Webflow vs Shopify: Wich is Better for Ecommerce?

Sometimes it's tough to decide between two ecommerce platforms, even when they're so different. In our Webflow vs Shopify comparison, you'll find that your decision will depend completely on your experience and desire for certain features.

Keep reading to learn about how Webflow and Shopify match up.

What is Shopify

Shopify is your go-to solution if you're looking for a complete ecommerce platform designed to help businesses of all sizes create and manage online stores.

It offers a wide range of customizable themes, making it easy for users to launch professional-looking websites quickly.

With its user-friendly interface, extensive app store for added functionality, and built-in Shopify Payments gateway, it's an all-in-one solution for online retail. Shopify also offers features like abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, and analytics to help businesses grow and optimize their operations.

What is Webflow?

Webflow is a powerful web design and development platform that combines visual design with coding capabilities. It's primarily known for its advanced website builder, which allows users to create responsive websites without writing code.

However, Webflow also offers e-commerce functionality, making it a viable option for online stores. What sets Webflow apart is its focus on design flexibility and customization. It provides a visual canvas that translates designs directly into clean, semantic code.

For ecommerce, Webflow offers features like custom checkout and shopping cart designs, product fields, and integrations with payment gateways. It's particularly appealing to designers and developers who want more control over their site's appearance and functionality.

Read more:

• BigCommerce Review
• BigCommerce Pricing
• Webflow Review
• BigCommerce vs Webflow

Webflow vs Shopify: Pricing

It's worth noting that both Webflow and Shopify have increased their prices over the years. As their features have expanded and their market presence has grown, so too have their costs.

What might have been a bargain a few years ago may now require a more significant investment. With that in mind, let's explore the current pricing from both to see which is best for you.

So, let's explore the pricing from both to see which is best for you.

Webflow Pricing Plans

What's great about testing Webflow is that there's no limit to your testing period. So, you can run up to two projects, view tutorials, and access full design control, as long as you don't go live with the project.

After that, you're able to connect your domain and go live with the website.

Webflow sells regular website plans, but we won't cover those right now. We're more interested in the Ecommerce Plans since that compares directly to what's offered at Shopify.

Site Plans

These are sold per project, so you're essentially paying a monthly fee for one website. I've watched Webflow's e-commerce prices climb over the years. What started as a bargain has become a bit pricier with each passing year.

Here's how the Ecommerce Site Plans are priced now (almost double, compare to 2021).

• Standard – $42 per month for all features from the CMS, custom checkout and shopping cart, product fields, email customizations, integrated blogs, a 2% transaction fee, Stripe payments, automatic tax calculations, Apple Pay and Web Payments, three staff accounts, support for up to $50K in yearly sales volume, and several social integrations
• Plus – $84 per month for all features from the previous plan, along with unbranded emails, a 0% transaction fee, 10 staff accounts, and support for up to $200K in yearly sales volume.
• Advanced – $235 per month for everything in the previous plans, a 0% transaction fee, 15 staff accounts, and unlimited yearly sales volume.

Account Plans

These plans are meant to help out with teams who need collaboration tools, and you also receive some options for client billing, staging, code exporting, and white labeling.

The pricing starts at $0 and goes up to $35 per month. It's a little unclear on the website whether or not this includes ecommerce functionality, but judging by my research it does not. So, I won't go into the Account Plans.

Shopify Pricing Plans

Many of the ecommerce platforms we review are similarly priced, but it's not too often we see packages that are exactly the same. Shopify and Webflow are pretty close to the exact same when it comes to pricing.

Shopify currently offers new users a chance to test the waters with a 3-day free trial, followed by their first month of service for just $1, allowing merchants to explore the platform's features at a minimal initial cost.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that all of the offerings are the same. So, let's take a look at the Shopify pricing:

• Shopify Starter – $5 for a Buy button to put on our own website, Facebook selling options, and Facebook Messenger. This isn't a complete online store, but we like it if you already have a blog and only need something simple.
• Basic Shopify – $29 per month for a complete online store, unlimited products, two staff accounts, manual order creation, discount codes, a free SSL certificate, abandoned cart recovery, shipping label printing, and no transaction fees if you go with the Shopify checkout option.
• Shopify – $79 per month for everything in the previous plan, five staff accounts, gift cards, professional reports. and some additional shipping discounts.
• Advanced Shopify – $299 per month for everything in the previous plans, 15 staff accounts, an advanced report builder, and third-party calculated shipping rates.
• Shopify Plus – This plan starts at $2,000 per month and requires you to speak with a sales rep and request pricing. It's made for larger brands.

Webflow and Shopify are similar in feature-sets and pricing, but we like Shopify because of its no transaction fees. Keep in mind that you must go with the Shopify payment gateway in order to take advantage of this. You can use a third-party but that will include a fee.

You can read more about Shopify pricing here to understand all of the expenses.

Winner: Shopify edges out with no transaction fees when using Shopify Payments.

Webflow vs Shopify The Overall Features

One thing I started to notice when testing Webflow is that it has tons of features for developers. It's a website designer meant to streamline complicated processes like working in Photoshop before launching.

You can also tap into class-based styling and custom CSS. The designer may be simple enough to use for some beginners, but I still think Shopify has Webflow beat in that respect.

Having said that, Webflow is a great option if you want a professional-looking ecommerce store and you, or someone on your team, is a somewhat experienced developer.

Anyway, let's take a look at some of our favorite features from Webflow:

• A designer that provides a visual canvas while still allowing you to utilize CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.
• A completely branded checkout page.
• A customizable shopping cart.
• Beautiful product pages.
• Transactional emails.
• No templates (the point of this is to make it so easy and customizable that you don't need bulky templates).
• Payment gateways like Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, and Stripe.
• Store extensions with Zapier.
• Built-in social media campaign manager.
• A built-in email marketing tool.
• A blog.
• Integrations with any analytics tool.
• A truly visual site editor with tons of customizations.

And now, what about Shopify features?

• Over 70 professionally designed themes.
• Options to edit code.
• A full ecommerce and blogging platform that you can pretty much launch within minutes.
• A free built-in payment gateway and support for over 100 others.
• Automated taxes and shipping rates.
• Abandoned cart recovery.
• A well-stocked app store for extending your website.
• Excellent dropshipping options.
• Support for things like product reviews, discounts, and gift cards.
• Social media integrations.
• Tools to sell directly on Facebook.

It all depends on what you need. If you would never plan on building your site without a template, go with Shopify. If you'd rather have more built-in tools for things like email marketing and social media, consider Webflow.

Winner: It's a tie. Both offer unique strengths: Shopify for e-commerce, Webflow for design flexibility.

Webflow vs Shopify: Customer Support

When you search for support on Webflow it directs you to its University Tutorials, which serves as an excellent knowledgebase.

You can browse by topic and learn lots of things about the platform. Other than that, Webflow offers a community forum for chatting with other people and a feature wishlist to let the company know what you would like to see in the future.

For direct customer support, Webflow has an email form where you get dropped into the ticketing system. It appears that the tech support team is available from 6 AM to 6 PM PST, Monday through Friday.

This might seem a bit limiting to some people, but you can at least expect a support team that's not outsourced.

Shopify is known for its online support, as it has tons of online documents and videos for you to sink your teeth into. For instance, you'll find a help center, a blog, guides, forums, and podcasts about ecommerce.

Shopify also provides 24/7 customer support through email, live chat, and phone.

Seeing as how you can pretty much contact Shopify at all times and find loads of support documentation online, I would say it wins in the support department. However, Webflow is excellent as well.

Winner: Shopify. Shopify's 24/7 support trumps Webflow's limited hours.

Webflow vs Shopify: Payment Processing

Shopify is the clear winner here since its built-in payment gateway has a 0% transaction fee.

Webflow supports some unique payment options like Google Pay and Apple Pay, but you're limited to Stripe for accepting credit cards.

Shopify also supports hundreds of other third-party payment gateways. So, if your company is in a country that doesn't use Stripe, or you're interested in finding some lower credit card fees elsewhere, you can still look into other options.

I would argue that the majority of Shopify customers should be using the built-in Shopify Payments (which is powered by Stripe,) since it's completely free (besides credit card transaction fees,) and you get the peace of mind of setting up your payments without any problems.

Winner: Shopify. Shopify's built-in gateway and numerous options give it a clear advantage.

Webflow vs Shopify: Which One Should You Consider?

The pricing for Webflow is very similar to that of Shopify. So, I wouldn't make your decision based on pricing.

Instead, think about the types of features you need and the experience you have with development. Yes, Webflow's interface is more visual and customizable than Shopify–by far.

That's why I like Webflow for people who have some experience with development or design. You can customize everything from the product page to the checkout, branding all elements as you go along.

However, Webflow doesn't offer as simple a process for building your store, and it lacks templates.

So, I would recommend Shopify to those who are less interested in complete branding and more interested in launching a store quickly and making it look professional.

If you have any questions about our comparison of Webflow vs Shopify let us know in the comments.