In today’s digital age, online shopping has become the fastest-growing form of retail, offering a massive opportunity for businesses to reach consumers globally. According to Statista, global eCommerce sales are projected to surpass $8 trillion by 2027 having reached over $5.784 trillion in 2023.
Whether you are just starting or looking to scale, finding the right eCommerce platform is crucial for your business’s success.
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Shopify
Wix WooCommerce
Square Online
The 10 Best Ecommerce Platforms
The best thing about ecommerce platforms is they save you the money and time to find a team of developers to launch your online store.
Here are some of the best ecommerce platforms in the market.
1.Big Commerce
BigCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms. It has two offers, BigCommerce Essentials and BigCommerce Enterprise.
BigCommerce essentials is best for small businesses. BigCommerce Enterprise however, is a more customized experience for large businesses. Whichever one you pick, you can scale for growth. Over 1000 fortune 500 companies use BigCommerce.
Setting up a store on BigCommerce keeps you organized, you can start with setting products and build your website further. The advantage is BigCommerce walks you through the process of setting up your online store. BigCommerce has open APIs, zero transaction fees, and an open partner ecosystem.
Ease of use
The BigCommerce has two main areas to set up, adding products and customizing the store. Their store design tool is not the easiest to use out there when we compare to the likes of Wix and BlabBuilder. It can have a higher learning curve.
BigCommerce Features
BigCommerce has some of the best in class SEO features. 40+ payment gateways or payment options. BigCommerce allows you to customize Title tags, Meta descriptions and URLs except for blog posts.
It also has a sitemap feature, and robot.txt (you can make edits to robot.txt). Another upside is its mobile optimized throughout the customer experience. Features like abandoned cart recovery are available, and lots of testing and reporting options.
App Integrations
BigCommerce can integrate with everything you need to run your entire eCommerce business. You can have accounting, marketing, point of sales (POS) and other systems you can think of.
Now, this is where it gets interesting, if you can’t find an integration, the BigCommerce development team can use their RESTful API to build it.
Support
Support is available 24/7 by phone, live chat and email. There is a whole community of BigCommerce users, who you can ask questions in the community forum and also a big knowledgebase.
Pricing
BigCommerce Essentials has three price packages and an enterprise package for BigCommerce Enterprise. Prices range from $29.95/ month for standard to $299.95/month for Pro in BigCommerce Essentials. Custom prices are available for Enterprise.
2. Shopify
If you want to run a Drop shipping business, this might just be the option for you. Shopify is versatile and has the ability to adapt to suite your business needs.
With Shopify, you can make for a simple and effective way of selling with drop shipping features, and social selling. Shopify hosts over a million merchants worldwide and nearly 1.5million websites. Shopify has 31% market share of ecommerce stores in United States.
Shopify’s brand started as a way to appeal to “dreamers”. In their marketing reached new users who want to make it through ecommerce.
Ease of use
It’s easy to build a store with Shopify. Even the most inexperienced users can set up a drop shipping store with ease. Shopify is also makes it easy to design a nice looking store for your eCommerce business.
Shopify Features
Unlike BigCommerce, Shopify has some drawbacks when it comes to SEO features. Shopify forces you to use categories in your URLs for example, siteurl.com/category/products/.
It’s not an ideal setup for search engine rankings. Search rankings are important because you would want to rank for your products.
You can however, customize Title tags, Meta descriptions and URLs. Also when there is a URL change, Shopify automatically creates a 301 redirect for you.
They also have a lower number of product variations, limited to a hundred. Say you are selling Jackets with in different colors, sizes and materials, you can only have a 100 variations of the jackets.
You can integrate with Facebook, Instagram, Google, Walmart Marketplace, eBay, and Amazon to sell on these channels.
They are however a good and reliable ecommerce platform for small businesses. Shopify plans include reporting options for you sales, profits and customer reports. With Shopify plus, you can create custom reports.
App Integrations
Some of the best integrations are available, and they are easy to use to customize your website.
There are more than 2400 apps you can integrate with on the Shopify app store, making it very flexible. It also allows you receive payment with some of the most popular payment gateways.
PayPal, stripe, Authorize.net, 2checkout are some of the payment gateway options available. In addition they have Shopify payments, which only available in some parts of Europe, Asia, America, Australia and New eland.
Support
Support is offered 24/7 by phone, live chat and email. There is a ton of support documents, tutorials, and guides you can use to get answers to your questions.
Pricing
Shopify has three plans and an enterprise package for BigCommerce Enterprise.
3.Wix Ecommerce
Wix is one of the best ecommerce platforms for a small business. It is a website builder with additional ecommerce functionality at an additional fee of $20/month.
Wix websites are optimized for mobile, giving you an advantage for both iPhone and android phones. Wix plans come with a free SSL certificate.
Ease of use
Wix is labeled one of the easiest tools to use in both building a website and an online store. Their builder is easy to familiarize yourself with and you can get your ecommerce business setup quick.
Wix Ecommerce Features
Wix ecommerce allows merchants to track orders, and accept online payments. With Wix you can sell products across social and other channels. You can even create abandoned cart campaigns straight from Wix.
Wix has some great blogging features that even a beginner will find easy to use. You get a range of designer built templates to work with to launch your website. And, you have the option customize to suite your brand more.
You get a number of inbuilt features to help you succeed online. It is however not the best for SEO. Additionally, there are always new features launched to help you build your ecommerce business
App Integrations
Wix integrates with the most popular secure online payment gateways. Also, Wix now offers multichannel integration. Wix ADI for AI supported branding. It offers lots of apps and plugins to help you add more functionality to your website.
Support
Support is available 24/7 by phone, live chat and email. Wix has blogs, guides, on how to start and grow your business. You have a great deal of information about getting things started. From building your brand to launching you ecommerce business.
Pricing
Wix has different prices for both starters and established businesses. There are also transaction fees to consider when choosing to build your website with Wix. Ecommerce starts from $25/ month.
4. Squarespace
Squarespace has recently been gearing up for the ecommerce space, with some special features.
With Squarespace, you can create a beautiful website. Also, if you are already using the platform for your website, and want to add an online store, you can do it with ease.
Ease of use
Like Wix, Squarespace is also one of the best website builders with drag and drop features. This means building your ecommerce business without knowledge of coding.
There are templates ready for you to add your brand story with visuals and writing. It’s easy to work with and navigate, making it fall among the best platform for beginners and enterprise businesses. A Squarespace website is easy to set up and also great at because it’s mobile friendly.
Squarespace Features
Squarespace may not be the best option for SEO and site speed optimizations, but they are flexible with their drag and drop features. They have made it easy for anyone without technical skills to build a website.
There are inbuilt analytics tools to give you a clear picture of website visitors, in case you are not using google analytics. With Squarespace you can’t go wrong with a beautiful website design.
App Integrations
You can get integrations with shipping solutions like ShipBob and ShipStation. Also, you can get real time shipping rates from major providers like USPS, and FedEx.
You also have at your disposal the most popular payment gateways like PayPal to accept different forms of payment.
Support
Support is offered 24/7. There is a host of tools to help you set up your business online and also running promotions to drive traffic to your website.
Pricing
Squarespace has four main pricing plans, two lower plans are for building your website and the top two are for your online store. Personal Plan: $12/month, Business Plan: $18/month, Basic (Online Store): $26/month, Advanced (Online Store): $40/month
5. Shift4Shop
The Shift4Shop (3DCart) customer experience is intuitive, it’s been designed to get store owners to launch quickly. If you are familiar with CSS and HTML it might be great for you to know, these customizations are available.
Ease of use
Shift4Shop has a slightly higher learning curve than other ecommerce platforms. Its quick and easy to setup a store and integrate different gateways.
The more sales you make a year, you can easily upgrade to a new plan. So, Shift4Shop is built for growth.
Shift4Shop Features
It has decent SEO and content marketing features, and options. Also, you can customize your store using CSS and HTML.
Shift4Shop adds more than a 100 themes a day.
App Integrations
You can get integrations with shipping solutions like ShipBob and ShipStation. Also, you can get real time shipping rates from major providers like USPS, and FedEx.
You also have at your disposal the most popular payment gateways like PayPal to accept different forms of payment.
Support
Support is offered 24/7. There is a host of tools to help you set up your business online and also running promotions to drive traffic to your website.
Pricing
Shift4Shop pricing ranges from free to $229 / month with differences in the number of users and unlimited products in all plans.
6.WooCommerce
WooCommerce works best for WordPress users. It is the best option if you are looking to add ecommerce functionality to your existing WordPress website.
Unlike other ecommerce platforms, WooCommerce is not a standalone Website builder. If you know your way around WordPress, you can use WooCommerce.
If you don’t have a WordPress site, you will need to make an additional investment in a WordPress website.
Ease of use
WooCommerce will need knowledge of WordPress to use it. But, after learning managing your store becomes easy.
If you want to grow your business, much of it will require you to involve a developer to accomplish more. It may need coding knowledge to use the full functionality of WooCommerce.
WooCommerce Features
It’s an excellent choice for SEO and content marketing just like WordPress. It will work with a number of add-ons.
You can have email marketing tools, social media selling and one click upsells. Also you can include shipping calculations. You may however need help from a professional WordPress developer to get these setup.
App Integrations
You can extend functionality with lots of apps, plugins, and widgets. You can also integrate with email marketing, and social selling tools to extend functionality.
Support
Support is offered 24/7. There is a whole community of WordPress Experts, who you can ask questions in the community forum.
Pricing
To get started, WooCommerce is free to use and the plugin comes as a requirement for every WordPress theme with an online store. You will only need to pay for additional functionality which is through extensions or if you want to expand your store. Also there is the cost of hosting and managing your WordPress website.
7.Ecwid
Ecwid is not used to build a standalone ecommerce website like other ecommerce platforms. With Ecwid you add an online store to an existing website.
You can use Ecwid to sell across many channels including your website, social media, and other market places like Amazon.
It is an “eCommerce Widget” which is what Ecwid stands for. What happens is it generates an electronic widget you place on site where you want ecommerce functionality.
Ecwid works like WooCommerce but its applications work beyond WordPress websites. You can get a free plan if you are selling products below 10 items.
Ease of use
Ecwid is easy to use and understand. They provide a menu that helps you to easily access the tools you need for your website.
They walk you through a seamless onboarding process that helps you setup and provide you with a checklist of your steps along the way.
Ecwid Features
Ecwid is SEO friendly with the option to customize your page titles and descriptions. It also has inbuilt analytics features which are great for measuring your success in sales.
You get lots of customization options. You can also manage your store using Ecwid mobile app which allows you to even sell products in person as you move.
App Integrations
They have a marketplace where you can find a number of apps to integrate and improve functionality of your store. It’s also great with adding extra integrations and store features.
You can integrate with a number of payment gateways to process customer payments.
Support
Support is depends on the plan you are on. You get
- email support on the free plan,
- email and live chat on venture plan
- Phone Live chat and email on business and unlimited plans
Additionally you have access to tutorials and other self-help resources for all plans.
Pricing
Ecwid offers a free plan and three paid plans: Venture: $15/month, Business: $35/month and Unlimited: $99/month
8.Volusion
Volusion is one of the world’s favorite ecommerce platforms for entrepreneurs.
It is flexible, and is a great option for selling physical products online. You will need to buy an additional SSL certificate to secure your website. Volusion has a clear marketing management and inventory management system.
Ease of use
Volusion’s drag and drop functionality makes it easy for beginners. It has a convenient and easy to use interface great for beginners.
Onboarding support makes it easy to setup your online store.
Volusion Features
Volusion has some of the best reporting and analytics features. Its drag and drop functionality is straight forward for beginners because you also get in page editing options. You don’t get a lot of free theme options but, you can make customizations to suite your brand.
The reporting feature allows you to better make decisions on how you can scale your eCommerce business. You get a range of inbuilt subscription payment options.
Like Ecwid you also get a mobile app so you can sell while on the move.
App Integrations
It has limited cross selling features which might be an advantage especially if you want to reach a wider market.
Support
Support is available 24/7 by phone, live chat and email. There is a whole community of BigCommerce users, who you can ask questions in the community forum and also a big knowledgebase.
Pricing
Volusion offers plans based on the number of products you sell. Sell 100 products $29/month, Sell 5000 products $79/month and Volusion premium (unlimited products)
9. Weebly
One of the best platforms for beginners. Weebly started off as a website building tool without ecommerce. You get a range of templates to use for your website and Weebly online store.
You will find that platforms like Square online use Weebly for the building side of the ecommerce solution and Weebly uses square online for its ecommerce functionality.
Ease of use
Weebly is easy to use, and especially works best for beginners and small businesses. The range of templates make it the perfect tool for beginners.
To create a website with Weebly is easy. So, if you are setting up a simple ecommerce website for your small business with not much advanced functionality this is the option for you.
Weebly Features
With Weebly, you can manage hundreds of products, track inventory and boost sales by showing customers the number of products remaining.
Their plans come with inbuilt marketing automation tools to help you sell your business online. It also has email marketing tools for you to make use of.
App Integrations
Weebly integrates with some of the most popular tools in eCommerce like PayPal marketing, Communication, Marketing and Social
Support
Support is offered 24/7 by phone, live chat and email. There is a community forum Weebly users, who you can ask questions in the community forum and also a big knowledgebase.
Pricing
Price ranges from $12 to $38/month for pro, business, and business plus.
10.Square Online
Square started off as an in person solution to accept credit card payments and has since evolved to online. With square you don’t get many options, you just choose your font and a color closest to your branding.
Your website launches fast yes, but with not much options to customize. If you already have an ecommerce website, Square online is not the best option for as it offers less options to collect payments.
It is suited for small business, with small product variations and small catalogs. These would be artisans, craft shops and small service businesses and artists.
Ease of use
Square online is user friendly. Website setup can take only a few minutes to go live. IT can link with other big platforms like BigCommerce, WooCommerce and other ecommerce platforms.
Square Online Features
It offers full reporting functionality to all users. You get access to sales, discount and taxes reports including employee sales performance reports.
It has some SEO advantages in its features, for permalinks, SEO titles, Descriptions and mobile usability.
App Integrations
More than 100 third party app integrations available which include POS, accounting and marketing tools. The integrations extend functionality to even other ecommerce platforms.
Support
Support tools are available, with the sales team and even a tweet @SqSupport. The contact sales form will send you to Weebly since it’s used for the building side of Square online.
Pricing
Price ranges from $12 to $38/month for pro, business, and business plus.
11.Zyro
Zyro website builder is easy to use and full of great tools that let you control your online presence. The website builder lacks a free option, but if you’re just starting out with an online business, that’s probably not a big issue. It lets you customize everything from the header and footer, to the fonts used throughout your site.
With the Commerce plan you get unlimited product listings and the ability to accept credit card payments through Stripe; all other plans have five product listings and no ecommerce capabilities, although you can add PayPal buttons
Key features
Zyro has plenty to like when it comes to building websites. For starters, it offers a fantastic and easy-to-use interface that gives you complete control over your site’s content and layout. You can manipulate elements with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to drag-and-drop functionality and an intuitive element editor.
There’s also a WYSIWYG editing environment that lets you see changes in real time as you work on your site. Another feature you will like is Zyro’s unique AI Design feature. With this tool, you can give the service some information about your business (or personal needs) and it will use artificial intelligence to create the site for you.
On top of the beautiful features
- Excellent uptime
- Easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface
- Cool, AI-powered tools
- Logo maker
- Free SSL certificate
- Useful photo repository
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth in all plans
Pricing
Zyro offers four pricing tiers for monthly and annual subscriptions. The ecommerce functionality starts from the Business plan, for P11.49/month, Online store $15.90/month and the advanced store for $25.90/month all billed monthly. You can get up to 68% off when you choose an annual subscription.
What is an Ecommerce Platform?
An ecommerce platform is a tool that helps you manage your business website, marketing, sales, and operations online. It has the necessary tools your business needs to run safe transactions online and keep your customer relationship growing.
With the help of an ecommerce platform, you will have different payment options available to your customers. Also, it gives you the ability to launch your business faster online. There are skilled teams behind ecommerce platforms who help you set up and launch your business.
How to choose the best Ecommerce platform
An ecommerce platform should make it easy for your business to connect with your customers. You should be able to both launch a website and manage your online store. But, how do you as a business take advantage of this? The answer lies in the best ecommerce platforms available to the market.
We understand businesses vary by size, volume of sales and growth potential. But we believe this review will give you an idea of the best ecommerce platform you can partner with for your growth of your business. With that said, here are some qualities we have used to review these ecommerce platforms. These include
Ease of use
If you don’t have coding knowledge or just don’t want to concern yourself with coding, this will likely be a decider for you. Some platforms have easier to use features.
Anyone can use them, others will require you to gain more knowledge to use them. Make sure the platform you pick is easy and straightforward for you to use.
Check for customization capabilities, like drag and drop design so it’s easy for you to work on your store. Some ecommerce platforms have templates ready for you to start with and launch fast.
Platform Features
For the most part this is what makes an ecommerce platform and the top decider for a great ecommerce platform. Starting with the basics, there should be a checkout page with payment gateway options. Also, look for options to sell both physical and digital goods and services.
Usually, ecommerce platforms will have automatic invoicing to your clients at the time of purchase. and inventory management. Also security is an important feature for both you and your clients.
Marketing Tools
To enable relationship building with your clients it’s important to choose a platform that has marketing features. These can be things like SEO capabilities, email marketing or social media integrations.
Website analytics are also a big plus as you can monitor your website performance and inform on your marketing strategy.
If not available at least choose one which allows possible integrations with your most popular platforms.
App interactions
App integrations can help improve the functionality of your website. Imagine you already have a host of tools you use for your marketing, accounting, or inventory management. When you launch your store, you want to have these tools still useful for your business, that is, if you need them.
Let’s say for example you are using mail chimp for email marketing, and your ecommerce platform does not have an email marketing feature. The next best option will be to integrate your ecommerce store with mail chimp. This way your email marketing will be easy to manage.
Support
Support is crucial to your success, you want help readily available when your site is down for any reason. You want the process to be swift.
Check for multiple support options like chat, email, and phone. Additionally a knowledgebase or community forum for self-assistance can come in handy.
Pricing
As we mentioned before, business come in different sizes, this includes even the budget for your ecommerce platform. It’s always best to choose something you can afford so you can start and scale as your business grows.
Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses
For small businesses, the biggest challenge in becoming an ecommerce powerhouse is capital. So, ecommerce platforms that have great starting packages for small businesses, are a great go to.
We have picked these looking at affordability and scalability potential for small businesses.
- BigCommerce
- Wix Ecommerce
- Blab Builder
- Weebly
- Ecwid
Best ecommerce platforms for Enterprise Businesses
If you are a big business, you may want an e-commerce software that works for you. For this you need a tool with unlimited options, and that you can customize more to your brand.
- BigCommerce or BigCommerce Enterprise
- Adobe ECommerce (formerly Magento)
- Shopify Plus
- WooCommerce Enterprise
- Squarespace Enterprise
In summary ECommerce Platforms
As you can see from this article, ecommerce platforms comes in different builds. Finding the perfect one for your business solely depends on your needs as a business.
If you are a beginner you may opt for tools that are simple to use like BigCommerce, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and BlabBuilder.
They offer affordable prices on their ecommerce platforms, ease of use and you can launch your online store quickly
BigCommerce is one of the best tools available for growth. Shopify is built for drop shipping so it has some great drop shipping features you can use to scale your business.
Make sure you always try a free sign up with a new shopping platform before you use it. This gives you a clear picture of how you can use it best for your ecommerce business.
