Multichannel ecommerce is used by the world’s largest brands. Multi channel commerce is an exciting software space and we’ve created this resource to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about multichannel software. You’ll find everything you need to decide which software is right for your business.
There are so many ecommerce software systems out there, that it can be quite confusing to know which one is the best multichannel ecommerce software. In fact you’re likely to find some multichannel selling software called ‘the best’ with new companies coming and going every day, but when it comes to choosing the right multichannel selling application for your business – time is of the essence.
Modern ecommerce marketplaces require a more sophisticated set of software tools than ever before. We’ll help you choose the right multi-channel ecommerce platform for your business, based on your needs and scale.
Multi-channel ecommerce software is a platform used to list, sync and sell your products on multiple online marketplaces across the globe. It helps in the automation of your business processes and provides real-time updates on inventory levels and order status across all sales channels. It also helps you to manage business expenses, track returns, manage vendor information and increase productivity of your business as a whole.
What Is the Purpose of a Multichannel Ecommerce Software?
A multichannel platform saves you time, money and stress. It helps you work more efficiently across multiple channels (read: you won’t have to log into each channel individually for the same tasks). It saves you the hassle of redoing your work for each channel and reconciling inventory or sales numbers by hand.
Note that a multichannel system is very different from an ERP. While both offer the ability to centralize your operations, a multichannel system is specifically designed for ecommerce and for customer-facing sites. It tends to be faster to implement, nimbler and more in touch with how ecommerce channels work.
SellerActive
SellerActive is one of the more established multi-channel inventory management solutions. Unlike most competitors, SellerActive focuses on direct sales, with repricing tools built in alongside marketplace inventory synchronization and order management for fulfillment. The listing software integrates into major marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Jet, and eBay to enable listing creation, listing imports, and channel management through a single dashboard.
SellerActive differentiates itself with one-on-one support from customer-service “selling experts” who walk you through the software from the ground up.
At a minimum of $79 per month (without repricing or product creation), SellerActive is affordable for sellers who are starting out. However, if you need full-time support, SellerActive has a lot to offer.
SellerActive Pricing
Tip: SellerActive offers Deliverr merchants 3 months free, with repricing features included.
| For GMV up to… | Monthly pricing | Add on: Repricing | Add on: Product creation |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | $79 | $50 | $50 |
| $25,000 | $179 | $75 | $75 |
| $100,000 | $299 | $100 | $100 |
| $250,000 | $499 | $125 | $125 |
| $500,000 | $699 | $150 | $150 |
| $1,000,000 | $899 | $175 | $175 |
Sellware
Sellware provides multi-channel listing, inventory management, and order fulfillment management. They work with marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Magento, Zen Cart, OSCommerce, and ShipStation.
With pricing starting at $99 per month for 250 orders and 1,000 products, Sellware isn’t the cheapest solution for small eCommerce sellers, but it is relatively affordable. The software offers fewer features than many competitors, with no billing or shipping management functions and no real-time inventory management solutions. You’ll also have to watch out for reduced customer support on lower-end tiers, and a maximum of 2 hours of phone support with the Enterprise tier ($295 per month).
Overall, Sellware excels as a multi-channel listing tool, with support for all major channels, inventory synchronization, and strong template and workflow creation for automating listing. If you run a smaller eCommerce store or already have a solution to manage shipping and inventory, Sellware has a lot to offer.
SolidCommerce
SolidCommerce offers multi-channel listing and inventory management with automation, repricing, and cross-channel inventory synchronization.
With additional features including vendor management, inventory history management, stock updates across channels, multiple warehouse support, bundling and kitting, order fulfillment, dropship management, and bulk quantity uploads, Solid Commerce competes well with features.
Pricing starts at $499 per month, but with software that seems designed for standard retailers moving to eCommerce, it’s not always intuitive for eCommerce-only sellers.
Zentail
Zentail is designed by retailers for retailers, with all of the features to run and automate multi-channel eCommerce sales. Their solution supports all major channels, including Google Shopping.
Zentail is one of the most sophisticated eCommerce automation tools available. They utilize smart tools, such as listing software that automatically defines products based on category for faster and smoother listing. They also offer channel-based overrides (change pricing and ship-time based on channel) and multi-channel automation for FBA.
They offer catalogue and inventory management with multi-channel automated listing, integrated shipping label generation, FBA integration, dynamic repricing, and unique filters like Smart Types for product categorization. However, with pricing starting at over $1,000 a month, you will be paying extra for those features.
While Zentail has a lot to offer, it’s a best fit for medium-to-large eCommerce sellers who need to optimize rather than set up processes.
Fulfil.io – Best cloud ERP for ecommerce wholesalers and manufacturers
Fulfil.io is an ERP that lets you sell globally with support for multi-currency and easy return management. For wholesalers, it simplifies purchasing with customer price lists and a dedicated wholesale portal.
For manufacturers, there are tools for raw material and production tracking, enabling you to monitor manufacturing costs. You can implement workflow automation using Fulfil.io’s open API.
In terms of inventory management, it has inventory tracking support for Shopify’s multiple store location features. It also provides automated accounting and inventory tracking on Magento. In terms of integrations, it works with ecommerce apps like Shopify, Shopify Plus, Spree, and BigCommerce. In terms of Marketplaces, it works with Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Walmart Marketplace, among others. It supports payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and other commonly used apps.
Support is available via email and chat. There is also extensive documentation available to cover nuanced queries. Pricing is available upon request.
Shopify – Best ecommerce platform for multi-purpose needs
Shopify Plus helps bring point of sale and ecommerce under one umbrella, making it an omnichannel retailer. The tool helps bring click-and-collect customers to your store with features for in-store and curbside pickups. Vice versa, it can remind customers of their in-store favorites with email carts, thus giving an unprecedented online shopping experience. (Yes, just like that, magic!)
When a product is not available, the tool can still enable a sale by offering the option of buying in-store and shipping to the customer at a later date. Also, no matter where customers buy from, they can return or exchange in the retail store.
The tool also lets users track inventory, export/import inventory through CSV files, adjust inventory, and other important inventory management tasks. Its headless feature enables flexibility by making your business available via mobile devices and voice-powered technology.
The SaaS is known in the industry for its stability and comes with a streamlined content management system. The analytics can track store visits, conversions, average order value, and more. The product integrates with Apple Business Chat, Google Sheets, Oberlo, Airtable, Slack, and marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
Support is available through chat and email. There is an extensive knowledge base available to cover the basic queries. Shopify plans start at $29 per month with a free trial option.
LS Retail – Best POS software for retail management
LS Retail is a unified retail management system offering state-of-the-art POS, financials (Microsoft ERP), store operations, inventory, supply chain management, and ecommerce under one roof.
The POS terminals support both keyboard and touch screen products, and they are easy to set up. You can use it to track sales, stock level, and productivity in real-time across all your multiple sales channels. So, be it physical locations, ecommerce platforms, or mobile apps, you can see and monitor synced data across all channels.
It can be deployed as a vertical software for Business Central/Microsoft Dynamics NAV, making the solution more competent and sought after. The UI/UX is user-friendly, and applications are easy to implement. In terms of customization, it has widespread configuration facilities, with the ability to hide features for some users, making the app deploy truly as your own. It also has features for configuring pricing, offers, and promotions fairly easily.
LS Retail integrates with apps like Woocommerce, Shopify, and more. Support is available via email and has been reported to be a little slow. Pricing is available upon request.
Wix.com – Best multi-channel ecommerce software for design customization
A regular in our best ecommerce platform series, you can use Wix to sell on multiple channels like Facebook, Instagram, eBay, and so on. Your inventory will be synced automatically across all these channels so you can hit the ground running.
Users can also sell on other marketplaces like Amazon, Google Shopping, and third-party apps like AdScale and InkFrog. Wix allows you to create multilingual sites so you can cover the entire global market.
The website builder comes with 500 beautiful templates to create a modern site that converts. The artificial design intelligence tool drives on insightful questions to automate the site design process. Wix integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks, Mailchimp, and other top ecommerce apps.
The main form of support is via the Help Center feature. Wix’s ecommerce and business plans start at $23 per month.
Sellbrite
Sellbrite is a popular solution for small to medium-sized businesses with a smaller budget. It offers plans ranging from free to $179 a month and is best known for its easy-to-use interface.
It is one of the best beginner tools, with features spanning listing automation, inventory syncing and order management. It additionally offers Shopify-specific plans whereby Shopify users can use Sellbrite as an extension of their Shopify store, rather than use Sellbrite as the source of truth.
However, it is not uncommon for larger sellers to outgrow Sellbrite. Sellbrite is designed specifically with small business owners in mind and does not offer as many customization options as platforms intended for big businesses.
- Capterra rating: 4.6/5
- Featured review: “Amazing App! Even better support!” – David R. on Capterra
Key Features
As you look for a solution that meets your needs, you’ll want to keep your eye out for these key capabilities. Some may take more priority than others—create your list ahead of time so that you can properly evaluate your options.
Centralization
Does the system integrate with your most important sales channels? Keep in mind that some platforms will not integrate with every channel you sell on, so you will need to decide whether a channel is a make-it-or-break-it factor. You’ll additionally want to check if the platform can integrate with foreign marketplaces (if that’s a strong focus for you) and/or if it connects with your WMS, OMS or other essential apps.
Listing Automation
One of the biggest perks of a multichannel software is being able to avoid manually listing your products on each channel. However, keep your eyes peeled for software (especially cheap ones) that claim to automate listing but still require lots of manual setup. Each channel has very specific listing requirements and a unique taxonomy, which change regularly, so your platform needs to be able to adapt to their criteria both now and later.
Change Management
Marketplaces are always evolving. Amazon, for example, routinely updates its listing criteria to deliver a better user experience for their buyers. This forces sellers to adopt changes quickly—even if it means hitting “pause” on normal operations and spending weeks manually updating their ASINs—in order to avoid costly penalties. Your software provider should be experienced in adapting to such changes. Most providers require weeks (if not months) to develop new solutions (which usually still require manual work on your end). But if they’re like Zentail, they’ll have an automated solution in place to implement solutions faster and cut down the amount of work on your plate.
Conclusion
Ecommerce is one of the most successful ways to build a business. Your potential customers use different channels like mobile, desktop, tablet and also pay via different methods. All these factors makes Ecommerce multi-channel selling scenarios. In this article, I will list and describe best multichannel ecommerce software which helps you to start an effective multiple channel selling enterprise.
More and more retailers choose to use multichannel selling, transferring customers from one sales channel to another, to try to squeeze out extra profits. To meet the needs of multichannel retailers, there are several solutions like: multichannel management software, multichannel inventory software and multichannel fulfillment software.