Ecommerce has evolved in the past decade and is quickly taking over the market. Thousands of new products are available in the form of apps now, giving you easy access to your purchase needs anywhere, anytime. While this can be seen as a boon for us buyers, the flip side is that an average user has no idea whatsoever how to find those apps. Having a website for ecommerce is not just about having a platform to buy and sell products online. It also helps people find you. It makes them aware of your presence online even before they come across you through other mediums like social media or email marketing.
The e-commerce industry is constantly growing and evolving. With the growth of online stores, comes the need to have multiple tools that can help increase sales. Shopify has become one of the leading e-commerce platforms with plans for small business, entrepreneurs, marketers and more. But these days, there are many other ecommerce platforms on the market that can be a more cost effective option for startups or those looking for something different. If you’re looking for the best web builder for ecommerce, then this article is for you.
Finding the right web builder for Ecommerce to sell online is a process that requires examination of many different factors. Many e-commerce website builders claim to be best in all but only few can able to deliver quality, services and performance.
The ecommerce niche has grown by leaps and bounds, with thousands of startups and small businesses rushing in to capitalize on this growing market. This has led to the emergence of a wide range of ecommerce websites builders which gives users access to a number of features and options to help them build their ideal store.
What is ecommerce software?
eCommerce software is a tool that drives all online store processes, helping owners manage inventory, add or remove products, process payments, compute taxes, and fulfill orders, among many others. It offers all the things needed to run a retail site, effectively simplifying online store management.
An online store consists of many intricate components and processes, which ecommerce software streamlines through an easy-to-use interface that even non-tech persons can operate. Further facilitating things is the ability of the system to integrate with other platforms and services such as CRM, CMS, ERP, payment gateways, email marketing tools, accounting software, fulfillment services, and social media networks.
In this article, we’ll go beyond answering what is ecommerce software and examine its many aspects from what it does and how it works to its key features and examples of the leading tools on the market. This way, it’s easier for you to discern how you can use it for your operations.
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
Squarespace
Squarespace is another one of those platforms that offers drag-and-drop. Founded in 2003, they have sleek templates and design capabilities.
If you don’t need a lot of features, try them out. It’s also great for print on demand ecommerce business.
The prices are quite low. To start selling, you need to at least be on the Business website plan that’s $18/month when billed annually. Note that you’ll have to pay 3% on transaction fees.
You can escape that with any one of the ecommerce plans at $26 and $40. The top plan allows you to get abandoned cart auto recovery, sell subscriptions and gift cards, and give flexible discounts.
The package comes with all the basic features you’d expect from an ecommerce platform all arranged on the side menu.
The website design part is not that easy though. Their drag and drop editor is not as great as Weebly’s. You might have to try your hands on it a few times before you get the hang of it. When you have gotten past the website design phase, you’ll enjoy the access to marketing, inventory, social selling, SEO, and analytics features.
Squarespace integrates ShipStation and allows you to install Printul and ShipBob from the app section. Real-time calculation of shipping rates from major providers (UPS, FedEx, USPS) is also available.
The biggest downsides are payment processors and third-party applications. They only support Stripe and Paypal. As for the apps, they only integrate with very few third-party tools.
Pros
- Easy To Set Up
- Great For Simple Stores
- Stunning Designs
- Solid SEO tools
- Integrates with ShipStation and ShipBob
Cons
- No dropshipping
- No marketing automation integration
- No Amazon integration
- Could be faster for the price
- No app store for more features and functionalities
Pinnacle Cart – Making e-commerce work
About Pinnacle Cart : Pinnacle Cart is an all-inclusive eCommerce shopping cart solution. Developed by online marketers for online marketers, our platform includes everything you need to take your business from start-up to eCommerce enterprise. Our secure solution is PCI complaint and PA-DSS certified and includes an optimized mobile store. We guarantee you’ll see an increase in online sales and offer FREE migrations from over 40 different shopping carts!
Pinnacle Cart eCommerce Features : Catalog Management, Channel Management, Customer Accounts, Email Marketing, Inventory Management, Loyalty Program, Order Management, Product Configurator, Promotions Management, Returns Management, SEO Management, Shopping Cart
PrestaShop – Free Ecommerce Software
About PrestaShop : PrestaShop was founded in 2007 with a mission to provide world-class ecommerce software through open source innovation. Today more than 270,000 ecommerce stores run on PrestaShop technology. The company provides software that enables users to have an online store at the lowest cost possible. The PrestaShop open source community includes 850,000 merchants, developers and web agencies from around the world.
PrestaShop eCommerce Features : Catalog Management, Channel Management, Customer Accounts, Email Marketing, Inventory Management, Loyalty Program, Multi-Store Management, Order Management, Product Configurator, Returns Management, SEO Management, Shopping Cart
Magento
The large brands like Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Cisco trust Magento. Coding is an integral part of the package. So, if you have a developer or the budget for one – and want something truly customizable and powerful – Magento is a solid choice. You can do and undo till you get the feature-rich online store you want.
A big part of Magento is the community. It’s large with developers willing to work on your store for a fee or answer some of your questions free. There’s also a marketplace where you can get extensions and themes to increase the functionality of your platform.
Magento’s most used free, but there’s a paid level for enterprise solutions for large ecommerce businesses. It is expensive; the annual licensing fee runs in tens of thousands of dollars. That’s huge, but it’s on the cloud, faster, and comes with additional features including automatic trigger-based email campaigns and automatic cross /upsell.
Whichever you pick, you’ll enjoy the long list of features that you can extend. Things like discounts, recurring payments, ability to grind SEO, adjust content per user, membership subscriptions, unlimited products, and more.
Pros
- Robust and feature rich
- Strong SEO
- 1-Click selling
- Lots of users and community
- Scalable and highly customizable
- Flexible to choose where you want to host the software
Cons
- Pricey themes.
- Easily Slowed Down
- Requires Development Skills
- Virtually no support.
- Requires ample space and memory to perform well
Volusion – eCommerce website store & shopping cart software
About Volusion : Volusion provides an all-in-one ecommerce solution for all business types, ranging from startups to large enterprises. Since 1999, Volusion has been committed to connecting people with innovative and powerful commerce solutions to empower their business growth. 17 years later, Volusion has earned dozens of awards and accolades, recruited nearly 300 ecommerce experts and has powered over 180,000 successful online businesses.
Volusion eCommerce Features : Catalog Management, Channel Management, Customer Accounts, Email Marketing, Inventory Management, Multi-Store Management, Order Management, Product Configurator, SEO Management, Shopping Cart
Square (Web, iOS, Android)
If you want the option to sell in-person, like at a farmer’s market or craft fair, as well as through your online store, Square is the best choice. Your online and offline orders are all organized under a single dashboard, so there’s no jumping between apps, trying to track down customer details using random spreadsheets, or having to enter things manually after the fact.
Square bought the website builder app Weebly in 2018, so when you set up your store, that’s what’s running under the hood. If you occasionally see a URL direct to weebly.com, it’s nothing to worry about. (Note: we noticed fewer Weebly URLs popping up in the most recent review.)
Square has some of the best onboarding around. When you sign up, you have to fill in a quick questionnaire about your business and its needs. You’ve got the option to set up a single booking page, a full online store, or simple checkout links, depending on what you’re looking for. The default theme will also be tweaked to match the business category you chose.
In terms of storefront customization, Square is a little more limited than some of the other options. Instead of picking a theme that does most of the work, with Square you have to make your own design using the (admittedly excellent) site builder—or you can hire a designer from $99 to do it for you.
From the Square Dashboard, click Online then click Website > Edit Site to get started. In the sidebar on the left, you can select the different page elements, or you can just click on them directly. For more options, click the three little dots. You can change the colors, fonts, and layout of everything individually and, of course, upload your own images. It works well, but it is a bit constrained.
You can create “items,” what Square calls products or services for sale, through both the regular Square Dashboard and the Square Online Dashboard, and they’ll be synced to a common Item Library. This means that you can sell the same products both online and off, or have some things you just list in one location. Just go to Items > Item Library, and click Create an Item.
When you want to make an in-person sale, open up the menu and select Virtual Terminal, which acts just like a digital cash register. If you have a Square credit card reader (available for free), you can swipe your customers’ cards for a 2.6% + $0.10 fee from Square, and their details will automatically upload to your account. Otherwise, you can type in your customers’ credit card information for a 3.5% + $0.15 fee per charge. Online, Square’s charges are similar. On the free plan, you’re charged 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Square also integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to thousands of other apps to do things like post your in-person transactions to a Slack channel for the rest of the team to see or record the details using Airtable.
What are the Types of eCommerce Software?
There are two general classifications of ecommerce software and they pertain to the type of deployment:
- On-Premise. Installed on a local server or computer and managed on-site by a team that handles manual updates, fix problems, and do general troubleshooting. Online sellers early on initially went with on-premise solutions because they allowed greater hands-on management compared to hosted solutions.
- Software as a Service. SaaS or hosted solutions are technically the hands-off option since all updates, patches, and newly-released features are done automatically or with one-click integrations. Hosted ecommerce software has evolved dramatically to allow wide customization and flexibility, previously exclusive to on-premise, making it now a sufficient solution for most online retailers. Furthermore, SaaS software can be launched quickly and comes in affordable packages.
Conclusion
One of the most difficult things to do when starting a company is finding a way to set up an online presence. Prices for web hosting are too high, and the interface is often confusing. This can be especially true for ecommerce websites. The sheer number of services offered by a platform often makes it difficult to determine which service will best meet your needs.
Best ecommerce platform for startups, small businesses and even large enterprises can build their online stores in minutes. Templates are built on design principles of great ecommerce websites. Best Ecommerce platforms let you manage your customers via mobile app or web dashboard. You can also create a community, showcase your merchandise via videos, allow users to shop with multiple payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.