10 Best E-commerce Platforms For Your Business in 2024

Best ecommerce platforms to start an online business

Physical shops have their own limitations, whereas online shops perform beyond the boundaries. The only way to expand your business across diverse geographical locations is to sell services or products through an online store. Online stores can be accessed from anywhere, so getting a bigger customer base becomes easier with a fully functional online store. Here comes the necessity of e-commerce platforms.

An attractive online store not only ensures higher revenue, it also works like a perfect virtual representation of all the products or services that you sell. That's exactly why starting an online store can help you boost your customer base as well as your business profit. All you need is a perfect E-commerce platform to get started. There are plenty of options to choose from, but we picked up the best ones and prepared this list for you. Feel free to choose one that fits your requirements.

Contents Overview

Top E-commerce platforms for your business

1. Woocommerce: This platform comes with a lot of advanced e-commerce features. No doubt, Woocommerce is currently one of the most popular names in the list of best e-commerce platforms. Woocommerce lets your existing wordpress site into a fully functional e-commerce store with payment processing features. It has a diverse range of extensions to fit the needs of different business sizes. Of course, you can customize the appearance of your woocommerce.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Woocommerce is highly customizable.
• Through wordpress, Woocommerce offers some SEO features.
• Woocommerce is free for installing, so it can be the perfect choice for small businesses.

Cons

• Just because wordpress is a self-hosted service, so you will be responsible for updating the plugins and themes.
• Users who are new to wordpress may find managing and setting up Woocommerce a little challenging.

2. Hostinger: Using Hostinger website builder, you can quickly build your e-commerce store. Hostinger has always been known as one of the best hosting service providers, so definitely, it can be a reliable choice. It offers a drag-and-drop website builder that will help you create your e-commerce store within a very short span of time. Hostinger is also known for offering some AI-based tools. Last but not least, Hostinger provides top-class support.

Pros and cons

Pros

• The website builder of Hostinger supports Google Analytics.
• Hostinger also has some in-built marketing tools.
• Hostinger provides AI tools to edit images and create product pages.

Cons

• The site builder of Hostinger offers fewer third-party integrations compared to its in-built features.
• There are no free plans available in Hostinger.

3. Magento: Magento offers features that can be helpful in simplifying the management tasks of large-scale sites. Magento is an open-source e-commerce solution and it's also known for allowing the listing of unlimited products with product grouping feature. The content management system offered by Magento can simplify content organization. However, the performance of Magento is partially dependent on the quality of web hosting. In simple terms, you must choose the right hosting to ensure the best performance of your Magento site.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Magento comes with advanced search engine optimization capabilities.
• You can gain deep insights about search terms, sales, taxes, etc which will help you improvise your upcoming strategies.
• Magento has built-in features for creating custom catalogs for individual companies and managing quote requests.

Cons

• Magento provides very minimal customer support.
• One must have sufficient technical knowledge to learn how to use Magento.

4. Shopify: Shopify is currently one of the top ecommerce platforms globally. It comes with a very user-friendly interface so that people of all skill levels can make the best out of it. Shopify lets you sell unlimited products and it offers cutting-edge features like marketing automation and customer segmentation. However, some advanced features offered by Shopify only come with Shopify POS Pro.

Pros and cons

Pros

• You will get 24/7 support from Shopify.
• You can set different pricing strategies for different markets.
• You can re-engage with all those customers by e-mail who have added any item to their cart.

Cons

• Shopify Payments is only available in a few countries. If you don't use it, then you will be charged for using any other third-party payment processor.
• Shopify provides very limited design features, it only offers 13 basic templates. To get more, you must try the paid ones and the cost of those templates starts from $100, which may seem overpriced to small-business owners.

5. Ecwid: Using ECwid, you can transform your existing social media account into an ecommerce store and start selling online. Ecwid will help you turn your current followers as well as visitors into customers. Ecwid also has an app market that consists of paid and free apps that you can use and if you can't find what exactly you are looking for, then you will also get custom development services in return for a specific price.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Using Ecwid, you can get a better advantage while starting your online business powered by your already established online presence and follower base.
• With the paid version of it, you can automatically generate tax invoices

Cons

• The site builder capacity is limited, you may need custom CSS code to make complex changes.
• You may need an additional paid app to create an intricate website structure that has a critical navigation system.

6. Bigcommerce: If you are looking for a very powerful ecommerce solution with complex requirements, then Bigcommerce can be the right choice for you. Headless commerce is one of the most mentionable features of it, which is known as a unique ecommerce architecture that separates the front end of a website from its back end. The real-time inventory management system of Bigcommerce will help you maintain your brand loyalty as well as authenticity. Most of the plans of Bigcommerce come with 24/7 support.

Pros and cons

Pros

• You will get unlimited staff accounts with Bigcommerce.
• You can create custom features to enhance the workflow of your business.
• With Bigcommerce, you can store the credit card information for the returning customers.

Cons

• It has a limit on the annual sales. The Bigcommerce pro users are charged $150 per month for every extra $200,000 in sales that exceeds the threshold.
• You will need some technical knowledge as well as a bit of coding skills to unlock the full potential of Bigcommerce.

7. Bigcartel: Independent sellers who are trying to earn money online may find Bigcartel very useful. It's very user-friendly and offers some in-built templates that can be used without having any prior knowledge of coding. Both of the free plan and paid plan will offer you access to the templates of Bigcartel. Sellers are also allowed to accept payments through PayPal or Stripe.

Pros and cons

Pros

• You will get a lot of in-built free templates to use.
• Bigcartel has always been known for being one of the fastest ecommerce platforms.

Cons

• Bigcartel does not offer any in-built payment processing system, you will only be able to accept payments through PayPal or Stripe.
• You may need to pay extra for selling downloadable items or for hosting.

8. Square online: This ecommerce platform is reputed for offering offline payment support. You can easily set up your ecommerce store using the drag-and-drop builder offered by Square Online. Square Risk Manager is a built-in security tool of it that provides robust fraud protection. It will help you identify the patterns of payment fraud. Most certainly, tight security is one of the most highlighted features of it.

Pros and cons

Pros

• You will get a free domain with the paid plans of Square Online.
• Using it, you can turn the accounts of your social media into active sales channels.

Cons

• Square Online will charge you extra for online payments, on-demand delivery, and in-person payments.
• Unlike the paid users, the free users will get limited customer support from Bigcartel.

9. OpenCart: Just like Magento and Woocommerce, Opencart is also known as one of the top ecommerce platforms that is being used by a lot of business owners globally. It offers a bunch of built-in features for global selling. It accepts payments from many different currencies and supports a lot of payment gateways. OpenCart is also known for having a wide range of shipping methods that will help you sell your physical products to a diverse range of customers.

Pros and cons

Pros

• It allows customers to purchase products without creating an account.
• Its default affiliate system will help you promote your brand by commissioning common people.
• You can also manage multiple inventories and store settings from the admin dashboard.

Cons

• Stores that have extensive inventories may require installing a bulk editing module to ensure a smooth workflow.
• The module installation in OpenCart will require some technical knowledge.

10. Sellfy: This ecommerce platform is known for being very creator-friendly. If you are an artist willing to sell your work online, then you may find Sellfy very useful. It offers great tools for subscription-based services as well as digital assets. Also, it offers a few in-built templates that can easily be used by non-technical users. It supports Stripe and PayPal for online payments.

Pros and cons

Pros

• It supports a diverse range of digital and physical product categories.
• You can also use it for multichannel marketing. Using it, you can showcase your products on your YouTube channel or Social media accounts.

Cons

• You must purchase their premium plan to remove the branding of Sellfy from your store.
• As mentioned above, it offers a very limited number of store templates.

Choosing any of these ecommerce platforms and creating your own online store will surely help you experience a massive boost in your customer base as well as your profit margin. As you can presume, not all the platforms can be equally beneficial for you, hence, take enough time to choose the right platform.