The Best Ecommerce Platforms for a Successful Online Store
It’s never been smarter to start an ecommerce site. The best ecommerce platforms make it so easy for online sellers in every industry. Common troubles like inventory size and sales volume aren’t problems anymore in marketing.
Best Ecommerce Platforms
Shopify – Best All-Around Ecommerce Platform
Shopify is slightly better in several areas over Big Commerce such as post-purchase 1-click upsells – but far behind in terms of performance. I’ve used Shopify on my site before and have worked with many Shopify sites in the past, but I like WordPress sites better because I have an affiliate revenue model in addition to products. It’s easy to set up the online store with Shopify’s drag and drop interface. Most beginners to ecommerce website development can get the hang of it in a few minutes. Their apps are far too many to list. Be careful, though. With even the basic Shopify plan, many of the apps come at an additional cost, which can add up quickly.
Also, they have a rigid URL structure; you cannot change sections of it. I’ve seen many strange unstructured URLs in Shopify sites well beyond the /products/, /pages/, and /collections/ slug restrictions. I also noticed during our research that websites using Shopify have weak ranking. In terms of SEO, Shopify is very middle of the pack at best.
Zyro – Best Price for a Full Online Store
Zyro is a beginner-friendly website builder that includes the ability to sell products online. It’s easy to learn and affordably priced.
Because it’s built specifically for smaller ecommerce stores, Zyro (pronounced “zero”) has a refreshing lack of complexity. It’s perfect for the person who wants to make a few hundred or thousand dollars each month.
You don’t have to sell very much to start turning a profit, and you’ll never need a web developer to keep the site looking fresh. I recommend Zyro if you want a “move-in ready” online store where you can put up your digital sign and start selling right away.
Wix – Best for Stores with Fewer Than 100 Products
Wix ecommerce has come a long way in a few years. When I first started writing ecommerce platform reviews in 2017, Wix wasn’t even on my list. Once they got added to my list, I gave them a really poor rating and would not recommend them.
Now, Wix is a major force in the ecommerce space and they deliver amazing value for solopreneurs and small ecommerce businesses. Wix’s ecommerce features have evolved drastically in a few years, they now offer multi channel integration, abandoned cart recovery, dropship and print on demand capabilities.
In previous years, they’ve had significant issues with SEO. Few were resolved; some, like the short extra string to the URLs of blog posts and product pages still remain. That’s not ideal for SEO, especially for large ecommerce businesses.
As you grow, you might need to switch because aside from the limited features, the storage space is 20GB and if you are dealing with lots of heavy digital products or other materials, that space might not do.
BigCommerce – Best for Large Inventories
BigCommerce is a very popular ecommerce platform that keeps getting better. There’s a whole lot you can do, and it won’t take you very long to learn.
We recommend BigCommerce for businesses with a large inventory of products. It keeps management simple regardless of how many SKUs, variants, warehouses, and channels you have.
On the front end, your customers have no problems finding exactly what they need. Where other ecommerce platforms struggle at scale, BigCommerce excels.