“Website builder” covers two different jobs. One job is publishing a marketing site that explains what your business does and turns visitors into inquiries. The other is running an online store: products, checkout, payments, and orders. Webflow and Shopify are both called website builders, but each is built primarily for one of these jobs, and choosing the wrong one creates work you did not need to do.
This comparison is based on published product and pricing information from the vendors, not hands-on testing. Prices and plan details change, so confirm the current figures on each provider’s site before you commit.
At a glance
| Webflow | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Built primarily for | Designed marketing and content sites, with ecommerce available | Online stores and selling across channels |
| Getting started | Free Starter site plan | Paid plans; trial offers vary |
| Starting paid price | Basic site plan from $15/mo billed yearly | Basic from $29/mo billed yearly ($39/mo billed monthly) |
| Content management | CMS included on the Premium site plan ($25/mo billed yearly) | Product catalog and store content built in |
| Checkout and payments | Ecommerce plans add cart and checkout; transaction fees apply on the entry ecommerce tier | Checkout and Shopify Payments are core features |
| Design control | Visual design with fine-grained layout control | Theme-based storefronts with customization |
Webflow: when the site itself is the product
Webflow is a visual website platform that combines design, content management, and hosting. Its site plans are priced per site. The free Starter plan lets you build on a webflow.io domain with a small page limit. The Basic plan (from $15/mo billed yearly) adds a custom domain for simple sites that do not need a CMS. The Premium plan ($25/mo billed yearly) adds the CMS, which is the tier most businesses publishing articles, case studies, or service pages will actually need.
That structure suits a business whose website is mainly a marketing asset: a consultancy, an agency, a local service company, or a software product that needs landing pages. You get precise control over layout without writing the site from scratch, and hosting is included.
Webflow does offer ecommerce plans (Standard from $29/mo billed yearly), but read the details before treating it as a store platform. The Standard ecommerce plan carries a 2% transaction fee on top of payment processing, and the plan is sized for smaller catalogs (500 items). A business whose revenue depends on selling online will usually outgrow that tier quickly, at which point the comparison changes.
Pricing note: Free Starter site plan; Basic from $15/mo billed yearly. Workspace plans, which govern staging and collaboration, are priced separately.
Shopify: when selling online is the core
Shopify is an ecommerce platform first. Every plan includes a full-featured online store, unlimited products, checkout, and the operational tooling around selling: inventory management, orders, shipping labels with carrier discounts, and sales channels that include social platforms and marketplaces. The Basic plan starts at $29/mo billed yearly ($39/mo billed monthly), with online card rates from 2.9% + 30¢ through Shopify Payments.
For a business that sells products, this removes the central question from the decision. The store is not an add-on; it is the product. The trade-offs sit elsewhere. Design starts from themes rather than a blank visual canvas, so highly custom marketing pages take more effort or an app. Costs also extend beyond the subscription: paid themes, apps, and the POS Pro add-on ($89/mo per location, if you sell in person) can add up, and using a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments adds a transaction fee (2% on Basic).
Shopify can host a simple marketing presence, and many small stores run everything on it. But if the business does not sell online at all, you would be paying for a checkout and order system you never open.
One practical point in Shopify’s favor: the operational basics are bundled. Plans include unlimited web hosting, a free SSL certificate, and support for a custom domain, and the store can sell through social and marketplace channels from the same catalog. A small team that does not want to assemble hosting, security, and channel integrations piece by piece gets them as part of the subscription.
Pricing note: Basic from $29/mo billed yearly ($39/mo billed monthly). Payment processing fees are separate from the subscription.
How to decide
Ask one question first: will visitors buy something on this site?
- If the honest answer is no — the site exists to explain, persuade, and generate inquiries — Webflow’s site plans map to that job, and its CMS tier is the realistic starting point for a content-led business site.
- If the answer is yes — products, checkout, shipping, and repeat orders are the business — Shopify is built around that work, and its plan price includes the store infrastructure Webflow charges extra tiers to approach.
- If the answer is “not yet, but soon,” decide which migration you would rather avoid. Adding a store later usually means moving to Shopify anyway; adding rich marketing pages to a store is the smaller problem.
Whichever you choose, price the full first year: subscription at your billing term, domain, any paid theme or apps, and transaction fees at your expected sales volume. The cheaper subscription is not always the cheaper setup.