Choosing your ecommerce software is a key step in beginning an ecommerce business. The correct ecommerce software will provide the capabilities your online store need. It will increase checkout conversions, give numerous sales channels, and facilitate your growth.

So, where do we start? This article discusses what to look for in ecommerce software and some of the top ecommerce solutions to test.

Ecommerce software is the system that enables your online store to function. It may incorporate features such as a checkout, inventory management system, fulfillment service, and marketing tools.

Basic ecommerce software solutions allow you to post things for sale and take payments online. However, most platforms go above and beyond, meeting broader online business demands such as website creation and social network integration.

The best ecommerce software offers a comprehensive set of tools and features to help your business flourish.

1. Shopify

Shopify is the best platform for selling. If you want to dropship or rely on Facebook Ads or Instagram promotion, this is the ideal option. Shopify outperforms BigCommerce in a few categories, including post-purchase 1-click upsells, but falls well behind in terms of performance.

Shopify offers three pricing plans, ranging from $39 to $399/month. Customers who commit to one year upfront are eligible for a 10% discount. If you want to save even more, commit to 24 months for a 20% discount. All plans come with a free trial.

All plans feature unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, and SSL encryption. You also get access to discount codes and abandoned cart recovery. This is a nice change since abandoned cart recovery was only available on the higher two tiers in the past. If you’re looking for one-click upsells, you’ll need a paid app for that.

If you want carrier-calculated shipping (integrated with your third-party shipping service) for live and up-to-date shipping rates at the time of order, you’ll need to upgrade to the Advanced Shopify Plan for $399/month.

2. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is the greatest overall e-commerce platform. Its powerful product search engine makes it appropriate for huge retail firms. It’s also a wonderful option for folks who wish to start an ecommerce company or who already have a physical store but want to expand their operations to include online orders. Its available tools enable any niche or business to succeed.

The interface lets you to personalize your online shop without learning how to code by using configurable templates to design, sell, and market your products. It is designed at folks with limited web development skills, but it also allows tech-savvy users to adjust the HTML and CSS for greater control over the web design. Its headless ecommerce structure allows for maximum customization for larger companies, as well.

As for pricing, the lowest BigCommerce Essentials plan costs $29.95/month. Other Bigcommerce plans are on par with Shopify pricing, costing $79.95 and $299.95/month, respectively. Some goodies like discount codes, gift cards, unlimited bandwidth, and professional reporting come along. However, you don’t get a custom SSL or abandoned cart saver, but it’s still really good for simple stores not getting sales worth more than $50k per year. As the plan goes higher, so does the sales limit. All plans come with a free trial, and you’ll get a 10% discount on annual plans.

3. Wix

Wix ecommerce has progressed significantly in recent years. When I first began writing ecommerce platform reviews, Wix was not even on my radar. Once they were added to my list, I gave them a very low rating and would not recommend them.

Wix is becoming a big force in the ecommerce industry, offering incredible value to solopreneurs and small ecommerce enterprises. Wix’s ecommerce tools have expanded dramatically over the last few years. They now provide multi-channel connectivity, abandoned cart recovery, dropshipping, and print-on-demand capabilities.

Wix offers three plans for Business and ecommerce. Opting for a standard website plan will not get you the features you need for an online store. Business Basic is $27/month, Business Unlimited is $32/month, and Business VIP is $59/month.

The plans differ in the amount of storage space and video hours. With the two basic plans, you get 50 GB and 100 GB of storage space, with 5 and 10 hours of video. The top-tier plan includes unlimited storage, unlimited video hours, and customized reports.

All plans include a custom domain (free for one year), customer accounts, unlimited products, abandoned cart recovery, the ability to sell on social channels, and ad vouchers.

If you want to sell on marketplaces, sell in multiple currencies, have product reviews, use dropshipping with Modalyst, automate sales tax, or use advanced shipping, you’ll need to upgrade to either Business Unlimited or Business VIP. Business VIP also includes a loyalty program by Smile.io.

4. ShopWired

Shopwired is quickly becoming one of the most popular ecommerce systems. It serves consumers all over the world and rates highly on our list in terms of features, performance, and usability.

Shopwired provides five plans ranging from $29.95 to $499.95 per month. All options include a 14-day free trial. Committing to annual billing saves you 20% on your chosen plan.

All options include 1-click upsells, digital products, customizable products, product exporting and importing, and more. Many features that require a premium add-on with Shopify and BigCommerce, such as abandoned cart recovery and ratings and reviews, are available as free add-ons with ShopWired.

Shopwired has many apps and integrations to choose from. Many free extensions include fulfillment center integrations, email marketing automation, and user-generated content automation. The only thing it’s missing is integration with Amazon, WordPress, and USPS.

That said, you may need coding experience (or to hire someone to help you) to install some of the extensions.

5. Shift4Shop

Since its public release in 2001, 3dcart (now Shift4Shop) has served more than 22,000 online businesses, including PCMag. They offer practical advantages such as limitless storage and no transaction fees. You can also use their POS, which supports multi-channel sales.

Read Also: The Benefits of Using Collaboration Software

Despite being older than BigCommerce and Shopify, Shift4Shop does not perform as well, and the reason for this is obvious. It is not for beginners. Although there is a lovely onboarding video when you log into your dashboard, the entire function is difficult to understand, and the builder is not visually appealing.

Shift4Shop recently revamped their pricing model. Now, customers can get access to the platform completely free if they process at least $500 in sales transactions per month. For merchants who aren’t quite there yet, it’s just $29/month with PayPal. The plan includes various features, such as:

• Single-page checkout
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Product comparison
• Product reviews
• Purchase order module for B2B
• Digital downloads
• Real-time shipping rates and shipping labels
• Tax rate calculator
• Inventory control

Since they’ve switched to one core plan, it still appears they still lack abandoned cart recovery and one-click upsells.

Shift4Shop offers its own App Store for integrations, but it also includes a number of built-in ones. Online businesses are immediately set up to accept credit card payments using PayPal or Shift4. Marketing connectors include Google, Facebook, MailChimp, Aweber, and Houzz.

If you want Amazon 2-way sync, Amazon FBA integration, or fulfillment center integration, you will need to purchase a premium app. POD integration also has an additional expense.

6. WooCommerce

When compared to platforms such as BigCommerce, WooCommerce is the greatest single platform for running both ecommerce and affiliate sites under one roof. However, actual ecommerce platforms like as BigCommerce and Shopify sell better, albeit not by much.

It integrates with WordPress to transform any website into a functioning ecommerce store. There are also extensions for integrating payment gateways, social media, email marketing, one-click selling, and shipping.

It comes at no cost. There are few addons with pricing, and some WordPress themes are pricey. However, you may not require such extensions, and there are some nice free themes. You will still need to spend in WooCommerce hosting, so put that into your budget.

7. Volusion

Volusion was created in 1999 but began offering ecommerce solutions in 2002. It’s a terrific choice for people selling physical things because automated digital downloads after payment are not yet allowed.

Overall, it’s a reliable platform for subscription ecommerce businesses. Dropshipping is also acceptable, but not print on demand. I would grade it higher if the Amazon integration was better, but that may not matter to you at all.

Their prices have a limitation to the number of products you can sell. The first two plans that cost $35 and $79 per month have restrictions of 100 and 5,000 products respectively. That may change at some point because they used to have a limitation on bandwidth, but that is no more. The constant improvements give us hope, but for now, if you require unlimited products, you must pay $299/month for the premium plan.

It also doesn’t come with blogging capabilities which is a huge downer mostly in this day where building SEO with blogs is king. To get that, you’ll need to use a third party like WordPress and a plugin or other means to connect the blog to your store.

The dashboard is nicely structured with all of the main action areas in the top navigation menu. It also has inventory management and multichannel selling features built in. The marketing options include SEO, sell on Google, eBay, Amazon, social selling, rewards, and coupons.

Volusion does not offer an app marketplace, like its primary competitors do. Instead, it includes a partner marketplace where you can connect with other firms to help you expand and develop your site, such as Accessibe, which will ensure that your website is accessible to everyone, including those with impairments. Integrations such as ShipStation are also available, but you must pay for them before they can be integrated into your Volusion store.

8. Sellfy

Sellfy is a simple and user-friendly platform that supports a variety of business models and has built-in print-on-demand capabilities. You can integrate the platform with your existing website, create a Sellfy store with a custom domain, or use Shopify Lite’s “Buy Now” buttons and other embed possibilities to generate sales from other platforms.

The free plan allows users to sell up to 10 physical products, but doesn’t include a custom domain.

Premium starts at $29/month, with the highest tier plan coming in at $159/month before annual discounts. Compared to other ecommerce platforms, Sellfy is one of the most affordable options. Considering the features and ecommerce functionality you get standard, you can save a lot of money compared to Shopify. You’ll have to invest in some expensive third-party apps to take advantage of things like recurring subscription billing.

Sellfy’s claim to fame is that you can get your store up and running within five minutes. While there are limits on the number and types of products you can sell on the Free plan, upgrading to a paid plan means you can sell unlimited products, digital products, and subscription products, too.

9. Squarespace

Squarespace is another platform that supports drag-and-drop. They were founded in 2003 and offer slick templates and design skills. If you don’t require many features, test them out. It’s also ideal for print-on-demand ecommerce businesses.

Squarespace pricing starts at $23/month ($16/month when paid annually) for the personal plan. Unfortunately, that plan lacks the fully integrated ecommerce features you need to run an online store. For that, you need the Business plan, which is billed at $33/month or $23/month with annual billing. That plan comes with a 3% transaction fee.

To save on that transaction fee, you’ll want to upgrade to the Commerce Basic Plan for $36/month ($27 with discount), which removes the additional fee. To get the most features, including abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping, advanced discounting, and to sell subscriptions, you’ll need the Commerce Advanced Plan for $65/month ($49 with annual discount.) 

10. Magento (Now Adobe Commerce)

Adobe Commerce is trusted by huge brands such as Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Cisco. Coding is a vital component of the program. So, if you have a developer or the budget for one and want something truly flexible and powerful, Adobe Commerce is an excellent option. You can do and undo until you have the feature-rich web store you desire.

Adobe Commerce is primarily utilized for free, however, there is a premium level for enterprise solutions for larger ecommerce firms. It is pricey; the annual licensing charge is tens of thousands of dollars. That’s a lot, but it’s in the cloud, faster, and includes additional features like automatic trigger-based email campaigns and automatic cross/upsells.

Whatever option you choose, you’ll like the extensive list of features that may be extended. Discounts, recurring payments, SEO grinding, user-specific content, membership subscriptions, endless products, and more features.

Finally

Choosing the finest ecommerce site builder is entirely dependent on your needs. We recommend that you consider a couple as front-runners: BigCommerce was by far the finest overall platform for any business plan, and it performed exceptionally well in SEO.

WooCommerce is coming up to market giants like Shopify in terms of functionality and applications. Ideal for private/white-label ecommerce websites. Great for affiliate marketing. And the best solution if you want to run a private label and affiliate marketing website.