18 Best eCommerce Platforms + Reviews in 2024

In 2023, choosing the right ecommerce platform is still one of the most difficult challenges for any new online business, and even for businesses that have been operating in eCommerce for a while but wish to migrate to a new platform for various reasons.

Developing an ecommerce website is not that hard, but if you choose the wrong ecommerce platform, it’s going to harm your business soon.

In this article, we will walk you through some of the best ecommerce platforms in 2023 from their features, pros and cons and how to choose the right platform for your business.

No time to read? Here are our top 3 picks:

17 best eCommerce platforms in 2022

Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world with more than 7 million websites using Shopify.

Some outstanding features of Shopify

• Comprehensive set of tools and features that cover every aspect of running an online business
• Easy to set up and use without coding knowledge required
• Manage online store across multiple channels, including web, mobile, social media and more
• Many customizable templates with seamless responsive themes
• Robust built-in analytic tools
• Strong community with millions of entrepreneurs worldwide
• A fully hosted solution with level 1 PCI-DSS compliance and SSL certificate
• Unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited products
• Fast loading time
• The most user-friendly platform. Shopify knows how to make commerce faster and easier for everyone
• Scalable and can support a wide range of businesses
• Built-in marketing and blog CMS features
• Huge app store with over 7,500 apps
• Extensive free learning resources to help merchants build a successful business

Cons

• Transaction fees are applied if you use a payment gateway outside of Shopify Payments.
• Customization on the back end requires coding knowledge, buying an app, or working with a Shopify development Services or a Shopify partner.

Pricing

Shopify offers different pricing options for businesses of different sizes:

• Starter: starting from $5/month, for those new to selling and through Social Networks
• Basic: starting from $39/month, recommended for individuals or small businesses use
• Shopify: starting from $105/month, recommended for small businesses use
• Advanced: starting from $399/month, recommended for medium to large businesses use
• Shopify Plus: starting from $2000/month, recommended for enterprise with high volume

In addition, Shopify also has a 3-day free trial package. After the trial expires, you can use the Shopify offer of 1 dollar a month for 3 months.

So, who is Shopify best for?

• Who is a first-time entrepreneur
• Who is a non-techie and just want to focus on selling instead of complex technical stuff
• Who want to start a dropshipping or print-on-demand store
• Who run multiple sales channels

Read more: Top 30+ Must-have Shopify Apps in 2023

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is famous for being the world’s leading open SaaS ecommerce software and platform. The platform is also known for its low total cost of ownership and highly flexible APIs.

If you like the hassle-free nature of SaaS but still want the customizability and flexibility of open source platforms, then BigCommerce is what you need.

Some outstanding features of BigCommerce:

• Best-in-class APIs that can smoothly integrate with existing systems, synchronize data, and centralize operations
• Handle up to 400 API calls per second
• Complete SEO control, including URL structure, edit metadata, optimize for rich results, and edit the robot.txt file
• Allow adding up to 600 SKUs/variants per product
• Professional reporting tools on all plans
• An open SaaS platform that allows you to customize at ease
• Rich built-in flexibility and customizability features, reducing the reliance on plugins and third-party apps
• Complex inventory and order management
• Easy to use interface
• Industry-leading APIs
• No transaction fees

Cons

• Annual sale limitation on Essential plan. Once you reach the threshold, you’ll automatically be upgraded to the higher plan.
• A steep learning curve for beginners due to the complexity of features
• No native POS system
• Some themes look pretty similar in terms of design

Pricing

BigCommerce splits its plans into two versions: BigCommerce Essentials and BigCommerce Enterprise (the enterprise plan for large businesses, custom quote).

Who is BigCommerce best for?

In short, BigCommerce can work well for B2B, B2C, and D2C businesses, especially big businesses. The platform also supports omnichannel and international commerce. Fast-growing businesses and large enterprises are the ones who benefit most from BigCommerce’s flexible APIs.

The ability to manage large inventory and orders can also be beneficial to big stores with thousands of products or stores that are making a good amount of sales.

Visit BigCommerce

Magento Ecommerce

Magento (which is now Adobe Commerce) is one of the most used eCommerce platforms in the world. Although it is well-known for being incredibly complicated, this platform has significant benefits that make it deserving to be one of the best ecommerce platforms.

Besides, the launching of Magento 2 has taken the platform to a higher level, accelerating many providers to create more effective solutions for B2B eCommerce firms.

Some outstanding features of Magento eCommerce:

• Versatile content management: The backend and content management interface comply with the rule “what you see is what you get” allow store owners to build and customize features on their online stores on the fly.

• Mobile-friendly configuration: Magento user interface and shopping carts design are responsive to smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

• Advanced search engine optimization: With SEO efficiency, it gives online stores more opportunity to rank highly on search engines such as Google, Bing, and more.

• Sturdy and spacious: The platform allows a site with up to 500,000 products, and handling 80,000 orders per hour.

• Flexible third-party integrations: Magento enables your online stores to integrate with third modules or apps such as MailChimp, Google Shopping, and more efficiently.

• Customizable security permissions: Magento supports you to customize multiple levels of security permissions, control internal access, and ensure your site’s safety.

• Save time and money: Magento is open-source and has several custom extensions that can be shared between multiple Magento users. Through one instance of Magento, you can manage numerous eCommerce stores with various languages and various currencies.

Pricing

• Basic or open source version is free
• Magento Commerce: There isn’t a specific figure for the price. The investment cost for Magento Commerce depends on various factors such as web hosting, domain, SSL certificate, web design, etc., based on your needs. From my experience, a well-established eCommerce store on the Magento platform typically spends around $1,500 - $2,000 per month.
• Magento Commerce Cloud: Tends to be more expensive than Magento Commerce due to cloud hosting. Typically, the cost ranges from $2,800 to $3,200 on average.

May in your interest: Shopify vs Magento: Which one is better?

Elementor

A powerful website builder, Elmentor enables users to create stunning WordPress websites without having to write a single line of code. And, with powerful ecommerce features, Elementor can be used to create comprehensive WooCommerce websites, code-free.

Elementor’ interface is intuitive; users can leverage dozens of features and widgets to create a one-of-a-kind online store. You can leverage 20 unique ecommerce widgets to build the store you’ve always wanted. These include ‘Custom Add To Page’, ‘Product Rating’ ‘Product Breadcrumbs’ and many more.

Pricing: start at US$49 per year.

Pixpa

Pixpa is an all-in-one website builder that comes with easy to use e-commerce tools specially designed for the needs of business owners to sell their products, services or digital content, and grow their online business. With a beginner-friendly interface and a wide range of feature-rich, mobile-friendly and responsive e-commerce templates, Pixpa can help you create, maintain and manage a comprehensive, professional e-commerce website, without touching a single line of code!

Pricing: Start at $6/month.

Shift4Shop (formerly 3DCart)

Shift4shop, previously known as 3DCart, is a powerful and secure eCommerce software platform that has served over 22,000 online businesses in 20 years of service. The company dedicates to help online merchants build online stores that rank higher and sell more.

Shift4shop has over 200 built-in features, 50 free themes, offers SEO options and supports over 100 payment processors.

The platform provides intuitive features, mobile-ready themes, latest SEO standards, and marketing eCommerce tools to make your store convert higher and increase conversion rate.

Pricing: Start at $29 per month via Paypal for new customers.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free Wordpress plugin that enables merchants to turn their Wordpress sites into online stores freely and also offer additional paid features and integrating options to streamline the functionality of the shopping cart.

This open-source platform is an ideal solution for small brands with Wordpress development resources as it will be easy to customize. Through its secure payment processor, WooCommerce ensures PCI compliance and secures communications between your customers and your server.

However, WooCommerce can slow down because it can’t handle too much weight of themes, plugins, or products you add to your store. So if you want to scale up your business, it’s better to choose another platform. If you plan to stick with WooCommerce, research the application in a bit more detail and learn as much as possible about it. It has a specific set of requirements, and if it is to perform as expected, you need to pick a WooCommerce-optimized hosting service that meets all of them.

Pricing:

• WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin. However, there will be costs associated with purchasing WordPress plugins and extensions, depending on the needs of each eCommerce store
• From my experience, I can say that you will spend at least $50 per month on expenses such as web hosting, domains, themes, extensions, payment processing, design, security, and more.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Formally known as Demandware, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based eCommerce platform tailored to both B2C and B2B merchants. It integrates many other CRM and marketing services, which helps you grow your business and build a good customer relationship all at a time.

Besides, Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers other features such as order management, commerce personalization with AI, globalization solutions for international businesses, and more solutions categorize by business type, needs, industry, and role.

Despite being able to handle high volumes of traffic and sales, Salesforce is not suitable for small brands or starters in selling online as its high price and complex technological requirements.

Pricing: typically range from 1% to 3% of your store’s gross merchandise value.

Squarespace

Squarespace is an easy-to-use and friendly platform that empowers users without any coding background to create beautiful websites. Whether you’re a beginner or established brand, this all-in-one platform gives you everything you need to run and grow your business website.

They offer numerous features and tools for building an eCommerce website and provide hostings in all available packages.

Squarespace is famous for its award-winning designs, which makes it the leader in the website design for world-class designers. You can use seamless templates and intuitive drag-and-drop tools to design your websites to your personal style.

Pricing: Start at $26/month.

Yo!Kart

Yo!Kart is a powerful standalone multi-vendor e-commerce platform, best fit for business owners who are looking to start online marketplaces similar to Amazon, Etsy, or eBay. The platform has been used by 1000+ businesses that include startups, enterprises, & some Fortune 500 companies.

Yo!Kart is a fully customizable ecommerce software platform that allows business owners to scale the business as per the requirements. It offers the right set of features and functionalities to launch future-proof multi-vendor ecommerce stores.

Pricing: Start at $1,249 for lifetime license.

Volusion

Volusion has been in the industry for almost two decades and is an all-in-one eCommerce solution that helps you easily create, manage, and expand your online store. The platform empowers users to build online stores with many handy features and intuitive functionality.

You can create your online store on your way with expertly-designed themes, a variety of navigation styles, custom domains, rich content editor, and more. All the functions will help you create a website with a stellar shopping experience for customers.

Also, Volusion offers features that are crucial to scale up your business. With powerful SEO tools, you can easily track and manage all your metadata to keep your pages, products, and categories SEO-friendly.

In addition, reporting features give you insights about everything happening in your store from abandoned carts, live carts to product and category views.

Pricing: Start at $35/month.

Prestashop

Prestashop is another efficient, innovative, and open-source eCommerce solution providing all features you need to build an online store and skyrocket your business. Prestashop has opened the doors of eCommerce for over 300,000 merchants around the world.

You can build your website with Prestashop’s professional-looking and fleek themes. It doesn’t limit your creativity and ideas in personalizing your online store on your own style and liking.

Besides, there is a wide range of addons and modules contributing to boost the overall performance of your online store. You can manage your products, orders, customer relationship, and get the report on real-time statistics.

Pricing: PrestaShop is free to download and use.

Wix

Wix is one of the most easy-to-use eCommerce platforms providing simple alternatives to build a full-on website with serverless computing and hassle-free coding. It’s the best fit for brand new online stores with affordable pricing, 72 free themes, and a super simple setup.

The platform gives you the freedom to create a website your way. You can select a template and customize anything you want to appear in your store. As your store grows, you can always add new features to improve your store performance.

By using Wix, you can effortlessly capture leads, build customer relationships, and accept payments right from your website. However, due to its simplicity the lack of important tools for selling, the platform is not viable for fast-growing or large-scale online businesses.

Pricing: Start at $17/month for eCommerce businesses.

Quick eSelling

Quick eSelling is a SaaS ecommerce software platform that enables global business owners to start an online store for free. The platform is used by 25,000+ B2B & B2C merchants successfully all across the globe. You can build, launch, and manage your ecommerce store to harness the online & sales channel without any coding experience.

It is a fully managed & hosted ecommerce platform that comes with a powerful CRM to manage orders, inventory, and customers from a single CRM. The platform is integrated with popular payment gateways and third-party APIs such as PayPal, PayU, QuickBooks, SAP, etc. Also, Quick eSelling supports all kinds of customization in-case you want to change the look and feel of your ecommerce store.

Pricing: There is a 1000 products cap in the free plan, however, if you want to add more products to your online store, you can opt for its paid plans.

MyDukaan

Dukaan is a leading eCommerce platform for many reasons: from excellent client support and a friendly team, to a variety of business tools and seamless experience with the platform.

With Dukaan you can add information about your products, change the appearance of your eCommerce website, manage overall business operations, and much more. Additionally, you can install different plugins to help track other specifics on your website. Even though the platform offers many tools, the interface is still simple, comprehensible, and easy to navigate through. This helps users avoid the guessing game which is an advantageous feature.

Pricing: Start at (approximately) $6/month.

Instamojo

With their free online stores, Instamojo allows small and micro businesses to start online businesses on their own terms. These ready-to-use stores come fully equipped with crucial marketing tools and features, an integrated payment gateway and shipping services. You will be able to launch your own business in 5 minutes!

You can choose from more than 30 themes to create an online store that aligns perfectly with your brand’s identity. With integrated shipping services, you can conveniently ship to over 26,000 pin codes. Gain valuable insights into your customers through built-in analytics, and keep your cash flow under control with instant payouts.

Pricing: Start at (approximately) $50/year.

Appy Pie Website

Appy Pie is known for its mission to democratize technology by making it accessible and affordable for everyone. Appy Pie’s no-code website builder lets anyone with an internet-connected device create their own website in minutes. The platform has a lego-like architecture where the platform users can choose an eCommerce block and add it to the website without coding. That’s it! Your eCommerce website is now ready to go live on the Internet.

The platform is entirely no-code which means the users do not have to acquire any new skills or hire skilled resources for app development.

Pricing: Start at $18/month.

Dokan

Dokan is the best frontend multi-vendor marketplace plugin on WordPress. It is powered by WooCommerce. It helps to build big e-commerce sites like eBay, Etsy, Amazon etc.

Developed by weDevs, Dokan helps to build a multi-vendor marketplace according to individual requirements. Till now it has been downloaded by 1.85+ Million, and 70,000+ active online marketplaces.

Dokan offers a plugin that is designed to be user-friendly, providing a seamless experience for both administrators and vendors. The plugin supports various payment gateways, making transactions secure and efficient. Overall, Dokan simplifies the process of creating and operating a multi-vendor e-commerce platform within the WordPress ecosystem.

Pricing: Dokan pricing starts from $149/year.

8 Key features of an eCommerce platform

Though different platforms offer different features, having so many platforms out there with countless features and functions available can get you overwhelmed.

It’s sometimes hard to say which eCommerce softwares or platforms will offer the function you want, or it will still be cost-effective as your store is scalable.

To choose a winning eCommerce platform, you can rely on the following features:

• Run on a single, unified platform: an eCommerce platform should provide natively unified eCommerce, accounting, POS, inventory, and order management, marketing, customer service, financial, merchandising.

• Offer a complete customer view: All customer interactions and transactions should be in a single view across all the touchpoints and channels.

• Intelligent order management: create the most convenient way for customers to purchase, fulfill, and return the products.

• Provide superior customer experiences: choose a platform that creates responsive, friendly, personalized and rewarding mobile, web, and in-store experiences for customers if you want to make your store stand out.

• Support bottomless expansion: fully support multiple business models, brands, channels, locations, currencies, and languages all on the same platforms.

• Site security: if you’re a new store owner, terms like “PCI compliance” or “eCommerce SSL certificates” might give you a head-spinning. But you will be familiar with them soon. Choose a platform that offers an SSL certificate and PCI compliance to assure the security of your store and customer data it contains.

• Easy to create content: It should be a snap to create and publish content on your store. If your store doesn’t have strong supporting content, it will suffer much in Google searches.

You can think about a platform with a reputation for having a reliable content management system (CMS).

• Highly dedicated support and document: your platform provider should provide help whenever you need it. Companies often offer support via many channels such as email, live chat, ticket support, or direct phone calls. Choose which one is the best for you, then you can reach out to your platform provider if you have any problems related to the platform.

Whichever route you rely on when building your website, always think about below factors carefully:

• The platform you choose must ensure your website is constantly updated and managed
• Choose a good web hosting
• Intuitive and seamless payment processors and shopping cart
• Good for customer service and user experience
• Ensure security for your site and customers’ data

Using eCommerce platforms, you can customize your product information to fit your online business needs best. It’s beneficial for both store owners and customers.

Conclusion

Imagine a house without a solid foundation; it’s terrible like an online store without a good platform. An eCommerce platform doesn’t just support, but it enables the growth of an online store.

Put simply, eCommerce platforms are crucial to the business success of any online retail enterprise.

Mageplaza Blog hopes this article will help you choose the best eCommerce software or platform that is most suitable for your business.