10 Best eCommerce Platforms and Site Builders 2024

eCommerce, also known as electronic commerce, refers to the buying and selling of product and services online. Which is more cost effective than traditional business systems but trading much more easily. So, we can buy anything online without hassle. That’s why, eCommerce platform is getting popular more and more.

Now most of the product based company want to build eCommerce website to sell their product to customers. For making eCommerce website you first need to select right eCommerce platform as your requirement. Because if you select a wrong platform you can not achieve your goal. In this thesis we highlight the popular eCommerce platform feature. Which will help you to easily select the perfect platform for your business without wasting valuable time and money.

Best eCommerce Platforms

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We’ll provide the detailed features and limitations of the top eCommerce platforms. After that you can select which eCommerce platform is preferable for your business.

Before we go into details you need to know important key features for judging eCommerce platforms. It will help you pick the right eCommerce platform for doing business online for long term.

– Flexibility of use

– Payment method

– Costing

– Security

– SEO procedure

– Customer facility

Let’s go inside ..;

1. Shopify

Indisputably, Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platform. In 2021 Shopify is the market leader by commanding 26% of market share. For significant features, the popularity of Shopify is increasing day by day.

Now we explain the advantages and disadvantages of Shopify eCommerce platform.

Advantages:

• Easy to handle: Most of the business person do not have proper technical knowledge. In this case Shopify is perfect for making an online store. You’ll find tons of Shopify themes to build it without any hassle. Anyone can operate easily and boost their sales rapidly.
• Payment System: Customers always want an easy payment way to buy anything from an eCommerce platforms. Shopify has inbuilt payment service and also accepts credit cards. It is especially perfect for an international eCommerce website for accepting multi currency.
• Customer Support: When building a website you may face several problems in different stages. At this time you need help from experienced one. Shopify has an expert support team to help their customers through email,chat and phone.
• Marketing And Appearance: SEO is one of the most important issues for any website.Majority of the eCommerce platforms find their clients through search engine result.For this reason everyone wants to rank up their website and spend additional money. Shopify provides marketing tools for improving SEO rankings which save your money and time.Inbuilt themes of shopify is so attractive and responsive.This themes make the website appearance so professional which impress the clients easily.

Disadvantages:

• Expensive: Starting plan of Shopify is $29 which may be $300+ for properly customized as per your business requirement.Most worst thing is that you need to pay commission to shopify according to sales value.
• Limitation of Product category: Every eCommerce platform needs to perfectly categorize their product which can help customers to find their product easily.But the real frustrating factor is that shopify has no wide range of product category. That’s why shopify is not suitable for medium and big business.
• Difficulty in Customizing theme: We say that shopify inbuilt themes is perfect but some time needs to be customized.In this case you require help of an expert to customize themes and spend additional money.

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free eCommerce plugin that allows you to sell anything online. Built to integrate seamlessly with WordPress, WooCommerce is one of the world’s popular eCommerce solution that gives both store owners and developers complete control. With endless flexibility and access to hundreds of free and premium WordPress extensions, WooCommerce now powers 30% of all online stores – more than any other platform.

In statistics of w3techs 2021 we know that 39.5% of websites use WordPress. User of WordPress increasing day by day. For this reason WooCommerce user also increasing. With the newer versions of WooCommerce you can now manage downloadable and virtual products.

Advantages:

• Variety of Product: In WooCommerce a merchant can sell different kinds of products like physical product,digital products,external product,tickets.It is one of the major reasons why people choose WooCommerce.
• Easy Customization: Everyone can customize WooCommerce in an easy way.The provide unlimited variety of free plugin and themes available in WordPress plugin directory or WordPress theme directory.You can also find paid WooCommerce extension on WooCommerce.com and codecanyon.
• Inventory System: Running an online store without a well organized inventory system is completely impossible.Inventory system is an essential part of all kinds of product based business.Piece of news that WooCommerce inventory system is not complicated. For this reason you can manage your shop inventory properly.Customer can easily check their product order And delivery status.
• Security:An online eCommerce site must need a secure gateway for protecting their customer credential data.Still bags of customers are not interested in big online purchases due to security concerns of data theft and credit card scams. WooCommerce always allows the use of security plugins for customer safety.
• SEO Management: Product based eCommerce websites have two ways to increase their sales are purchase ads or improve search rankings(SEO). Both methods are costly but SEO is more cost effective than purchase ads.Most of the merchants focus on SEO system to sell their product.WooCommerce is best platform for SEO,because it’s offers plugins to better optimize for SEO.

Disadvantages:

• WordPress Based: WooCommerce fully depends on WordPress because it is still a plugin. Without WordPress hosting you can not use it.For this reason any ready eCommerce site which does not use WordPress is cannot use WooCommerce.
• Additional cost: WooCommerce must need few extensions to run the site smoothly.For using those you need to pay a portion of money every year which is irritating.
• Difficult to Troubleshoot: Troubleshooting can be a pain for inexperienced users.For this reason they need to hire technical person.

3. Wix

People who are interested in building a strong and attractive brand with creative control Wix eCommerce could be the perfect choice for them. If you have no tech knowledge you can also create a perfect eCommerce site in WIX. Especially it is appropriate for small business and beginner.

Advantages:

• Simplicity: In Wix merchants can easily set up a professional and attractive site without taking too much time.Editing tools drag-and-drop functions of Wix is superb.
• Plenty of Apps: Here are 250+ free and paid apps available for adding extra functions.By using those apps you can configure the site as per your requirement.
• Multilingual Feature: When you want to build international eCommerce for selling globally, you must add multi language. You can create a multilingual website by using Wix.
• SEO: If you want to boost your sales,your website must organize SEO perfectly.Wix is helping you in this regard.

Disadvantages:

• Free Wix Branding: Wix is forced to wix branding in the entry plan which is always top of the site.If you want to remove ads you must advance to another plan which is costly.
• Template Unchangeable: In wix you cannot transfer content from one template to another.For this reason if you want to change template you’ll have to manually shift over all the content you’ve created on your previous template.
• Lack of Inventory alert: There is no alert when your product stock label low.

4. BigCommerce

If anyone wants to build a large-scale eCommerce platform with high volume sales, Without any hesitation BigCommerce is the top choice for them.BigCommerce have the most powerful store management and analytics interfaces. Currently it is used by many international well reputed company like Toyota,Martha Stewart, Camelbak, Schwinn, Payless and Gibson.

Advantages:

• Easy Using System: In BigCommerce a merchant can easily set up the online store.Moreover it’s easy to create products and manage your store.
• Variation Of product: BigCommerce has a huge variation in product which allows up to 600 variants tied to a single SKU.
• Unlimited User Account: A large eCommerce shop must need many user accounts to run their shop properly.In BigCommerce multiple users can access and update the store from any location.
• Inventory System: BigCommerce provides well organized necessary tools for managing inventory.Now a days customer want hassle free and super fast buying process.This means that an eCommerce site always needs to maintain their every product stock properly.

Disadvantages:

• Limitation on Yearly sales: In BigCommerce every plan has limitation of annual sales.If you cross the limit you have to pay more by choosing an expensive plan.It seems odd for customers when their cost increases from under $100/month to $1000/month.
• Expensive Themes: There are only seven free themes. Most of the themes are very similar in the free section.The have several premium themes which cost $145 to $235.
• Difficult to Customize Theme: BigCommerce theme customization is not so easy because this isn’t a drag-and-drop website builder.In this case BigCommerce needs to improve for custom pages.

5. Squarespace

People who want to build an eCommerce site with qualitifull professional designs and feature Squarespace is ideal for them. Squarespace provides a fast and easy way to build unique websites through a drag and drop interface.

Advantages:

• Squarespace provides 67 templates,from there you can choose the perfect one for your site .All of the themes are looking attractive and professional.You can also easily customize this as per requirement.
• Here are a lot of useful widgets in Squarespace which can be placed, moved, or resized exactly the way you want them.It supports several third party widgets.
• All Squarespace websites are fully responsive.So that it is automatically adjusted on tablets, mobile devices and desktop computers.
• One of the most important features of Squarespace is allowing data import & export.By using you can shift your content anywhere.

Disadvantages:

• There is no free plan in Squarespace.You have only 14 days trial ,in those days you can edit your site .After that you cannot edit any part of your site.
• If there is any issue to troubleshoot in Squarespace you can only chat with the technical team.Here is no phone call option available.The chat method is not fast as conversation.
• In Squarespace you cannot get the advanced SEO tools. Squarespace provides all marketing basic tools which have limited meta structure.
• It is not suitable for large business.by using Squarespace it is quite impossible to create multilingual websites.

6. Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop (Formerly 3dcart) is one of the most popular eCommerce builders which provide lots of inbuilt features and many more payment options. In this platform you can quickly and easily create an online shop with a friendly shopping cart and checkout.Shift4Shop has a powerful API for integrating with other apps and tools.

Advantages:

• Shift4Shop has plenty of inbuilt features without any cost.Most popular features which you enjoyed are Smart categories,POS app,Unlimited product attributes and options based on your rules,Quick Edit Bar,256-bit SSL encryption and Built-in warehouse management module.
• In Shift4shop you get more than 100 free templates which are mobile friendly and fully professionally designed.Those responsive themes ensure a smooth browsing experience when buyers use a tablet or smartphone.
• Shift4Shop has no own payment processing service but it provides over a hundred payment gateways.You can run an international e-commerce site easily by using Shift4shop.
• Easy to use for someone with no coding skills.Anyone can quickly and easily make changes by using drag-n-drop features of Shift4shop[.
• Shift4shop provides a fully optimized platform that uses the latest in best practices to help you higher rank the competition.Moreover it also allows connecting to Google Analytics and checking additional store statistics from your dashboard.

Disadvantages:

• 3dcart doesn’t provide enough customization options. Making it very limited for customers.
• Moreover the layout and file structure takes some getting used to. This should be improved upon.
• Although Shift4shop provides lots of themes that are customizable, their free themes are limited. And generally, the theme designs do not look as clean and modern as other competitors.

7. Weebly

Weebly is a most well-known largest site builder with powering over 50 million websites worldwide.It is equivalent to 2% of all websites that are currently live. It has a drag-and-drop website builder, making it ideal for users with limited coding knowledge.

Advantages:

• Client wants to build their website easily.Every website builder claims that they are easy to use. In the case of Weebly, it is true. With some rapid site builders, the term ‘drag and drop’ is figurative, but with Weebly it is literally a drag and drop editor.
• Most preferable feature of Weebly is cost minimizer, with its affordable premium packages offering more than its competitors.
• The template selection is very good and responsive.Most importantly of all, the site builder has an ‘import’ feature that you can use to upload your own themes.This feature of Weebly gives you much creative freedom for the build of your site.

Disadvantages:

• Weebly is not great for international online shops.By using Weebly you cannot create multiple language website. Weebly also blocked in Russia, Ukraine and China.
• Although you can have a blog section on Weebly, it seriously lacks in this area.It is not dedicated to content and allows extended functionality like WordPress.
• Weebly only allows custom domains if you are a paid plan user.If you are a free plan user basically stuck with the Weebly subdomain even if you own your own domain.

8. Magento

Magento is the front runner in the online business world. It’s a flexible and feature-rich eCommerce solution. Magento is one of the leading eCommerce platform which is used by top companies like Nike, Ford & Cannon.

Advantages:

• Flexibility is the biggest feature of Magento which means that you can modify the source codes as per your desire, customize templates, and set up the desired functionality for your website.It is also flexible regarding third-party integrations that allow you to perform various functions like importing products and many more.
• Magento has exclusive built-in functionality to manage Marketing, promotions, conversion tools,Checkout, payment & shipping, and Order management.In magento you can vary your price of the specific product depending upon the group of customers.
• Magento is one of the most used e-commerce platforms in the world, thus having a large community of users.When you face any problems, you get more support because there are unlimited resources to solve problems.
• SEO is an important part for any e-commerce business.Magento performs well in this department.It allows you to modify the URL of each of its pages. It is also possible to alter their meta descriptions, the sitemap and other aspects.

Disadvantages:

• Magento offers many versions.Community version is free but the Enterprise version starts at US$14,420/year and the Premium Enterprise version starts at US$49,990/year.In the case of small companies and online shops, Magento becomes a very expensive solution.
• Magento customize feature is not so easy.If you do not have technical knowledge ,you must need an experienced Magento developer to customize your site.
• Community version of Magento is slow at loading. But the paid version like enterprise and premium enterprise versions are quite fast.

9. Volusion

Do you want to create an attractive and responsive website and operate it smoothly with the right eCommerce tools? Volusion is the perfect solution for you. The solution has some solid product management features which has helped to solve many challenges in starting an eCommerce business. Volusion is one of the oldest eCommerce website builders created in 1999.

Advantages:

• Volusion is easy to use and easy to set up. Basically get a working store after you sign up, and you only have to adjust the settings, add your products, and change your design.It doesn’t require any technical skills to get it.
• Inventory is an essential part of any online shop.In volusion inventory integration features give its edge over competing alternatives.Furthermore, adding products, updating stocks, prices and others is available on just a click.
• When visitors can go through your product offerings, the first thing they’ll notice is your website design and appearance.
• Volusion allows you to promote and push a certain product in your store. A promotional landing page will be created and it will be added to your store navigation.

Disadvantages:

• Volusion has sales limits on each of its plans,like BigCommerce.So you are looking out for increased bandwidth, then you will have to increase your budget substantially.
• Blog is one of the most mighty marketing tools that you could have to further reinforce your brand and rally your customers.But there is No blogging function,it would be better if a blog feature was built in.
• Volusion has free and paid themes.If you did not like free themes,you need to choose from premium themes which are costly.

10. Sellfy

Sellfy is a different eCommerce platform,it is no ordinary e-commerce platform like other. It is the perfect solution for those people who want to sell digital products in an online shop. Digital product means like eBooks, videos, music, artwork, and online courses. In Sellfy you can easily create and completely customize a fully-fledged e-commerce website in 5 minutes.

Advantages:

• Sellfy is fully user friendly. All of the terms are explained perfectly that everybody should understand. That is why merchants can start selling in a couple of minutes.
• Most special feature is that it is designed specifically for these digital-based businesses, providing features like PDF stamping, pay what you want pricing, unique download links and limited download attempts.
• In Sellfy you can provide your social media followers with links to your products.Users can buy products through your website or social media.You’re free to sell directly from your blog, Sound Cloud page, YouTube channel, or any other third-party platform.
• Email marketing features can help your business bloom and stand toe-to-toe with a competing store.By using email you can offer a discount code, send newsletters and promotions to customers.We can’t overstate the importance of offering a discount to promote sales.

Disadvantages:

• Sellfy has only two payment options which are PayPal and Stripe. If you don’t want to use PayPal or Stripe to process payments, you’ll have to use another platform.Where others competitors eCommerce platforms can work with more than 50 payment gateways.
• You can’t customize your website in Sellfy which you can do in other eCommerce platforms.
• There are only a few apps of integrations to choose from.Limitation of integrations may not be enough for heavy users.

Finally about eCommerce Platform

From the above discussion we know that you did not get all features in an eCommerce platform. Different eCommerce platforms offer different features and prices.So,choosing the eCommerce platform is really based on your needs.I hope that above discussion will help to select the right eCommerce platform for your online shop.If you suggest any eCommerce platform which feature preferable for any online shop we will add in future in this topics.