Choosing an Ecommerce Website Platform: Which Webshop Platform Is Right for You?

Which ecommerce platform is best depends on what you sell and how much of the technical side you want to handle yourself. For brands that mainly sell online, a hosted platform like Shopify, from €21 a month billed yearly, is a sensible place to start. Dutch platforms like Mijnwebwinkel (from €20) and CCV Shop (from €36) start cheaper but have limits per plan, and open source platforms like WooCommerce and Shopware have no license fees, but then you take care of hosting and maintenance yourself.

In short

• The biggest difference isn't between two platforms, it's between hosted (a monthly plan, tech taken care of) and open source (free software, tech handled by you or someone you pay).

• Compare the cost per payment too: iDEAL costs €0.29 with Shopify Payments and WooPayments, and 2.5% + €0.30 with Wix Payments.

• Choose for what you'll need in two years: more products, a second language, a physical shop or business customers.

Stuck between two platforms? Book a free intro call, and we'll look together at which platform fits your products, your customers and your plans.

Choosing an ecommerce platform feels like a technical decision, but what you're really choosing is how you want to work for the next few years. Every comparison you find puts ten platforms in a table full of checkmarks, and almost all of them can show a product, fill a cart and take a payment. The real difference is in what happens after that: who does the updates, what each payment costs, and what happens when you want a second language, open a physical shop or start selling to businesses.

A quick note first, so you know where we stand: we design and build Shopify stores. That's why Shopify is at the top, but we've looked at every platform for what it does well, even when that means it suits you better than Shopify. What an ecommerce website is and what goes into one is in What is an ecommerce website? Here, it's about the platform underneath.

How we chose these nine platforms

We picked platforms you can actually use as a business owner in the Netherlands or Belgium, with prices in euros and their own checkout. Marketplaces like bol and Amazon aren't on the list, because there you sell on someone else's platform. We looked at every platform on the same points: who it's for, how you pay (only as shown on the official pricing page, checked in November 2026), who handles the tech, what a payment costs, and what you run into as you grow.

Hosted or open source: the first difference

The platforms on this list fall into two groups, and the difference between the groups is bigger than the difference between two platforms in the same group.

Hosted platforms, also called SaaS: Shopify, Lightspeed eCom, Mijnwebwinkel, CCV Shop, Wix and Squarespace. You pay a monthly plan, and hosting, security and updates are taken care of. You can start quickly, but within what the platform allows.

Open source platforms: WooCommerce, Shopware Community Edition and Magento Open Source. The software itself is free, but you need hosting, and someone who keeps up with updates, security and integrations. You get more freedom in the code, and more responsibility with it.

What does that mean for your day-to-day work?

On a hosted platform, you usually manage products, inventory, payments and orders from one dashboard. The provider maintains the infrastructure and takes care of updates, while you focus on your range, customer service and marketing. That makes it easier to get started, but you depend on the features, integrations and terms the platform offers.

With open source, you choose your own hosting, themes and extensions. That's attractive if you have specific requirements or already run a WordPress website with a developer. At the same time, it takes active technical management: plugins have to stay compatible, backups have to be tested and security updates have to be installed on time. So the software is free, but the total cost of ownership isn't necessarily lower.

Comparing webshop platforms for selling online: look at the cost per payment too

The plan is the number you see when you choose. The cost per payment only shows up once you sell, and it grows with your revenue. Dutch customers mostly pay online with iDEAL, so check what each iDEAL payment costs on the platform you're considering.

An example: 100 iDEAL orders of €60 cost you €29 in payment fees with Shopify Payments or WooPayments. With Wix Payments it's €180, because there you pay a percentage of every order. The higher your average order, the bigger that difference.

Do the maths: what does it cost in total?

Don't just compare the monthly plan price. Include payment transactions, apps, themes, custom work, hosting, maintenance, migration and any costs for extra users or languages. Also think about the time you or your team spend on technical management. A cheap plan can turn out more expensive as soon as you have to add key features like email marketing, inventory management or reviews with separate tools.

For a realistic comparison, make a simple forecast for twelve and 36 months. Estimate your monthly revenue, average order value and number of orders. Multiply the number of orders by the cost per transaction and add the fixed and variable platform costs. That way you see how the bill changes as your webshop grows.

Good to know in the Netherlands

Compare prices the same way. Shopify, Mijnwebwinkel and CCV Shop show their prices excluding BTW (Dutch VAT). Squarespace shows prices including estimated VAT, and Wix excluding surcharges. So compare excluding with excluding.

Check the contract length. At Mijnwebwinkel, the agreement runs for a year and renews for another year each time unless you cancel at least a month before it ends. CCV Shop works with a yearly contract. With Shopify and Lightspeed, you choose between paying monthly and yearly.

iDEAL is now called iDEAL | Wero. You'll already see that name on the WooPayments and Wix pages. What it means for a Shopify store is in iDEAL and Wero in your Shopify store.

And in Belgium: Belgian customers expect Bancontact, and if you also sell in Wallonia, you need a French version. So check how many languages your plan includes. On Lightspeed eCom, Essential has one language and Advanced three, at CCV Shop multiple languages come with Professional, and on Shopify you can translate your store on every plan.

Mostly wondering whether Shopify fits your brand? Take the short quiz below. After that, you'll find the overview and the nine platforms.

At a glance

01. Shopify

Best for: Brands that mainly sell online and want to grow without their own tech

Shopify is a hosted platform where the store, the checkout, the payments and the admin all live in one system. Shopify takes care of hosting, security and updates, and what you want to add, you add with a theme or an app. On every plan you can translate your store and sell in several countries with Shopify Markets, in local currencies. More in What is Shopify?

What you pay: Basic is €28 a month, or €21 billed yearly. Grow is €78 or €59, Advanced €384 or €289, and Plus starts at €2,100 a month, all excluding BTW. With Shopify Payments, iDEAL costs €0.29 per payment. If you use another payment provider, you pay an extra 2%, 1% or 0.6%, depending on your plan. All plans side by side are in Shopify pricing.

• Good: you start quickly, you grow without having to move, and there's a wide choice of themes, apps and people who work with it.

• Watch out: apps add up in your monthly costs, and on the regular plans you can only customize the checkout in limited ways. Full customization is possible on Plus.

02. WooCommerce

Best for: Anyone who already has a strong WordPress website, with the tech in good hands

WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress website into a webshop. The software costs nothing, and because it's open source, a developer can build almost anything with it. The other side is that you handle the hosting, the updates of WordPress, WooCommerce and your plugins, and the security, or pay someone to do it for you. More on that in WooCommerce vs Shopify.

What you pay: no plan for the plugin, but hosting, any paid extensions and maintenance. With WooPayments, iDEAL | Wero costs €0.29 per payment, a European card 1.5% + €0.25 and Bancontact 1.4% + €0.25.

• Good: full control over the code, your content and your webshop in one place, which also helps with SEO and your visibility in search engines, and no platform plan.

• Watch out: the fixed costs are in hours instead of a plan. If an update breaks something, you fix it, or the person you pay does. Category and product pages also need to be optimized for relevant keywords. The two side by side: Shopify vs WooCommerce.

03. Lightspeed eCom

Best for: Shops with a physical store that already use Lightspeed at the register

Lightspeed makes point of sale systems for retail and hospitality, and also has its own webshop platform, Lightspeed eCom. For retailers with a physical shop, that's handy: if your shop already uses Lightspeed at the register, you can extend it with a webshop, reach new markets and sell outside opening hours too, while keeping your shop and webshop with one provider.

What you pay: Essential €68, Advanced €120 and Professional €259 a month billed yearly. Paid monthly, it's €78, €138 and €298. Enterprise is by quote. Essential has 250 product variants, 1 user and 1 language. Advanced has 5,000 variants and 3 languages, and Professional 15,000 variants, 7 languages and B2B.

• Good: register and webshop from the same provider, and B2B in the Professional plan.

• Watch out: the limits on variants and languages. A webshop in Dutch and French needs at least Advanced, and with sizes and colors you quickly reach 250 variants.

04. Mijnwebwinkel

Best for: A first webshop with a set monthly price and support in Dutch

Mijnwebwinkel is a Dutch-language webshop platform for business owners who want to sell online without technical knowledge. You choose a professional webshop template, add your products and connect a payment provider like Mollie.

For a webshop you need a unique domain name, in the Netherlands registration in the Trade Register (Handelsregister) of the KVK is mandatory as soon as you sell as a business, and you have to comply with the GDPR (AVG), consumer rights and other relevant rules.

What you pay: Grow €20, Pro €40 and Premium €70 a month, excluding BTW, on a yearly plan. On Grow you can list up to 25 products, and there's a "powered by Mijnwebwinkel" note in your footer. Pro has 2,500 products, customer accounts and B2B, and Premium an unlimited number of products. Mijnwebwinkel charges no commission on your orders, a point of sale app costs €39 a month extra from Pro, and you can try it free for 14 days.

• Good: clear, in Dutch and with a low monthly price to start with.

• Watch out: the agreement runs for a year and renews automatically, and you can only connect external apps through an API on Premium.

05. CCV Shop

Best for: Webshops that want to connect products from wholesalers

CCV Shop is a webshop platform from Hengelo, with its own Design Studio if you want help setting up. Professional adds wholesaler integrations, multiple languages and API access. Enterprise has a B2B app, bundled products and premium support.

What you pay: Basic €36, Professional €59 and Enterprise €129 a month, plus a one-time €30, excluding BTW and on a yearly contract. You don't pay CCV Shop a percentage of your revenue. Your payment provider's fees do come on top. You can try it free for 21 days.

• Good: a Dutch company with a set monthly price, and wholesaler integrations if you sell products from suppliers.

• Watch out: multiple languages only come with Professional, and you're committed for a year.

06. Wix

Best for: A website where selling is one part of it

Wix is first of all a website builder, with an editor where you drag everything into place, and ecommerce is built in as one part of it. That's handy when your website is more than a webshop and you want to design everything yourself.

What you pay: Light is €14 a month, but you can't accept payments with it. To sell, you start at Core (€25), then Business (€34) and Business Elite (€149), per month on a yearly plan paid upfront, excluding surcharges. Wix sometimes offers a temporary discount on those prices. With Wix Payments, iDEAL costs 2.5% + €0.30, a card payment 1.9% + €0.30 and Bancontact 1.3% + €0.30.

• Good: easy to design yourself, with your website and webshop in one editor.

• Watch out: iDEAL costs a percentage of every order here instead of a fixed amount, and multiple currencies only come with Business.

07. Squarespace

Best for: Creatives and service providers who sell a few products next to their website

Squarespace is a website builder known for its templates, with a store included on every plan. You can sell an unlimited number of products and services with it.

What you pay: Basic €12, Core €18, Plus €32 and Advanced €69 a month excluding BTW, billed yearly. Including BTW, that's €14.52, €21.78, €38.72 and €83.49. On Basic you pay a 2% transaction fee on your store sales, from Core there's none. Card payments cost 2.0% + €0.25, a little less on Plus and Advanced. You can try it free for 14 days.

• Good: beautiful templates and a clear editor for a website you keep up yourself.

• Watch out: iDEAL isn't on the pricing page. Check beforehand whether you can offer it at checkout, because your Dutch customers expect it.

08. Shopware

Best for: Larger brands with their own developer or agency, B2C and B2B

Shopware is a German open source platform. Next to the free Community Edition, there are paid editions with more features and support. The higher editions include B2B features like quotes and purchase approvals. What else a B2B webshop needs is in B2B webshop.

What you pay: the Community Edition costs €0 in license fees. Rise starts at €600 a month and Evolve at €2,400 a month, and Beyond is by quote. According to Shopware itself, hosting, the build, maintenance, paid extensions and payment fees come on top.

• Good: a lot of freedom in the code, and strong B2B features in the paid editions.

• Watch out: without a developer or agency you won't get far, for the build or for the maintenance after it.

09. Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source

Best for: Large brands with complex catalogs, several markets and a tech team

Magento Open Source is free open source software to build a webshop on. Adobe Commerce is the paid version, which Adobe positions for B2B and B2C at enterprise level, with extra features, hosting and support.

What you pay: Magento Open Source costs nothing in license fees, but you pay for hosting, extensions and development. Adobe Commerce has no price on its site: you request a demo and get a quote.

• Good: built for large catalogs, several stores and complex pricing.

• Watch out: a lot of technical work, from the build to every update. For most brands that are starting out or want to grow, this is more platform than they need.

How do you choose the right ecommerce platform for your online store?

No platform wins for everyone. These five questions help you choose, even if you never call us.

1. How much of the tech do you want to do yourself? If you'd rather spend your time on your products and customers, go hosted. If you have a developer, open source gives you more freedom.

2. How big will your range get? Count your variants, not just your products. A dress in five sizes and three colors is already fifteen variants, and some plans have a limit.

3. Do you also sell in a shop or to businesses? Then you want your register and your webshop to see the same inventory. Lightspeed is strong at that, and Shopify has its own point of sale system, Shopify POS. If you sell to businesses, check which plan has B2B.

4. How many languages and countries will you sell in later? Even if it's one language for now. A French version for Belgium or an English one for the rest of Europe can mean you need a more expensive plan, or that your platform can't handle it well.

5. What does it cost over three years, not per month? Add up the plan, the cost per payment, apps or extensions, maintenance and the build. How that works out for a Shopify store, we calculate in What does a Shopify store cost in 2026?

Think about conversion and ease of use too

A webshop platform isn't just a place to manage products and orders. It also shapes how quickly and pleasantly a customer moves through your online store. So choose a platform where product pages, filters, search, cart and checkout match the way your customers shop. Visitors need to find important information easily, like sizes, ingredients, delivery time, shipping costs and return terms.

Look at the full buying journey on mobile. Mobile commerce is the main way of shopping online for many customers, and a large share of online purchases happens on smartphones. A platform can be mobile-friendly, but the end result also depends on the theme, the images, scripts and the setup. So don't just test the homepage, but also search, choosing variants, paying and order confirmations on a real phone.

A delay can cost you visitors and undermine trust. Watch the loading time, image optimization and the number of apps or extensions you add. Keep the checkout as short as possible and offer reliable, familiar payment methods. An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between browser and webshop; on top of that, check how the platform handles customer data, access rights and backups.

Do it yourself, a template with a freelancer, or a webshop with a strategy?

Whichever platform you choose, someone has to build the webshop. Building an ecommerce website is more a journey than an end point: after launch, you still need marketing to bring traffic to your webshop. Roughly, there are three ways to do it.

Which features should you check beforehand?

Before you sign a contract, make a list of the features you really need, and also check whether dropshipping fits if you don't want to manage your own stock. Also check whether the platform fits your model, for example C2C between private individuals. Think of inventory management, discount codes, bundles, subscriptions, customer accounts, returns, shipping rules and connections with accounting or CRM. Also check whether your payment provider supports the payment methods your customers expect, for example iDEAL, Bancontact, credit card, PayPal or buy now, pay later.

Ask how the platform handles product variants, multiple warehouses, selling through social channels and international orders.