13.7 E-Commerce Platforms
Ecommerce Platforms
There are many ecommerce platforms in the marketplace today. These platforms make it easier for businesses to deliver Ecommerce to their clients. There are also many analysts each with opinions about which platform is the best and why. The following content is drawn from The Balance Small Business, an organization focused on exploring and advising about alternative Ecommerce platforms. It discusses three alternatives including one which will be used in this course for a key assignment where you will develop an Ecommerce site!
Best Ecommerce Platforms
The quest to discover the best ecommerce platform out there has been our ongoing goal here at ecommerce-platforms.com ever since the site was established. We invest real hours each week to test and examine each platform, all in an effort to find out how viable they are among the top ecommerce platforms in the market. We’re doing all this testing so that you don’t have to.
The resource you’re reading right now is a summary of our findings + how to pick the perfect ecommerce solution for your individual needs!
No time to read? Here’s our no.1 pick when it comes to the absolute best ecommerce platform in the market:
Shopify is the most flexible, feature-rich and the most complete ecommerce platform of the bunch. Out the box, it already offers everything you might need to run an effective store, and also lets you customize your design and add various feature extensions. You can also sell pretty much 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. I wouldn’t have a problem recommending this platform to anyone looking to get started in the ecommerce industry.
Overall rating: 10/10
Ecwid is the only sensible free option in the market right now. Though, it’s not without flaws. Chiefly, you don’t get any interchangeable themes/designs for your store – you can only adjust the stock design by changing fonts, colours, etc. There’s also no support on the free plan, and you can only have up to 10 products.
It might be a good place to start for some online stores. However, once your store gets off the ground and starts earning money, you’re probably still better off switching to a different platform.
Overall rating: 7/10
As hard as it might be to believe, there are over 120 different shopping cart software platforms out there, and they all have their place in the market. We should know, after all, our work is to test them all out. And we’ve been doing that … a lot. So far, we’ve covered each of the top platforms in individual reviews plus created a comprehensive comparison chart looking through the most crucial traits of each platform. We’ve also ranked all platforms based on their SEO effectiveness.
What you’re reading here is an all-in-one summary of which is the best ecommerce platform, plus what makes each of the contenders great. After reading this guide, you will know exactly how to pick the right ecommerce solution for your store.
Here are the best ecommerce platforms that we’re testing
(Karol, 2020)
The Business Environment by NSCC, eCampus Ontario, Pamplin College of Business and Virgina Tech Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
