Ecwid Review

While Ecwid is not a complete eCommerce solution, it definitely boasts a lot of great features. You will be able to easily manage your entire store from your computer or your mobile devices. You can set up multiple payment options, and you can even accept payments on the go using a service like Clover. The Ecwid dashboard is simple to use and packed with loads of options for adding new features as you grow. Ecwid even provides you with a simple-to-use walkthrough wizard so you can set up your entire store with ease, even if you’ve never had an online store in your life. Overall, Ecwid is a powerful eCommerce solution for businesses with existing websites that want a simple way to sell products online.

Ease of Use

Ecwid truly excels when it comes to ease of use. This online store add-on can be integrated into almost any blogging platform, CMS, or social media network available online. The integration process takes just a couple of minutes. Once you’ve added this add-on to your website, you will be able to access the Ecwid dashboard, which is incredibly intuitive. You will be presented with an easy-to-use wizard, which walks you through every step of setting up your online store. Along with showing you how to set up your store, add products, and more, you will also be able to see a time estimate for how long each step should take. Getting to know Ecwid should take a matter of minutes, making this one of the easiest online store add-ons available.

Functionality

Ecwid is an add-on for existing websites and not a complete eCommerce platform. For this reason, you shouldn’t expect to find a whole lot of different features and don’t expect them to release new features regularly either. Nonetheless, Ecwid is still very powerful, and it excels at adding the shopping experience to any website. You can easily manage your entire store online or even from your mobile devices. Track orders, allow guests to create accounts, manage shipping, add new products, and much more. You can enjoy amazing built-in features such as allowing customers to add products to their favorites, automatic language detection, smart shipping calculators based on IP addresses, and much more. You can even accept payments physically by using add-ons like Square, Vend, or Clover.

When it comes to online stores, many different functions can apply. For example, not all stores will require email marketing tools, and not all online stores will need customer shipping tools. This is where apps come into play. By using third-party apps, you can easily upgrade the functionality of your eCommerce solution and provide more options for your customers. We had a look at the Ecwid apps, and they have an awe-inspiring selection. We found hundreds of useful apps spanning dozens of different categories. Whether you want to add email marketing tools, feedback services, bulk order options, subscription billing, countdown timers, or any other online store function, you will most likely be able to find it available at Ecwid. Some of their apps are free, but most of them come at a price, which can quickly add up. Ecwid may not be the ideal solution if you need numerous apps since it can get rather expensive, but most users won’t need many paid add-ons.

Ecwid is not an actual website builder, so they do not allow you to choose themes or templates. In fact, Ecwid adapts to your existing website in order to provide a seamless experience. You can quickly set up the entire Ecwid platform on your existing website and it will immediately fit in perfectly with the design of your site. If you want to customize the way that Ecwid appears on your website, you will need to edit the theme you are using on your website builder platform itself. For instance, if you’re running your site on WordPress, you’ll need to edit your WordPress theme in order to change the way Ecwid looks.

A high-performance online store environment is crucial if you’re serious about selling products online. Nobody will take your store or products seriously if you choose a poorly performing eCommerce solution. Ecwid does alright when it comes to uptime, and while they have a slightly high incident frequency, most of their issues do not involve serious site outages. When adding Ecwid to your website, the loading time will vary greatly according to the website builder that you are installing it on. Still, overall, you shouldn’t expect Ecwid to be too heavy unless you have hundreds of products displayed on a single page. A small increase in loading time is expected, but this shouldn’t be enough to ruin the user experience or affect sales. Overall, Ecwid performs average and does seem to have lots of regular incidents, but it shouldn’t be much of an issue when matched with a high-performance website builder.

Uptime

Having a great uptime will allow you to enjoy a powerful platform that doesn’t crash. Unfortunately, Ecwid does not have the best uptime in the industry. They do not advertise or promote their uptime, but we were able to find it by searching within their support forums - they have a 99.95% uptime guarantee. This is slightly below the average of 99.9%. They do not mention their uptime anywhere on their website, and their slightly below-average rating means you should expect Ecwid to crash a little more often than other similar tools. For an online store, you expect near-perfect uptime scores since a single crash that lasts a few minutes can end up costing you lots of sales and potential customers.

Incident Frequency

The incident frequency will give you a pretty good idea about how often this online store add-on widget crashes. We searched online for recent complaints and found quite a lot of issues with Ecwid. Some of the issues included storefronts not being displayed to all users, Ecwid not working on Weebly when installed via a plugin, having issues upgrading to a paid plan, merchants not receiving email notifications, and much more. Ecwid provides an incident status page so you can find out about recent issues, maintenance on the platform and so you can know when certain functions are currently down. Overall, Ecwid seems to be prone to numerous incidents regularly.

Speed

Having a fast loading time for your website is crucial if you want to rank well in Google and other search engines. With mobile-first indexing and users wanting an increasingly faster online experience, you need to provide a fast-loading online store for your visitors. Ecwid is not an actual website builder, so this tool is not responsible for most of the speed optimizations - in most cases, this will depend on the website builder platform you are using for your site. However, you should consider that Ecwid is a type of widget add-on and will definitely add some loading time to your web pages. We noticed a minimal impact on loading time when comparing a site before and after installing Ecwid. However, keep in mind that adding Ecwid can increase your web page loading times by as much as a full second or two.

Knowing that you have numerous ways to get in touch with customer support if something fails to function properly with your online store is crucial when operating an online store. You’ll want to resolve issues quickly and with simplicity to prevent the loss of sales and customers. Ecwid provides many resources for getting assistance, including a complete knowledge base, live chat, phone, and email. Their community forums even allow other Ecwid users to give you a helping hand. One problem with the Ecwid support channels is that most of them are only available to premium customers. Live chat, phone support, and email support are only available when you pay for a premium pricing plan. Overall, the support teams at Ecwid are beneficial, and they are capable of quickly helping you resolve issues as they arise. If you’re a premium member, you will benefit from the best support they provide, and this includes 24/7 availability. It’s worth upgrading to a premium plan for this sole reason - it’s definitely money well-spent for any serious business.

Support Availability

An online merchant’s worst nightmare is running into issues when a customer is about to make a purchase, then realizes that absolutely no customer support channels are available until the following day. Having an excellent support team to back you up when you need assistance is of utmost importance and is often overlooked by small businesses first starting out. Ecwid has a good support team that’s available to assist whenever you need it. While some support channels are only available when paying for premium plans, there are still many ways to contact their support team. You can get answers via live chat, phone, email, and even the community forums. Ecwid also provides an extensive knowledge base filled with useful tips and tricks. Ecwid even has a “Do-It-For-Me” service, which helps you complete tasks such as setting up your store for a price.

Speed of Response

The amount of time it takes to get connected to a customer support agent will greatly affect your business when dealing with time-sensitive issues. One of the downsides to Ecwid is that they don’t offer the same type of phone support that you would normally expect. To speak to a phone support agent, you will need to request a call-back from within the widget’s backend. Once a support agent has looked over your issue, they will call you back, which can take up to one hour. Email support responded on average within a few hours. Live chat usually results in 15 to 20 minutes of waiting time, but this varies according to the number of live chat agents online and the number of issues being dealt with. Community forums are a great way to get relatively quick answers from other users, but it can take some time to get answers when posting a question during the middle of the night. Overall, Ecwid is about average as far as speed of response is concerned.

Friendliness & Helpfulness

The fact that you must request a call-back to speak with an agent on the phone means they are all prepared and ready to provide you with the proper answers from the moment you begin talking with them. This tends to make them much friendlier and very helpful. In addition, a support agent will not call you back until they have figured out a way to provide you with assistance. This means you’ll be much less likely to be put on hold while they attempt to resolve your issues. However, when contacting them via live chat, they tend to be much less helpful and can only help you resolve basic issues. Overall, the support team is great when requesting call-backs, but other support channels should be used for simple questions only.

Telephone Support

Phone support at Ecwid is excellent, but the fact that you can’t simply call them up and get instant answers can make it difficult for some merchants who enjoy resolving issues within minutes. However, the fact that they only contact you once they’ve figured out a way to resolve your issue means less time speaking with a customer support agent and much less time waiting on the phone. Their team is beneficial, and every time we asked for a call-back, they provided us with useful information. It would be nice to see them add a phone number that could accept real-time calls, but the phone support they currently provide is great if you don’t mind the wait.

Live Chat Support

Ecwid provides decent live chat support, but they are unable to deal with complex issues. For more complicated questions, you should request a call-back from their phone support team. Live chat is only available when paying for their premium subscription plans. Premium plan holders will need to click on the “Chat With Us” button found within the Ecwid control panel to benefit from this real-time support team. There is also a sales live chat team available for pre-sale questions during weekdays from 9 am to 9 pm PDT.

Email Support

Email support is available at Ecwid, but it’s only available on premium plans. The email support team at Ecwid is decent and relatively helpful with basic inquiries. However, when dealing with complex issues, we were unable to get a clear response. This resulted in having to request a call-back from their phone support. Email inquiries were usually attended to within a couple of hours when contacting them during business hours. Still, the responses seemed to take a little longer to come in when emailing them late at night or on weekends.

The pricing structure at Ecwid is very reasonable. You should find it quite affordable compared to other similar platforms, especially if you don’t plan on selling very many products on your site. However, as your need for more products increases, so will your costs because Ecwid limits the number of products you can sell for each plan. Better features will also require you to upgrade your pricing plan to a more expensive option. However, Ecwid has no other hidden fees, and they don’t have any transaction fees either. Keep in mind that third-party payment processors will most likely take a transaction fee. Overall, Ecwid is a very affordable option, especially for businesses with few products.

Plans Pricing

Ecwid has a very affordable pricing structure, especially when compared to complete eCommerce solutions. However, keep in mind that most other eCommerce solutions include your entire website management as well, so if you need to pay for your CMS tools plus Ecwid, it could quickly become more expensive than simply choosing a complete eCommerce platform. Ecwid has a free plan with a maximum of 10 products, which is great for getting to know the platform. Their cheapest paid plan is called “Venture” and allows you to publish 100 products, plus it gives you live chat support. The next plan is called “Business”, which allows you to publish 2,500 products and provides you with live chat support and phone support. The final plan is called “Unlimited”, which lets you have unlimited products and provides you with priority support.

Transaction Fees

Ecwid does not have any transaction fees for any of their pricing plans, so you won’t have to worry about paying anything when selling your items. However, they limit the number of products you can sell, which can cost you more than transaction fees since you would constantly have to upgrade pricing plans as you sell more products. They also limit the number of available features on smaller plans, so you may have to upgrade even if you don’t sell all that much to gain access to certain functions.

Other Fees

Other than adding third-party apps that aren’t free, we didn’t find any other fees on Ecwid. We did not see any hidden fees, and after searching the internet for complaints concerning odd fees, we came up short. There are no complaints about extra charges or fees other than the pricing plans and apps.

Ecwid is unlike traditional eCommerce solutions that provide full website builders. Instead of offering users the ability to create an entire online store, Ecwid offers the ability to add an online store to any existing website or social media account. This allows merchants to keep their existing online presence without having to redesign, recode or redo anything. In addition, Ecwid is compatible with hundreds of different website builders, blogging services, CMS platforms, and social media networks.

The idea for this add-on platform came to Ecwid’s CEO, Ruslan Fazlyev, who co-founded the world’s first PHP eCommerce platform in 2000 called X-Cart. He went on the launch of Ecwid in 2009 to provide business owners who already have live websites to easily integrate online shopping features without affecting the current design or functionality.

Ecwid’s headquarters are located in San Diego, California, and the platform is available in over 50 different languages. It’s the most popular shopping integration tool for Facebook pages, and they currently serve over 1 million online merchants. In addition, their ability to provide integration compatibility for hundreds of different platforms makes them the most popular add-on store builder on the internet.

With millions of new websites built and many new site builder platforms launched every year, Ecwid continues with its innovations. They work hard towards providing compatibility with even the newest website builders so that everyone can integrate this simple to use store add-on. Furthermore, they provide fully responsive designs to look amazing on all devices so that your newly integrated online store will look amazing.

Ecwid is an eCommerce solution that allows you to build an online store without knowing how to code. The major benefit of choosing Ecwid over other similar eCommerce platforms is that Ecwid is an add-on, which allows you to integrate it into existing websites easily. You won’t have to edit your web design to adapt to your new online store - your new Ecwid store will adapt itself to your current website’s design. An affordable pricing structure makes it a great option for small merchants and businesses with few products, but you’ll have to upgrade your service to a more expensive pricing plan as you begin selling more. Ecwid is loaded with great built-in features, but it will most likely increase the loading time of your web pages. Customer support is excellent, but not all support channels are available for lower pricing plans, making it difficult for you to resolve issues unless you pay for premium plans quickly. Overall, Ecwid is an excellent solution for businesses that already have existing websites and don’t want to rebuild an entire site using a complete eCommerce platform.