Professional Documents
Culture Documents
TOP 5
ECOMMERCE
PLATFORMS
FOR SELFSTARTRS
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
TOP 5 ECOMMERCE
PLATFORMS
By Darren DeMatas, MBA & Christina Boyes
Darren DeMatas
Darren DeMatas has an MBA in Internet Marketing, but hangs his
hat on a decade of experience making retail brands profitable. He’s
marketed global Fortune 500 companies and small 1-man ecom-
merce niche brands.
Christina Boyes
I’m a fan of honest words, clarity, and impact. A copywriter, editor,
and translator, I spend my days guzzling coffee like a champ. The
brains behind the email and web copy at a handful of eCommerce
brands.
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
You’ve seen how we tested each platform and how they scored. We even filled
you in on our favorites for UX, value, and overall performance. Now it’s time to take a
closer look at the top 5. You’ll find the info you need to make a decision in the next few
sections, but if you’re still indecisive, keep an eye on the blog. We’ll be adding more in-
depth reviews and comparisons in the near future.
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Four affordable pricing plans ($29.95 - custom quotes) make BigCommerce an accessi-
ble ecommerce platform for most ecommerce entrepreneurs. Despite being more expen-
sive than Shopify or Volusion, BigCommerce proves its worth in the feature department.
Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
2.41s 63 96 86
Features
Feature Type $29 $79 $199
SEO Tools Must Have 75 75 75
Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 100 100 100
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 0 100 100
Blog Must Have 75 75 75
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 100 100 100
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100
Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 25 25 25
Drop Shipping Nice To Have 100 100 100
Fulfillment By Amazon Integration Nice To Have 100 100 100
Real Time Shipping / Tracking Nice To Have 100 100 100
Reward Points Nice To Have 25 25 25
Google Trusted Stores Nice To Have 0 0 100
Payment Gateways Scalability 25 75 75
Paypal Checkout Scalability 100 100 100
Amazon Checkout Scalability 100 100 100
Amazon Sync Scalability 100 100 100
Ebay Sync Scalability 100 100 100
Facebook Sync Scalability 100 100 100
Google Product Data Feed Scalability 100 100 100
Open API Scalability 100 100 100
Ease Of Use
Feature $29 $79 $199
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 75 75 75
Phone Support 100 100 100
24/7 Support 0 100 100
Chat Support 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 75 75 75
Free Templates 100 100 100
What We Like: BigCommerce is fast to setup and loads quickly. The free themes, al-
though limited in number, are beautifully designed. Oh, and the UX is a dream come true.
What We Didn’t Like: There’s not much we can criticize with BigCommerce, but one of
the sites we tested did crash due to bandwidth issues. Another thing we noticed was the
Sitemaps could be improved. Right now they are PHP based. It also doesnt seem to have
the ability to have child sitemaps. Something important for larger stores.
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Shopify’s main benefit is its attractive out-of-the-box store designs. Sales are often im-
pacted by great visuals, so that’s nothing shabby to boast about. The platform offers 24/7
support for users, and more than 1,000 apps in their app store - a huge benefit for many
ecommerce retailers. Priced between $9-179/month, Shopify easily adapts to even the
smallest budgets, but its features are capable of serving large enterprises, as well.
Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
1.98s 63 94 59
Features
Feature Type $29 $79 $179
SEO Tools Must Have 100 100 100
Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 0 0 0
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 0 100 100
Blog Must Have 75 75 75
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 100 100 100
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100
Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 25 25 25
Drop Shipping Nice To Have 25 25 25
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Ease Of Use
Feature $29 $79 $179
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 100 100 100
Phone Support 100 100 100
24/7 Support 100 100 100
Chat Support 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 100 100 100
Free Templates 50 50 50
What We Like: A ridiculously fast setup and excellent site speed performance keep cus-
tomers around and the attractive designs can help you project a professional image while
raking in sales.
What We Didn’t Like: Many of the plugins are billed monthly, including product custom-
izer to sell personalized products, instead of a one-time or annual fee. Adding recurrent
billing costs and additional $20/month. Otherwise, it’s safe to say we found ourselves
falling in love with this ecommerce platform.
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Although 3D Cart doesn’t offer automatic display detection, it does provide a buffet of
more than 60 free themes to choose from. Downside? The only responsive themes 3d
Cart offers are Premium themes - luckily the pricetag for those appears to be under $199.
24/7/365 phone support and more than 100 payment gateways sweeten the deal.
Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
1.82 62 84 52
Features
Feature Type $19 $35 $65 $99
SEO Tools Must Have 100 100 100 100
Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 0 0 0 0
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 100 100 100 100
Blog Must Have 100 100 100 100
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 100 100 100 100
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100 100
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Ease Of Use
Feature $19 $35 $65 $99
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 100 100 100 100
Phone Support 100 100 100 100
24/7 Support 100 100 100 100
Chat Support 100 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 100 100 100 100
Free Templates 50 50 50 50
What We Like: The definition of a feature rich platform, 3D Cart also makes it easy to set-
up out of stock messages at the product level. It’s one of the fastest loading ecommerce
platforms, and you can easily edit the HTML template and CSS files and do bulk metada-
ta updates.
What We Didn’t Like: Unfortunately, 3D Cart has a visitor quota - something we hav-
en’t seen elsewhere and we hope they remove in the near future. The platform also only
makes multichannel available on higher cost plans.
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Volusion
Created in 1999 and continuing on a steady growth trend, Volusion now serves more
than 40,000 stores - several of which are household brands. During our testing, it placed
high, with a solid 82-point overall score.
Priced between $15-135/month with a 10% discount for ecommerce retailers who pay
annually instead of monthly, it’s an accessibly-priced complete ecommerce store solution.
You will, however, need to buy your SSL certificate separately.
The built in rewards program is a fun perk to have, and useful for creating return custom-
ers. Where design is concerned, the back end is great. There are plenty of demos and
tutorials to work with, and although you can access advanced features, you don’t have to
reinvent the wheel every time you want to do something simple.
Volusion is continuously updating, which means that the experience in always improving
for merchants. On the front end, you have several free templates - including responsive
ones - to choose from, but premium themes can cost as much as $900. Integrations are
a bit behind the competition, but they’re getting there. You’ll still have the basics, like
MailChimp, Quickbooks, and Shipwire.
Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
3.5 55 81 86
Features
Feature Type $15 $35 $75 $135
SEO Tools Must Have 100 100 100 100
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 100 100 100 100
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 100 100 100 100
Blog Must Have 25 25 25 25
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 0 100 100 100
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100 100
Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Drop Shipping Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Customizable Products (like engraving) Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Fulfillment By Amazon Integration Nice To Have 0 0 0 0
Real Time Shipping / Tracking Nice To Have 25 25 25 25
Reward Points Nice To Have 0 0 100 100
Google Trusted Stores Nice To Have 0 0 100 100
Payment Gateways Scalability 100 100 100 100
Paypal Checkout Scalability 100 100 100 100
Amazon Checkout Scalability 100 100 100 100
Amazon Sync Scalability 0 0 100 100
Ebay Sync Scalability 0 0 100 100
Facebook Sync Scalability 100 100 100 100
Google Product Data Feed Scalability 0 0 100 100
Open API Scalability 100 100 100 100
Ease Of Use
Feature $15 $35 $75 $135
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 100 100 100 100
Phone Support 100 100 100 100
24/7 Support 100 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 50 50 50 50
Chat Support 0 0 0 0
Free Templates 75 75 75 75
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
What We Like: Volusion offers excellent product display options (especially the custom-
izable swatch feature), helping you sell, sell, sell. It’s also one of the few platforms we
tested with a decent search function.
What We Didn’t Like: Load times are slower than I’d like. Don’t count on upsells and
cross-sells with this platform - it’s weak in both areas. You also can’t configure which re-
lated products to display. Integrations are a bit behind the times, too. That said, Volusion
has a reputation for continuous improvement.
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Unless you’ve got strong coding skills and a lot of free time, you’ll probably want to hire
some help if you choose this platform. We’d recommend a skilled web developer at the
very least. Self-hosted, you’ll need to pay for hosting or put it on your own server. Loaded
with hundreds of out-of-the-box features, it’s clear this software was made by people who
know the problems you’ll be facing because they’ve been there. At the same time, you’ll
probably want to add on a few plugins, and those can be costly.
The software itself loads quickly and has a great user interface that’s attractive and easy
for merchants to work with. At the same time, it’s not easy to scale and cross-selling ap-
pears impossible. Like all open source projects, customer service is at the mercy of other
users - there’s no phone number for you to call if you want help. You can, however, pay
a monthly fee to get support, but it’s probably cheaper to hire your own web team on an
as-needed basis.
Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
3.75 58 86 50
Features
Feature Type Self Hosted Hosted (Saas)
SEO Tools Must Have
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
Ease Of Use
Feature Self Hosted Hosted (SaaS)
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 50 100
Phone Support 50 50
24/7 Support 0 0
Chat Support 0 0
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 50 50
Free Templates 75 75
What We Like: Fast loading, PrestaShop offers and excellent interface that’s easy to work
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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS
with. You can start your store totally free, including hosting with the cloud platform.
What We Didn’t Like: You either need to be a tech or IT geek, or hire one (or three) if
you want to use this ecommerce platform. Add-ons and plugins can get costly, although it
does come with an impressive suite of over 300 features.
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