Choosing the right eCommerce platform for your business is arguably the most important step before taking your business online. Although most people know this, there still remains a lot of misconception around the platform selection process. The most common among these misconceptions is that a powerful eCommerce platform is all you need for taking your business online. However, that’s not necessarily true.
A powerful eCommerce platform may sound like a good idea to the uninitiated but, those of you who have prior experience will know that is not the case in reality. Albeit a powerful platform means that it can support many functionalities and what not but it is not necessary that the functionalities that your unique business requires are supported by the platform.
Ideally, your eCommerce platform will also need to be super flexible. The eCommerce industry is constantly evolving, your platform needs to have the capability to adapt to the changes. An open-source eCommerce platform is preferred by many aspiring entrepreneurs because of its high flexibility and superior command over the platform.
A reliable eCommerce platform will ensure that you are not left to fend for yourself if or when something goes wrong on your eCommerce store. Make sure to check out the platform’s history as well as reviews before choosing an eCommerce platform for your business. Make sure that the platform offers good customer service. Superior customer service means that you’ll have help from experts should something go wrong with your eCommerce store.
It’d make sense to make a list of all the functionalities or capabilities that you want your eCommerce store to have and check for an eCommerce platform that can support them all. This will help you to not miss anything and also cross-check your requirements with what the eCommerce platforms have to offer.
Every business is unique, and hence they have unique requirements as well. You need to consider the size and nature of your business, is it product-centered or service-centered? What kind of features will you need to integrate into your store? A powerful eCommerce platform is generally capable of supporting a large product catalog, multi-store feature, and so on. But the question you need to ask yourself is, “Does my business need it?”
In other words, it is not necessary that the eCommerce platform you found on Google is, in fact, the right choice for you. Ideally, you’d have a reliable eCommerce expert to advise you on important decisions like this. But, even eCommerce companies often try to sell you the eCommerce platforms that they specialize in and not the one that is best for you.
So, how do you make sure that you have selected the right eCommerce platform for your business? You need a platform-agnostic eCommerce expert who will give unbiased and reliable advice on eCommerce, like Virtina. The in-depth experience working on all industries and certified expertise on all major eCommerce platforms will help us pick the ideal platform on which you can set up your business.
This post will shed light on some of the best eCommerce platforms out there so that you can choose the ideal pick for your business.
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform built on WordPress. One of the best things about WooCommerce is that it’s an open-source eCommerce platform, which means you have full access to the code that runs the website. This means that your site will be highly customizable with unique designs & layouts. WooCommerce is the platform for you if you want a flexible platform that lets you extensively customize your website.
WooCommerce provides thousands of third-party plugins and themes, which adds to the flexibility of the platform. The fact that it comes mobile-optimized makes it possible for your website to be viewed from any device. Geo-location support helps both you and your customers. Catalog and inventory management is made easy with WooCommerce, and it even provides a shipping calculator, which makes shopping easier for your customers.
Since WooCommerce is built on WordPress, it inherits many features from WordPress. A significant one among these features is the ability to handle heavy content. eCommerce companies are replacing age-old advertising strategies with effective alternatives like content-commerce. Apart from this, you also get advanced eCommerce SEO capabilities that can drive more traffic to your store.
Price
Free to download, with extensions.
Best Suited Business
Small and mid-size businesses.
2. Magento
Magento is a powerful eCommerce platform with strong functional capabilities. Being an open-source eCommerce platform, it is one of the most sought after platforms out there. Over 5000 extensions available on the platform makes it flexible and helps you set up your eCommerce store with all required functionalities.
Magento comes with integrated checkout, payment, and shipping, cutting your work short and making it easier for you. It is also mobile-optimized, meaning that your site can be accessed from any device. Magento is a powerful platform and has multi-store capabilities that can help you run two or more businesses and manage it centrally by a single admin.
You can always choose to extend the functionality of your Magento store through the App marketplace. Global selling, instant purchases, and site search further optimize and enhance the flexibility of your store. Magento also offers a high customization capability, thanks to it being an open source-eCommerce platform.
Price
Magento Open Source is free to download and use. Magento also offers “Magento Commerce,” an enterprise-level solution that can cost you anywhere between $15,000 to $50,000 annually.
Best Suited Business
Magento can work for pretty much all kinds of businesses, from small scale businesses to large enterprises.
3. Shopify
Shopify was started in 2004 and is one of the most established eCommerce platforms in the world right now. The best thing about Shopify is that everything that your eCommerce business would require is already integrated into the platform. This includes everything from storefront design to performance analytics to content marketing capability.
Shopify also supports unlimited product listings, so if yours is a business that sells a wide variety or range of products, Shopify can come handy for your business. Shopify focuses on running your eCommerce business easier on their platform, and this is evident from the features like real-time sales statistics and inventory tracking. With the help of features like this, Shopify provides helpful insight into your business.
Shopify is also a leader when it comes to AI or personalization, and this is supported by a wide variety of themes and templates available. However, one area Shopify really seems to shine and set them apart from the rest is their support. With 24 hours of chat support, phone support, community forums, and online help centers, Shopify makes sure that they have your back should anything go wrong with your eCommerce store.
Price
Basic Shopify: $29/mo
Shopify: $79
Advanced Shopify: $299
Best Suited Business
Shopify is capable of running businesses from any and all spectrum.
4. BigCommerce
If eCommerce has been on your mind for a while now, you’d have certainly come across the name BigCommerce. It is one of the best eCommerce platforms for running a retail business. Bigcommerce’s abandoned cart and shipping integration features are some of the best in the eCommerce industry. Established in 2009 and spread across 120 countries, there is no question about its reliability.
BigCommerce lets you have unlimited product listings as well as unlimited bandwidth and file storage. This would come handy in case your business sells a wide range of parts (small or big), and the vast number of products wouldn’t pose a problem with the BigCommerce platform. Unlimited file storage means that you can include more content on your store, especially heavy content like videos that can be further used to attract more customers to your store.
The other capabilities that you get with BigCommerce include multi-currency sales and gift cards. While one expands your customer pool, the other keeps the existing customers happy with attractive rewards. The integration with shipping and POS software makes it one of the ideal platforms for businesses that already have a physical store.
Price
BigCommerce Standard: $29.95/mo – $50,000 annual sales limit
BigCommerce Plus: $79.95/mo – $180,000 annual sales limit
BigCommerce Pro: $299.95/mo – $400,000 annual sales limit
BigCommerce Enterprise: available upon request
Best Suited Business
Although BigCommerce can support most of the businesses, it works best when used for retail stores.
5. Volusion
Volusion is yet another big name in the eCommerce industry. One reason you’d want to choose Volusion over the other eCommerce platforms is that the standard dashboard already has many important features. Volusion is also known for its security features, especially their secure checkout. The one element that everyone adores in Volusion would be their “Drag and Drop Builder.” Modifying, and editing your page is a cakewalk with drag and drop.
Volusion also offers inventory management, which makes the handling of your business through eCommerce easier. The discounts and coupons feature adds yet another brownie point for Volusion, and this is one of the features that can help you build a positive relationship with your customers. If done right, the SEO tools that come with Volusion are all you need to optimize your store for top SERP.
One feature that could possibly be the most useful to you may be the Automatic Tax Calculator. Managing your business’s taxes could easily be the hardest part of running a business, and Volusion eases this pain with their Automatic Tax Calculator. Apart from this, Volusion also offers free and paid themes, social media integrations, SKU import/export, and abandoned cart reporting.
Price
Personal ($29/mo)
Professional ($79/mo)
Business ($299/mo)
Custom plan
Best Suited Business
Volusion is a platform that is mostly preferred by startups and small businesses as it is easy to set up while providing enough room to grow their business.
6. Squarespace
Squarespace is one of the eCommerce platforms that is fast gaining popularity. The drag and drop functionality combined with their pre-built website template makes it effortless to create their web pages. Some of the loved features on Squarespace include abandon cart auto-recovery and gift cards. They can be utilized for customer retargeting and to build customer relationships, respectively.
Squarespace also happens to be one of the platforms that are preferred to sell digital products because of their capabilities. So, if yours is a business that sells digital products, Squarespace could be the platform you are looking for. Furthermore, it comes with ready to use SEO tools which lets you optimize the pages on your website for SERP.
Squarespace lets you personalize your products, and hence if your business involves custom products that the users can customize, this could be the right platform for you. It also provides real-time shipping rates and tracking for your customers. Automatic discount is one of the favored features that seem to have a positive impact on the users and, by extension, your business.
Price
Personal: $16/mo
Business: $26/mo
Basic Commerce: $30/mo
Advanced Commerce: $46/mo
Note: A transaction fee of 3% is charged for every purchase made on the store except for the personal tier
Best Suited Business
Squarespace is ideal for small businesses and entrepreneurs who has basic eCommerce requirements.
7. Wix
Wix is a cloud-based website builder and is one of the widely used eCommerce platforms. Wix allows you to create eCommerce stores with the help of drag and drop tools. This makes it easier for you to design and build your store the way you want it. Wix offers one of the easiest to use site builders, and you’d have no trouble creating the site for your business.
Although Wix can handle eCommerce relatively well, it is not built for managing complex product lines. You will have no trouble whatsoever to fulfill basic eCommerce needs. Wix can be optimized to sell digital products as well. So if you are an entrepreneur who wants to sell digital products (like online study materials), Wix can be the ideal platform for you.
Wix does give you a mobile-optimized experience meaning that your store can be accessed through pretty much any device. Some of the other aspects that enhance the platform’s experience are Product galleries, easy inventory management, and abandoned cart recovery.
Price
eCommerce: $17/mo
VIP: $25/mo
Business Basic: $23/mo
Business Unlimited: $27/mo
Business VIP: $35/mo
Enterprise: $500/mo
Best Suited Business
Wix is ideal for your business if it is a small scale one & if you don’t have a dedicated web designer.
8. Big Cartel
Big Cartel is an eCommerce platform explicitly aimed for artists, by artists. The best part about Big Cartel is that the builder is simple and straight-forward, which means there is very little room for confusion and that you can create an eCommerce store without the help of an expert. The dashboard is another highlight of the platform as it is easy to use and without any unnecessary complications.
One of the exciting features in Big Cartel is the ability to provide product options with different price points, and this could come handy for an artist selling his/her work. Big Cartel comes with multiple selling channels, inventory management, discount codes, and more. The best thing, however, is that it even has a limited tax calculation capability coupled with SEO tools.
Price
Gold (Free)
Platinum ($9.99/mo)
Diamond ($19.99/mo)
Titanium ($29.99/mo)
Best Suited Business
Big Cartel is best suited for artists as well as entrepreneurs, and it can be the ideal substitute for Etsy.
9. 3dCart
Versatility is the trump card that 3dCart holds. It can be used by the smallest businesses to huge online stores. 3dCart’s dashboard is among the most loved dashboards found in any eCommerce platform. It is clean, simple, and even provides you with an introductory video to familiarize yourself with. 3dCart also takes SEO to another level by making SEO functions visible on the site.
3dCart offers a wide range of integrations and provides a much better Blog Feature than Shopify. However, it can not compete with WooCommerce (WordPress) when it comes to blog features. 3dCart also provides excellent business management tools and comes with over 200 built-in functions, 90 free templates, and supports more than 160 payment gateways!
Price
Startup Store: $19/mo
Basic Store: $29/mo
Plus Store: $79/mo
Power Store: $129/mo
Pro Store: $229/mo
Best Suited Business
3dCart is ideal for you if you are just starting out on your business journey.
10. PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a feature-rich, open-source eCommerce platform that offers one of the most secure payments in the industry. One feature that makes PrestaShop stand out from the rest is the Demographic Assistance, which lets your eCommerce store support multiple currencies as well as languages. This feature could be handy if you intend to target a considerable number of customers from other countries.
Easy customization is another aspect that has helped PrestaShop succeed in the industry. You can easily customize your website through PrestaShop as it lets add or remove features from your store effortlessly. The platform is ideal for you if you are under immense budget-constraints as PrestaShop is free of cost and is looking for minimal investment business.
The platform also provides a user-friendly design. The downside of the platform is that it does not have an official support team and the limited scalability of the eCommerce platform.
Price
Free to download.
Best Suited Business
Ideal for small-scale and budget-restrained businesses.
11. OpenCart
OpenCart, like many of its competitors, is an open-source eCommerce platform that makes it transparent as well as flexible. Running your eCommerce store on OpecCart means you’ll get a powerful catalog functionality and superior order processing. The order processing capability of OpenCart is among the best in the industry.
OpenCart offers a vast range of extensions that can optimize your eCommerce store. It also offers lightning-fast speed, which ensures a better user experience. OpenCart even enables you to run multiple stores simultaneously from a single Admin panel with their multi-store function. However, it is not very easy to customize your store in OpenCart as compared to their competitors.
Price
OpenCart is free to download.
Best Suited Business
It is the ideal eCommerce platform for you if you need to run multiple stores from a single admin or if you are good at customizing a web store.
12. VTEX
VTEX is one of the promising eCommerce platforms that is fast gaining traction in the industry. The best thing about the platform is that it can tend to the requirements of all verticals, let it be B2B, B2C, B2E, or B2B2C. This makes the platform highly versatile and susceptible to change. VTEX is famous for being the first fully-integrated marketplace-commerce-oms solution.
Some of the factors that add value to the platform are responsive designs that can work well for pretty much any kind of business, secure payment gateways, and a centralized order management system. It is an ideal platform for businesses that gives priority to order management. VTEX comes with a customizable Content Management System (CMS), which can come handy if you intend to implement a content commerce store for your business.
Price
VTEX offers its services starting from $250.00/month.
Best Suited Business
Customizable Content Management System (CMS) and a centralized order management system are excellent for content-rich B2B eCommerce stores.
