Just like how the world has shrunk into a global village, the ecommerce industry is also getting converged. For the uninitiated, ecommerce software have been designed to help entrepreneurs enter the online world and compete with others from different corners of the world.
As the use of ecommerce grows, more and more platforms are arising to help merchants start and run their online store. These platforms can be easily integrated into websites and apps. Any business owner who wishes to sell online can take full advantage of these ecommerce platforms.
Ecommerce software is the key to running your business. It’s where you manage inventory, customer data and basic product information. Each ecommerce platform varies in design and experience, so I’m going to share the top 10 popular shopping cart software with you. In this post, I’ll evaluate each ecommerce solution and explain what makes it great for small businesses.
Whether you’re launching a new business from scratch or taking your brick-and-mortar operation online, this guide has you covered.
Should You Use An Ecommerce Platform To Sell Goods?
If you have a product that you want to sell online, you need an online store. There are 2 options for having an online store — either create one by scratch or use a ready-to-ship ecommerce platform that includes all the moving parts.
If you are a first-time entrepreneur or a small business with budget limits, then coding and developing your own online store can be an extremely costly affair. A pre-built ecommerce system is the best alternative for small businesses and startups. You might also consider one of these ecommerce platforms for small businesses.
Now, an argument can be made that a ready-to-ship ecommerce system will look generic and not unique, but this is not necessarily true. With hundreds of template designs and custom branding options available in all the major ecommerce platforms, you can make your online store match your brand and design language.
Omnisend
For the online sellers who need more eCommerce-friendly tools from their email marketing provider, Omnisend is a go-to platform.
With Omnisend, you’ll be able to create eCommerce-focused email campaigns and automation workflows in a few clicks, offering you the critical welcome, cart abandonment, and post-purchase follow up emails you need.
It even comes with their best eCommerce workflow templates, so it’s a matter of just customizing your workflow for your online brand.
Features of Omnisend
- Visual builder for email, automation workflows, email capture forms, landing pages, SMS, and etc.
- E-commerce-focused features like auto-generated discount codes, and the ability to pull products directly from your store to your campaign in a matter of clicks.
- Smart segmentation for easy campaign targeting.
- Powerful automation workflow splits that allow you to target customers as they move through your workflow.
- Email and SMS capture with forms, landing pages, pop ups, etc.
- Advanced sales reporting for online sellers.
MailChimp
On connecting your online store with MailChimp, you will be able to create targeted campaigns, automate follow-ups and send ‘back-in-stock’ messages. The tool helps you learn about what your customers are purchasing, which will eventually help you create better targeted emails for them.
The tool helps you design your site with a custom domain and online store. It generates customer journeys for better mapping capabilities and creating authentic sales experiences.
Features of MailChimp
- Flexible design for all sizes
- Powerful and effective automation for online sellers
- Advanced analytics to grow your business
- Comprehensive mobile options that go well with your e-commerce brand
- Hundreds of integration with apps you are already using
- Complex and flexible API documentation
ReferralCandy
Here one gets a reward for telling their friends about your store. It is the eCommerce store plug-in that helps your eCommerce site to get more word of mouth sales.
ReferralCandy has been successfully running referral marketing campaigns since 2009. This eCommerce tool has helped numerous brands to increase their referral rates and growing sales for customers.
Features of ReferralCandy
- ReferralCandy gives you the flexibility to create and set a variety of reward and incentive programs.
- It gives every customer their own referral link and makes it easy for new members to join your program.
- In today’s era, referral marketing is one of the most powerful methods to generate new customers for any other business.
- According to ReferralCandy, the ROI of referral marketing can go up to 300%, or even more!
WooCommerce.
The Ecommerce Platform for WordPress (Free + Paid Add-Ons).
With over 74 million downloads, WooCommerce powers around 25% of online stores worldwide. This simple open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress launched in 2011 and has grown into one of the most popular ecommerce solutions on the market today.
WooCommerce is a completely free plugin that you can add to your WordPress site. However, for more advanced functionality that you’ll find with other ecommerce platforms on this list, you need to add paid extensions.
Another drawback is scalability. I installed the plugin on my site and first noticed that it installed a total of four plugins to run and slowed down my site a bit.
Drawbacks aside, there are a few reasons that so many people use WooCommerce. First, it is a highly customizable solution. There is a large community of WooCommerce developers who add new functionality due to the open-source nature of the plugin.
Second, WordPress is one of the best platforms for SEO on the market. With endless SEO customizations and the ability to have more control over your search results, WooCommerce is a natural extension of the WordPress platform.
However, it’s not the only option, as I currently sell digital products on my WordPress site with the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin. I found it much faster as it’s a “headless commerce” solution that works via an API.
Volusion
Like BigCommerce and Shopify, Volusion is a comprehensive ecommerce solution.
Key features include:
- 24/7 customer support – impressively thorough support pages and video tutorials, plus phone support on higher price plans.
- Broad range of mobile-responsive themes – whatever you want to sell online, Volusion has you covered. Its themes cover fashion, beauty, food & beverages, electronics – pretty much anything you can imagine! These themes are also mobile-optimized, meaning your customer’s experience will be smooth no matter what device they’re using. However, for sheer number of designs, Volusion can’t match Shopify (offering 45 compared to Shopify’s 100+).
- App market – you can choose from over 20 apps to bolt onto your store from Volusion’s App Marketplace.
- Ecommerce tools – add products, offer subscription billing, get automatic tax rates, and integrate with Amazon and eBay – all without touching any code.
We like the simplicity of Volusion’s design. The overall offering is not as comprehensive as Shopify or BigCommerce, but Volusion’s store editor is pretty accessible.
Volusion does not charge transaction fees on any of its plans. This means you can keep all your profits and reinvest them in your store.
Like Shopify and BigCommerce, Volusion also has a great range of analytics tools. This makes it easy to assess where your store is doing well and where it could be improved.
Volusion is especially helpful if you’re selling over multiple channels, such as Facebook and Instagram. It allows you to pull all your sales into one place, making it really easy to keep track of everything.
But beware: Volusion doesn’t have any in-house blogging tools, which is less than ideal for growing your store. Blogging can be central to your marketing efforts, so Volusion’s lack of blogging tools is a big drawback.
On the whole, though, Volusion is a more than decent ecommerce software that can get you online even if you’re not at all technical. It’s not quite up to the standard of Shopify or BigCommerce, but it’s still an ecommerce solution that lets you build a stylish store and sell online without coding.
Shopify
Shopify is one of the best ecommerce software in the market today.
It’s suitable for small businesses who are just starting out, but we recommend it most for larger stores that sell a range of products and manage large inventories. Shopify customers include Tesla and Penguin Books Store. This is a solution with the scalability to grow with your store as your business expands.
Here are some key Shopify highlights:
- Over 100 beautiful, professional, mobile-ready themes to help your store look great
- Over 1,400 apps to add to your store and extend the functionality of your business
- 24/7 anytime support (perfect if you find yourself pulling your hair out at 3am)
- Qualified/re-approved experts available to hire if you want to customize your design and functions
Shopify is a one-stop-shop for ecommerce solutions. Its drag-and-drop functionality eliminates the usual challenges of building an online store, with no coding required whatsoever.
In our research testing, Shopify scored an impressive 4.5 out of 5 stars for its range and quality of sales tools. Some of these tools include:
- Multi-channel selling through Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and more
- 100+ payment options
- No limit on number of products you can sell
- Mobile app to manage your store on the go
- Customizable checkout and guest checkout options
- Automatic email notifications for customers
- Abandoned cart recovery
- In-depth analytics and insight reports
- All-round shipping support
To put it simply: Shopify is one of the very best ecommerce solutions. It’s used by brands like Red Bull and Tesla, so it must really be doing something right! It’s perfect for starting and scaling your business.
Shopify has three main price plans: Basic Shopify ($29/month), Shopify ($79/month), and Advanced Shopify ($299/month), unlocking a wider range of brilliant sales tools the more you pay.
Sellfy.
Best for Bloggers and Creators ($19/month).
Sellfy is a simple but powerful ecommerce platform that allows you to sell digital products, physical goods, and subscriptions – all from one place.
Their tool was originally built to sell digital products, (like eBooks, videos, music, and courses) but now they offer a fully-functional platform with all features necessary to sell physical products too.
Sellfy has built-in marketing tools and analytics and connects with over 1,000 third party apps with Zapier.
With a user-friendly dashboard and the ability to get your site up in a matter of minutes, Sellfy is best for bloggers, creators, and small businesses looking to sell digital products, subscriptions, and physical goods on their website, via buy buttons, and on their social media profiles.
It can easily integrate your website and product pages with your YouTube channel, Instagram page, or Soundcloud account with buy now buttons.
Plus, you don’t need to install multiple apps for your ecommerce site since Sellfy provides tools for email marketing, discount codes, upselling features to increase your sales, and more.
And since it’s cloud-based, you can use it from multiple devices like PCs, mobile devices, tablets, and laptops.
Some of its other key features include:
- Extensive design customization makes it easier for you to add your logo, change colors, etc.
- Allows you to add your own custom domain
- You can choose any language you want for your store
- Offers mobile-optimized interface for a seamless experience
- Integrates with payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe
- Provide in-depth analytics to track best performing products, analyze traffic channels, see top locations, and more
- Extensive integrations with more than 1000 tools
- PCI-DSS compliance
- Comes with a 14-day free trial period
Pricing Plans:
Sellfy offers three pricing plans.
The Starter Plan costs $19/month, the Business Plan is $39/month, and their Premium Plan costs $89/month.
All of the plans enable you to sell your products online, embed “buy now” buttons, add shopping carts, integrate with multiple payment options, and powerful analytics.
You don’t have to pay any additional transaction fees. In the Business and Premium Plans, you also get email credits and upselling features, priority customer support.
Their Premium Plan also offers migration services to switch from a different provider.
ShopBase.
Best Platform for White-Label, Cross-Border Commerce, and Print-on-Demand ($19/month).
ShopBase is a brand new platform that has been around since June 2019. They are known as a great tool if you perform dropshipping and are looking to white-label your products.
ShopBase offers fully-customizable, mobile-optimized storefronts created by a reputable design team. Every page comes with its own unique settings, and you can also edit every page’s HTML and CSS.
You can edit every facet of your checkout page, which is important for your ecommerce conversion rates. They also offer abandoned cart recovery emails to encourage visitors to complete their checkouts.
Some of its other key features include:
- Web hosting with unlimited bandwidth.
- A 256-bit SSL certificate included on every plan.
- 24/7 downtime monitoring and 99.98% uptime.
- Powerful online store builder. Well-designed store templates that are free.
- Fast site loading speed. It claims to be 3x faster than any other platform on the market.
- 250 product variants (2.5x more than Shopify).
- It’s easy to import your products and transfer your store from another platform to ShopBase. With the Migrate to ShopBase tool, it’s free to migrate from another platform like Shopify or WooCommerce.
- Provide premium product sourcing and fulfillment services for dropshipping merchants.
- ShopBase automatically optimizes everything on your product pages and checkout page to increase conversions.
Other than that, there are only a few downsides with ShopBase.
For example, there aren’t as many apps in their app store to integrate with compared to other platforms. Additionally, if you’re not looking to dropship, print-on-demand, or become a white-label business, ShopBase is not for you.
Their plans start at $19/month, and their Basic Base plan provides everything you need to get up and running and make your first sale.
If you’re planning to get started with a white-label, print-on-demand, or dropshipping business, ShopBase is the best choice for you.
WP Engine – Best ecommerce platform for lightning-fast web speed
WP Engine is primarily a web hosting platform for your blogging needs, but its Genesis pro subscription plan packs a powerful statement when it comes to ecommerce functionality.
The Genesis framework comes with built-in SEO-optimized features curated by experts. The Gutenberg-ready site builder can be used to implement reusable modules for design and content. You can also freely change headers, logos, or any other aspect of your site to match your ecommerce store aesthetics.
Also, there’s an open-source community of developers backing the product with auditing and security updates. The community also provides useful integrations, plugins, add-ons, and extensions. It integrates with WooCommerce and other major ecommerce apps.
The pricing for WP Engine’s startup plan starts at $25 per month.
GoDaddy – Best easy-to-use ecommerce platform for small businesses
Most business owners know GoDaddy as the leader in domain name hosting. What a lot of people don’t know is that GoDaddy comes with a powerful ecommerce website builder.
GoDaddy’s ecommerce platform provides you with all the tools and insights you need to operate a fully-functional online store. It comes with all the essential features like product listings, a shopping cart, multiple payment options, SSL certificates, shipping, and more.
The product is easy to use and comes with helpful guides and powerful customer support to set up your ecommerce platform easily. The site builder is simple to use and helps you build a modern-looking ecommerce site without any coding knowledge.
True story: Back when I was a technical klutz, I used GoDaddy to build my first-ever website. So I can vouch for this firsthand.
You can use the online store’s inventory feature to manage stock levels and let your customers know if a popular item is available. You can also connect your online store to marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and sync inventory across all channels.
GoDaddy integrates comfortably with apps like Stripe, LiveChat, Acuity Scheduling, and other mainstream business software. Support is available 24/7 via phone, email, and chat.
The GoDaddy website builder starts at $10 per month with an option for a free trial.
Compete For YOUR Market, Not THE Market
Everyone we talked to tied their store into social media feeds and online marketplaces. This was the lifeblood of their digital stores’ traffic. It created brand new streams of revenues for brick-and-mortars. “They were selling only in their store,” one developer said about a beauty shop, “giving them a very easy-to-use ecommerce site literally just open[ed] worlds up.”
Once the word about their products was online, it spread, and now they have their own niche market of shoppers from across the country.
“I have a presence on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, all those spots,” a recording artist told us. SquareSpace makes it as easy as possible for her to gain followers, subscribers, and eventually paying customers.
The platforms I’ve recommended let you connect to all the big social channels, and are constantly adding newer, trendier social media options. People using website builders like Wix were using links to get followers from social media to their stores. It was very effective, but Shopify let store owners push further. With the TikTok app, Shopify users could link their store to TikTok for Business and generate shoppable, in-app content for customers.
BigCommerce has a comparable TikTok app, for example, but the other platforms do not. For example, you can embed TikTok on your Wix site, but you can’t design a shoppable TikTok video within the Wix platform.
I’d pay very close attention to the integrations, plugins, and apps available. Get current information and read the reviews in the app store–these are a goldmine for assessing the quality of the plugin or app.
But you can’t just blast away on every marketing channel. The users we spoke with who were finding success were extremely targeted in both the channels they selected and how they positioned themselves within the channel.
One user we talked with loved the ability to do email marketing directly within SquareSpace. It was just “clicking a button” as opposed to installing a plugin or buying another tool to integrate. At the same time, though, she had to be careful “not to overwhelm them or cause email fatigue.”
Pick your channels carefully and word your offers thoughtfully. As the SquareSpace user explained, “I want them to pay attention to a message when they do get it from us.”
CONCLUSION
It is vital for business owners to analyze the latest trends as it helps them in establishing a successful business. The following discussed e-commerce platforms are based on two significant factors; those include features, and popularity.
Ecommerce is ever increasing in popularity. This has led to an increase in the variety and quality of tools available to help you run your own website or online business. And with the amount of competition between vendors, the quality of these tools improves year on year. However, it can be difficult to keep up with all the new features and software without breaking the bank.