Ecommerce Platforms are online market places where people display their products and services to capture the attention of their target audience. Selling on these 6 best ecommerce platforms has become the order of the day in this jet age.
So, if you’re looking for the 6 best eCommerce platforms and solutions, we’ve outlined them below based on the following feature:
6 Best Ecommerce Platforms Features
These 6 best eCommerce platforms have these unique features as listed below;
- Pricing
- Features, flexibility, and ease of use
- Templates and designs
- Apps and add-ons
- Customer support
- Popularity.
6 Best Ecommerce Platforms | Ecommerce Solutions
- Shopify
- Bigcommerce
- Volusion
- Big Cartel
- 3dcart
- Ecwid
1. Shopify – Overall rating: 10/10
- If you are looking to get started in the eCommerce industry, Shopify is our best recommendation. Shopify is the most flexible, feature-rich, and the most complete eCommerce platform out there. You can find everything you need to run an effective store on Shopify. It also lets you customize your design and add various feature extensions.
You can sell whatever you wish, including physical products, digital products and downloads, services, and even do drop-shipping. - All of that starting at the price of $29 / month, or as low as $9 / month if you’re okay with not having an online storefront but instead selling via social media and other channels.
- Shopify Lite also stands out due to its original offering. On that Lite plan, you don’t get any online store, per se, but instead can use your Shopify buy button on your already existing website, social media, emails, and so on.
Feature-wise, Shopify has it all:
- Unlimited orders, products, file storage, bandwidth
- 24/7 support
- Mobile commerce ready
- Use your own domain name
- Point of sale
- Free SSL certificate
- You can accept credit cards + 100 payment gateways
- Automatic carrier shipping rates
- Automatic taxes
- Web-based website builder with drag-and-drop
- Full blogging platform
- Multiple languages
- Customer profiles
- Dropshipping
- Customer accounts
- Search engine optimized
- Product reviews
- Gift cards
- Social media integration + sell on Facebook
- Inventory management
- Digital products
- Product variations
- Level-1 PCI compliant
- Advanced reporting
- Mobile app
- All this gives you great flexibility. Basically, no matter what type of store you want to launch, Shopify will be able to handle that. Including Stores selling physical products, Digital products, Dropshipping and Services
2. Bigcommerce | Best Ecommerce Platforms and Solutions
- Bigcommerce has made some recent changes to its pricing structure, making it difficult for companies to scale up with the system. If you start to make more than $125,000 in revenue, Bigcommerce pretty much forces you to switch to an Enterprise plan. This spikes your rates up to around $900 to $1,500 per month. It’s still unclear how this will affect those businesses who plan on remaining in the lower tiered pricing plans.
Next to Shopify, Bigcommerce has the cleanest dashboard and clearest directions for getting your online store built within a few minutes. In fact, the dashboard looks surprisingly similar to Shopify’s, with modules for accepting credit cards, customizing your store and more. - Everything is neatly available via the sidebar menu that’s been divided into a couple of sections that are thematically related. You can get to your products, orders, and customer info easily, and then you can take advantage of some of Bigcommerce’s marketing settings, analytics, and other modules where you can optimize your store’s appearance.
Adding your products is also very easy to do with the important product attributes clearly accessible. Instead of putting every little detail about a product on a single screen, Bigcommerce uses tabs, with each one getting into a different characteristic of the product. - Here are the other features you can find in Bigcommerce that make it a contender for the best eCommerce platform:
- Unlimited products, orders, file storage, and bandwidth
- 24/7 live chat support
- Point of sale
- Visual store builder
- Migrate your store and import products
- Accept payments via PayPal powered by Braintree, Stripe, Apple Pay, Pay with Amazon and dozens more
- Manage orders and inventory
- Sell via Facebook, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon, and Square POS
- Multiple marketing features
- API
- Multi-layered hosting security and DDOS protection
- Level 1 PCI-compliant hosting
- HTTPS
- Get found on product comparison sites
- Encourage return visits with email marketing
- SEO features
- Overall, Bigcommerce is a nice alternative to Shopify if that’s what you’re looking for. The feature set is just as vast and impressive with roughly the same pricing (that is until your sales grow too much, at which point Shopify is the cheaper option).
3. Volusion | Best Ecommerce Platforms and Solutions
Volusion has a pretty nicely structured dashboard, with all of the main actions pointed out. If you’re a new user just getting started with the platform, you will find a nice step-by-step wizard guiding you through the setup.
The top menu is where you can navigate to the key sections of the panel, and manage your orders, customers, inventory, marketing efforts, design, and reports.
Adding new products is also done in a clear way, with all the fields right where you’d expect them. It might not be as pretty as Shopify, but it does the trick.
Here are the main features that Volusion brings to the table:
- Sell from 100 to unlimited products
- Unlimited orders and file storage
- 1GB to 35GB of monthly bandwidth
- 24/7 support via chat, phone, and priority support
- Visual website builder
- Point of sale
- Accept credit cards
- Ratings and reviews
- Newsletters
- Import/export products
- Built-in SEO + all-in-one SEO tools
- Reports
- Social media selling tools
- Accept payments with Stripe, PayPal, Amazon
- Handle shipping rates
- Abandoned cart reports
- eBay + Amazon integration
- Phone orders + CRM
- API access + batch order processing
- Dedicated account manager
- Volusion is an interesting platform to start with, especially if you want to minimize the costs and aren’t planning to sell hundreds of products.
4. Big Cartel | Best Ecommerce Platforms and Solutions
The main focus of Big Cartel is undoubtedly minimalism. The main dashboard shows you only the most basic stats regarding your store. However, it’s hard to call that a flaw, since it’s probably exactly what you want to see when you log into your store on any given day.
There are just a handful of options in the main menu, highlighting the most common actions that site owners will want to take.
And no surprise, the panel for adding a product is also very clear and rather nice looking.
Overall, you get the most basic features that are a must when launching a new eCommerce store, but not much more than that.
Specifically, the features in Big Cartel:
- From 5 to 300 products in your database
- From 1 image to 5 images per product
- Email support Mon-Fri, 9 am-6 pm EST
- Point of sale
- Unlimited bandwidth and orders
- Responsive and mobile-friendly store designs
- Real-time stats
- Search engine optimization
- Promotional tools
- In all, Big Cartel is a very basic player in our journey to find the best eCommerce platform, and – despite its a beautiful design – while it might be okay for you to start with, it can be difficult to grow with it as your sales, products and overall business increase.
One notable thing about Big Cartel is that it’s one of the only two solutions on this list that offers a free plan.
5. 3dcart
The main user interface and dashboard in 3dcart is clear and understandable. Every area of the panel is easy to get to via links in the sidebar, plus there’s a nice onboarding video in the center panel when you log in for the first time.
You do get a set of sample products in your catalog to help you start. You can examine how these products are structured, what the example descriptions look like, etc.
The product creation panel looks okay, and you get tons of features packed into this area. Some beginners might find it a little intimidating with all the features, but the learning curve shouldn’t take long to overcome.
Here are some of the features you get:
- Sell from 100 to unlimited products
- Unlimited orders, file storage, and bandwidth
- 24/7 live chat support + phone + priority support
- Point of sale
- Mobile & social ready
- Sell online on eBay, Amazon, Google Shopping, Facebook, Shopzilla
- Upsell + crossed
- Bulk import/export
- Product questions & answers
- Customer reviews
- Digital products
- Waiting list
- Detailed product reports
- SSL certificate included
- FTP access to files
- Daily backups
- Secure level 1 PCI hosting
- Simple shipping setup
- Accept payments
- Marketing and SEO features
- 3dcart also offers wonderful tutorials and setup steps to help you do everything from picking a template to set up your shipping options. The clean wizard is ideal for beginners.
Perhaps a downside is the 3dcart visual editor, which is not exactly the best in the market (no drag-and-drop functionality), but it helps you click and edit components instead of having to modify CSS or HTML code.
6. Ecwid
Ecwid has a very clear and easy to grasp dashboard, with the most important options highlighted in the center part of it. What’s immediately noticeable is the nice onboarding interface showing you how far ahead you are in completing your store setup.
The side menu gives you access to all the other areas of the admin panel where you can adjust the design of your store, manage products, see your orders, customers, and so on.
Adding new products is also a straightforward process. The interface presents the most important parameters of a product in the center panel and makes everything else available via tabs at the top.
Overall, this interface gives you a lot of possibilities, while still remaining easy to use, which is great.
Here are the other features you can find in Ecwid:
- From 10 to unlimited products
- Unlimited orders, file storage, and bandwidth
- 24/7 live chat support + phone + priority support (no support on the free plan)
- Sell on multiple sites, blogs, and social networks
- Sell on any device and on the move
- Customer address book
- Smart shipping calculator
- Integrates with WordPress, Joomla and more
- Track inventory
- Sell digital goods
- Accept payments via 40 different payment options
- Define shipping options
- Level 1 PCI compliant
- Overall, Ecwid delivers all the features that most eCommerce store owners might need. Plus, it’s very affordable, especially if you have less than 100 products in your catalog.
- Last but not least, without a doubt, Ecwid offers the best free plan of the platforms featured in this comparison. The only other tool with a free plan is Big Cartel, but that one is pretty limited compared to Ecwid’s.
6 Best Ecommerce Platforms Support Options and Solutions
Here’s a quick comparison of the support options offered vs the price associated with the monthly plan that you must buy:
- Shopify: 24/7 live chat + phone support on all plans ($9 to $299)
- Bigcommerce: 24/7 live chat + phone support on all plans ($29.95 to $249.95)
- Volusion: 24/7 live chat support ($15), 24/7 live chat + phone ($35), 24/7 priority support ($75)
- Big Cartel: email Mon-Fri, 9 am-6 pm EST on all plans ($0 to $29.99)
- 3dcart: 24/7 live chat ($19), 24/7 live chat + phone ($29), 24/7 priority support ($229)
- Ecwid: no support on the free plan, 24/7 live chat ($15), 24/7 live chat + phone ($35), 24/7 priority support ($99).