Which E-commerce Platforms to use in 2024?

CRM Software reviews
Last Updated on 29/09/2024 by Gaz S

What is an E-commerce platform?

People turn to Internet shopping for convenience, diversity, and accessibility. It offers a vast array of products at your fingertips, eliminating geographical limitations. Online reviews aid decision-making, while 24/7 availability fits busy lifestyles. Discounts, comparison tools, and personalized recommendations enhance the experience. Furthermore, doorstep delivery and easy returns provide added comfort, making internet shopping a preferred choice for many.

What type of Ecommerce business models are there?

You can find a multitude of business models in the ecommerce world. Business to consumer is the most common one, since companies address the consumers directly. Then you have business to business where companies sell items to another company and not directly to the customer.

You also have consumer to consumer ecommerce where a consumer will sell his own products to another consumer. Then you have the consumer to business, in which case a consumer will actually provide products and services to a company. In this case we are talking about freelancers, photographers and so on.

In addition, you also have a variety of ecommerce formats based on the situation. Retail is bringing in products directly to the consumer without intermediaries. Wholesale is the sale of bulk products, usually to a retailer. Dropshipping involves the sale of a product to customers through a third party. You can also sell physical or digital products, services, establish a crowdfunding campaign to gain funds for product/service creation or a subscription system where you send products/perform services for customers on a regular basis. So it really is a must to setup an eccomerce website with credit card processing.

Ecommerce platforms
ecommerce platrorm reviews

In addition, ecommerce platforms are adapted to smartphones too, so you can buy from your phone if you want without any hassle. Plus, to make things better, you can create wishlists and monitor the product/service prices if you want.

One thing is certain, the ecommerce world continues to grow and expand, and customers are extremely happy with it. If you are very interested in buying or selling products, the online world continues to be a top solution and e-commerce platforms make this process seamless.

What are eCommerce platforms?

Want to know what Shopify can do for your business? check out this complete guide by Shopify.

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 In 2018, an estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide purchase goods online. During the same year, global e-retail sales amounted to 2.8 trillion U.S. dollars and projections show a growth of up to 4.8 trillion U.S. dollars by 2021.

Retail ecommerce sales in the USA

Here are my top picks for 2024’s best e-commerce platforms

What are the best eccomerce platforms?

1. BigCommerce Review

If you want to create an ecommerce store to sell services or products, then Bigcommerce is one of the main platforms you can go for. What makes this unique is that it’s a specialized ecommerce website builder. Is it a good idea to use Bigcommerce if you want to create a website and sell online? Let’s see how dependable the platform really is and what you can expect when you do eventually sell something on there.

BigCommerce review
BigCommerce review

How easy is Bigcommerce to use?

When you want to create an ecommerce store, hosted solutions like Bigcommerce are great because they help you handle everything. All data, content are images are kept online and that can help more than you might imagine. On top of that, you have a lot of guidelines and tutorials when you start using the platform. The dashboard itself is really easy to use, you can add stuff without a problem and Bigcommerce does a very good job at keeping things simple and seamless all the time. They know how to make the process convenient for you and you can use it even if you have no coding knowledge.

BigCommerce apps
BigCommerce apps

What makes BigCommerce stand out?

You will notice that all hosted ecommerce solutions have their own attractive points. In the case of Bigcommerce, you have a great SEO performance. They optimized the platform for search engine ranking and that will help your website quite a lot, which is very good. On top of that, you will like the fact that they have multi channel selling. The way they do that is they integrate Pinterest, eBay, Facebook and Amazon stores in a single place. On to

Another thing we like about Bigcommerce is the fact that they come with great theme designs. These themes look amazing, they convey a lot of value and quality, and you will be very impressed with the quality and attention to detail.

We also like the fact that there are no transaction fees. Some of the competitors have fees on top of the monthly subscription. Here you get none of that. Bigcommerce makes things easier for you and the lack of additional fees will bring it to be very appealing.

Pricing.

The price points are all over the place based on what you need. If you just want to sell a few things and you don’t need extra features, Bigcommerce will help you with $29.95 per month. Plus will give you abandoned cart emails, stored credit cards, persistent cart and many others at $79.95. Pro is great if you want a vast range of features like reviews, custom SSL, faceted search, sales up to $400000 per year and so on, then you have to pay $299.95.

Conclusion.

Bigcommerce is a great platform for those that want to sell a product or a service online. It’s very interesting to use, it can bring in a great value for money and the return is always among some of the best. If you are very passionate about selling stuff online without having to worry about massive fees and costs, Bigcommerce can be a great option!

2. Shopify Review

Shopify is one of the major platforms that appeals when you want to create a website that enables you to sell products online. It makes a lot of sense to use Shopify as a platform because it’s reputable, resilient and it certainly gets the job done very well. A lot of people like using Shopify because it’s extremely reliable as a platform and will cope with wholesale ecommerce as well. It also has a great relationship with Amazon too. You can even directly sell on Amazon from your Shopify store, which is a really big deal.

Shopify review
Shopify review

How easy is Shopify to use?

When it comes to selling items online, you always want a platform that follows your bests interests and which provides the best value and quality. Shopify does a very good job here because it allows you to focus on the features that you really need. The most important thing to note with Shopify is that their dashboard is easy to use and they do have a vast range of tutorials. You even get guidelines on how to set up your first store. There’s no coding experience needed and everything works exactly the way you would expect. You can experiment with all kinds of different store ideas and features, and it really works.

Shopify themes
Shopify themes

Things that make Shopify stand out.

Shopify has its own system named Shopify Payments that helps you get the store up and running quickly without worrying about other payment processors. The cool thing about Shopify however is the fact that this acts as a unified back office. You can have your store in multiple marketplaces and still make a lot of money that way.

They also have a lot of themes, many of which can already be seen just about everywhere online. That’s because the platform itself is very popular. You can find custom themes created by programmers, so you can go with that if you want to.

Pricing.

You pay $29 per month for Basic, if you need more features you pay $79 and for the advanced structures and scaling your business you can expect to pay $299. This is pretty much the same with Bigcommerce. However unlike the aforementioned platform, Shopify also has transaction fees and sometimes even credit card processing fees.

Conclusion.

Shopify does a very good job when it comes to helping you scale your business. It’s designed with scaling in mind, and it does provide you with support for unlimited products. You may have to go for the more expensive options to access the extra features, but they do help you grow and expand your business depending on the situation.

We encourage the use of Shopify because it’s an amazing product with great features and tremendous attention to detail. All you have to do is to give it a try for yourself and you will appreciate just how organized and chock-full of features Shopify really is. This is a very good platform for any type of online sales and you will find it suitable for any ecommerce project regardless of its size!

3. WooCommerce Review

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress that converts the site into an online shop. Thus, due to the fantastic traits, WordPress got this award-winning plugin. However, after purchasing the plugin, WordPress added it in the portfolio in May 2015. Unlike Shopify, Big-commerce, and different other rivals, WooCommerce is an open-source method. Above all, it’s the best way to have absolute control over your e-shop. So, it is a place where you can sell the stock and find the customers easily.

WooCommerce review
WooCommerce review

How easy is WooCommerce to use?

It’s so easy to use and set-up WooCommerce’s e-store. WooCommerce works on the drag and drop option.

So, it is a fantastic platform to establish an online business. This plugin has no fee or hidden costs and allows you to include the cryptocurrency payments. However, for registration you only need to follow these steps;
• Register the domain name and select the web hosting
• Now install WordPress on your host
• And at last, step, install and activate the FREE WooCommerce plugin
In short, WooCommerce is fully customizable, so you can add features anytime to extend the effectiveness.

Organization of Variable product:

It is the best feature if you want to show your product from different directions to the clients. However, you can show selling items from the front and back end in multiple angles. Along with this, you can easily categories the products in different groups and variations.

Inventory management:

You can manage your orders and stock by counting the number of orders you get from the customer. There is an option to see “orders you have taken” and the “items left in your stock.” It also provides a checkout page to manage the orders and stock levels. 

Sizing and shipping options:

Here you can display different sizes of each item with original and sale price separately. But the measurement can be different, i.e., XS, S, M, L, and XL.  However, it also offers the shipping calculator at the end of the order placing process. So, you can easily set all the available options for the shipping. Apart from this, you can apply the discounts to only one item or all of them.

Here are some other features that are enough to make the WooCommerce a best online shopping facility.

  • Geo-location support detects the location and address of customers
  • The mobile-friendly interface makes it easy for customers to shop
  • Integrates google analytic for in-depth analysis
  • Customers can leave a review for the products
  • For customer support, you need to submit the web ticket
  • 30 days money-back guarantee

WooCommerce recently merged into WordPress – comes with a bunch of powerful SEO features. However, through this, we can quickly determine whether we are following strong SEO or not.

WooCommerce wordpress
WooCommerce WordPress

Things that make WooCommerce stand out.

WooCommerce offers features in the core and extension models. Thus, Website developers can easily use WooCommerce’s features according to need. WooCommerce is the open-source e-commerce structure for WordPress. It comes with vital parts, e.g., analytics, news, business choices, and mobile-friendly interface. In short, it is an attractive option for WP users who want to build an online store.

Pricing.

At WordPress, you can install this plugin free of cost. However, the price of the hosting is between $3.95/month up to as much as you are willing to pay. But some initial offers come at a low cost with different discount offers. On the other hand, the cost price to buy one domain is just 15$ per year. Apart from this, you can set up WooCommerce’s e-store with a safe online payment gateway.
• Starter package: $13.99 with 100 GB webspace
• Plus-Package: $17.99 with unlimited space for WooCommerce store
• Pro package: $31.99 with advance backup solutions

Conclusion.

If you already have the WordPress site, setting up WooCommerce gets easier. If you’re the WordPress developer, then you can easily understand WooCommerce. WordPress is all that you need to create the website. However, WooCommerce is the thing through which you will bring life to your e-store. WordPress allows you to make the design, and WooCommerce gives you the power to make money. In short, it is the best platform with plenty of integrations.

Just make sure that WooCommerce as the basic package will suit your needs, because if you need to add extra plugins most of them are by third party developers and yes they will expect payment for them.

4. ShopBase Review

First of all, let’s begin with the history of how ShopBase started from nowhere. There was teamwork behind this concept that began in 2008. However, in 2008 the name of the startup was Beeketing. Beeketing was a venture that helped the merchants in e-commerce to grow their business and sales pretty fast.

However, after the successful start, Beeketing then converted into the ShopBase. The main aim of this solution is to deal with the following problems:

  • Deal with the longer shipping times
  • Come up with the high-quality product
  • And eliminate the sub-standard packaging.

However, after all these aims, the world saw a new venture named “ShopBase.” However, it is the first white-label drop shipping and print on demand company. ShopBase’s primary services are to provide the website building along with the content optimization tools. Above all, it is your go-to-choice that helps you to create a profitable online business.

ShopBase review
ShopBase review

How easy is ShopBase to use?

As we discussed earlier that ShopBase is user friendly that makes it possible to access the tools from the dashboard.

However, you can create a dropshipping store in less than 15 minutes. Apart from this, there is unlimited bandwidth for any of the plans for sweeping performance. You don’t need any coding skills to set up the store.

The 256-bit SSL encryption gives a smooth run for your drop shipping and payment transaction. ShopBase assures no loss when it comes to the uptime speed. However, the 99% uptime does fast updates on sales, orders, and inquiries.

ShopBase store
ShopBase store

Things that make ShopBase stand out.

If you are expecting to build a top-notch e-store, then choose ShopBase. It is effortless to create a mobile-friendly store with just a few clicks. However, after building up your store, ShopBase redirects the user towards the admin dashboard. So, the dashboard then comes up with the following cool features;

Order management

Order management helps to deal with the problem of missing and pending deliveries.

This feature shows the status of payments with the delivery details. Here you can easily organize the shipping details to maintain credibility.

Checkout page

It is like a barrier to control and reduce the purchasing uncertainties by navigating the status. ShopBase provides all features that help to make the sale order more successful by avoiding funnel cracks. However, through the checkout page, you can schedule emails to convert the visitors into customers.

Built-in payment gateway

Whether it is drop shipping or print on demand, the ShopBase gives a complete guarantee of payment. You can accept convenient payment methods, ShopBase accepts PayPal, stripe, and Blue snap. Apart from this, the store owners can complete the transaction by using debit and credit cards.

Pricing.

Everything valuable comes with the price. But ShopBase is an economical option with a fantastic platform.

They also offer a 14 days trial here, so you can try before you buy.

If you choose to pay annually you can enjoy the 10% discount that is offered.

However, there are three plans of ShopBase with the following price range:

  • Basic plan: $19/month (Best for the tight budgeted people)
  • Standard plan: $59/month (Most famous solution for the store owners)
  • Pro base: $249/month (Perfect for the enterprise level)

Conclusion.

ShopBase is a well based and dedicated e-commerce platform that is pretty friendly for beginners. So, it has pricing plans with prominent features for any sales level. In short, it is the best platform that allows customization at such an affordable price. So, choose ShopBase if you want to spread out your brand’s base in the market and launch your e-store on a mobile responsive platform with such a fantastic uptime speed.