Shoplazza Ecommerce Website Builder Review

Starting your own ecommerce store may seem daunting, but Shoplazza wants to make this a little easier for you. The ecommerce platform is designed for those just starting out, wanting more features, or needing to scale their business. Does the platform really have everything you need to launch your online business? I tried the platform to see how everything works.

This is a sponsored article and was made possible by Shoplazza. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author, who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.

The Shoplazza Platform

The Shoplazza ecommerce website builder is designed to make it as quick and easy as possible to set up an online store. Whether you’re selling online for the first time or already have a successful shop, Shoplazza has all the tools necessary to build an audience, sell globally, and scale up and down as needed.

To help you get set up, attract customers, and retain customers, Shoplazza offers the following:

• Over 30 professional themes
• Collaborative stores with up to 100 staff accounts
• Optimized checkout experience
• Create embeddable product cards to place on any website, not just your Shoplazza site
• Set up your own domain name
• Full data analytics to understand traffic for improved sales funnels
• Over 100 apps for marketing, fulfillment, delivery, etc.
• Google Ads management
• SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, and more
• No-code store builder
• Blog
• Migration tools to move your store from other platforms, including Amazon

What’s impressive is that the platform offers the same enterprise level support, store management, and security features on every plan. Every store receives:

• Unlimited products
• 12/7 support via chat and email (community and support topics are available 24/7)
• Data protection using PCI DSS Level 1 compliance
• Fraud analysis for secure payments
• Multiple language support
• Support for over 80% of major payment processors
• Dropshipping

Essentially, Shoplazza goes above and beyond just building an ecommerce store. You get marketing tools, a content management system, customer management tools, and extensive customization options for everything from the design of your storefront to every detail of the checkout process.

Signing Up

Signing up is simple. All you need is a valid email address, a password, and a store name. That’s it. No credit card is required during the free trial.

The first screen is a set of questions asking about what you’re selling, why you’re signing up, your region, and any social platforms you may be utilizing to sell. I like that you can skip this step if you want, or fill it out and enter your shop for the first time.

I was taken to a list of five steps to finish setting up my store. These include:

• Add Products – import products using CJdropshipping or do it manually.
• Set up shipping – choose your shipping methods.
• Set up payments – the defaults are Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, and Oceanpayment. During the free trial, you can also set up Bogus Gateway to serve as a placeholder as you explore the platform.
• Publish your site – during this step, you choose your theme and design.
• Marketing – offers a variety of marketing strategies, such as Facebook, TikTok, pop-ups, and more. You can skip this step if you want.

If you get stuck at any time, tap the WhatsApp icon that pops up during each step to contact support.

Create and Add Products

In this step-by-step guide to adding products, you can import, use a SKU to auto-generate, or add products manually. The editor is designed for both digital and physical products and gives you ample space for an optimized description. There’s even an SEO review section to ensure your product is optimized for search. When adding images, upload your own or use Shoplazza’s library.

Set Up Shipping

The next step is to choose your shipping region(s). The default shipping cost is free, but you can change this. Set conditions based on how much a customer spends. Set as many zones as necessary.

Payments

If you’re just testing things out, you can set up a “bogus gateway.” Otherwise, choose from one of the recommended providers, or select from a lengthy list of payment providers.

I love that there’s a fake option to let you see how things work before connecting any financial accounts.

Publish Your Site

Now for the fun part: designing your site. The Shoplazza ecommerce website builder features a variety of free themes to choose from. They look like professional storefronts. There are even seasonal themes to give your site a quick holiday look if you’re selling holiday products.

Once you choose a theme, it’s time to customize it. From here, I was able to customize colors, content blocks, social media placement, subscriber pop-ups, and much more. I could also access both free and premium apps to add to my site from here.

I love that you can customize based on desktop, mobile, and full-screen setups. If you’re not ready to publish, just save the draft and continue editing later. Obviously, this step and adding products are the most time-consuming steps, but critical to setting up your store. Simply hit Publish when you’re ready. Of course, I can go back and edit at any point.

Marketing

While this step is optional, I’d really consider checking it out. From here, you can add Facebook promotions, rebates, special sales, discount codes, abandoned cart reminders, and check out your traffic data. It’s nice to see all of these laid out well, versus scattered throughout various pages or left to you to do manually.

In the data analytics, you get an overview for different sales periods, real-time info, and many different report options. Something I liked was that you can create custom reports, which isn’t always available on ecommerce platforms.

Managing Your Shoplazza Store

The Shoplazza ecommerce website builder lets you add/remove pages, redirect URLs, customize navigate, and create your own blog. You can manage all of this from the sidebar in your dashboard.

By default, you already have five site pages created for you, which you’re free to edit or remove:

• Refund Policy
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• About Us
• Shipping Policy

Of course, you really should keep the pages, but just edit the text, since all stores need these pages. It’s also nice to be able to fully customize the navigation to make it easier for customers to use your store.

The blog post editor is fairly simple – but all you need to get the job done. Just like when you’re first creating your store, there’s an SEO editor to optimize your blog posts.

Adding Apps

Another thing that makes the Shoplazza ecommerce website builder ideal for all types of stores is the variety of third-party apps available. If you can’t find something that meets your needs, you’re also able to add in custom-built apps. These are referred to as private apps.

Only a handful of apps are listed at a time. See everything available by visiting the app store via the “Apps” area of your dashboard.

Support and Tutorials

Shoplazza does a great job of providing tutorials and support to users. As mentioned earlier, you can chat live 12/7 or send an email. As usual, the chat starts with a bot to answer common questions, then sends you to a live agent or asks for your email if no one is available.

However, I’d recommend checking out the help center and Shoplazza blog. You’ll find answers to most common questions right there. There’s also a community forum, but it’s not exactly active. For instance, the most active area has 68 posts and hasn’t been used since 2022. But you can still browse to see if your question has already been asked.

Shoplazza Pricing

Hate platforms that make you choose a plan or enter a credit card just for the trial? Shoplazza offers a completely free seven-day trial. If you love what you see, choose from five different plans. What’s great is Shoplazza doesn’t limit your products, customer support, themes, or other features based on the plan. Whether you choose the lowest or the highest-priced, you’re getting the same core features to grow your business.

The plans include:

• Basic – $28/month – great starter plan that takes a 2% commission and allows up to six staff accounts.
• Advanced – $59/month – plan cuts the commission to just 1%.
• Premier – $99/month – if you need more staff accounts, Premier gives you up to 15 and lowers the commission to just 0.6%.
• Enterprise – $189/month – as you scale up to a much larger business, you’ll likely need extra staff accounts (up to 100). Plus, Shoplazza only takes a minimal 0.3% commission.
• Pro – $218/month – as your profits grow, decrease the commission to only 0.2%.

Honestly, Basic is a great place to start for entrepreneurs or small teams. But, if your sales are high, you’ll likely save money by upgrading to the Premier plan. For larger teams with higher sales numbers, Pro is the most cost effective.

Final Thoughts

The Shoplazza ecommerce website builder has all the tools you need to create a professional store for digital and physical products. Creating a quick temporary store with just a few products took around 30 minutes, but to really get everything set up, it’d probably take a few days. However, if you’re importing, this will speed up the process.

If you’re a complete beginner, all the options can seem overwhelming, but everything’s laid out so well that it’s easy to figure things out. For experienced shop owners, you’ll love the variety of customizations, apps, themes, etc. My only complaint was that many Shoplazza pages gave me Access Denied errors, and I had to refresh the page a few times to view them. However, Shoplazza has since fixed this issue and pages are loading correctly.

If you want to set up your own store, check out Shoplazza’s complete guide to setting up an online store.