Ecommerce is a growing industry. If you have a business that sells physical goods, having an online store is one of the most important things you can do to increase sales. There are many advantages to online shopping, but not everyone has the time or skill to create their own e-commerce platform online, or they don’t want to pay for one. If you’re curious about which of the best e-commerce platforms is right for your business, try one of them and outsource your product photography.
There are many online shop builder platforms you could use to help build and launch your ecommerce site. But which one is the best ecommerce platform to use? Are all online shop builders made equal? When it comes to the best online shop platforms, there are some things you need to consider. Things like marketing, support, extension and product options (to name a few). In this blog post I will do my best to put everything in perspective and provide points and tips on how to choose the best online shop platform for you.
The ecommerce market is growing exponentially and all popular brands are trying to establish their online shop. This rule applies both to renowned companies and small businesses. The convenience, comfort and time-saving online shopping gives us, is really hard to overestimate. And we should also admit that modern equipment and software will improve efficiency of any business. That’s why more and more people try to manage their business in the Internet, connecting with a lot of customers by improving processes on all stages of business life cycle.
The online shopping market is growing and direct to consumer sales are becoming a major force in the retail industry. To meet with the demands of this evolving market, eCommerce platforms have arrived and they have the potential to change the way we buy products online.
What is an ecommerce platform?
An ecommerce platform is a way to build and create an online experience that allows you to make sales and fulfill orders—no matter where your customers are or where they like to shop.
While most people think their ecommerce platform is just a tool that lets them list products and accept payments online, a true ecommerce platform is much more than that. Your ecommerce platform should be a complete business command center from where you control everything from inventory to marketing. It should let you process payments but should also give you seamless access to all of the tools you need to sell online, including (but not limited to) your own online store.
1. Shopify
- Price: Basic Shopify: $29.99/month; Shopify: $79/month; Advanced Shopify: $299/month; 10% discount on annual plans and 20% on biennial plans when paid upfront
- Free trial length: 14 days
- Customer support options: Callback phone support; email support; support provided in 19 languages; community forum; support content
- Integrated sales channels: Facebook, Instagram, Google, Walmart Marketplace, eBay, and Amazon
- Mobile app features: Suite of mobile tools to fully manage your online business
- POS: Yes
Shopify is, arguably, the best software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for ecommerce. Our robust platform comes with complementary tools and features for multi-channel selling and dropshipping, so you can sell directly through your website, at your retail store, on social media and third-party marketplaces, and everywhere in between. Choose from over 100 paid and free themes to get your store up and running fast with zero learning curve.
Plus, Shopify handles all aspects of your business—you can use our best-in-class suite of business tools to build a complete business command center. Shop Pay handles payment processing with low transaction fees, Shopify POS administers in-person sales, and Shopify Fulfillment can help you get products into customers’ hands. It also offers unlimited bandwidth and online storage, so you don’t need to pay more as you get more traffic and grow your business.
Those are just a few of the many powerful apps that work together seamlessly as part of the Shopify ecosystem. You can also tap into our extensive library of third-party apps that can extend your experience with Shopify even further. Shopify also offers a free email marketing service, abandoned cart recovery, search engine optimization, and more native tools for business owners.
Shopify’s mobile app offers almost complete parity to manage your business online or on your mobile device, with everything from fulfilling orders on mobile to adding products, real-time sales and inventory updates, and more.
With all of these powerful features, you can set up your business with little technical know-how and budget and scale to an international online brand without changing platforms along the way.
2. Wix
- Price: Business Basic: $23/month; Business Unlimited: $27/month; Business VIP: $49/month
- Free trial length: No free trial
- Customer support options: Callback service available 24/7
- Integrated sales channels: Facebook and Instagram require third-party app Ecwid
- Mobile app features: The ability to manage your website, though lacks key business tools like inventory management; requires separate app to use mobile POS
- Point-of-sale: Yes
Wix is a user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder that offers customizable templates, web hosting, and domain name registration. You can build a basic website for free, but you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan to use Wix’s ecommerce features.
As far as ecommerce functionality goes, Wix has a few helpful tools. The platform lets merchants track orders, accept online payments, sell products on multiple channels, and create abandoned cart campaigns.
However, it lacks certain features that are imperative for product-based businesses in particular. Shortcomings include the absence of low stock alerts and other key inventory management features. If you have more than 10 or so products, you’ll want a platform with more robust inventory tracking tools. Plus, you need to use a third-party app for social commerce integrations.
3. BigCommerce
- Price: Standard: $29.95/month; Plus: $79.95/month, or $71.95/month when paid annually; Pro: $299.95/month, or $269.96/month when paid annually; Enterprise custom pricing
- Free trial length: 15 days
- Customer support options: 24/7 technical support via phone, email, or chat
- Integrated sales channels: Google Shopping, Facebook, price comparison engines, eBay, Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and Instagram
- Mobile app features: View analytics, update orders, manage inventory and products, and search for customers; some features are Android-only
- Point-of-sale: Yes
BigCommerce is an ecommerce platform well-suited to enterprise-level software companies. Like Shopify and Wix, BigCommerce offers web hosting and lots of customization options. However, you can’t register your domain name through BigCommerce, so you’ll need to purchase and register elsewhere and port it over.
Valuable features include international selling, SEO tools, and multichannel selling on social and third-party marketplaces. However, with these powerful features also comes complexity.
Lack of flexibility and ease of use were major factors in Grace & Lace’s decision to migrate from the platform. It moved over to Shopify Plus, Shopify’s enterprise solution, to take advantage of more than just the ecommerce platform—the brand quickly reaped the benefits of having an entire ecosystem of business tools from Shopify.
4. Magento Commerce
- Price: Custom pricing only
- Free trial length: No free trial
- Customer support options: Phone support and online help center/technical support resources available
- Integrated sales channels: Amazon
- Mobile app features: n/a
- Point-of-sale: Third-party extensions available
Magento is a non-hosted ecommerce platform made for developers who want a powerful, flexible system they can customize. And while this offers many benefits for brands that want a completely tailored platform, it also presents a lot of hurdles in the form of complexity and cost. You need advanced coding and development skills to build out and manage the entire infrastructure yourself.
Magento also lacks tools to create a seamless multichannel strategy. There’s no easy way to turn on social commerce or marketplace selling with Magento, and the same rings true for foreign currencies. So if going global is in your plans, Magento may not be the best ecommerce platform for you.
Ecommerce site Character.com maintained its complex Magento site with thousands of products, tons of integrations, and solid SEO—despite its poor UX. Magento was limiting and too complex, so Character.com migrated to Shopify. Conversions increased by 40% and its success soon pushed it to upgrade to Shopify Plus to take advantage of even more features.
5. WooCommerce
- Price: Average monthly fee is up to $30; WooCommerce estimates costs to be $120/year for hosting; $15/year for domain name registration; up to $100/year for your site theme; up to $108/year for shipping; 2.9% plus $0.30 per sale; up to $348/year for marketing and communications; up to $79/year for SEO; up to $65/year for SSL certificate
- Free trial length: None, but offers a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Customer support options: Only available via live chat or email; no support offered for third-party apps and plug-ins
- Integrated sales channels: Google Shopping, Etsy, eBay, Facebook, Amazon, Pinterest, and Walmart; integrations are disjointed
- Mobile app features: Add products, manage orders, and view analytics
- Point-of-sale: Native POS available
WooCommerce is especially familiar to those who know WordPress, as it’s essentially an add-on to the popular blogging platform. WordPress is traditionally for content-driven websites, not ecommerce, so WooCommerce is WordPress’s answer to those who want to sell online.
Because WordPress is a content management system (CMS) first and an ecommerce platform second, many of the selling features are simple or rely on adding apps. And while there are plenty of apps and plug-ins you can add to your store, the more you use, the more likely it is you’ll break something. And this isn’t always a risk worth taking, considering limited support options.
Learn more: Monetize your WordPress blog without migrating to an entirely new platform with the Shopify Buy Button. You can embed the button and start selling on your blog starting at only $9/month.
Overall, WooCommerce’s fragility and unreliability makes it difficult not only to build an online store but also to maintain it. Plus, it’s not hosted, so you’ll have the added task and cost of managing your website hosting. It also lacks PCI compliance, which puts your business at risk when processing payments.
6. PrestaShop
- Price: Free
- Free trial length: No trial
- Customer support options: Technical support available through paid support plans; support provided via phone, Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (GMT+2); help center, technical documentation, and community forum available online
- Integrated sales channels: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Facebook
- Mobile app features: n/a
- Point-of-sale: Available as add-on modules
PrestaShop is an affordable open-source ecommerce platform that’s great for beginning businesses that have a somewhat technical background. There’s no built-in customer support, and integrations can be hit or miss, so PrestaShop users do a lot of troubleshooting themselves with the help of the community.
Business tools and features include inventory tracking, online shopping cart, international selling, and analytics reporting. You also have lots of control over the privacy and security settings on your PrestaShop site.
Overall, maintaining your ecommerce site with PrestaShop can be cumbersome when it comes to third-party hosting, the multitude of unvetted add-ons and modules, and the cumbersome setup.
7. Squarespace
- Price: Personal: $16/month, or $12/month when paid annually; Business: $26/month, or $18/month when paid annually; Basic Commerce: $30/month, or $26/month when paid annually; Advanced Commerce: $46/month, or $40/month when paid annually; Enterprise pricing also available
- Free trial length: 14 days, and you can opt for a one-time seven-day trial extension
- Customer support options: Email available 24/7; live chat available Monday through Friday, 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET
- Integrated sales channels: Shopping Feed extension to sell on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Google Actions
- Mobile app features: Website editing, scan shipping labels, order management, inventory management, and customer communication
- POS: Available via mobile app
The next website builder with an ecommerce platform option is Squarespace. Like Wix, Squarespace uses drag-and-drop functionality, which requires little technical know-how. Both platforms are primarily website builders, not online selling platforms, so they require a fair amount of tweaking to add ecommerce functionality.
Squarespace requires time and patience to set up if you want to sell online, not to mention there are only two payment integrations, Stripe and PayPal. If you have the budget, you may even outsource it. Once you’ve set up the ecommerce function, Squarespace has decent inventory tracking tools. Higher-tiered plans also come with the ability to sell gift cards or subscription-based products.
If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of the backend in Squarespace to turn your website into a full-blown online store, you can simply add the Shopify Buy Button.
For just $9/month, you can add a small embeddable code to your Squarespace site and leverage Shopify’s advanced ecommerce tools to handle the rest. With them, you get to add an unlimited number of products, use secure checkout with more than 100+ compatible payment gateways, track sales and growth trends, easily integrate orders and shipping, and get global tax and currency support.
8. Big Cartel
- Price: 5 products: free; 50 products: $9.99/month; 250 products: $19.99/month; 500 products: $29.99/month
- Free trial length: None
- Customer support options: Email available every day, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET
- Integrated sales channels: n/a
- Mobile app features: Store analytics, add/edit products, track order shipping, manage discounts, and print packing slips
- Point-of-sale: Requires third-party integration
Big Cartel is a fully hosted ecommerce platform and website builder that is specifically designed for makers, artists, and crafters—the types of businesses you’d expect to see on Etsy. Big Cartel has customizable templates, domain name registration, and marketing tools.
While you can change the look and feel of your site, Big Cartel limits merchants to five images for each product. Payment and integration options are also limited, so this platform makes it much harder to scale as a multichannel business.
Pricing is based on how many products you sell, so it can get pretty costly as your business and product collections grow.
9. Weebly
- Price: Free
- Free trial length: n/a
- Customer support options: Chat, email, phone
- Integrated sales channels: n/a
- Mobile app features: Drag-and-drop builder, order fulfillment, inventory management, payments, analytics
- Point-of-sale: Integrated Square POS
Weebly is a simple ecommerce website builder owned by Square. It works well if you want a small online store that doesn’t need much upkeep. You don’t need any technical expertise to operate Weebly’s platform, but it offers a very basic online store.
You can build a store on Weebly for free. The trade-off? You can’t use your own domain name or get rid of the in-app ads until you buy a paid ecommerce plan.
10. 3dcart
- Price: $9.99 per month
- Free trial length: 15 days
- Customer support options: 24/7 phone, email, and chat support
- Integrated sales channels: eBay, Amazon, Facebook
- Mobile app features: n/a
- Point-of-sale: Available for purchase
3dcart offers a shopping cart for store owners who want to sell online. The platform doesn’t have extensive features, but you can build a mobile-ready storefront fast. It offers hundreds of out-of-the-box features and templates to create and operate your store. You can also use its API and apps to integrate your 3dcart store with third-party apps.
Choosing the right ecommerce software for you
If you’ve figured out how to start an online store and are ready to choose which ecommerce platform is best for you, there are a number of considerations. The best ecommerce platform for you might be different from the best platform for another merchant—you need to consider your unique business needs and goals.
Many merchants choose the easiest and most affordable online store builder, which often leads them to Shopify. But there’s more to the decision than day-to-day use and cost. You need to think about where your business is headed and anticipate your future needs—and find a platform that can anticipate those needs as well.
Now, it’s about finding the best platform for commerce—online and in-store and everything in between. This means you need a best-in-class online store and best-in-class suite of business management tools. Look for a platform that consistently invests in its technology and stays ahead of the curve when it comes to commerce. Your website builder can become so much more than just a platform where you do business—it can be a vehicle for growth.
When evaluating your choices, think through the following scenarios:
- I need to sell my products online, offline, and to all my customers—no matter where they are—and accept payment for those sales.
- I need to deliver my products to my customers in the best way for my business.
- I need to engage my current and future customers to grow my business.
- I need to operate my business day to day, doing everything from managing my finances to making sure my strategies are working, learning new tactics, and getting technical support when I need it.
Know your costs
While budget shouldn’t be the only deciding factor, it’s certainly an important one. You can get started for as little as $100, but you’ll likely put more than that into your startup business before you start recuperating your investments, especially upfront.
According to our research, most small business owners spend about $40,000 during their first year—and only 9% of that goes to online business needs. (Though Shopify merchants spent an average of $38,000, while non-Shopify merchants came in closer to $41,000.) And when you have a platform that supports your business needs, you can make the money back or offset it with your profit margins.
With so many other aspects of your business to fund, it’s important you find an ecommerce platform that won’t suck your budget dry but still has the features you need to operate your business and make a profit.
When evaluating costs, look at more than just the setup and monthly fees. You’ll also want to account for payment processing fees, costs for adding integrations, and potential fees for customer support (PrestaShop, for instance). Remember, if hosting isn’t included, you’ll need to figure that in as an added expense too.
Find a good fit for your business model
Selling online takes many forms. You might sell tangible products or digital products, and other business models have emerged as well. If you dropship, for example, you’ll want an ecommerce platform that can easily connect in the back end to streamline operations.
A platform like Shopify has tons of apps you can add to your site to make selling easier for different business models. There are apps for print-on-demand and subscription businesses, for example, that make it easier to run on Shopify compared to other platforms.
Look for safe and reliable checkout and payment gateways
Checkout is a core component of your ecommerce site. You need a protected and dependable way to accept payments, while ensuring the process is quick and painless for shoppers. Shop Pay, for instance, increases checkout speed by four times. Shopify also offers simple integrations with over 100 payment gateways, so you can offer the most relevant payment options for your audience, no matter where they are in the world.
Plus, it’s extra important to instill trust at this stage, so you’ll want to accommodate familiar payment methods like mobile wallets and PayPal. These known platforms can make customers more comfortable providing payment information and make their checkout process easier at the same time.
Consider your future business plans
While your business might have humble beginnings, you likely have a vision for where you want to take it in the future. These goals are important to think about, even if you don’t plan to become a global brand.
You might also want to add physical retail to your business at some point. With a limited ecommerce platform, POS integrations may be cumbersome. You risk having inaccurate inventory data due to disjointed online and in-person systems.
With a platform like Shopify, everything is tracked and synced in a single place. So you’ll have accurate inventory and sales data at any time—and you can be up and running for in-person sales in a matter of minutes. And you can also add services like local delivery and take advantage of the Shopify Fulfillment Network.
Many businesses need additional funding down the line. In fact, as many as two-thirds of entrepreneurs pull from personal savings to fund their business in the early stages, as many as 23% borrow from friends and family, and 21% use personal loans, according to our analysis.
But there are other business funding options that pose less risk to personal relationships. Look for ecommerce platforms that provide assistance to merchants, like Shopify Capital small business lending.
Conclusion:
If you are looking for an ecommerce platform, you are considering to develop an online store or you want a complete solution for your IT project, you definitely already know what features and characteristics your new website or application must have.
There are numerous online shop platforms that you can choose from. Since the e-commerce market is still growing, more and more online shop platform solutions are popping up every day. There are plenty of shopping carts, but keep in mind that not all are created equal. Depending on your needs and how your business will grow over time, you should choose the platform that can scale accordingly while keeping your monthly costs low. Having best ecommerce platform is one thing, but you have to have a merchant account in order to get started.