How to Choose the Best E-Commerce Platform for CPG Brands

Choosing an e-commerce platform for your CPG brand is one of the highest-leverage decisions you will make in year one. Pick the wrong one and you will spend six months rebuilding your store instead of selling product. Pick the right one and your DTC foundation becomes the engine that funds wholesale growth, proves market demand, and gives retail buyers confidence to stock your product.

This guide breaks down the three platforms that matter most for food, beverage, and wellness brands: Shopify, Squarespace, and BigCommerce. No fluff. Just what you need to decide and move forward.

Why Your E-Commerce Platform Choice Matters for CPG

Your online store is not just a sales channel. It is proof of concept. Retail buyers check your website before they respond to your pitch. A polished DTC presence signals that your brand has traction, understands its customer, and is ready for shelf placement.

The platform you choose affects everything downstream. Subscription management for replenishment products. Inventory syncing across DTC and wholesale channels. Integration with the tools that help you find best-fit stores and run outreach at scale. A bad platform choice creates friction at every stage of retail growth.

The three platforms worth evaluating are Shopify, Squarespace, and BigCommerce. Each serves a different stage and style of CPG brand. Here is where each one wins, where it falls short, and what it actually costs.

Shopify for CPG Brands

Shopify dominates CPG e-commerce for good reason. Its app ecosystem is unmatched, the checkout converts well, and it handles the complexity that food and beverage brands deal with daily: subscriptions, bundles, perishable shipping rules, and multi-channel inventory.

Where Shopify wins:

• Over 8,000 apps including best-in-class subscription tools (Recharge, Loop), wholesale portals (Faire, Handshake), and shipping calculators built for perishable goods
• Native multi-channel selling across Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, TikTok Shop, and Instagram
• Shopify Markets for international expansion without a separate store
• Robust API that integrates with virtually every fulfillment, ERP, and marketing tool

Where Shopify falls short:

• Costs add up fast. The base plan is $39/month, but most CPG brands need Shopify Plus ($2,300/month) once they hit real volume
• Transaction fees of 2.9% + $0.30 on Shopify Payments, higher if you use a third-party gateway
• Template customization requires Liquid (Shopify's templating language), which has a learning curve
• App dependency means your monthly software bill can balloon to $500+ before you realize it

Best for: Brands doing over $10K/month in DTC revenue, brands selling subscriptions, and brands that need deep integrations with wholesale and retail tools.

Squarespace for CPG Brands

Squarespace is the design-first platform. If your brand story is visual and you are pre-revenue or early-stage, Squarespace gets you live faster and looking more polished than anything else at its price point.

Where Squarespace wins:

• Stunning templates built for lifestyle, food, and wellness brands out of the box
• All-in-one pricing with no app marketplace to navigate (or overspend on)
• Built-in email marketing, SEO tools, and analytics
• Commerce plans start at $33/month with no transaction fees on the Business plan and above

Where Squarespace falls short:

• Limited third-party integrations. No native connection to Recharge, Faire, or most wholesale platforms
• Subscription commerce requires workarounds or third-party embeds
• Inventory management is basic. No lot tracking, no expiration date management, no multi-warehouse support
• Scaling past $50K/month in revenue exposes real limitations in checkout customization and fulfillment workflows

Best for: Pre-launch and early-stage brands that prioritize brand aesthetics, have simple product lines (under 20 SKUs), and are not yet running subscriptions.

BigCommerce for CPG Brands

BigCommerce is the underdog that punches above its weight for mid-market CPG brands. It offers enterprise-grade features at a lower price point than Shopify Plus, with no transaction fees on any plan.

Where BigCommerce wins:

• Zero transaction fees on every plan, regardless of payment gateway
• Native B2B and wholesale features including customer-specific pricing, quote management, and purchase orders
• Headless commerce support for brands that want a custom frontend with a powerful backend
• Multi-storefront from a single dashboard, useful for brands running separate DTC and wholesale sites
• Strong SEO out of the box with customizable URLs, automatic sitemaps, and fast page loads

Where BigCommerce falls short:

• Smaller app ecosystem compared to Shopify. Some CPG-specific tools are not available
• Annual revenue thresholds trigger automatic plan upgrades ($50K on Standard, $180K on Plus, $400K on Pro)
• Fewer agency partners and developers specialize in BigCommerce, making custom work harder to source
• The admin interface feels dated compared to Shopify and Squarespace

Best for: Brands doing $50K to $500K/month that sell both DTC and wholesale, brands that want to avoid transaction fees, and brands planning headless architecture.

Cost Breakdown That Actually Matters

Platform pricing pages are misleading. The sticker price is just the beginning. Here is what CPG brands actually pay across each platform when you factor in apps, fees, and the tools you need to run a real food or beverage DTC operation.

Monthly cost at $30K/month revenue:

These numbers shift dramatically at scale. At $100K/month, Shopify's transaction fees alone hit $2,900 unless you are on Shopify Plus with negotiated rates. BigCommerce's zero-fee model becomes increasingly attractive as volume grows.

Key Features CPG Brands Cannot Skip

Regardless of which platform you choose, your e-commerce stack needs these capabilities to support both DTC sales and eventual retail growth.

Inventory management that handles lot tracking, expiration dates, and multi-location stock. If you sell perishable products, this is non-negotiable. Shopify and BigCommerce both support this natively or through apps. Squarespace does not.

Subscription commerce for any product with a replenishment cycle. Supplements, snacks, beverages, and wellness products all benefit from recurring revenue. Shopify has the best ecosystem here with Recharge, Skio, and Loop. BigCommerce supports it through integrations. Squarespace has limited options.

Wholesale channel support so your DTC and B2B operations do not live in separate universes. BigCommerce leads here with native B2B features. Shopify handles it through apps like Handshake or wholesale channel add-ons. This matters because your DTC foundation should complement your wholesale growth, not compete with it.

Analytics and reporting that show you more than page views. You need to understand customer lifetime value, subscription churn, and which acquisition channels drive profitable customers.

Migrating From Wix or WordPress

If you are already running a store on Wix or WordPress (WooCommerce) and feel the limits, migration is simpler than you think. Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer dedicated migration tools and will even assign a migration specialist on higher-tier plans.

The migration playbook:

1. Export your product catalog, customer list, and order history from your current platform
2. Set up your new store in parallel. Do not take down your existing site until the new one is ready
3. Use a URL redirect map to preserve SEO equity. Every old URL should 301 redirect to its new equivalent
4. Migrate email subscribers separately through your email platform (Klaviyo, Mailchimp), not through the e-commerce platform
5. Test checkout, shipping calculations, and tax settings thoroughly before switching DNS
6. Switch DNS during a low-traffic window, typically Tuesday or Wednesday morning

Most CPG brands complete a full migration in two to four weeks. The biggest risk is not the technical migration. It is losing SEO rankings because redirects were not set up properly.

The Platform Decision Framework

Stop overthinking this. Here is the decision tree:

Choose Squarespace if you are pre-revenue, have fewer than 20 SKUs, do not need subscriptions, and want to launch a beautiful store this weekend.

Choose Shopify if you are doing over $10K/month, sell subscriptions, need deep integrations, and plan to scale past $100K/month within a year.

Choose BigCommerce if you sell both DTC and wholesale from the same brand, want to avoid transaction fees, or are planning a headless commerce setup.

Your e-commerce platform is the DTC foundation that proves your brand can sell. That proof is what opens doors with retail buyers. Pick the platform that supports where you are heading, not just where you are today, and you will build a business that grows across every channel.