When it comes to starting your online business or taking your small business online, a good eCommerce platform can be the difference between success and failure. When choosing an eCommerce platform for your business, there are certain features that you need to look out for if you want to achieve success. Below are the best ecommerce solutions for small businesses in 2021 based on specific features, advantages and limitations of each platform.
As online sales increase every year, it’s important to compare and pick the best ecommerce solution for your small business. Whether you’re just starting out or are looking to turn a website into an online store, it’s helpful to weigh your options and figure out the steps you’ll need to take.
Business is booming, and your business has recently started seeing a lot of online orders. This is awesome! You’re a new business owner and have got more orders than you can handle alone. There are a lot of people out there who can offer you some help. Before you start looking for help though, it’s best to know what your options are first. Don’t risk getting stuck with an ecommerce software you don’t like or that doesn’t meet your needs completely.
As a small business owner, you’re probably looking for the best ecommerce platform to sell your products online. There are many ecommerce solutions out there, but it can still be hard to find what you’re looking for. The most important thing when choosing an ecommerce solution is that it has the features you need, including inventory management and payment processing. A great way to get started is by checking out our list of the top ecommerce platforms for 2021.
Bonus Platform: Big Cartel
As an added bonus, we wanted to discuss a website builder that caters to specific ecommerce businesses. Big Cartel is a creative-based website builder. This site builder hosts businesses with unique and creative products.
It’s great for businesses that have products like hand-made jewelry, prints of art, or a unique fashion line. Big Cartel is most suitable for businesses that are creative and offer unique products.
This platform is made with artists and creatives in mind. It’s aimed to help small creative businesses create a website that is unique to them. It’s a simple and straightforward platform that allows you to create a website that’s just as unique as your products.
The free version of Big Cartel allows you to post up to five products. From that point, the cost is determined by the number of products you post. This makes it a budget-friendly option because you’re only paying for products you’re posting.
If your small business offers unique products, Big Cartel may be the right choice for you.
Ecwid (Web, iOS, Android)
If you’re launching an online store but want to minimize your initial outlay, Ecwid is the best place to begin: it’s got a great, free plan that lets you start selling your first 10 physical products, and affordable upgrade tiers starting at $15/month as you grow or need extra features. There are also no additional transaction fees on top of what your payment gateway charges, so it isn’t skimming any profit with hidden fees.
When you sign up, Ecwid gives you the option to integrate your store with your existing website—it supports most platforms like WordPress, Weebly, Drupal, and the like—or to set up your own store with a company.site domain name (although you can change that to a custom domain at any time by upgrading to the Venture plan).
At the Dashboard, you’re presented with a big, bold to-do list that walks you through setting up your site, adding your first products, localizing your store, and choosing how you want to deliver goods—and get paid for them. Working through the full list takes less than 15 minutes.
Where Ecwid stands out from some of the other free options is its customizability. In the sidebar, click Website and then Edit Site to open the site builder. To change the theme, click Themes and choose from one of the dozens of different options. Whatever you’re planning to sell, there’s a decent base theme to work from. Then, dive deeper into the intuitive builder to customize every section, text block, and photo.
While Ecwid is a great free option, it doesn’t skimp on the features with the paid plans. It integrates with social channels like Facebook and Instagram so you can sell directly to your followers, you can list your products on Amazon or eBay, or take payments in person. It automatically calculates tax, offers discounts, and tracks your inventory. If you set up a free store on Ecwid, you don’t have to worry about moving to a new platform if things take off.
Ecwid integrates with Zapier too, so you can connect it to all your other apps and do things like receive texts when someone places an order or track sales with Google Sheets.
Ecwid Price: Free for standard features; from $15/month Venture Plan for professional features; transaction fees depend on payment gateway.
Volusion
Volusion Pros
+ No transaction fees
+ Subscription selling by default
+ 11 free themes
+ In-house payment platform
+ 24/7 support
+ 14-day free trial
Volusion Cons
– Expensive starting plan ($26/mo)
– No website hosting included
– 1 account with the cheapest plan
– Product limits with cheaper plans
Volusion offers eCommerce store and shopping cart software but doesn’t provide website hosting. They still deliver a decent online store building and managing package for selling goods. Their prices start from $26/month with annual payments. However, if you’re just getting started with your online store, then you might want to look at some other options.
There are 11 free and 34 paid ($180) themes you can pick from for the base of your online shop. The templates are mobile responsive, and you can tweak them further with CSS. You can set up your store for subscription selling by default. Unfortunately, there’s a limit on the added products with cheaper plans.
The other main features are built-in SEO tools and social media integrations, related products feature, customer accounts and reviews, discount codes, and gift cards. Abandoned cart reports start from the Professional plan ($71/mo billed quarterly).
Payment Options
Volusion offers a payment integration Volusion Payments. The transactions are PCI certified and secure with additional integrations with Amazon Pay, PayPal, and Stripe. The payment process is done on-domain without any redirects. In the US, Volusion Payments offers a 2.15% transaction rate and low monthly fees for major credit cards.
Online Store Management and Reports
Volusion’s platform has intuitive drag and drop tools for building your online store and managing it. You can set custom shipping types and prices. But, the automatic shipping rates calculator becomes available only from the Business plan. You can still set custom tax rates for your products using the built-in tax rate calculator.
You’re only able to create advanced reports starting from the business package, which includes your standard analytics and in-depth online shop progress insights.
Customer Support
The base plan only includes 24/7 online chat support. However, you are first greeted by a chatbot and a promise to get an answer within an hour. With the Professional plan, you get additional phone support, with the Business plan priority support, and with the Custom plan VIP support.
Pricing
Volusion’s pricing structure is based on your past 12-month sales. Once you’ve exceeded the threshold turnover for the past year, they automatically upgrade you to the next plan. You can study the thresholds for each plan below.
Volusion doesn’t charge additional fees on transactions, but the standard credit card fees still apply.
Personal plan for sales of $50k a year: $26/month quarterly or $29/month monthly
- 1 contributor account
- 100 products
- Social media integrations
- Online support
Professional plan for sales of $100k a year: $71/month quarterly or $79/month monthly
- 5 contributor accounts
- 5,000 products
- Abandoned cart reports
- Online and phone support
Business plan for sales of $500k a year: $269/month quarterly or $299/month monthly
- 15 contributor accounts
- Unlimited number of products
- Amazon & eBay integration
- Advanced reports
- 3rd party shipping rates and payment gateways
- Priority support
The cheapest Personal plan is excellent for starting and building your online store. But, it only comes with one user account, and you can add up to 100 products. You’re also missing abandoned shopping cart recovery and phone support.
However, if you want to try Volusion out, you can do so for 14 days without giving your credit card information. It’s not as long as some other providers are promising but give you enough time to get your bearings.
Sellfy
Sellfy was founded in 2011 as an ecommerce platform exclusively for digital products. Over the years, they’ve expanded the platform so that no matter what business model you use, you can build your own online store in a matter of minutes. It’s an easy to use website builder that requires no technical knowledge to start using.
If you want to start selling online with Sellfy, you have three options:
- Connect your Sellfy store to your existing website
- Attach your store to a custom domain
- Use “Buy Now “and other embed options to make sales from other platforms.
The free plan allows users to sell up to 10 physical products, but doesn’t include a custom domain.
Premium starts at $29/month, with the highest tier plan coming in at $159/month before annual discounts. Compared to other ecommerce platforms, Sellfy is one of the most affordable options. Considering the features and ecommerce functionality you get standard, you can save a lot of money compared to Shopify. You’ll have to invest in some expensive third-party apps to take advantage of things like recurring subscription billing.
Sellfy’s claim to fame is that you can get your store up and running within five minutes. While there are limits on the number of and types of products you can sell on the Free plan, upgrading to a paid plan means you can sell unlimited products, digital products, and subscription products, too.
Sellfy includes its own print-on-demand platform, so you can sell a variety of POD products without relying on a service like Printful or Printify.
Pros
- Free forever plan – All plans come with a 4-day free trial, no credit card required
- Has a Wix integration
- Multiple options for online selling
- No transaction fees
- Email marketing included in all paid plans
Cons
- Poor ratings for SEO traffic
- Limited options for payment gateways
- Must use Zapier to facilitate most third-party integrations
- Missing key marketing tools like 1-click upsells
How can small business benefit from ecommerce?
It saves time and energy, and also you can sell your product or service to a huge audience all over the world with just a mouse click. Compared to other businesses, it is cost-effective. By minimizing the damage of operations and increasing sales through better reach, you can do wonders for your business.
Conclusion
What is the best eCommerce platform for small business? As a small business, you need an Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Without them, we wouldn’t have stores to shop in or restaurants to eat in. Aside from that, small businesses also hire the most people and they’re the ones who keep us employed while they grow their companies. If you have one or are planning on starting one, you should look into an e-commerce solution.
We all know that the digital age has brought a lot of changes. In particular, one of the most notable shifts is how business is being conducted online. Entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized businesses are increasingly going digital in their search for new leads and customers. And ecommerce has become the go-to channel for this process.