8+ Best E-commerce Platforms in 2023

Looking for a list of the best e-commerce platforms on the market? You've come to the right place. E-commerce platforms provide all the tools you need to manage, sell online and grow your business. They also allow anyone to easily create an e-commerce store from scratch.

However, not all e-commerce platforms are created equal. Finding the right one for your business can be tricky, and choosing the wrong one can lead to many problems. To help you determine which one best suits your needs, we've taken a detailed look at each of the best ecommerce platforms below.

We will show you their prices, features and the type of business each is best suited for. So take this opportunity to find your best e-commerce platform.

What is an e-commerce platform?

E-commerce platforms are software solutions that allow companies to create, manage and operate their online stores. They generally provide all the tools that online retailers need to set up and manage their business. 

This takes into account the website/showcase builder, marketing tools, shopping cart solutions, gateways, etc. So, if you want to create an ecommerce store, they are essential. Below are the top 8 of them:

  1. Shopify
  2. BigCommerce
  3. Square Online
  4. WooCommerce 
  5. Ecwid
  6. PrestaShop
  7. nopCommerce
  8. Dropizi

Shopify

Shopify is the "giant" of e-commerce platforms. It is the most popular in the English-speaking world and caters to businesses of all sizes. More than 1 million merchants use the platform, across nearly 1.5 million websites. As a result, Shopify has a 31% market share in the U.S. for websites using e-commerce. One of the most crucial reasons for Shopify's success is its flexibility. 

In fact, there are over 2,400 apps in the Shopify App Store. In addition to standard Shopify, Shopify Lite is for those who have an existing website and just need a way to accept payments. Shopify Plus is for businesses so large that they can easily spend $2,000 a month on their e-commerce platform.

Shopify is a way to quickly and easily deploy an e-commerce back-end for businesses that might not otherwise have had the resources to do so. It includes an integrated CMS, multiple themes for your site and blog functionality for your online store.

The most notable feature of Shopify is its ease of use. The smallest business can set up an attractive and successful Shopify store, and larger businesses will benefit from the additional features of Shopify Plus.

Ease of use

Shopify, although a very robust tool, still manages to be easy to use. You can create a fully functional and attractive store or store in just a few hours. The platform's backend is intuitive and user-friendly. Moreover, Shopify offers tons of tutorials and support to help you in a jiffy.

Payment processing

Shopify offers payment processing with over 100 payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, etc. The platform also has its own payment gateway, Shopify Payments, which is currently available in countries like: 

  • United States,
  • Canada,
  • United Kingdom, 
  • In some European countries,
  • Hong Kong,
  • Japan,
  • Singapore,
  • Australia,
  • New Zealand, and other countries will be available soon.

If you do not use Shopify Payments, expect additional fees depending on the Shopify package you choose. These additional fees can range from 0.5% to 2%.

Analytical

Shopify provides different levels of reporting and analytics depending on the plan you are on. With the Basic Shopify plan, you will have access to:

  • Summary reports showing sales, orders, sessions, etc.
  • Real-time reporting
  • Financial reports including sales, tax and payment information
  • Acquisition reports
  • Inventory reports showing % of inventory sold and a month-end snapshot
  • Limited reporting on user behavior, including payment rates and conversion rates
  • Analytics for campaigns using a UTM

The Shopify plan includes some additional reporting options such as sales, retail sales, profit and customer reports. On the other hand, the most expensive plan, Advanced or Shopify Plus, gives you the option to create custom reports. Don't forget that you can always connect Google Analytics!

Shopify e-commerce platform : SEO compatible

Shopify has some great SEO tools. You can customize most of your SEO settings such as title tags, descriptions, image alt text, etc. Plus, you can automatically create optional redirects when you change a URL.

However, Shopify's URL structure is not fully customizable and the robots.txt file is automatically generated. So you can't customize it. There are also limitations on the amount of non-ecommerce content you can create and it's a bit tedious to create subcategories.

Adapted to mobiles

In addition to being a better small business e-commerce platform, Shopify includes an integrated shopping cart for mobile commerce. Coupled with a responsive theme for your online store and secure payments, it offers your customers a user-friendly online shopping experience.

Integrations

Shopify integrates with tons of tools you probably already use. There's an app marketplace with thousands of extensions to connect to your favorite tools or extend the functionality of your Shopify store. 

While many apps are free, you will find even more paid apps available. Some of these apps were developed by Shopify itself, but others were created by third parties.

Free e-commerce platform: Shopify support

Shopify has excellent support. You can contact them 24 hours a day via phone, live chat or email. They are usually quick and helpful, even if your support question gets a little technical. There are also several guides, tutorials, and documents you can refer to to answer your questions without even contacting support.

Pricing

Shopify offers three packages:

  • Basic: $24/month
  • Shopify: $79/month
  • Advanced: $299/month

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Dropizi

We all want to earn more, work from where we want, when we want and with whom we want. That's exactly why Dropizi was born. To allow everyone to be an entrepreneur. And above all, without big initial investment, without risk, thanks to the Trustshipping business model.

Indeed, Dropizi is a turnkey solution, optimized for online sales, that allows you to create your own personalized website in a few clicks. Moreover, it gives you all the cards in hand to succeed, and accompanies you throughout your journey.

With advanced training, you have the knowledge you need to grow your store with confidence. Its performance-based model is sure to make you successful. To go even further, Dropizi facilitates the life of these e-merchants, by offering the Dropizi extension or the Dropizirank. It allows you to connect your store to European suppliers carefully selected by its team.

Moreover, you have access to millions of quality products (branded products, licensed products, etc.). Dropizi reinvents dropshipping as you know it and creates "Trustshipping". No more poor quality Chinese products and long delivery times! That's why Dropizi is among the top French e-commerce platforms.

Pricing 

Dropizi offers two packages for launch:

  • STANDARD 27
  • PRO 77€
  • ADVANCED 297

In addition, you will have to pay a percentage of your sales. The rate of this commission is between 0.5% and 2%.

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Best E-Commerce Platforms : BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the best known e-commerce Platforms. It has two offerings: 

  • BigCommerce Essentials (a DIY SaaS platform)
  • BigCommerce Enterprise (a personalized experience for large customers).

In addition, BigCommerce guides you through the steps necessary to set up your virtual store. You can start by adding your products and then expand your website throughout the setup process. It also keeps you organized. You have clear instructions on what information is needed and links to help files related to what you are filling out.

If a third-party application can help you more than what BigCommerce offers, you will have the option to install that application directly from the admin console. Over 800 apps in the app store allow you to add many additional features to your store, depending on your needs.

Ease of use

BigCommerce is another best platform for easy to use e-commerce website. However, it is not as ideal as Shopify. For starters, there are two separate areas where you manage your store's backend. 

In one area you add products and manage shipping and discounts, but you have to go to another area to edit your current storefront. Their store design tool seems to be an attempt to remedy this problem. As such, it makes it easy to customize and design your store, but it's far from perfect.

Payment processing

Whatever your online payment method, BigCommerce probably accepts it. Below are all the major ones: 

  • PayPal, 
  • 2Checkout, 
  • Stripe, 
  • Authorize.net and even digital wallets. 

In addition, BigCommerce does not charge transaction fees, so you will only pay the fees charged by the payment gateway.

BigCommerce platform : Analytics

BigCommerce manages some large stores, so it needs to provide robust reporting. You can get real-time sales analytics, including orders, customer information, marketing reports, and more. And it integrates with Google Analytics.

SEO compatible

With BigCommerce, you can't customize the URLs of your blog posts. However, it does allow you to customize title tags, meta descriptions and other URLs. It also has advanced features such as sitemaps, 301 redirects, and editing metadata and robots.txt.

Adapted to mobiles

BigCommerce is mobile friendly and optimized for mobile from your storefront to checkout, no matter which theme you choose.

Integrations

BigCommerce integrates with everything you need to manage your entire e-commerce business. You'll be able to easily bring together your accounting, sales tax, marketing, point-of-sale and other systems. Plus, if you can't find the integration you need, your development team can use the BigCommerce RESTful API to create it. 

E-commerce platform for wholesalers : support of BigCommerce 

BigCommerce offers 24/7 support via phone and live chat, as well as email support. There is also an extensive BigCommerce knowledge base, and even a community forum where you can get answers on your own.

Pricing

BigCommerce Essentials has four price points:

  • Standard: $29.95/month
  • Plus: $79.95/month
  • Professional: $299.95/month
  • Company : on request of estimate

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Square Online

Square has been facilitating credit card payments since 2009. From the beginning, anyone could use Square to accept credit card payments using a smartphone app. Although Square began as a solution for in-person transactions, it has expanded over time into the online sphere.

You probably wouldn't choose Square if you only had an e-commerce site. This is because you have fewer options when creating a Square website: there are no themes. Pick a font, choose the color closest to your existing branding, upload a banner image and you'll have a website in about 30 seconds.

Then you can add stock items to your database. Square creates two separate databases of your products, one for your online store and one linked to your Square back-end payment system. Everything automatically syncs between the two databases. However, it is not designed for products with a large number of variants.

Square Online is best suited for small independent businesses with small catalogs with little variation, such as :

  • Artisans, 
  • Thrift stores,
  • Small service companies,
  • Subscriptions and artists.‍

‍Ease ofuse

Square Online is very user-friendly and easy to use. After registering with Square, you can have a site up and running in just a few minutes. Just click on "Online Store", then on the "Start" button and you are ready to create your site. 

If you want, you can link Square Online to BigCommerce, WooCommerce or another e-commerce platform and set up your store there instead.

Payment processing

Regardless of the plan you choose, your customers will be able to use Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Square Pay. If you're on the Performance plan, you'll also be able to accept payments via PayPal.

E-commerce platform for wholesalers : analytics

Square Online offers full reporting functionality to all users, regardless of your plan. You will have access to reports including:

  • Sales
  • Methods of payment
  • Discounts
  • Taxes
  • Gift cards
  • Mobile Sales
  • Sales to employees

SEO compatible

Square Online has some SEO tools, but it's certainly not the best. With Square Online, you can add permalinks, SEO titles, descriptions, and use a mobile-friendly design or optimized HTML format. Unfortunately, there is no way to update the alt tags of images.

Adapted to mobiles

Square Online offers incredibly beautiful site designs that work well for both desktop and mobile shoppers. The platform also integrates with Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook if social commerce is your thing.

Integrations

Square Online has over 100 third-party integrations available, including: 

  • Real-time points of sale, 
  • Accounting, 
  • Loyalty tools, 
  • Marketing tools, etc. 

As mentioned, the platform integrates with several other e-commerce platforms.

Best E-Commerce Platforms: Square Online support

You can fill out a form to contact the sales team for help or tweet @SqSupport. For your information, the sales contact form sends you to Weebly since this platform is used for website creation. Square Online also has a comprehensive knowledge base and a large community of vendors.

Pricing

Square Online has a free plan. Paid plans start at $29/month.

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WooCommerce 

If you want complete flexibility and control over your online store, WooCommerce is one of the best e-commerce Platforms. Indeed, it is a flexible and self-hosted e-commerce solution that runs on WordPress. 

WooCommerce hosting 

WooCommerce is different from the other options on this list in that it is not a complete platform in itself. Instead, it is a plugin that you can install and activate on your WordPress website to turn it into an e-commerce store.

The great thing is that it's totally flexible. WordPress is open-source, with an almost infinite library of third-party plugins you can install alongside WooCommerce to endlessly expand the functionality of your online store. You have complete control over every aspect.

Another advantage is that the main WooCommerce plugin is completely free. This makes it a low-cost e-commerce solution, especially if you already have your own WordPress website.

The downside is that WooCommerce is self-hosted. This means that you will have to purchase web hosting services separately before you can publish your site on the Internet. Thus, you can use Nexcess: a web hosting company that specializes in e-commerce and offers managed WooCommerce hosting.

Nexcess provides the servers you need to power your e-commerce website. As well as a multitude of tools and services to help you manage your online store.

WooCommerce Registration

Once you sign up, your hosting service will automatically keep all major WordPress and WooCommerce software up to date for you. It will also perform daily backups, plugin updates, and malware scans to keep your site safe.

Their powerful cloud infrastructure ensures minimal downtime and fast loading speeds. Plus, you'll have access to a wide range of other premium plugins and themes at no extra cost, such as:

  • Astra Pro, 
  • AffiliateWP, 
  • ConvertPro, 
  • Glew.io (for advanced analysis).

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Pricing 

The installation of WooCommerce on Wordpress is completely free. However, other hosting services can be paid.

Best E-Commerce Platforms : Ecwid

Ecwid differs from most other e-commerce platforms. Instead of using it to create a standalone e-commerce platform, you can use it to add an online store to your existing website. Additionally, you can use Ecwid to easily sync and sell on your website, social media, marketplaces like Amazon, and even in person.

Recently, Ecwid has added some capability to create an "instant site". Basically, Ecwid generates an electronic widget that you place on sites where you want e-commerce functionality. 

If you only want to sell a small number of products (less than 10), you can use Ecwid for free. For higher product volumes, Ecwid offers three pricing plans, ranging from $19 to $99 per month.

Ease of use

Ecwid has an easy to use interface with a vertical menu on the left side of the screen that gives you access to the tools you need. There is also an integration checklist when you first log in that really walks you through the process.

Payment processing

As one of the best e-commerce Platforms, it offers direct integrations with about 75 payment gateways such as : 

  • PayPal, 
  • Stripe, 
  • Apple Pay, 
  • Authorize.net, etc. 

This includes some local options for international e-commerce businesses. Some of the integrations involve monthly fees, but you can easily get started with PayPal and pay only a per-transaction fee.

Analytical

Ecwid offers reporting tools in the dashboard. However, you need to connect it to Google Analytics or another third-party analytics tool to get the data you need.

Ecwid e-commerce platform : SEO compatible

Ecwid has SEO optimized URLs and allows you to customize elements such as page titles and descriptions to improve SEO. Unfortunately, Ecwid generates URLs for each of your products (which you can't edit). So you'll have to rely on titles, on-page product descriptions, and meta descriptions for SEO. 

In addition, automatically generated URLs are based on the names you give your products. So you'll likely have to be intentional when assigning names to make sure the URLs include the keywords you need. Finally, unlike the top e-commerce Platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce, Ecwid does not support AMP pages.

Adapted to mobiles

Ecwid stores are mobile friendly right out of the box, with no optimization required. You can even create your entire e-commerce site using the Ecwid mobile application. 

Integrations

Like the other ecommerce platforms on our list, Ecwid has a vast app marketplace. Because of this, you'll find tons of integrations to extend the functionality of your ecommerce site. There are only a few hundred integrations available, but you will find many key products supported.

Best E-Commerce Platforms : support for Ecwid

Ecwid support depends on the plan you use. While you have access to tutorials and other self-help resources with all plans, you will receive email support with the Free plan. For the Venture plan, you will also receive email and live chat support. Finally, you will receive support via phone, live chat or email for the Business and Unlimited plans.

Pricing

Ecwid offers one free package and three paid packages:

  • Business: $19/month
  • Company: $39/month
  • Unlimited: $99/month

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PrestaShop

PrestaShop is one of the best open source e-commerce platform hosted in the cloud. More than 300,000 merchants currently use this platform. Indeed, PrestaShop is based on the Symfony framework. It includes more than 600 features and more than 5,000 modules and themes available on the market. 

Since it is open source, users and designers can rely on a secure, scalable, versatile and permanent solution for all their e-commerce projects. PrestaShop Addons is the official PrestaShop marketplace. In addition, its community of developers works to offer new products.

Although the basic functionality of PrestaShop is free, you will have to pay for add-ons to make your site functional. Of course, all e-commerce stores need a payment solution. You can easily and securely manage all types of payments directly from your back-end interface using PrestaShop Checkout, built with PayPal.

Ease of use

PrestaShop has a more technical backend that makes setup a bit more difficult than on the other platform options on our list. However, they do provide a demo to guide you through the installation. After installation, you will need to choose the modules you want for your store.

This task is also a bit more complicated than we would like, and you may need a developer to manage it for you. Once you have everything set up, it is much easier to create products and manage orders and inventory.

Payment processing

You'll need to use a merchant account or third-party payment gateway, but PrestaShop has more than 120 on its Addons marketplace. PrestaShop partners with Stripe and ViaBill, but offers other payment gateway integrations with PayPal, Apple Pay, Klarna, Authorize.net, Square and many others.

Analytical

PrestaShop allows you to segment customers, view sales data and monitor inventory levels. It also allows you to see all open, but not yet purchased carts. You can find out which products are performing the best so you can highlight them. See how visitors are navigating your site and how your promotions are going. In addition, you can even spy on your main competitors.

SEO compatible

PrestaShop comes with decent SEO features right out of the box. You can rewrite URLs, edit meta titles and meta descriptions, and set up redirects as needed. In addition, the platform offers more than 180 modules that will help you improve your SEO and make sure you are on top of the SERPs.

Adapted to mobiles

PrestaShop offers more than 3000 mobile-friendly paid templates. We recommend you to choose one of them, because the free template provided by default is not optimized for mobile.

Integrations

As we mentioned, PrestaShop offers tons of free and paid integrations on its marketplace. It's important to note that the modules are created by a number of different developers. Therefore, you may encounter compatibility issues.

Free e-commerce platform: support for PrestaShop

The level of support you get with PrestaShop depends on the plan you use. Expect to pay $250/month for three hours of support. You can also pay $399/year for six hours of support. PrestaShop has an online community that can help you troubleshoot some issues yourself.

Pricing

PrestaShop is free. 

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nopCommerce

nopCommerce is an open source shopping cart solution for e-commerce. It allows you to upload an unlimited number of products, manage multiple stores from a single admin panel and increase your sales with built-in marketing tools. Every 6-7 months, developers release a new version of their e-commerce software to keep up with the latest technologies and development trends.

In addition, nopCommerce offers powerful out-of-the-box features for effective B2C and B2B sales without any restrictions and for free. It also includes a variety of tools for professional marketing and sales growth. The platform supports all popular payment methods and gateways, as well as several shipping features. Finally, it also offers multi-seller and multi-boutique functionality.

Ease of use

nopCommerce is one of the best e-commerce Platforms. In addition, it has a certain learning curve in terms of configuration and operation. The platform is an ASP.NET based software that requires hosting on Windows Server. It is only compatible with SQL Server. If none of this makes sense to you, you'll probably want to choose another best small business e-commerce platform.

Payment processing

There are over 50 payment gateways for you to accept cash, purchase orders, money orders, Amazon, PayPal, Stripe and more.

Analytical

nopCommerce provides basic analytics and reporting. This takes into account product performance, monthly customers, daily/weekly/monthly orders, payment history and some others.

SEO compatible 

nopCommerce gives you full control over your URLs and keyword tags. This makes it a very SEO friendly platform. There is also a sitemap included so that search engines can easily crawl your site.

Adapted to mobiles

nopCommerce offers mobile-friendly options without any additional development or integration. This means that your e-commerce site is already mobile-friendly.

Integrations

There are currently over 100 integration options on the nopCommerce marketplace. You'll find both free and paid options for themes, RGPD, payment gateways, and more.

Best E-Commerce Platforms : nopCommerce support

nopCommerce is free and open source, so it doesn't offer much in terms of included support. However, there is a wonderful documentation portal, a community forum and premium support services available for purchase (with guaranteed response within 24 hours Monday through Friday).

Pricing

Free and open source.

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Conclusion

In this guide, we have presented the 8 best e-commerce platforms. This way, you won't waste time on inferior platforms. Instead, you are now ready to choose a first-class platform to create your store and start selling online. 

Finally, if you want to stay ahead of your competitors, we recommend Minea. It is a very reliable and powerful tool that allows you to analyze all your competitors' strategies. It also allows you to quickly find the winning products and the best marketing formula to sell them in one click. You can start from 0$ your free trial.

Frequently asked questions 

What is the best e-commerce platform?

Here are 8 best e-commerce platforms for small business: 

  1. Shopify
  2. BigCommerce
  3. Square Online
  4. WooCommerce 
  5. Ecwid
  6. PrestaShop
  7. nopCommerce
  8. Dropizi

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