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The world is sailing through the COVID-19 crisis, unfolding the new reality made up of complexities and opportunities for the business leaders. Today, we are facing tough choices with unprecedented levels of uncertainty, and businesses are the ones impacted the most. The infection spread, self-isolation, and economic insecurity has rapidly changed consumer behavior, and this shift is likely to accelerate the adoption for E-commerce stores by many businesses and startups worldwide. To shift from brick-and-mortar stores and deliver a rigorous customer experience with your online presence, you must be looking for the best E-commerce platforms.
Did you know?
How to choose the best E-commerce platform for your business?
Choosing the best E-commerce platform depends on the business needs that you might have. If you are a startup, then you might need an open-source E-commerce platform for a hosted solution, which can render even more benefits than just being budget-friendly. In case you have a small business, then the perfect platform will be the one that will offer freedom to build something truly creative for your E-commerce store like, the platform offering integrations with additional applications.
Top 5 E-commerce Platforms for your Business
Now that you know how to choose the best E-commerce platform, let’s get started with the top E-commerce platforms that will help you thrive in the highly competitive world.
Magento
Magento is the best E-commerce platform to create unique and engaging shopping experiences and the complete E-commerce solution for businesses. Adobe (Magento) was recently recognized as a market Leader in the latest 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce report. If you are a well-established and successful business and are taking a shift from brick-and-mortar to digital commerce then Magento, the flexible cloud solutions, can help your business with rapid and cost-effective innovation and growth. Magento also supports multiple external sales channels to deliver a next-generation sales experience. With Magento, you can set promotional pricing for specific stores, categories, customer segments, or products and personalize shopping experiences with advanced segmentation and targeting.
Pricing: Magento is a free-to-download software. Magento Commerce comes with pricing that starts at $1988 per month.
Significant Features:
- Most customizable E-commerce platform
- Full control over customer experience, without limits
- Supports expansion
- Enables to sell customizable products
Shopify
Shopify is a one-stop shop for setting up your E-commerce business that will deliver value during every stage of your business growth. Shopify has emerged as the top challenger in the latest 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce report. With Shopify you can create an E-commerce website backed by powerful tools to drive your sales, manage day-to-day operations and deliver a better customer experience. Most of businesses opt for Shopify because they can build an amazing, customizable store without having to learn coding or design. If you’re serious about selling online, Shopify is one of the best options available for your business.
Pricing – Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, and pricing starts at just $9 per month for the “Lite” plan followed by $29 and $299 per month for the “Basic” and “Advanced” Shopify experience respectively.
Significant Features:
- Low-cost entry to the E-commerce platform
- Built-in and expandable toolset
- Easy-to-use mobile app for managing payments and the store
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a flexible, open SaaS E-commerce platform that offers rock-solid foundation to build a powerful E-commerce store and sell across multiple channels for startups and businesses. BigCommerce has emerged as the 2nd top challenger in the latest 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce report. With BigCommerce, startups and businesses can deliver differentiated customer experiences without compromising the security, stability, or scalability. It offers the most intuitive dashboard for managing products, orders, and returns to let your customers enjoy advanced filtering options based on reviews, pricing, brands, categories etc. With BigCommerce you will never have to worry about paying additional transaction fees, no matter which credit card processing provider works best for your startup or business.
Pricing: BigCommerce offers relatively cost-effective plans starting at $29.95 per month for the “Standard” plan followed by $79.95 and $299.95 for “Plus” and “Pro” plans respectively.
Significant Features:
- 24×7 support assistance
- Strong security, stability or scalability
- Easy-to-use interface with advanced built-in features
Episerver (Optimizely)
Episerver (Optimizely) is the best Digital Experience platform (DXP) to connect digital commerce and digital marketing for unique digital experiences. It was ranked as a challenger in the latest 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce report. Episerver offers web content management, digital commerce, and digital marketing, through the Episerver Digital Experience Platform Cloud Service and allows merchandisers to create, preview, and publish digital commerce campaigns to operate with data-driven confidence and create hyper-personalized experiences.
Pricing: You have to contact Episerver Digital Commerce for enterprise pricing information.
Significant Features:
- Campaign management
- Marketing automation
- Hyper-personalized experience
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a customizable, open-source E-commerce plugin for WordPress and is the best E-commerce platform for software integration. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. Being a developer-friendly E-commerce platform built with a REST API, WooCommerce offers sound scalability with hundreds of free and paid extensions to add features and functionality while designing a complex store from scratch. As your business needs and budget grows, with WooCommerce your business will be able to evolve from store enhancements to marketing integrations, multichannel and point of sale.
Pricing: WooCommerce is free but before making your online store live, you might have to plan a budget for essential costs. This cost can range from $10 per month for basic features to $1000+ per month for Large-scale WooCommerce websites.
Significant Features:
- Public support forum
- Customer-friendly with multilingual content
- Easy-to-use, comprehensive security and backups
Conclusion
Whether you’re looking for the best E-Commerce platform for startups, best E-Commerce platform for small businesses, or best E-commerce platform for sellers and retailers, we not only hope but also believe that the platforms listed in this article will help you gain a competitive digital edge. Switching to these E-commerce platforms will make your business more resilient and agile in the future.
If you need to go the extra mile with an E-commerce website platform and mobile application development services for your B2C or B2B business; feel free to reach out to us to get started.
