Many users have difficulty choosing the right ecommerce software. There is so much to choose from. You have many options to choose from, including different features, price points, capabilities, designs and so forth.
We are here to help you navigate the maze of ecommerce software available and guide you to the best ecommerce software on the market.
You’ll find an ecommerce tool that suits your needs, whether it is free or paid.
Shopify
- Price: Starting at $9/month
- It is a sign-up-based online system
- Dropshipping, physical and digital products
- Features: 9/10
- Easy of Use: 9/10
- Designs: 9/10
Shopify may be the most popular ecommerce software. It is loved by its simplicity and wide range of features.
Shopify works well for any product or service you wish to sell.
Shopify is also a great choice if you want to scale up your ecommerce business.
Shopify has many templates that can be used to design your website. Many of these templates are specifically tailored to niche markets. Shopify’s theme store has many themes, including those for jewelry shops, furniture, clothing, and wineries.
Shopify offers very affordable pricing. Five pricing levels/tiers are available depending on the features your store requires.
- It’s very affordable to get started with a basic setup – $9 per month with Shopify Lite. You can insert Shopify Buy buttons to any website. You can also sell products on Facebook Messenger and Facebook.
- The Basic plan costs $29 per month. This plan is the most popular. This allows unlimited products, an ecommerce store that offers all the necessary features (and also access to the App Store).
- $79 per month allows you to create more staff accounts, use gift cards, and get professional reports. There are also slightly lower credit card fees.
- Advanced Shopify is available for $299 per month. This is for larger-volume sellers who are on the rise.
- Shopify Plus is a plan that provides enterprise-grade solutions to high-volume merchants.
Shopify offers some notable features:
- All things unlimited: Orders, products, file storage and bandwidth
- Support available 24/7
- Compliance with Level-1 PCI
- Mobile commerce is now possible
- Point-of-sale equipment
- Mobile app
- SSL Certificate for Your Store
- Credit card payments can be processed
- Shopify will automatically calculate shipping rates and taxes
- Drag-and-drop is the best way to build your online store.
- Blog module included
- Multilingual compatibility
- Create customer profiles
- Customers can have their accounts
- Optimized to be found on search engines
- Integration of social media is built-in
- Inventory management
- Create product variations
- Module for reporting
Wix
- Prices start at $13/month for a basic website, or $23/month for sites that offer eCommerce functionality.
- It is a hosted eCommerce solution
- Sell: Digital and physical products, services, or dropshipping
- Features: 10/10
- Easy of Use: 10/10
- Designs: 9/10
Wix is a powerful tool for small and medium-sized businesses. Wix is easy to use, even if you are not a skilled coder or have years’ of online experience. Wix is a remarkable product that allows you to access everything, from high-quality templates and automation with ease. You can even design your own templates with drag-and drop customization.
Wix provides all the functionality needed to create a website that is successful. You have over 500 templates to choose, many of which are professional and appealing right out of the box. Wix ADI allows you to sell products in a variety of ways. You can also build your website with AI through Wix ADI. Wix enables you to create a multi-channel eCommerce solution. This is not possible with BigCommerce and ECWid.
Wix gives retailers and business owners access to many additional features and add-ons, including plugins for cart abandonment and drop-shipping. SaaS solutions are available for almost all needs. There are also many analytics to track the performance of your campaigns.
Wix is the perfect website for startups looking to scale quickly or larger businesses that need a flexible website to sell their products. Wix keeps the experience fresh by adding new functionality and features all the time.
Pricing
The Business Basic package starts at $23/month. This product includes customer accounts, secure payment, a custom domain that is free for one year, and many other amazing functionalities.
Upgrade to Business Unlimited, and you’ll get 10 hours of video for $27/month. Unlimited bandwidth, 35GB storage and more are all available.
Business VIP is the final product for eCommerce. It comes with 50GB storage space, priority support by Smile.io, loyalty program, priority support and automated sales tax for 500 transactions per month.
You can upgrade to the Enterprise package if you have a large business. This includes custom pricing. To find out the cost of this service, you will need to contact our team. However, it typically starts at $500 per month.
Wix has many notable features, including:
- More than 500 templates
- Drag and drop complete customization
- Mobile-friendly designs
- Salesforce is a leader in industry-leading integrations
- AI supported designs
- Media galleries and advanced design options
- There are tons of plugins and app options
- SEO and Marketing feature
- Unified database management to your CRM
- A wide range of API connections available
- Reservations and bookings for restaurants
- Multiple payment processing support
- Forums and memberships
- Event management
- Contact management and booking forms
- Reporting and analytics that are comprehensive
- Integration with social media
- Domain name custom
- Support for SSL certificates
- Professional mailbox
BigCommerce
- Prices starting at $29.95 per month
- It is a signup-based online system
- Sell physical and digital products
- Features: 8/10
- Easy of Use: 7/10
- Designs: 9/10
BigCommerce has been a very popular ecommerce solution. It provides all the features you would expect from an ecommerce platform, and it is very user-friendly.
Bigcommerce’s setup wizard is similar to Shopify’s. You can sign up at Bigcommerce.com and go through the setup wizard. This allows you to specify what you want to sell, and how your store should look. Your store will be ready in no time.
BigCommerce allows you to sell any product and configure many parameters that can be used to describe them.
There are many options for themes and store designs. Bigcommerce templates are widely considered to be the best in their field. They are professional and modern.
Although the overall pricing is identical to Shopify’s, you won’t get a $9 per month plan. Most of the features are already included. BigCommerce offers more marketing tools than other platforms, for example.
These are just a few of the features that BigCommerce offers:
- Unlimited product, order, file storage, bandwidth
- Live chat support available 24/7
- Compliance with Level 1 PCI and multi-layered security, DDOS protection
- Included SSL certificate
- Point-of-sale equipment
- Visual builder to create your online store website
- Migration tools to import your store data from another software
- PayPal / Braintree / Stripe, Apple Pay / Amazon Payments, and other payment methods
- Inventory management
- Optimized to be found on search engines
- Tools for selling on Facebook, Pinterest and Amazon
- Developer API
- Integrations with product-comparison sites
- Email marketing module
WordPress + WooCommerce
Prices: Starting at $6-$10 per month
It is self-hosted, ecommerce software
Dropshipping, physical and digital products
Features: 8/10
Easy of Use: 5/10
Designs: 7/10
This is our first experience with self-hosted eCommerce software. It is different from Shopify and BigCommerce in that you do not need to sign up for an account. Instead, you will receive a WordPress software package, which you must install on your own web server.
To put it another way, in order to get started using WordPress, you need to purchase a web hosting plan and then set up things a little manually. I say “somewhat” because most web hosts offer easy-to-use installer scripts that will make your life much easier. SiteGround is one example of a company that provides WordPress installation services.
Let’s now talk about the other half – WooCommerce.
WooCommerce, a plugin for WordPress that enables ecommerce features and turns your website into an online store, is what you see under the hood.
WooCommerce’s strength is its versatility. It allows you to sell any product you want. WooCommerce gives you complete control over how your store is set up and what features you add (extra features). This is not something that you get with BigCommerce or Shopify.
However, WooCommerce setup is more laborious than most people realize.
You will also need additional plugins (add ons) for advanced payment processing, dropshipping, discount codes, gift cards, etc. Although they are easy to install, this is an additional step you will need to do in addition to the standard setup.
Both WooCommerce and the WordPress platform are open-source and free of charge. They are free to download without any restrictions. Web hosting is what you will need to pay, but that’s not all. You can’t have an online store that works on WordPress without this element. This will usually cost you between $5 and $20 per month. SiteGround is our recommended host and you will pay $3.95 per month.
WordPress has a wide variety of themes (design packs) available. There are literally thousands of them online, both paid and free. Finding the right one is the hardest part. You have two options: either hire someone to create it or you can build one.
These are just a few of the features that WooCommerce offers:
- All things unlimited: Orders, products, file storage and bandwidth
- Only support from your web host is available, which may (or may not) be of any assistance (it is with SiteGround).
- Mobile optimized
- SSL certificate via your host
- You can accept PayPal as default and also install extensions to process credit card payments
- Extendions for shipping and taxes
- Good drag-and-drop builder for site content
- The best blogging platform available
- Multilingual compatibility
- Create customer profiles and accounts
- Optimized to be found on search engines
- Social media integration via extensions
- Inventory management
- Variations in product
- PCI compliance depending on your host
WordPress + Easy Digital Downloads
- Prices: Starting at $6-$10 per month
- It is self-hosted, ecommerce software
- Sell: digital products
- Features: 6/10
- Easy of Use: 5/10
- Designs: 7/10
WordPress + Easy Digital downloads is another self-hosted ecommerce platform on this list. The core of the setup is identical, as you can see. It’s WordPress. Easy Digital Downloads is the plugin that handles the ecommerce part of the job.
All the coolness of Easy Digital Downloads aside, it is only intended to sell digital products. Although this feature set may seem a little limited for some online shops, it might still be sufficient. Easy Digital Downloads does a great job at what it does!
Easy Digital Downloads allows you to sell documents, images, ebooks, music, songs, and other media files. It also handles the part that allows customers to download the product directly from your website.
Similar to WooCommerce, the requirements for hosting are identical here. You will need to purchase a web hosting account individually, which will cost you $6-$10 per month. SiteGround is our recommendation.
It’s the same story with designs. You can find thousands of themes on the internet.
These are just a few of the many features that Easy Digital Downloads offers:
- All things unlimited: Orders, products, file storage and bandwidth
- All types of digital products can be sold
- Only your web host can provide support
- Mobile optimized
- SSL certificate via your host
- You can accept Amazon Payments and PayPal by default. Extensions for credit card processing are also available.
- Good drag-and-drop builder for site content
- The best blogging platform available
- Multilingual compatibility
- Create customer profiles and accounts
- Optimized to be found on search engines
- Social media integration via extensions
- PCI compliance depending on your host
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- The free plan is available. Pro plans start at $12/month
- What is it? Hosted ecommerce + POS software and equipment
- You can sell physical and digital items, order online food, accept donations, or book appointments
- Features: 9/10
- Easy of Use: 9/10
- Designs: 8/10
Square began their commerce venture as a collection of tools and hardware to support offline businesses and storefronts. Square is actually the name of the company. It comes from the original design of Square’s credit card readers.
The company has been largely unknown in the online space for years. However, they have provided some services that are geared towards ecommerce since 2010. Square has been doubling down on ecommerce over the past few years. They now offer a complete suite, including software and scripts, that allow any business to launch an online store.
Square’s online dashboard is a great feature. It allows you to easily build and manage your ecommerce site. It’s more than the dashboard. Signing up for Square Online is the first step. Square guides you through each step of the process.
Square will also continue to give you advice on how to set your store up and what to do next. This is especially true of their onboarding process.
Square’s expertise in running a storefront is also something to be aware of. You can sign up for Square hardware (credit card readers, cash registers and more) and integrate everything with your online catalog.
Square Online can also be used to sell standard products and set up online appointment bookings, food ordering, table reservation, and other business functions.
Square has a number of attractive website templates you can customize with their fully visual builder tool. You’ll find templates that are optimized for different types of businesses like restaurants and retail stores as well as non-profits.
Pricing
Square Online also offers a free plan. Square Online is different from other ecommerce sites in that it doesn’t restrict the products that you can sell, nor the storage/bandwidth of your site.
If you require more features such as custom domain names, Square branding, customer reviews and discounted shipping, then you can upgrade to a premium plan. These plans start at $12 per month.
The best part is that the price includes a domain name for the first year. You can also get 24/7 support via phone and live chat.
These are some of the top features from Square’s feature list:
- Unlimited products, orders, file storage, bandwidth
- Reservations for restaurant tables, event tickets, and appointment bookings
- Accept donations
- Offering pickup, delivery or shipping
- Gift cards and coupons
- Point-of-sale hardware
- Live chat and phone support available 24/7
- Visual website builder for ecommerce
- Mobile apps
- Integrations of social media with Instagram and Facebook ads
- Customer reviews
- Emails from abandoned cart
- Shipping rates discounted
- SEO features
