Top 11 Professional eCommerce Platforms

E-commerce business is more and more attractive. A lot of entrepreneurs join in this business. After researching, determining your niche, selecting persona and product, and establishing a legal procedure and necessary brand set-up step. The next one is creating your online store. To build an online store, choosing an e-commerce platform is very critical. Many criteria such as loading speed, features, compatibility with different payment gateways, compatibility with your business structure, your web developer skills, SEO-friendly features, etc. will work in your decision. Today, we will show you 11 well-known e-commerce platforms that are used popularly. They help for both retail business and wholesale business as well.

1. Shopify

Shopify is an e-commerce management platform. A paid platform with an easy-to-use interface and intuitive navigation. It has a lot of incredible customization options to customize your design. In addition, it is feature-rich, provides themes, extension and plugins. You can also sell whatever you wish, including physical products, digital products and downloads, services and even do drop-shipping.

Typical features:

• User-generated content (UGC) displays.
• Built-in blogging capabilities.
• Product management and uploading.
• Unlimited orders, products, file storage, bandwidth.
• Mobile app.
• Mobile commerce ready.
• Use your own domain name.
• Point of sale (POS).
• You can accept credit cards + 100 payment gateways.
• Automatic carrier shipping rates.
• Automatic taxes.
• Web-based website builder with drag-and-drop.
• Customer profiles.
• Customer accounts.
• Search engine optimized.
• Product reviews.
• Social media integration + sell on Facebook.
• Inventory management.
• 24/7 support.
• Free Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate.
• Level-1 Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant.
• Gift cards.
• Multiple languages.
• Drop shipping.
• Advanced reporting.

2. BigCommerce

BigCommerce enables you to set up your online store quickly and effortlessly. There are plenty of customization options and themes available. Besides, a lot of features are built into the platform with an intuitive interface as well. This makes not only set up but long-term management easy, because everything is easily found from the left side navigation bar.

Typical features:

• Migrate your store and import products.
• Get found on product comparison sites.
• Visual store builder.
• Sell via Facebook, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon and Square POS.
• Multiple marketing features.
• Encourage return visits with email marketing.
• API.
• Accept payments via PayPal powered by Braintree, Stripe, Apple Pay, Pay with Amazon and dozens more.
• Multi-layered hosting security and DDOS protection.
• Unlimited products, orders, file storage, and bandwidth.
• Manage orders and inventory.
• Point of sale.
• SEO features.
• Level 1 PCI-compliant hosting.
• HTTPS.
• 24/7 live chat support.

3. Weebly

When using Weebly, you can utilize a lot of great features such as cool sales features that let you discount based on what’s already in a user’s cart. Weebly will work relatively well for a small business who wants a site quickly and doesn’t need to do a lot of customization.

Typical features:

• Their standard templates let you upload multiple images or videos of a single product.
• Integrations are available for some marketing tools and social media.
• Payment options are good.
• SEO
• Responsive templates
• App integration
• Easy publishing
• Domain registration
• Free Sub-domain
• Full-width page editor
• 24/7 Support
• Multi-languages
• Unlimited pages
• Expanded stats
• Header slideshow
• SSL security
• Unlimited products, inventory management, integrated shopping cart, shipping and tax calculator and coupon code (Business package)

4. Wix

Wix is one of the no-coding-needed website builders works great. It is user-friendly and templates are extremely visual-heavy. Especially, Wix ADI is an AI assistant that helps you design your website.

Typical features:

• Hundreds of free plugins.
• A support ticket or request a call during business hours, but there’s no 24/7 live chat.
• Custom Domain Name.
• Analytics.
• Wix Chat.
• Professional Mailbox.
• Contact Management.
• Social Tools.
• Free Hosting.
• Member Login.
• SSL Certified.

5. Magento

Apart from e-commerce platform above. Magento is open-source software. It is self-hosted, which means that you need to install it on your own domain that’s hosted through another service. Due to open source, it has the power of full customization, so it requires more knowledge and technical skill. You should consider hiring a web designer or a web developer for your e-commerce development when choosing Magento.

Typical features:

• 24/7 live chat.
• Both free themes and paid themes available.
• Great extensions.
• Marketing, Promotions and Conversion Tools.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Site Management.
• Catalog Management.
• Catalog Browsing.
• Product Browsing.
• Checkout, Payment and Shipping.
• Order Management.
• Customer Accounts.
• Customer Service.
• International Support.
• Analytics and Reporting.
• Mobile Commerce.

6. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, so you’ll need to install WordPress and then WooCommerce (which is an e-commerce platform). WooCommerce is how you’ll add actual e-commerce functionality to it and WooCommerce gives you the ability to process payments. It is more complicated than other e-commerce platforms, so we recommend you should hire a professional helping you to set up.

Typical features:

• Countless themes.
• Unrestricted customization.
• Built-in blogging.
• Embed products, checkout and more on any page.
• Categories, tags and attributes make products easier to find.
• Product ratings and reviews.
• Customize for your location.
• Product sorting and filtering.
• Unlimited images and galleries.
• Unlimited products.
• Unlimited variations.
• Import and export products.
• Built-in payment processing from leading providers.
• Shipping options.
• Shipping rates.
• Geo-location support.
• Tax options.
• Customer accounts and guest checkout.
• One-click refunds.
• Inventory management.
• Order management.
• Email templates.
• Add shop managers.
• Search Engine Optimization.
• Reporting.

7. Squarespace

Squarespace is the next no-coding e-commerce platform. It uses drag-and-drop technology. Therefore, the customization options are relatively limited. However, you can change the template at any point without losing any content you’ve put on your website. All your modules will be shifted to the new layout, keeping your site intact even after a change.

They also don’t have quite as many payment options, but customers can pay through PayPal and Stripe.

Typical features:

• Modern Templates.
• Style Editor.
• Template Switching.
• Built-in Mobile Websites.
• Drag-and-Drop Management.
• Responsive Image Loader.
• Gallery Blocks.
• Audio Collections.
• Dropbox File Synchronization.
• Content Downloading.
• Social Links.
• Custom WYSIWYG Editor.
• Automatic Image Scaling.
• Site Annotations.
• Direct Editing.
• Mobile Information Bar.
• Custom CSS.

8. Volusion

If you want to minimize the costs and aren’t planning to sell hundreds of products, Volusion will be the best match for your business.

Typical features:

• Sell from 100 to unlimited products.
• Unlimited orders and file storage.
• 1GB to 35GB of monthly bandwidth.
• 24/7 live chat support ($15), 24/7 live chat + phone ($35), 24/7 priority support ($75).
• 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 + Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
• API access + batch order processing.
• Dedicated account manager.
• 40+ themes.

9. Big Cartel

Big Cartel is lack of a drag-and-drop editor. If you just want to sell a few products and don’t mind the basic features, Big Cartel will be the right fit for you.

Typical features:

• From 5 to 300 products in your database.
• From 1 image to 5 images per product.
• Email support Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm EST on all plans ($0 to $29.99)
• Point of sale.
• Unlimited bandwidth and orders.
• Responsive and mobile friendly store designs.
• Real-time stats.
• Search engine optimization.
• Promotional tools.
• 15 themes.

10. 3dcart

3dcart has wonderful tutorials and setup steps, click and edit components instead of having to modify CSS or HTML code.

Typical features:

• 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 + cross sell.
• Bulk import/ export.
• Product questions & answers.
• Customer reviews.
• Waiting list.
• Detailed product reports.
• SSL certificate included.
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP) access to files.
• Daily backups.
• Secure level 1 PCI hosting.
• Simple shipping setup.
• Accept payments.
• Marketing and SEO features.
• Modern themes (100+)

11. Ecwid

Fully customizable: image sizes, aspect ratios, product card details, category positions, product page layout, navigation, etc.

Typical features:

• 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.

Start building your store is not simple. Choose an e-commerce platform is not easy. It’s one of the basic decisions to lay the groundwork for your e-commerce development. Did you find out the best match with your specific business model? If so, share your opinion or experience to get an amazing, professional and responsive online store.