Ecommerce Software Solutions Solve Your Stores Biggest Challenges

This article explores the top 10 ecommerce software options, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Bluehost is good for small businesses that want to use WordPress and WooCommerce to host their online stores. WooCommerce is the best e-commerce solution for those who are looking to build and manage a highly customizable and versatile online store. Alibaba International also is rolling out Aidge to merchants on its e-commerce platforms, with the aim to support more SMBs through ISV and SaaS partners.

Your own requirements and how comfortable you are with automation will dictate what is most effective for you. Ecommerce is now a mobile-first industry, with 73% of purchases coming from a mobile device. For most companies, this is the better option for providing a user experience that encourages buyers to make a purchase now and and in the future. As ecommerce has boomed over the past two decades, so has the ecosystem around it. Canadian specific editing and research (including pricing) conducted by Anna Rey. The chart below illustrates some of the key differences among the three Shopify plans.

Shopify Ecommerce

This aims to improve user experience across the company’s products and services, including e-commerce, search, and navigation. Formerly known as Magento, Adobe Commerce offers real-time inventory control, SEO features, marketing automation tools and multi-store functionality. In a headless approach, an ecommerce platform’s frontend and backend are decoupled from one another, with each existing as its own system before being integrated with the other.

🤷‍♂️ If you’re still not quite sure which platform to sell products through, check out Shopify first. They have a 14-day free trial to test the waters, and the app/template store is too good to pass up. In fact, its most expensive plan supports merchants selling up to $200k in sales per year. However, you’ll have to contact them directly for more information.

Shift4Shop Integrations and Plans

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of these recommendations, you can get the help of professional talent online through freelance platforms online. Sellers can hire talented freelancers to handle virtually any aspect of running their businesses, from professional product photography to holistic business consulting. To create the kinds of graphics and logos today’s customers find appealing, Microsoft Paint won’t cut it — you’ll need sophisticated graphic design software. If you have the budget and skills to handle your own graphic design, the best in the business is Adobe Photoshop. Facebook is another platform where you can make money selling consigned furniture and electronics, arbitrage, and private-label products.

• Mailchimp has e-commerce software that costs as little as $0 a month for businesses that are just starting out and charges reasonable transaction fees for payment processing.
• There are over 500 templates to choose from, and many of them are highly professional and attractive straight out of the box.
• A live chat function allows you to have a real-time conversation with your customers, and there’s built-in support for 3D models and videos.
• In addition, other e-commerce platforms that use Square or Stripe charge a flat rate regardless of the credit card, whereas processing American Express through Shopify costs more.
• The Pro plan is BigCommerce’s basic website builder package and starts at $299.95/month.

In that case, you’re looking at buying a dedicated server or VPS from a web hosting company and set up your platform in there. Shift4Shop has its own App Store to handle integrations, though it includes many built-in integrations, too. Online retailers are automatically set up for credit card payments through PayPal or Shift4. Marketing integrations include Google, Facebook, MailChimp, Aweber, and Houzz. Like Shopify, BigCommerce has a large app marketplace with a wide selection of free apps.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

WooCommerce allows unlimited products and product variants, including digital products. Square Online has a few SEO tools but it’s definitely not the best on our list. With Square Online, you can add permalinks, SEO titles, descriptions, and use a mobile-friendly design or optimized HTML format. You probably wouldn’t pick Square if you only have an eCommerce site – other platforms cater better for online transactions.

When that time comes, you want support to be accessible and swift. After all, you don’t want to be waiting on support to respond if your site’s down, do you? Your global cloud commerce eCommerce platform should offer multiple support options including live chat, email, phone, and self-help options like a knowledge base or community forum.

Wix

BigCommerce offers a personalized Enterprise Customer Onboarding, catalog transfer services and robust educational resources to ease the replatform process. Formerly known as Demandware, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a scalable SaaS option that enables businesses to manage their sales in digital and physical channels with one unified solution. Interested customers should be able to easily find you and uninterested customers should be made aware of you.

Features are robust; enjoy unlimited staff accounts, as many products as you need, variations and digital downloads. More than 15 APIs now are available with the pilot launch of Aidge on Monday, for independent software vendors (ISVs) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors to develop and test use cases. The only difference between digital and physical goods is how they’re delivered. That step will differ from other companies, but a quality ecommerce platform will allow you to deliver digital goods easily. Located initially in Germany, commercetools is a SaaS-based, headless ecommerce platform that has expanded worldwide. Legacy systems have to always be considered when onboarding a new platform.

Key Considerations When Choosing An Ecommerce Platform

With a user-friendly interface, NopCommerce simplifies store setup and management, particularly catering to industries like furniture, B2B, international, fashion, and automotive. Every 6-7 months, the developers release a new version of their eCommerce software to keep up with the latest technologies and development trends. Shift4Shop, formerly 3dcart, is a feature-rich e-commerce solution. It has hundreds of built-in tools for marketing, inventory, customer service and store management. Shift4Shop is the best e-commerce platform for retailers processing over $500 monthly because it’s completely free.

It’s worth noting that unless you have either one of the Commerce plans, there is a 3% transaction fee on sales. These fees are in addition to the standard credit card fees per sale charged on each plan. Alibaba International operates Alibaba’s international commerce retail businesses, including Lazada, AliExpress, Trendyol, and Daraz. Calculate your pricing by factoring in product cost, shipping fees, and your desired profit margin. Next, customize your store’s appearance using Shopify’s templates and themes. Shopify has many free themes to choose from, but you can also use a paid premium theme if you have the budget for it.

The best ecommerce platform without limiits

You may not have heard of this eCommerce solution, but CE Phoenix is a very powerful tool that is ready to use right out of the box. Another very powerful eCommerce software platform that is also open-source. The best way to visualize or understand eCommerce platforms and what they do is to visualize a digital version of a mail-order catalog. Visitors can easily compare your product to similar options side-by-side, then click through to your product listing to make their purchases.

Like other eCommerce platforms on our list, Ecwid has an app market where you’ll find tons of integrations to extend the functionality of your eCommerce site. There are only a couple hundred integrations available, but you’ll find many key products supported. Much of Sellozo’s user-centric design shines in its Campaign Studio. With its intuitive features, users can effortlessly tailor their ad campaigns. Automation, particularly in keyword management, further enhances the user experience, affording sellers more time for strategy.

You can use a closed proprietary system like Shopify, or you can use an open-source eCommerce platform like WooCommerce. There are quite a few differences, even though the end outcome remains the same…to sell goods and services online. Perhaps the biggest selling point of OpenCart is the number of payment processors that it accepts. This allows you (store owner) to select from and accept a number of different payment gateways, which can bring you a broader audience.