Are you stuck trying to choose the best platform for your eCommerce store? Then you have dropped into the right space. We have given a clear picture of all the pros and cons of the best eCommerce platforms here. According to eMarketer, the global eCommerce market is expected to total $5.55 trillion in 2022. This is great news for all online sellers like you because the time is ripe for any business to join the eCommerce bandwagon and get a fair share of the trillion-dollar industry.
Why should you evaluate multiple platforms before you go for the build?
Since eCommerce is vital to your business, the platform you choose is arguably one of the most important business decisions you will make. Various platforms offer powerful eCommerce features while integrating with standard business tools, enabling businesses to centralize their operations and run their business their way. By creating an optimized website, you can maximize your sales potential, customer service, and user experience all at once.
Major functionalities of an eCommerce platform
A good eCommerce platform includes all core business functions integrated into a single package. It helps improve collaboration, aligns operational processes, and provides real-time data visibility. Such eCommerce platforms drive the below functions effortlessly:
- Procurement
- Inventory and order management
- Content management
- Pricing and promotions
- Marketing
- Customer support
- Analytics and reporting
Best eCommerce Platforms in 2022
Finding the best online eCommerce platforms that fit your business needs can be challenging. Here is a rundown of the best eCommerce platforms in the market. Let’s dive into these broad categories.
Magento Commerce (now Adobe Commerce)
Magento is a solid choice if you have the budget for a developer and if you want something customizable and powerful since coding is an integral part of the package. Many big brands like Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Cisco trust Magento. A big part of Magento is the community. There is a marketplace from which you can get extensions and themes to improvise the functionality of your platform.
Magento’s Open Source, the free version, is the most preferred one. But, there is also a paid version that caters to the complex requirements of medium and large enterprises. The paid version, Magento Commerce, starts from a few thousand dollars per annum and the price tag also includes a commission fee based on your annual sales. However, the premium version offers a lot that the free version doesn’t.
No matter which version of Magento you pick, the opportunities to extend your store’s capabilities are limitless.
Pros : Robust, Feature-rich, Strong SEO and marketing, secured, One-click selling, highly scalable, 100% customizable, omnichannel and headless support
Cons : Needs coding skills, continuous maintenance required to optimize the loading speed, No dedicated support for the free version
SAP Commerce Cloud
SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly, SAP Hybris) is one of the most progressive solutions for eCommerce. It is used by many enterprise-level businesses such as Vodafone, Samsung, Nike, and Audi. Its main benefit is that it reduces time to market, which means you need not build it from scratch. You can use existing components and build a fully functional eCommerce store. SAP Commerce Cloud is created to handle high volumes of traffic. The pricing plans of platform is split between the ‘Standard,’ ‘Professional,’ and ‘Enterprise’ packages. You can opt for SAP Commerce Cloud if your website processes massive data and ensures that it is stored and handled safely within the platform.
Pros : Flexible content management, Highly scalable and customizable, integrates well with other services
Cons : Robust build process, requires highly skilled developers to get the best out of it
Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC)
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is one of the world’s leading B2C and B2B commerce solutions. It is a multi-tenant, cloud-based eCommerce platform that empowers brands to create intelligent, unified buying experiences across all channels. SFCC helps you connect with prospects or customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey and across social, web, store, marketplaces, and mobile channels. It allows you to effectively launch one or more brands, nurture leads and drive conversions. With SFCC, you can collect data, gain insights, and create opportunities for your customers to reach your brand easily. In Salesforce Commerce Cloud, you can find a wide range of pricing plans for B2B, B2C, and B2B2C market segments.
Pros : Scalable, improves business process outcome, continuous innovation
Cons : Pricing, customizability
Small And Medium Level Platforms
WooCommerce
WooCommerce powers almost 28% of eCommerce stores. It is the eCommerce arm of the widely used CMS, WordPress. So it’s needless to say WooCommerce has content management provisions next to none.
It’s highly preferred because it’s free and can be easily customized to build an eCommerce store with basic functionalities to buy and sell online. WordPress is the best option for brands that need to run their eCommerce store alongside their affiliated content-driven websites.
However, not all extensions built on the open-source code follow a coding standard. So, they are vulnerable to security threats and hacks.
Pros : Free, highly customizable, great CMS, SEO features
Cons : Security issues, lacks native B2B functionalities, not built for high scalability
Squarespace
Squarespace has been in the market since 2003 and has established itself as one of the best eCommerce platforms for those with limited technical knowledge. Squarespace provides unique design templates for website building and is perfect for beginners. There are two pricing options – Basic for $26 per month (annually) and Advanced for $40 per month (annually). Everything can be done quickly with the platform’s easy-to-use interface from designing your storefront to getting your products to potential customers.
Pros : Easy to use, Good SEO, Affordable, Well designed templates
Cons : Lack of features, No support over calls, Supports only Stripe and Paypal payment gateways
Shopify
Shopify has been the most well-known eCommerce platform around since 2004. Brands that need to go to market faster can opt for Shopify. The main advantage of the platform is its GUI-based store building experience. You get to choose from hundreds of apps from the Shopify app store to amplify your store’s base capabilities. Shopify offers pricing plans ranging from $9 to $299 per month. The hosting is taken care of by the platform itself.
But all of this does not mean Shopify outperforms its competitors in every area. Shopify, being a SaaS platform, offers minimal customization options. The platform’s shared hosting model might affect your store’s performance at times when there’s a traffic spike in stores that share your Cloud space.
Pros : Easy to set up, free and paid themes, faster time to market, auto version upgrades, license cost covers hosting fee
Cons : Limited customization, needs proficiency in a proprietary language to customize, merchants should depend on the platform for new features
Wix
Wix shares a lot of similarities with Weebly. They are new to the eCommerce market and provide easy drag-drop eCommerce store building tools. The best part about Wix is that you can create an eCommerce site quickly with no coding experience. Wix suits small businesses. Pricing ranges from $17 to $25 per month (or less per year).
Pros : Plenty of themes and add ons to choose from, easy to use, affordable
Cons : Limited SEO, Lacks certain essential eCommerce features, dropping shipping not available, not suitable for medium or large eCommerce stores
PrestaShop
PrestaShop is an open-source cloud-hosted eCommerce platform. You can either download it for free or pay for PrestaShop Ready, a hosted version that costs 25 Euros a month. You will have to pay a developer if you don’t have good technical skills in HTML, CSS, PHP. It’s an easy platform to be used by the developers and can be highly customized. The dashboard is pretty straightforward, and the admin interface is easy to use.
Pros : Customizable, Strong SEO, Open source, Flexible, lots of apps and integrations
Cons : Expensive add-ons, Development skills required, Must pay for support, Hosted versions lack features
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a hosted Saas eCommerce platform. It allows business owners to set up online stores faster using customizable templates and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop store builder feature. BigCommerce offers a lot of built-in features and can fit businesses of any size.
BigCommerce’s pricing plans start from $29 per month and extend to $249 per month. The platform also holds an enterprise edition for large eCommerce companies.
Pros : Strong SEO tools, Flexible, Easy to use builder, Multi-Channel selling, free hosting
Cons : No one-click selling feature, Sales limits, No mobile app, Prone to bugs
Volusion
Volusion is a cloud-based eCommerce platform. They have similar drag and drop features like most SaaS eCommerce platforms. Hence you can be assured of a quicker building experience. Designing the storefront is also easy as the platform offers 11 free templates to choose from and a lot more premium options.
A unique feature that is very popular about Volusion is its extensive dashboard that offers intelligence on the important areas that you’d love to stay updated on.
The pricing plans of Volusion vary from $29 to $299 per month, differing in aspects like the number of products and storage. But only the top two plans include abandoned cart reports.
Pros : Multi-channel selling capabilities, easy to use dashboard, third-party integrations
Cons : Weak SEO, Few free theme options, expensive paid themes
Shift4Shop
Since its release in 2001, Shift4Shop has served more than 22,000 online businesses. They have a few attractive features like unlimited storage and no transaction fees. Despite being older than BigCommerce and Shopify, they don’t do that well comparatively. This is because Shift4Shop is not for beginners. Newbies find it challenging to leverage every feature the platform offers. But they have a better CMS than other Saas eCommerce platforms.
Pros : Supports all integrations, admin controls
Cons : Negative feedback on customer support, issues in upgrading, hard for beginners
Sellfy
Sellfy was founded in 2011. The eCommerce platform is built exclusively for merchants selling digital products like software, videos, downloadable content, etc. It has an easy-to-use website builder that requires no technical knowledge to start using it. The free plan allows users to buy ten physical products. The free version does not include a custom domain. The premium version starts from $29/month, with the highest plan priced at $159/month. Sellfy is one of the affordable options compared to other eCommerce platforms, especially if you are dealing only with digital products.
Pros : Specializes in digital products, Wix Integration, No transaction fee, Email marketing required in all paid plans
Cons : Less SEO features, Limited options for payment gateways
Final Words
Well, that concludes our list of the top 10 best eCommerce platforms. We hope you find it helpful. Having discussed the things to consider before choosing an eCommerce platform and features to look out for while evaluating each of them, you’d be eager to take your research to the next step – head-on comparison between platforms. We’ve got that covered too.
Feel free to check out our detailed comparison between the top eCommerce platforms we’ve discussed in our blog
Happy searching!
Would you find an expert’s advice helpful? Ziffity’s eCommerce experts would love to help.
