Crate vs Ecwid
Ecwid adds a shop to a website you already have, and that is the whole product. Crate embeds the same shapes into the same kind of site, and stands a full commerce platform behind them. The question is not whether you can embed. It is whether you want anything behind the embed.
What Ecwid is: An embeddable online store that adds a catalog and checkout to an existing website, content management system or social page rather than replacing it.
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How does Crate compare to Ecwid?
Both put a shop inside a site you already run. Ecwid is built around that one job, and ships official plugins for the common site builders and content management systems, so the shop drops into them without anyone touching code. Crate embeds a buy button, a product widget, a product grid and a cart that follows a buyer across your pages, from a single script tag, with checkout opening on your own store address rather than inside the page. Behind those shapes Crate also provisions a storefront, stock, point of sale and chat selling, whether or not you switch them on. So the deciding question is not whether you can embed. It is whether you want a platform standing behind the embed, or only the embed.
Side by side
Qualitative and stable. No prices and no fee percentages for either side, because both change without notice and a comparison table carrying a stale number is worse than no table.
| What | Crate | Ecwid |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A commerce platform that includes the storefront, on a domain you own. | A shop you embed into a site you already run. |
| Keeping your current site | Supported. Your site keeps its host, its content management system and its design, and the shop is pasted into it. | The main advantage, and the reason the product exists. |
| Embeddable shapes | Buy button, product widget, product grid and a cart shared across your pages, from one script tag. Each one degrades to a working product link if scripts do not run. | The same family of shapes, and a full store embed alongside them. |
| Getting it onto your site | One script tag, pasted wherever the shape belongs. No plugin for any particular site builder. | A script tag, plus official plugins and apps for the common site builders and content management systems. |
| Where checkout happens | A popup window on your own store address, so payment redirects and 3-D Secure behave as they do on the storefront and your page never renders a payment field. | Inside the page, in their own checkout. |
| What stands behind the embed | A full storefront, stock, orders, point of sale and staff permissions, provisioned whether or not you use them. | A shop, which is what you asked for. |
| Where the design lives | Your tooling for your pages, Crate's builder for the storefront and the embedded shapes. | Your site's tooling for the site, their settings for the shop. |
| Selling in chat | Built in. A chat order is a real order with real stock movement. | Not a native channel. |
| Point of sale | Included, sharing one stock count with the online store. | Available in some markets. |
| Staff and permissions | Roles, per-staff permissions and an activity trail. | Staff accounts available. |
Which one you actually want
Both columns are real. If the right-hand one describes you, take it: a product that does not fit you is a refund with extra steps.
Choose Crate if
- You want the shop inside your current site now and a storefront of your own available later, without changing platform to get it.
- You would rather one system held the catalog, the stock and the orders behind every place you sell.
- Most of your orders start as a message rather than as a checkout.
- You sell in person and want one stock count across the counter, the embed and the store.
Choose Ecwid if
- You want a checkout inside your site and nothing else, and a platform behind it would be weight you never open.
- Your site runs on a builder or a content management system where an official plugin clears review and a pasted script tag does not.
- Somebody else maintains your website, and installing a supported plugin is a smaller ask of them than anything else on this page.
Both columns are on the table. Only one of them you can have open this afternoon.
Where Crate is behind
Every comparison on this site carries this section. A page that only lists what we do better is an advert, and you already know how much to trust one of those.
Where Crate is behind: fitting into somebody else's site is something Crate does, not something Crate is built around. Ecwid ships official plugins for the common site builders and content management systems, and on a site where a plugin clears an approval process that a pasted script tag does not, that is a real advantage we have no answer to. Crate also hands you a whole platform behind the snippet: a storefront, a builder, stock, point of sale and staff permissions, provisioned whether you open them or not. If all you want is a checkout inside a page you already have, that is weight with no return.
About switching to Crate from Ecwid
Short answers, and none of them hedge. If yours is not here, ask us on the contact page.
Can I keep my existing website and use Crate only for the shop?
Yes. A buy button, a product widget, a product grid and a cart embed into any site from one script tag, and your site keeps its host, its content management system and its design. Checkout opens in a window on your own store address, so payment redirects behave normally and your page never renders a payment field. Crate still provisions the storefront behind them, which you can leave switched off or turn on later.
What happens to the embedded shop if the script is blocked?
The buyer still sees a working link to the product on your store. The snippet you paste contains a real link, already sized as the finished button, and the script upgrades it in place when it arrives, so nothing on your page moves and a blocked script costs you a page view rather than a sale.
Do I keep my URLs if I move?
Existing product and category URLs can be redirected permanently to their new addresses, so links already published elsewhere keep working.
Still have a question?
Every answer above was written by the people who build crate. If yours is not among them, the Help Center goes deeper, and a person reads what you send.
You have both columns now. The next step is fifteen minutes in the product.
How this comparison is kept honest
Last checked
Everything said about Ecwid here is a qualitative property of the product taken from what Ecwid publishes about itself: what kind of product it is, which channels it sells through natively, and which capabilities it ships rather than leaves to an add-on. We publish no prices, fees, percentages or counts for any competitor, including ourselves, on these pages, because those change without notice and a table carrying a stale number does more damage than no table.
Claims about Crate on this page do not go beyond what our own feature, pricing and security pages already state. Where they would, they are not made.
Product capabilities change. This page states what was accurate on the date above and nothing beyond it. If a row is out of date, we would rather hear it than rank on it.
Other comparisons
Same structure, same honesty rules, different competitor.
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- Crate vs Big Cartel Small storefront for artists and makers
- Crate vs Bumpa Mobile business app
- Crate vs Selar Digital product storefront
- Crate vs payment link storefronts Payment links
Try it before you decide.
Every plan starts with the same trial and the same full feature set. Import your catalog, take one real order, and judge it on that.
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