websites using Zyro, under 800 are in Germany. The Zyro website builder is aimed at anyone looking to build a personal website or run a small online store. A German-language version of Zyro is available.
Zyro is a Lithuanian-based company, but it also has people working for it in Germany. However, customer support is unavailable in German – only in English, Lithuanian, Polish, and Portuguese.
Zyro offers 148 contemporary-looking website templates organized into 16 categories. These include eCommerce, fashion, business, photography, and blank ones. There are 29 eCommerce templates available, and you don’t need any coding know-how to customize them. You might also be pleased to hear that there’s plenty of space for large images.
Zyro users also benefit from the following:
- A free domain for a year
- 24/7 customer support via live chat (or you can reach out via email or an online form).
- A 30-day money-back guarantee
- Free website building- you only pay when you publish
Other noteworthy Zyro features and free AI tools include:
- An intuitive drag-and-drop editor
- Built-in SEO tools like editing meta titles and page descriptions.
- Reporting tools
- Marketing integrations with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Facebook Pixel
- SSL security on all plans
- AI content generator
- AI slogan creator
- AI company name generator
- AI image upscaler to enhance images and low-resolution images
- AI heatmap to help you predict how visitors see and navigate your web pages
- AI blog name generator
- Returns policy generator
- Terms and conditions generator
- Privacy policy generator
Lastly, Zyro supports the following payment gateways (all of which are available in Germany):
- Stripe
- kevin.
- PayPal
Pricing💰
There are two pricing plan categories. At the time of writing, costs were discounted by 75%:
- Website builder plans: Website plan: €3.90/month, Business plan: €4.90/month
- Online shop and hosting plan: €2.99/month
Pros 👍
- Prices are affordable
- 24/7 support is available, albeit not in German
- The online shop and hosting plan comes with a free business email
- An SSL certificate is included in all plans
- The 30-day money-back guarantee is generous
- There’s a good choice of attractive code-free templates
- All the AI tools listed above are free
Cons 👎
- You’re limited to selling 500 items on your site – this might be too restrictive for companies looking to expand.
Who is this best for? ✅
Zyro by Hostinger is best for small businesses and online stores that want to list up to 500 items. It’s also a viable choice for anyone interested in a low-cost option, including people looking to create personal sites.
👉To find out more, read our full Zyro review.
7. Weebly – Best for Startups
Founded in 2007 in 2018, Square purchased Weebly.
You can convert the Weebly website into German at the bottom of its homepage.
Just under 600 Geman stores use Weebly. But, although this eCommerce platform isn’t as popular in Germany as some of the other contenders on this list, I still think some features are worth highlighting.
For example, you can translate your Weebly online store from English into 90 languages, including German.
Weebly also offers customers 50+ mobile responsive themes to choose from, including 15 specifically designed for eCommerce. You can customize these templates using the drag-and-drop site builder without writing a single line of code.
You can sell physical and digital products, services, and do business in person with Weebly using Square and Stripe. On top of that, there are 200+ apps available.
Additional features include:
- Analytics tools
- Payment processing via a Square integration
- Build, edit, and manage your store from Weebly’s mobile apps.
- Built-in marketing tools such as the ability to send newsletters, abandoned cart emails, and more
- You can use a custom domain
- Free hosting
- SSL security
- Access to 24/7 phone, chat, and email support (but it’s unclear whether this is available in German).
Pricing 💰
There are four plans. Each comes with a specific set of features. You can see more details about this on Weebly’s pricing page, which can be viewed in German:
- Free: £0
- Personal: £5mo paid annually
- Professional: £9/mo paid annually
- Performance: £19/mo paid annually
Pros 👍
- Pricing is affordable
- The drag-and-drop website builder is intuitive
- Weebly’s themes are attractive
- Free SSL certificate available on all plans
- The free plan is generous – it even includes eCommerce features like inventory control and shopping cart
- Marketing features such as SEO (for example, editing meta descriptions, image tags, and page-specific descriptions)
Cons 👎
- Weebly doesn’t have as many themes as other contenders on this list.
Who is this best for?
Weebly is best for anyone looking for an affordable website builder with attractive, no-doing-required themes and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. This makes it one of the best ecommerce platforms for startups. However, it’s not the most advanced tool on this list – for example, its drag-and-drop customization features are reportedly limited.
👉Find out more by reading our Weebly review. For more information on prices, check out our Weebly pricing guide.
Best Ecommerce Platforms Germany: My Final Thoughts
So, that's all for my best ecommerce platforms in Germany review – I hope it’s provided enough food for thought to kickstart your research.
Here are a few of my final thoughts:
- My winner for ‘best overall German eCommerce platform' – Shopify
- I think Wix is best for beginners
- If you're working within a creative niche, I think Squarespace will best meet your needs.
- BigCommerce is best for larger businesses and those looking to quickly scale their operations.
That's all from me! In the comments box below, let me know which ecommerce platforms you're considering.
Speak soon!
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