Best Ecommerce Platforms have transformed the way we shop and now after the pandemic, their importance has skyrocketed. If you are starting an eCommerce store there are more than 500 options to choose from.
To make things a bit easier I have shortlisted a handful of the best online store builder you should go for. These reviews rank based on reliability, scalability, technical support, price, product options, features, fulfillment, control panel experience, logistics tools, and more.
Also, I will suggest the best choices for small businesses along with enterprise eCommerce solutions for large brands. Plus, platforms provide the best website designs and themes.
So let’s get started.
What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms?
Best Saas eCommerce platforms are full-featured, robust software tools to sell products online. Each eCommerce website builder provides different functionalities for different requirements.
Ultimately, eCommerce software should offer discounts and coupons, let you add your products quickly, and automatically track inventory. They should assist with shipping and fulfillment so that you can focus on your business.
Here are my picks for the best eCommerce platforms to try this year:
1. Wix
Best Ecommerce Platform for Small Business (Start from $23/month)
Wix is a popular website builder that helps users to upgrade quickly to full eCommerce functionality for $20 per month. They boast beautiful product galleries, promotions and gift cards, hundreds of designer-made templates, and easy shipping and order management.
The online store is automatically optimized for Android and iPhone Devices. Moreover, you can customize the mobile look using their online site builder.
The product gallery’s layout looks great on mobile devices and adapts in a stacked format. No doubt, Wix is the easiest tool to use when it comes to getting complex things done.
Finally, Wix offers you 24/7 customer support, multiple payment options and solutions, secure checkout, global tax and shipping, and discounts and coupons to help you sell more.
Pros of Wix:
- 70+ free amazing themes to choose
- On-page support for various requirements
- Intuitive drag and drop interface
Cons of Wix:
- Difficult to fully customize the template
- Needs improvement in SEO optimization tools
Try Wix for free and start selling your products online.
2. BigCommerce
Best Ecommerce Platform for Large Business ($29.95/mo)
BigCommerce overall is the best eCommerce platform to go for. They have 40+ payment gateways, 24/7 support, advanced product options, best-in-class SEO features, and scale with your eCommerce business.
Most of the small businesses I have seen start with Shopify because of its name recognition and super easy setup. But once the business starts growing they start paying extra in add-ons and apps to help their business grow.
But even after doing that they lack the SEO optimization a big eCommerce site requires. To fix those issues they hire developers which have now become a really costly affair.
Know if you want to avoid all these future hassles choose BigCommerce. The main reason for choosing is the complete SEO flexibility from start as well as their flexible customization touch in the later stages of your business. This helps you in saving unnecessary time spent on testing add-ons and shelling money on developers.
BigCommerce offers 2 options – BigCommerce Essential ( For Small businesses) and BigCommerce (for large Enterprises). Plus, they are the most open-source SaaS platform offering zero transaction fees, open APIs, and an open partner ecosystem.
Brands like Skullcandy, Toyota, Ford, and others in the Fortune 1000 use BigCommerce. Additionally, they allow users to host WordPress on the front end with BigCommerce on their back end.
Their plan starts from $29.95/month, and you get a branded online store and domain name with the ability to sell on eBay, Amazon, and social media like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
Pros of BigCommerce:
- Scalable and flexible platform
- Have expertise in multi-channel selling
- Strong SEO performance
- The comprehensive abandoned cart features to choose from
- Amazing collection of theme designs
Cons of BigCommerce:
- No 1-click Selling/Upsells
- Lacks cart abandonment feature in early plans
- Speed may vary based on different geography
I highly recommend BigCommerce for medium to large businesses and you can get started with a 15-day free trial.
3. Shopify
Best Ecommerce Software for Dropshipping (Starts from $29/month)
Shopify is a powerful eCommerce solution provider hosting over 400,000 merchants worldwide. They were launched in 2004 and quickly grew to become one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in North America.
Shopify gained massive brand awareness by appealing to the people who want to prosper quickly using eCommerce. Also, one of the major advantages of Shopify is the extensive plugins available to cater to different purposes.
Even the most inexperienced person can set up a dropshipping business with relative ease. All plans include free SSL, unlimited products, discount codes, multilingual support, inventory management, abandoned cart recovery, easy buy buttons, 24/7 support, and marketing support.
They are the best b2b eCommerce platform for beginners who are completely new to this space.
Pros of Shopify:
- Lightning-fast page response time
- Very easy to set up an online store
- Tons of certified partners to help
- Allows multiple channels and social selling
- Great themes with many varieties
Cons of Shopify:
- Forces you to use their SEO structure
- No options to customize the checkout process
- Adding too many apps becomes very costly
- Require a developer for advanced feature development
To test them out for yourself, they offer a 14-day free trial.
Now let’s cover the basics.
What Are Ecommerce Platforms?
Ecommerce platforms help you sell products and services online to other people. In earlier days, businesses had to purchase expensive, on-premise software with an in-house IT Team and hosting to manage their eCommerce.
These top eCommerce platforms handle everything from product listings and web design to taxes, marketing, and shipping. With these web commerce platforms, you can manage orders and inventory, add your own products, sync with other apps, communicate with customers, and more.
What is the Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO?
SEO is based on important ranking factors like URL structure, site speed, sitewide HTTPS, and page titles/content.
1. Wix
Wix has a free SEO tool called Wix SEO Wiz. Wiz analyzes your eCommerce website and automatically provides a personalized SEO strategy with a to-do list to improve your Google rankings.
This includes optimizing your SEO meta descriptions and titles, alt text, and indexing tools to get your pages ranking faster. Google and Wix collaborated on this feature so that Wix users can see their pages in search results immediately.
2. BigCommerce
BigCommerce provides a big boost when it comes to SEO. Also, it provides amazing site speed with an average 100-millisecond delay in load time.
You can use websites like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix to check eCommerce site speed regularly. BigCommmerce provides its users with Google AMP on both category and product pages. It also enables automatic image compression with Akamai Image Manager.
Overall, BigCommerce features the best default URL format. This helps in ranking faster on google search ranking and hence is a great pick according to me.
What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses?
The crucial things that a small business requires are uptime guarantees, PCI compliance, performance, usability, and security. If your eCommerce business is mostly online then your requirements will be more stringent than normal selling websites.
Your solution is the one that manages multiple users easily and minimizes the time to complete orders. After all, the more time you save on shipping, fulfillment, and compliance, the more time you have to market your business online.
So based on these factors here are my suggestions for the best eCommerce platforms
1. Wix
Provide a simple dashboard to manage your sales activity. Plus, it also provides amazing templates and an easy website builder to get started quickly.
2. Shopify
Shopify is another good eCommerce platform for small businesses for similar reasons. They are super easy to use and any individual can manage and build the entire site easily on Shopify.
Additionally, if you need to learn how to use POS systems, Shopify is a great choice. They integrate with many top point-of-sale systems for retailers with both online stores and physical storefronts.
Ecommerce Website Platform- Final Summary
So these were my top picks for the best eCommerce platforms. I will keep updating the list with other relevant and most popular e-commerce platforms.
- The best online store platform for small businesses and the easiest to use – Wix
- Best b2b eCommerce solution to scale your large business – Start with BigCommerce
- Best Dropshipping platform for business – Shopify is the best choice.
What popular eCommerce platforms do you recommend? Let me know in the comment section below.
More from Smashitbuck – Check out our other articles on the niche site ideas, best CRM platforms, and best business hosting.
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