Top eCommerce Platforms to Consider in 2023
- 12 Minutes to read
Table of Content
- Introduction
- What is an eCommerce Platform?
- Top eCommerce Platforms to Consider
- Choose the Best eCommerce Platform!
- FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions
Introduction
Building a website was not as easy as it is now. Hiring a whole team of developers for unique website design is not the concept in today’s times. Fortunately, technology has advanced to the point that you can now use an eCommerce platform to create a shop that is not only functional, but also quick and attractive. Some of these systems are based on popular CMSes like WordPress, while others provide CMS-like functionality (great for SEO). Some may be standalone eCommerce platforms that provide simply the minimum for conducting business online.
Any online business will face one of the most challenging obstacles in the process of selecting the appropriate eCommerce platform. Building an eCommerce website is not very difficult; but, if you get off to a bad start by choosing the wrong eCommerce platform, your company will suffer in the near future.
In this article, we will discuss some of the best eCommerce platforms that are predicted to be the most successful in 2023. We will discuss their standout characteristics, their advantages and disadvantages, what you can anticipate from them, as well as how to select the right eCommerce platform for your company.
What is an eCommerce platform?
An eCommerce platform is a software system that gives companies the ability to set up and administer an online storefront from which they may offer goods and services to customers.
Ecommerce platforms offer a wide variety of features and tools to assist businesses set up their online store. These features and tools include the capability to manage products, process payments, handle orders and shipments, and maintain inventories.
Some eCommerce platforms also provide businesses with marketing and SEO tools to assist them in promoting their products and driving more customers to their online store. When it comes to selling products and services over the internet, eCommerce platforms are frequently utilized by businesses of all sizes.
Top eCommerce Platforms to Consider
There are literally hundreds of different eCommerce platforms available today, and each one has its own set of distinctive characteristics that make it suited for a certain kind of business.
But, the eCommerce platform that is perfect for you is the one that meets all of your requirements.
However, to save you the trouble of falling into analysis, we have compiled the following list of the top eCommerce platforms available.
1. Shopify
Shopify is the top eCommerce SaaS platform. This multichannel selling and dropshipping platform lets you sell directly through your website, retail shop, social media, and third-party marketplaces. Choose from over 100 paid and free themes to launch your store quickly with no learning curve.
Shopify manages all elements of your business, and its best-in-class business solutions let you establish a complete business command center. Shopify POS conducts in-person sales, Shopify Fulfillment delivers products, and Shop Pay processes payments with low transaction fees. As your business grows, it offers unlimited bandwidth and online storage. USPS, UPS, DHL Express, and other shipping services offer Shopify users competitive pricing.
The Shopify ecosystem has numerous sophisticated apps that work together flawlessly. And a broad third-party app library can enhance your Shopify experience. Shopify offers free email marketing, abandoned cart recovery, SEO, and other native tools for business owners. In addition, Shopify’s mobile app lets you fulfill orders, add products, track sales and inventory, and more.
With all of these powerful features, you won’t need a lot of specialized knowledge or a large budget to get your company off the ground, and you’ll be able to grow it into a global web brand without having to switch platforms along the way.
2. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform that offers a full array of capabilities, ranging from marketing to analytics, as well as high-quality design options and an abundance of support from industry experts. BigCommerce is widely regarded as the industry’s best open SaaS eCommerce platform for businesses of any size, and many smaller organizations can significantly profit from the services it provides.
BigCommerce is able to accommodate a wide range of business requirements because it combines all the benefits of a software as a service (SaaS) platform with the adaptability of an open-source platform. This means that it can meet your requirements regardless of whether you want to have more or less control over your platform.
Features such as multichannel selling on social and third-party marketplaces, foreign sales, and search engine optimization (SEO) tools are quite valuable. On the other hand, along with these tremendous qualities comes a degree of complexity.
3. Adobe Commerce (Magento)
As a self-hosted eCommerce platform, Adobe Commerce caters to programmers who seek a highly-configurable, robust solution. While this has obvious advantages for companies that want a unique platform, it also introduces significant challenges in the form of complexity and expense. To construct and maintain the complete infrastructure on your own, you need expert-level coding and development skills.
Magento’s administrative area and feature set are both extensive. You have complete freedom to develop and modify to suit your needs. Your developer ought to be able to modify Magento to serve any imaginable eCommerce purpose.
While Magento may seem complicated to a new user, seasoned pros should have no trouble picking up on the fundamentals.
Magento Open Source is freely accessible because it is open source. If you require more guidance from an online store platform, Magento Commerce may be the best option for you. This is a premium service that comes at an individual rate and is aimed at corporations.
4. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free and flexible eCommerce platform. As its name suggests, it is based on WordPress and functions as a plugin for an already existing WordPress site. Using WordPress also means you may take advantage of the platform’s built-in SEO features. However, many of the standalone eCommerce platforms take care of the technical details that WordPress doesn’t, such as hosting, domain names, and SSL certificates.
If you want to build a functional WooCommerce store, you’ll need a lot of add-ons. This contains shipping and email tracking plugins in addition to payment channels like Stripe, PayPal, Square, Amazon Pay, and Authorize.Net.
Any type of products, including digital ones, may be sold with WooCommerce, and there is no limit to the number of variations per product.
5. ShopWired
ShopWired is becoming a top eCommerce platform. It rates well in features, performance, convenience of use, and more for global customers.
Its features and price match Shopify and BigCommerce. All options include 1-click upsells, digital products, customizable products, export and import, and more. ShopWired offers free add-ons for abandoned cart recovery, ratings, and reviews, unlike Shopify and BigCommerce.
ShopWired specializes in B2B features. It simplifies trade accounts, credit accounts, bulk discounts, and quote requests for store owners.
6. Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware)
Businesses use Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Salesforce has B2C and B2B offerings. Commerce Cloud Digital was Salesforce B2C Commerce. Salesforce Commerce Cloud supports mobile, social media, your web store, your brick-and-mortar business, and more.
Extremely complete platform. It contains all the tools you need to start and run your eCommerce business. Sales, customer service, marketing, community development, and order fulfillment tools are included. Salesforce Commerce Cloud includes approximately 4,000 pre-integrated apps in its app store.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud also has other features, such as order management, commerce personalization with AI, globalization solutions for international businesses, and more solutions that are grouped by business type, needs, industry, and role.
Even though Salesforce can handle a lot of traffic and sales, it is not a good fit for small brands or people who are just starting to sell online because of its high price and complicated technical needs.
7. PrestaShop
As an open-source platform, PrestaShop is free to use, however some of its extensions and plugins do cost money. For its backend, PrestaShop utilizes the MySQL database management system and the PHP programming language.
Symfony supports PrestaShop. Over 600 functions and 5,000 modules and themes are available. Open-source eCommerce solutions are secure, scalable, flexible, and sustainable.
Third-party web hosting, a plethora of untested add-ons and modules, and a complicated installation process all contribute to making managing a PrestaShop-powered online store difficult.
To increase traffic, you may easily create a blog, fill it with informative posts, and distribute it across various social media platforms. By letting you display your store in multiple tongues and currencies, the platform removes any barriers that might exist for your online business. You can broaden your customer base to include buyers from any country.
Notably, dropshipping is simple to integrate with your Prestashop store in a few clicks, allowing you to expand your business with little to no effort spent on inventory management.
8. Squarespace
Squarespace lets beginners design attractive websites. This all-in-one platform gives beginners and experienced brands everything they need to run and build their business websites.
They offer all hosting options and several eCommerce website development tools. Squarespace leads website design for top designers because of its award-winning designs. Websites can be customized using seamless templates and simple drag-and-drop tools.
If you want to sell online, Squarespace demands patience and only two payment integrations, Stripe and PayPal. Squarespace provides good inventory tracking after eCommerce setup. Higher-tiered plans allow gift card and subscription sales.
9. Zyro
Zyro is a reasonably-priced SaaS platform designed for startups and small businesses. Hostinger, a company that manages online spaces for businesses, is behind this offering, so you know it’s legit despite its novelty. They provide business owners with a website builder and other artificial intelligence capabilities, such as:
- Create logos and favicons
- Shrink, increase, and remove backgrounds
- Business name and slogan creation
- Title and compose blog posts
According to the information provided on their website, in under an hour you can create a website with the assistance of their cutting-edge AI technology.
10. Weebly
Weebly is a straightforward website builder that Square Corporation owns and operates. If you want a simple online store that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, this solution is a good option for you. Weebly’s platform is easy to use and requires no prior technological knowledge on your part, but the online store it provides is quite fundamental.
On Weebly, you won’t have to pay anything to set up a shop. The cost and benefit? Until you purchase a paid eCommerce plan, you won’t be able to utilize your own domain name or get rid of the in-app advertisements.
Up until recently, there wasn’t a lot of focus on ecommerce, so it didn’t have as many advanced features as other top platforms. Still, it’s a great choice for people who are just starting out or who don’t want to hire a developer.
11. MyDukaan
MyDukaan is the simplest way for businesses to sell online, grow, and scale. The platform provides several tools to build and improve online retail and dropshipping businesses. To benefit users and businesses, the Dukaan team customizes its strategy. Dukaan is a top eCommerce platform due to its pleasant workforce, range of business tools, and frictionless experience.
Dukaan offers custom domain names for online stores. Dukaan simplifies starting, launching, and growing.
Dukaan lets you upload product information, customize your eCommerce website, manage business operations, and more. Install plugins to track other website details. The platform has many tools, but the UI is basic and easy to use. This avoids guessing, which is useful.
Dukaan simplifies and enhances online shopping. Why? because it has professional business tools. Dukaan can produce invoices, Terms & Conditions, and store taglines. They can also help you describe products creatively.
12. Wix
Wix is one of the most popular platforms for online commerce, and a large part of its success can be attributed to the platform’s intuitive user interface. You may have your own online shop up and running in as few as seven simple steps.
To get started, you will first need to create an account and then select one of the various templates available for professional online stores. Before you begin adding your products, you will then have the opportunity to personalize the appearance of your online store. Not only does it provide a large number of different ways to customize it, but it also allows you to add up to 50,000 different goods, making it an excellent option for businesses that plan to grow quickly.
You may pick it up easily as a beginner. Also, Wix’s on-page service during the store’s development was superior to that of any other best website builders.
13. Shift4Shop
Since it was made available to the general public in 2001, 3dcart, which is now known as Shift4Shop, has assisted over 22,000 online businesses. They provide useful features such as no transaction fees and no limits on the amount of storage space used. You can also use their point-of-sale system, and they support selling through many channels. In 2021, the company underwent a name change to become known as Shift4Shop.
It is completely obvious that Shift4Shop is one of the eCommerce platforms that has been operating in the industry for the longest time.
14. Big Cartel
Big Cartel is a fully hosted eCommerce platform and website builder that was developed with the explicit purpose of catering to makers, artists, and craftsmen. These are the kinds of businesses that you would often find on Etsy. Big Cartel offers templates that can be customized, as well as tools for marketing and the registration of domain names.
Big Cartel is mainly designed for artists and creatives. In Big Cartel, sellers are only permitted to upload five photographs for each product, despite the fact that the appearance and feel of their website can be customized. Because there are not many payment and integration choices either, scaling a multichannel business on this platform is far more difficult.
15. Sellfy
Sellfy is an eCommerce platform specially for digital products, they have improved the platform over the years to the point that it is now possible to develop your very own online store in a matter of minutes, regardless of the type of company model you operate. It is a website builder that is simple to use and does not require any prior knowledge of technology to begin utilizing.
There are three different ways to start selling online using Sellfy, one is to connect your current website to a Sellfy store, secondly, you can attach it to a custom domain, or use other integrated options to generate leads from various different platforms.
Sellfy’s print-on-demand platform lets you sell POD products without Printful or Printify. In the premium plan it offers unlimited products, digital products, and subscriptions.
16. Open Cart
OpenCart is a free and open-source CMS for online stores. It now serves more than 400,000 operational websites. In addition to integrating with a large number of well-known payment gateways and shipping methods, it makes use of a MySQL database and HTML components.
OpenCart is a eCommerce platform that is available for free to use, although it does offer paid themes, plugins, and support services to its users.
17. Instamojo
Instamojo makes it possible for small enterprises to launch their own online businesses on their own terms by providing them with free online stores. These ready-to-use stores come complete with all of the necessary tools and features for marketing, as well as an integrated payment gateway and delivery services. Within the next five minutes, you will be able to create your very own business store!
Choose from 30+ professionally designed themes and quickly create a fully functional online store that reflects your brand. It also provides a feature of mobile-friendliness in order to get best conversion rates. Instamojo is an app shop with over 40 different business automation tools which makes it one of the top eCommerce platforms.
18. Pixpa
Create your Awesome portfolio website using Pixpa. Pixpa is an all-in-one website builder that comes with simple eCommerce platforms specifically designed for the needs of business owners to sell their products, services, or digital content online and grow their online businesses.
Pixpa was created to meet the requirements of those who want to sell their products online and grow their online businesses. Pixpa is able to assist you in creating, maintaining, and managing a comprehensive and professional eCommerce website without requiring you to touch a single line of code thanks to its user-friendly interface and extensive collection of feature-rich, mobile-friendly, and responsive eCommerce templates.
Pixpa is great for creative businesses because it gives clients a good way to look over their work and gives them options for selling art and photography prints.
19. Volusion
Volusion was one of the earliest eCommerce website builders. Although it caters to enterprises of a medium to big scale, in comparison to eCommerce platforms such as Shopify or BigCommerce, it does not offer nearly as much capability. Having said that, despite being an all-in-one eCommerce online selling platform, it nevertheless provides all of the capabilities that you are most likely going to require.
Volusion lets you build homepage, product pages, and unlimited product selling with 30+ payment gateway integrations.
20. Quick eSelling
As a SaaS eCommerce platform, Quick eSelling makes it possible for business owners anywhere in the world to open an online store at no cost. B2B and B2C retailers are using the platform with great success. You may take advantage of the internet and sales channel by setting up shop and managing it using Quick eSelling eCommerce platform, and you don’t even need to know how to code.
It’s a hosted and managed platform for eCommerce that includes a robust customer relationship management system for handling all of your orders, stock, and clientele in one convenient place. Additionally, the platform is compatible with a wide variety of third-party APIs and payment processors. Moreover, Quick eSelling is highly adaptable, so you may give your online shop any design you choose.
Choose the Best eCommerce Platform!
Although there is no such thing as the top eCommerce platform, I have selected the best options.
Your requirements should be the first consideration when selecting the top eCommerce website builder. BigCommerce was by far the greatest overall platform for any company structure, and it performs exceptionally well in terms of SEO.
In terms of features and apps, WooCommerce is rapidly approaching parity with industry frontrunners like Shopify. And if you want to run a website that incorporates both private labeling and affiliate marketing, this is your best option.
Shopify is the most effective platform for dropshipping and print on demand, among other related services.
Wix may be used to create straightforward stores. Wix has seen significant development in recent years, and its pricing structure now makes it ideal for sole proprietors and small businesses.
FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the Things to Consider When Choosing Your eCommerce Platform?
Ecommerce platforms are specialists in presenting your products and services. With 370 eCommerce platforms globally, choosing the right one might be difficult. Naturally, a tailored solution may be better.
Manage your cost-sales ratio and engage customers first. Sales and marketing initiatives must also be supported by personnel.
This is to discuss how to make your eCommerce platform one of the best. Consider following things while opting for a top eCommerce platform.
- Hosting
- Customization
- Mobile-Friendliness
- Themes & User Experience
- Speed & Scalability
- Integration
- Payment Gateway Support
2. What are the eCommerce Solution Options?
There are basically three different eCommerce platform options, Open-source eCommerce platforms, SaaS eCommerce platforms and Headless eCommerce platforms.
3. What are the Important eCommerce Platform Features?
Every online store has its own specific requirements, and selecting the best eCommerce platform for your company is totally based on the platform’s capability of resolving the day-to-day difficulties that are exclusive to your company.
Nonetheless, there are a few fundamental features of potential service providers that you need to look at:
- Security
- Hosting environment
- Unlimited API call volumes
- SEO
- User-friendliness
- Promotion opportunities
- Payment processing