Do you want to run an eCommerce business? eCommerce is exciting. You design a brand, design a website, and share with the world.

What is an eCommerce platform? It’s a software for operating an online store, and doing other retail tasks online.

Here are some of the best eCommerce platforms in 2024.

• Shopify
• BigCommerce
• Centra
• Adobe Commerce
• WooCommerce
• Medusa
• Sylius
• BigCartel

Which one you are planning to use? Want to choose between BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce?

Shopify vs WooCommerce vs BigCommerce: Which E-commerce Platform is Right for You?

Shopify: With 4.8 million online stores utilizing it, Shopify is a popular option for e-commerce. It’s a complete platform that manages email marketing, shipping, and payments, providing a one-stop shop for your internet business. Here’s a breakdown of what Shopify offers:

Key Features of Shopify:

1. Ease of Use: Shopify is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. You don’t need to have any coding experience to set up a store. The platform comes with a drag-and-drop interface and customizable themes, making it easy to build and launch a professional-looking store quickly.
2. Wide Range of Themes: Shopify offers a variety of free and premium themes that are mobile-optimized and customizable. These themes are designed for various industries, including fashion, electronics, beauty, and more. You can adjust colors, fonts, and layout settings to match your brand’s style.
3. Product Management: Shopify supports both physical and digital products. It allows you to manage inventories, track stock, and set up product variants (e.g., size, color). You can easily add product details, photos, descriptions, and prices.
4. Payment Integration: Shopify comes with built-in payment processing through Shopify Payments, which supports credit cards, debit cards, and other payment methods. Additionally, it integrates with a wide range of third-party payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and others, allowing businesses to cater to customers globally.
5. Multi-Channel Selling: One of Shopify’s standout features is its ability to help you sell across multiple channels. You can sell through your Shopify store, but also integrate with marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, and even in-person through Shopify POS (Point of Sale). This enables a unified experience for managing inventory, sales, and customer data across all channels.
6. Shipping and Taxes: Shopify offers built-in shipping tools, allowing you to set up shipping rates based on weight, location, or price. You can integrate with major shipping carriers (like USPS, FedEx, and UPS) for real-time shipping rates. It also supports automatic tax calculation for different regions.
7. App Ecosystem: Shopify has a vast app marketplace where you can find thousands of apps to extend the functionality of your store. Whether you need apps for email marketing, customer support, accounting, inventory management, or SEO, there are many integrations to enhance your store’s capabilities.
8. SEO and Marketing Tools: Shopify includes a variety of built-in SEO tools to optimize your store for search engines. You can customize meta tags, URLs, and sitemaps. The platform also supports email marketing, abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, and promotional tools to help drive sales. Additionally, it integrates with Google Analytics and Facebook Ads, allowing you to track performance and create targeted campaigns.
9. Mobile Optimization: Shopify themes are mobile-responsive by default, ensuring your store looks great on mobile devices. Plus, Shopify offers a mobile app that allows you to manage your store, fulfill orders, track inventory, and engage with customers on the go.
10. Security: Shopify provides enterprise-level security, including SSL encryption for secure payments, PCI compliance (necessary for handling credit card data), and 24/7 monitoring to protect your store and customers. Regular updates ensure the platform stays secure and up-to-date.
11. 24/7 Customer Support: Shopify offers excellent customer support through live chat, phone, and email. They also have an extensive knowledge base, forums, and tutorials to help users solve problems independently.
12. Scalability: Shopify is built to scale as your business grows. Whether you’re just starting with a small store or managing a large enterprise, Shopify has different pricing tiers and features to accommodate businesses of all sizes. The higher-tier plans come with additional features, such as advanced reporting, custom reporting, and more.

Shopify Plans:

Shopify offers several pricing plans to cater to businesses of different sizes and needs:

1. Basic Shopify: Ideal for startups and small businesses, includes all the core features.
2. Shopify: Includes additional features like professional reports and better shipping rates.
3. Advanced Shopify: Geared toward more established businesses with advanced reporting, international pricing, and better analytics.
4. Shopify Plus: Enterprise-level plan, offering advanced features, customization, and dedicated support. Great for large, high-volume businesses.

BigCommerce: BigCommerce is a well-known software-as-a-service e-commerce platform that helps online retailers start, expand, and develop their businesses. BigCommerce is known for its flexibility, extensive integrations, and powerful built-in features, making it a popular choice for companies that want to sell products online and expand into new markets.

Key Features of BigCommerce:

1. Ease of Use: BigCommerce is a user-friendly platform with a relatively simple setup process. It provides a range of customizable, mobile-responsive themes and an intuitive drag-and-drop store builder. While it may have a steeper learning curve compared to platforms like Shopify, it offers a lot of flexibility and powerful built-in features without needing advanced technical skills.
2. Product Management: BigCommerce supports a wide range of product types, including physical goods, digital products, and services. The platform allows for extensive product options and variants (e.g., size, colour, material), and also provides inventory management tools to track stock levels and automate reorder notifications. It also supports advanced features for product organization, like product categorization, filters, and bulk imports/exports, making it suitable for businesses with large product catalogs.
3. Flexible Pricing and Shipping: BigCommerce offers flexible pricing options, allowing you to set prices based on customer groups, discounts, and even geographic locations. It also provides shipping tools to manage rates, calculate real-time shipping costs, and set shipping rules based on weight, dimensions, and zones.BigCommerce integrates with major shipping carriers (like USPS, FedEx, and UPS), allowing you to offer real-time shipping quotes during checkout. You can also provide free shipping or flat-rate shipping options as part of your strategy.
4. Multi-Channel Selling: BigCommerce shines when it comes to multi-channel selling. It integrates seamlessly with major marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, and Walmart, as well as social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. This allows you to manage your inventory and orders from one central hub while reaching a wider audience across various sales channels.
5. Payment Options: BigCommerce supports over 65 payment gateways, including popular options like PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Apple Pay. It also has its own built-in payment solution, BigCommerce Payments, which offers competitive rates and integrates seamlessly with the platform.
6. SEO & Marketing Tools: BigCommerce offers built-in SEO tools to help your store rank well in search engines. You can customize meta tags, URLs, image alt text, and sitemaps to improve your store’s visibility. Additionally, it supports abandoned cart recovery, discounts, email marketing tools, and promotions to boost sales and engage customers. The platform integrates with popular marketing tools, including Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and Facebook Ads, enabling you to track and analyze customer behaviors and run targeted campaigns.
7. Security and Compliance: BigCommerce provides a secure shopping experience with SSL certificates, PCI compliance, and fraud prevention tools. All customer data and payment information is encrypted to keep it secure, and BigCommerce regularly updates the platform to protect against vulnerabilities.
8. Scalability: BigCommerce is highly scalable, catering to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises. It can handle high traffic volumes and large product catalogs. As your business grows, BigCommerce offers advanced features, such as customizable checkout options, integration with ERP systems, and extensive APIs for advanced customizations.BigCommerce also supports international selling with features like multi-currency support, localized payment gateways, and the ability to manage multiple languages, which makes it ideal for global expansion.
9. Customization and Open APIs: For businesses that require more advanced customization, BigCommerce offers extensive APIs and allows custom coding for the storefront, checkout process, and integrations with other tools. This gives developers the flexibility to create tailored experiences without compromising on scalability or security.
10. Customer Support: BigCommerce offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. Additionally, there is a large community of BigCommerce users, and an extensive knowledge base, including video tutorials, guides, and case studies, to help you solve issues or learn more about how to use the platform.

BigCommerce Plans:

BigCommerce offers several pricing tiers based on the features and functionality your store needs:

1. Standard: The entry-level plan for small to medium-sized stores, including basic e-commerce features, product variants, and multi-channel selling.
2. Plus: Adds features like customer groups, abandoned cart recovery, and better reporting tools. Ideal for growing businesses.
3. Pro: Offers advanced features such as custom SSL, Google customer reviews, and more detailed analytics. Aimed at businesses with high-volume sales and more complex needs.
4. Enterprise: Tailored to large enterprises, with custom pricing based on your specific needs, including advanced security, API access, and additional support.

Centra: Centra is an e-commerce platform for fashion brands that serve all markets with the right products, prices, and campaigns so you can scale up fast.

Adobe Commerce: Adobe Commerce’s drag-and-drop page builder is one of its best features. You don’t absolutely require a developer for every modification thanks to this application, which streamlines the design process.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce is a popular open-source eCommerce plugin for WordPress, designed to help businesses create and manage online stores with ease. It’s known for its flexibility, scalability, and ease of integration with WordPress websites. Here’s an overview of WooCommerce’s key features and capabilities:

Key Features of WooCommerce:

1. Ease of Use:
   WooCommerce is built to work seamlessly with WordPress, which is one of the most widely-used content management systems (CMS). This makes it accessible for users who are familiar with WordPress. Setting up a store is relatively simple, and you can manage products, orders, and customers through an intuitive dashboard.
2. Customizability:
   Since it’s open-source, WooCommerce offers a high degree of customizability. You can modify almost every aspect of your store—whether it’s the design, features, or functionality. There are a wealth of themes and plugins available that can extend WooCommerce’s capabilities, allowing you to build a store tailored to your exact needs.
3. Product Management:
   WooCommerce supports various types of products such as physical, digital, and downloadable products. It offers a range of options to customize product attributes like sizes, colors, stock status, and prices. You can also set up product variations for more complex product catalogs.
4. Flexible Payment Options:
   WooCommerce supports multiple payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, credit card processing, and bank transfers. There are also third-party plugins available to integrate with additional payment systems.
5. Inventory Management:
   WooCommerce offers built-in inventory management tools, so you can track stock levels, manage backorders, and set low-stock alerts. This is especially useful for businesses that have large product catalogs and need to keep track of inventory.
6. Shipping and Tax Calculations:
   The platform includes tools for setting up shipping methods, rates, and zones, so you can manage domestic and international shipping. Additionally, WooCommerce can automatically calculate taxes based on location and store settings.
7. SEO and Marketing Tools:
   WooCommerce integrates well with SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, helping your products and pages rank better on search engines. There are also features to run promotions, offer discounts, manage email marketing campaigns, and integrate with social media channels.
8. Mobile-Friendly:
   Many of WooCommerce’s themes are responsive, meaning they automatically adjust to look great on mobile devices. This is crucial, as mobile commerce continues to rise.
9. Scalability:
   WooCommerce is flexible enough to support small, medium, and large online stores. As your business grows, you can add additional features or functionality through plugins, or even integrate with advanced systems for things like multi-store management.
10. Security:
    Being built on WordPress, WooCommerce benefits from strong security updates and practices. WooCommerce itself adheres to PCI compliance standards, ensuring that credit card information is handled securely.

WooCommerce Extensions and Plugins:

One of WooCommerce’s biggest advantages is its vast ecosystem of extensions and plugins. Some common extensions include:

• WooCommerce Subscriptions (for recurring payments)
• WooCommerce Bookings (for booking-based services)
• WooCommerce Memberships (for creating membership programs)
• WooCommerce Points and Rewards (for loyalty programs)
• WooCommerce Product Add-ons (for extra product options)

You can find a variety of third-party extensions to extend the functionality of your store even further—everything from advanced reporting tools to integrations with other platforms like CRMs or ERPs.