At this point, you’ve no doubt decided what you want to sell online and where you’re going to source your stock. For most people, that seems to be the starting point and then they move on to choosing the software which is going to power their fledgling ecommerce shop. This, in some cases can be more tiresome than researching suppliers as there are a lot of platforms out there these days, all claiming to be the best and pretty much all of them offering the same sort of features for the same sort of price points. Understandably, making the decision can be tough.
In this article we’re going to run through 5 of the top platforms and provide a bit of information on each. You may have already considered some of these, or perhaps you’ve never heard of them and this article will give you some food for thought. In truth, none can stake its claim as “the best” as like most things in life, each comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Evidently, it’s going to come down to personal preference for the most part so feel free to exercise trial and error before deciding on a specific solution.
Magento
Magento, at the time of writing is the cream of the crop. It boasts the highest marketshare and with over 500,000 active installs it doesn’t look like being caught any time soon. As you’d expect from a piece of software with such a high marketshare, it’s free. It boasts some fantastic analytical tools offering a range of reporting and forecasting options and in terms of the front end it really is second to none with functionality for multiple product images and product specific reviews. The customer accounts side of things is also top notch with the admin able to review order status, history and full customer info at the click of a button. It is also search engine friendly and offers Google sitemap support. If I had one criticism I’d say that it can be quite clunky, those extensive features come at a price. However, there are numerous hosting plans out there specifically designed for Magentowhich come fully optimised and can double your sites loading time.
Shopify
If you’ve never operated an online/ecommerce store before then Shopify will probably suit you the best. Particularly if you’ve never built or operated a website of any kind. It is designed for inexperienced webmaster/shop owner and with that in mind it offers all of the sort of tools you could expect. The first and most obvious one being its “website builder”. This like traditional website builders allows you to specifically define the look and feel of your store via its excellent drag and drop interface. Design elements aside, it also prides itself on its uptime and security being remote hosted. Feature wise, it comes with all the bells and whistles such as tax/currency support, discount codes and numerous out of the box payment gateway integrations.
WooCommerce
It’s hard to define WooCommerce and its subsequent marketshare as whilst it’s capable of being used as a fully fledged ecommerce platform it also has a lot of users who just want to sell a single product or two via their WordPress blog etc. It brands itself as “sell anything” and this couldn’t be more true thanks to its integration options. The script itself is extremely powerful, even if it is built for WordPress. It’s also mobile friendly and scalable. Due to its popularity with WordPress users, it also has a fantastic development community with lots of people producing compatible themes and plugins on a daily basis.
BigCommerce
A somewhat new player in the world of ecommerce and whilst it doesn’t have the marketshare of the other players I believe it’s the strongest competitor of the bunch. It’s slick, it’s modern and doesn’t feel as cumbersome as the likes of Magento. One feature existing store owners would like is the fact that the guys at BigCommerce offer free migration from other platforms over to BigCommerce so if you are using one of the other platforms and fancy trying it, you’ve really got nothing to lose.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop isn’t as popular as the other applications but it is still feature rich and well worth considering if you’ve fallen out of love with WooCommerce or Magento. My favourite feature of this particular application is how you can sell both regular products and digital products without the need for specific plugins/extensions etc. The catalog management isn’t as buggy as some other providers either with the CSV import working fantastically well along with the inventory management. Like with all of the major applications it comes with full shipping management features and integration with all of the major payment processors.
Final thoughts
New platforms and applications are coming on the market on a month by month basis. Some are just reinventing the wheel, some boast new fangled features that few will make use of and some, every so often appear as genuine challengers for the crown which Magento boasts. You can keep track of trends with regards to usage/marketshare and see who is performing the best currently but as I say above, it’s really a matter of personal preference and what works for one person may not necessarily work for another. My advice if you are struggling to find a solution is to install them all, have a play around in the back ends and see what works with you. All will perform pretty much the same as far as the front end goes.
Photograph by Jarmoluk