12 Best Ecommerce Platforms for 2024 - Expert Recommendations - Ecommerce Platforms (2024)

In this guide, we get right into what you want from an ecommerce platform: top-notch features, affordability, and solid customer support.

We’ll explore the absolute best ecommerce platforms in general, then narrow them down based on certain use cases.

What are the Best Ecommerce Platforms in 2024?

1. Shopify – Best overall ecommerce platform

Home to millions of merchants, Shopify fuels 10% of the entire ecommerce industry in the US. It also provides an impressive ecommerce community for business owners, developers, partners, and entrepreneurs.

The reason Shopify has grown in popularity is due to its sleek interface, reasonable pricing, and its flexibility with all types of stores.

For instance, you can run a retail point of sale with Shopify POS Go, while also handling a multichannel selling campaign through the Shopify dashboard.

It’s one of the best ecommerce platforms for fulfilling orders affordably and quickly, and it’s definitely the best when it comes to managing your entire business in one place.

Pricing

Shopify offers monthly subscriptions, but you can save a significant amount of money by opting for the yearly plans (25% to be exact).

Here are the plans:

• ‘Starter‘: $5 per month; this is not a real online store, rather a selling option for influencers and content creators who’d like to list and process payments for products on their current blogs or social pages. It’s not for true ecommerce businesses. The plan features a sleek landing page and links to add to social sites, selling through WhatsApp and Instagram, order management, and Buy buttons to include on a blog.
• ‘Basic‘: Starting at $29 per month (for the yearly plan), this package is the standard for entrepreneurs to launch a real online store with a shopping cart and checkout module. You can list unlimited products, sell on sales channels, and build a website with a visual page builder. Other features include gift cards, manual order creation, abandoned cart recovery, and basic reports.
• ‘Shopify‘: Starting at $79 per month (yearly plan) for everything in the previous plan, plus more staff accounts (5), improved reporting, more shipping benefits, decreased credit card rates, and ecommerce automations (the best part about this plan).
• ‘Advanced‘: Starting at $299 per month (yearly plan) for more staff accounts (15), advanced reports, further decreases in credit card fees, and the estimating and collecting of duties and import taxes. It’s a must-have plan for international business.
• Shopify Plus: Starting at $2,300 per month, the Plus plan is for rapidly growing brands and high-volume businesses with requirements for the utmost customization. You must contact Shopify to get a quote. Highlights include highly advanced automations, improved conversion elements, and the best optimization Shopify has to offer.

2. Wix

Wix offers plans for regular business and personal websites, but we’re more interested in its ecommerce packages.

Needless to say, Wix does ecommerce well, providing an all-in-one ecommerce platform; you can sell online, post to social media, launch items through sales channels, and even run a point of sale system.

It has a solid payment processing infrastructure, along with apps, themes, marketing tools, and a unified dashboard.

Pricing

Wix sells plans for personal and business websites (without ecommerce functionality). They range from Free to $45 per month. But to build an online store, you must opt for one of the Business and Ecommerce plans.

Here are the Wix ecommerce plans:

• ‘Business Basic‘: $27 per month for a complete online store, unlimited products, online payments, abandoned cart recovery, selling on social channels, online bookings, event management, reservations, art monetization, hotel listings, and fitness website management.
• ‘Business Unlimited‘: $32 per month for everything in the previous plan, plus automated sales tax, dropshipping, product reviews, subscriptions, multiple currencies, advanced shipping, and marketplace selling.
• ‘Business VIP‘: $59 per month for everything in the previous plans, plus customized reports, higher limits on things like dropshipping and reviews, and a loyalty program.

Wix has a free plan, but it’s limited in the realm of ecommerce. Wix is definitely one of the best ecommerce platforms around, but only with the plans meant to support online stores. The free plan, however, serves as a nice free trial.

3. BigCommerce

With both enterprise and essential pricing plans, small and large businesses alike can launch a store, grow their business, and utilize essentials like a conversion optimized checkout, an infrastructure built with native features (rather than relying on apps), and even headless commerce options for integrating your store with WordPress.

Pricing

The first pricing plan you see on the BigCommerce website is its Enterprise solution. That’s a highly customize system for high-volume businesses. You must request a demo to receive a price.

You can find the standard pricing plans under the Essentials tab on BigCommerce.com:

• ‘Standard‘: Starting at $29 per month for a complete online store with no transaction fees, unlimited staff, products, and storage, a POS, multichannel selling, multiple storefronts, social selling, Google Shopping, a single-page checkout, pro reporting, reviews, real-time shipping quotes, and a blog. This plan is for stores with up to $50k in sales per year.
• ‘Plus‘: Starting at $79 per month for everything in the previous plan, plus customer groups, segmentation, an abandoned cart saver, a persistent cart, stored credit cards, and lower credit card rates. This plan is for stores with $180k in sales per year.
• ‘Pro‘: Starting at $299 per month for everything in the previous plans, plus Google customer reviews, custom product filtering, and further decreases in credit card rates. This plan is for stores with up to $400k sales per year.
• ‘Enterprise‘: Custom pricing for everything in the previous plans, unlimited everything, the ShipperHQ shipping rules engine, price lists, unlimited API calls, express routing, priority support, a customer success manager, and the lowest credit card rates offered by BigCommerce.

The prices listed above are the yearly plans; the monthly plans are slightly more expensive (except for the Standard plan—that’s the same price).

4. Squarespace

Squarespace sells all-in-one website building plans for personal, business, and ecommerce websites, yet we’ll show you why it's considered one of the best ecommerce platforms (hint: much of it has to do with its themes/design, but we also like the unique products for reservations, subscriptions, and bookings).

Pricing

We won’t list the Personal plan, even though you can embed a PayPal button on your site. It’s more for simple business/personal websites.

Otherwise, Squarespace has three ecommerce-worthy pricing plans:

• ‘Business‘: Starting at $23 per month for a complete website with fully integrated ecommerce. There’s a 3% transaction fee, but you get templates, advanced analytics, a drag-and-drop editor, extensions, CSS/JavaScript customization, audience management, promotional popups, a video maker, and unlimited products.
• ‘Commerce Basic‘: Starting at $27 per month for an online store without any transaction fees (0%). You also receive everything from the previous plan, plus a checkout on your domain, powerful merchandising, a POS, limited availability labels, selling on Facebook and Instagram, customer accounts, and product reviews.
• ‘Commerce Advanced‘: Starting at $49 per month for everything in the previous plans, 0% transaction fees, advanced shipping, subscriptions, abandoned cart recovery, commerce APIs, advanced discounts, and advanced shipping.

These prices are for the yearly plans, which save you the most money. It’s a little pricier to pay monthly.

Squarespace offers a free trial that lasts for 14 days; they give you an option to extend that free trial for 7 days.

5. Sellfy

At the time of writing, over 60,000 creators use Sellfy to fuel their online stores and have collectively generated more than $100 million in total revenue.

It's a good choice for those new to eCommerce. Its dashboard and website editor are intuitive to navigate, with some users claiming to have their online stores up and running within days.

In terms of in-built marketing features, you can generate and distribute customer discount codes.

You'll also have access to email marketing tools, allowing you to grow your email list and send customers product updates.

On top of that, you can upsell shoppers from their checkout page, which is handy for boosting average order value.

Lastly, you can add Facebook and Twitter ad pixels to your store to better monitor the performance of your ads.

Pricing

Sellfy offers monthly billing, but you can save money by opting for its yearly or two-yearly billing cycles.

Below are Sellfy’s pricing plans (quotes based on annual billing):

• ‘Starter’: For $22 a month, you can launch an eCommerce store from which you can sell unlimited physical, digital, and subscription products that collectively generate up to $10,000 in sales a year. You can also connect a custom web domain and access email marketing features.
• ‘Business’: At $59 a month, this package is described as Sellfy’s ‘best value.’ You get everything in the Starter package. However, you can generate up to $50,000 in sales annually and remove Sellfy’s branding from your site. You also benefit from store design migration, cart abandonment functionality, and product upselling.
• ‘Premium’: For $119 a month, you get everything in the previous two plans, plus product migration, priority support, and you can generate up to $200,000 in sales a year.

If you make over $200,000 in sales a year, you’ll have to contact Sellfy directly for a custom quote. It's also worth noting that Sellfy offers a free two-week trial with no credit card required, and if you decide Sellfy isn’t for you, you can fall back on their 30-day money-back guarantee.

6. Simvoly

Simvoly offers a range of features, including a drag-and-drop page builder, 200+ templates, custom checkouts (including one-click upsells and downsells), eCommerce functionality (including physical and digital products, services, and subscription memberships), email and automation flows, sales funnels, A/B testing, and even white-label options.

Pricing

Simvoly offers a range of pricing packages, but looking specifically at its eCommerce plans, there are four:

• Personal: $12/mo paid annually or $18 month-to-month – for one website, full eCommerce features, one funnel, 20 website pages, funnel analytics, A/B testing, CRM, 10GB bandwidth for up to 10,000 monthly site visitors, Access to the AI Assistant, SSL, 1,200 emails to 100 monthly subscribers, the ability to list five products, access analytics, quizzes and surveys, and 0% transaction fees.
• Business: $29/mo paid annually or $36 month-to-month – for all the above and five funnels, unlimited website pages, 60GB bandwidth for 60,000 monthly site visitors, bump offers, 1-click upsells, you can list 100 products, and manage recurring payments.
• Growth: $59/mo paid annually or $69 month-to-month- for all the above and 20 funnels, 6,000 emails to 500 subscribers per month, you can list unlimited products, and get 200 GB bandwidth for up to 200,000 monthly site visitors.
• Pro: $149/mo paid annually or $179 month-to-month – for all the above and three websites, unlimited funnels, unlimited pages, 12,000 emails to a maximum of 1,000 subscribers per month, and 400GB of bandwidth for up to 400,000 monthly site visitors.

In addition to the above, there are price plans for additional email and automation capabilities if you exceed your month’s subscription allowance.

Prices start at $9/mo for up to 500 more subscribers, rising to $399/mo for 100,000+.

Lastly, there are three price plans aimed at anyone after white-label options. This option is aimed at developers, SaaS, and agencies creating websites for multiple clients or those wishing to offer clients a DIY website-building solution.

These plans start at $59/mo paid annually or $69 if you pay monthly and rise to $199/mo paid annually or $249 if you pay monthly.

Who is it best for?

Simvoly is best for eCommerce store owners with smaller product catalogs looking for a website platform that also offers sales funnel building.

It's also a good option if you need a white-label website-building solution.

However, some of its competitors (e.g., Wix) offer greater AI capabilities. Simvoly’s AI is restricted to generating SEO titles, descriptions, and product information. Unlike Wix, its AI Assistant won’t create an entire website for you.

Simvoly also has a bit of a learning curve. So newbies may prefer one of the alternatives on this list. That said, the free trial offers plenty of time to get acquainted with how Simvoly works, so you have nothing to lose by trying it!

7. Square Online

Having said that, the free plan isn’t the only option to consider. There are premium plans for more advanced ecommerce features. But for retail and most online stores, the free plan seems like a winner.

Pricing

The vast majority of online and retail selling tools are available for free. There are, however, two premium plans.

Here’s the roundup:

• ‘Free‘: $0 for a website builder with SEO tools, acceptance of multiple payment types, Square processing already configured, a complete online store, social selling, shipping and pickup and local delivery, syncing with Square POS, order/fulfillment management, automatic tax calculations, donations, unlimited products, marketing tools, and more. This plan lacks analytics.
• ‘Plus‘: $29 per month for everything in the previous plan, plus expanded site customization, customer accounts, personalized ordering, advanced item settings, PayPal support, and self serve ordering. This plan also removes Square branding, allows for custom domains, and offers abandoned cart recovery.
• ‘Premium‘: $79 per month for all features in previous plans, plus a decreased credit card processing fee, and real-time shipping rates.

For each plan you get:

• An online store right out of the box; it’s great as long as you want to avoid customizing too much
• Intuitive interface for adding products
• You can actually integrate with other website builders and platforms

8. Ecwid – Best for small business / startups

Smaller businesses, startups, and content creators should flock to Ecwid due to its external platform compatibility.

That’s the entire idea behind Ecwid, to add ecommerce functionality to any website, whether it’s WordPress, Joomla, or even any of the ecommerce platforms on this list.

Ecwid offers a free plan, along with features for selling anywhere online. Pin products on social posts, sync with online marketplaces, or list products on your blog.

The entire platform is similar to the Shopify Starter plan, but with far more features. That’s why we like it as one of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses and startups.

Pricing

• ‘Free‘: $0 for an online store, social advertising, Facebook pixel, tax invoices, support for 5 products, an instant site builder, the ability to add your store to any website, themes, Apple Pay, email support, and embedding on dozens of platforms.
• ‘Venture‘: Starting at $14.08 per month for everything in the previous plan, plus support for 100 products, a Facebook shop, Instagram store, TikTok ads, discount coupons, auto tax calculations, inventory tracking, mobile apps, chat support, custom fields, custom domains, advanced SEO, pre-orders, access to extensions, Facebook Messenger, discounts, and gift cards.
• ‘Business‘: Starting at $29.08 per month for everything in the previous plans, plus abandoned cart emails, a mobile POS, selling on Amazon and eBay, automated email marketing, phone support, subscriptions, multiple languages, manual order creation, product variants, filters, advanced inventory tracking, dimensional shipping rates, more staff accounts, scheduled order pickup, and wholesale pricing groups.
• ‘Unlimited‘: Starting at $82.50 per month for all features from previous plans, plus priority support, a POS like Square, Clover, or Alice, and a potentially free (and branded) mobile app.

The above prices are for yearly plans. That’s where you’ll get the most savings. Monthly plans are available for a higher price.

9. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) – Best for Selling Digital Goods

Easy Digital Downloads, or EDD, is your go-to solution for selling digital products. It’s a WordPress integration (similar to WooCommerce, but focused primarily on digital downloads), that turns any WordPress site or blog into an online store. The simplicity of EDD makes it desirable for just about any content creator interested in selling digital goods with far more advanced features for that purpose when compared to other platforms.

With EDD, you can list products like PDF files, eBooks, audio tracks, and software. EDD provides tools for accepting payments, creating discount codes, and sending out the downloadable files after someone makes a purchase. It’s one of the best ecommerce platforms in general, but primarily for digital goods.

Pricing

There is a free version, but it’s limited. We recommend using it as a free trial, then upgrading to a premium (and extremely affordable) subscription.

• Personal: Starting at $99.50 per year to support one site and receive a multi-currency interface, an “add to cart” popup, acquisition survey, free downloads, per product emails, cross-selling and upselling, a variable price switcher, and social discounts. You also get all email marketing extensions from EDD.
• Extended: Starting at $179.55 per year for everything in the previous plan, plus all payment gateway extensions, and an onslaught of other features like PayPal, Stripe, a wallet, conditional gateways, Zapier, a pro version for discounts, Dropbox storage, Braintree, recurring payments, content restriction, and support for Authorize.net.
• Professional: Starting at $269.55 per year for everything in the previous plans, plus custom deliverables, recently viewed items, EDD wishlists, checkout fields manager, file uploads, frontend submissions, purchase limits, recommended products, simple shipping, push notifications, software licensing, and commissions.
• All Access Pass: Starting at $399.60 for all previously listed features, plus a long list of advanced features such as re-sent receipts, slack integrations, campaign tracking, advanced reports, fraud monitoring, featured downloads, terms per product, coupon importer, widgets, Gravity Forms checkout, and more.

The above prices are the regular promotions, so you may see slightly higher prices. But EDD has frequent discounts similar to what’s listed. Each plan allows for an unlimited number of products.

10. Medusa.js – Best Open Source Platform

Billed as an open-source alternative to Shopify, Medusa.js provides developers an opportunity to build ecommerce sites for free. It’s similar to WordPress, but with a more advanced interface.

We’d argue it replaces Magento as the #1 open-source ecommerce platform, since Magento is now owned by and sold by Adobe.

Having said that, the Medusa.js website is rich with development documentation. You can build and integrate anything you want with the system, and there’s a strong community to fall back on for questions and discussion.

Pricing

• The self-hosted version is free forever.
• You must contact Medusa.js for a price quote to get premium customer support.

The creators of Medusa also offer referrals to developers if you need someone to create a site for you.

11. WooCommerce – Best for WordPress Sites

WooCommerce falls between Shopify and Medusa.js in terms of its user base and user-friendliness. WooCommerce turns any WordPress website into an online store.

WordPress is open-source and free. The WooCommerce plugin is also free. It works well right out of the box, but most legitimate online stores require additional extensions for full functionality.

WordPress offers the best blogging platform in the business. It’s wonderful for content creation, but you must keep in mind that it’s highly customizable.

This is a good thing for some people (like developers), but may feel intimidating to others. For example, you must go out and get a theme, a hosting package, and site optimization plugins.

12. Webflow – Best for No-Code Store Design

If your main priority is to avoid code altogether, take a peek at Webflow. It’s a highly customizable, drag-and-drop website builder that automatically adjusts website coding based on the visual modifications you make.

Essentially, Webflow reverses the development process, building visually first, then generating the necessary code.

Due to this methodology, it’s possible to never touch a line of code while constructing a Webflow online store.

We won’t say it’s necessarily good for beginners, but rather a speedier option for developers to make highly customized sites. For that reason, Webflow is one of the best ecommerce platforms.

Pricing

General websites have their own pricing packages, ranging from free to $49 per month, but ecommerce plans are a different story.

You have three Webflow subscriptions to choose from for an ecommerce store:

• Standard: Starting at $29 per month for 500 products, 2,000 CMS items, a 2% transaction fee, custom checkout, custom shopping cart, email product fields, email customization, Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, auto tax calculations, unlimited sales, social selling, Mailchimp integration, custom code integration, manual shipping rules, and 3 staff accounts.
• Plus: Starting at $74 per month for everything in the previous plan, plus 0% transaction fees, 5,000 products, 10,000 CMS items, unbranded emails, and 10 staff accounts.
• Advanced: Starting at $212 per month for 15,000 products, 10,000 CMS items, and 15 staff accounts.

The above pricing is for yearly billing, which gets you the best rate. Pricing goes up if paying on a monthly basis.

Other Ecommerce Platforms to Consider

If you haven’t found a solution from our list of the best ecommerce platforms, here are some other options that are widely used and recommended from our testing.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce used to be called Magento. It was an open source, highly customizable ecommerce platform that fueled millions of online stores.

After its purchase by Adobe, things have changed a bit. You can still technically download the open-source version of Magento, but all updated features come in the Adobe Commerce Pro package.

The pricing is customizable, and requires a demo and quote. Having said that, it’s a powerful online store building solution with image optimization, deployment tools, API access, and extreme customization.

We like it best for B2B merchants, but it stands strong for B2C due to its agility, integrations, and handling of spikes in traffic.

Podia

Podia has its footing in the online course market, but actually serves as an all-in-one ecommerce platform.

It has a free plan with extremely high transaction fees, along with two other plans that start at $33 per month.

We recommend Podia for online course sellers, or those with digital downloads. It’s popular with merchants selling webinars as well.

Some benefits of Podia include its built-in community features, where you can create topics, accept members, and upload videos to the community.

There’s also email marketing, coupons, affiliate marketing, and sales tracking. Not to mention, Podia offers advanced tools for PayPal, social tracking, Zapier triggers, and third-party code.

Gumroad

Gumroad is one of the most popular places for content creators to sell online. For one, it’s free to use. The startup costs remain low (Gumroad makes most of its money from slightly higher than average transaction fees).

The beauty of Gumroad is its simplicity. You’re definitely not making a fully branded online store, but you receive a landing page shop and payment processing right off the shelf.

The pricing is straightforward: 10% of all sales, and that’s it. No monthly subscriptions involved.

Features include a custom landing page, embedding on other websites, simple memberships, subscriptions, multiple currencies, payment processing, coupons, and digital products (in fact, that’s what you’ll mainly sell on Gumroad).

Zyro by Hostinger

Zyro is a website building and ecommerce platform solution from Hostinger. It’s mainly a way for Hostinger to get you to sign up for their website hosting, but Zyro is actually a powerful tool in itself.

Pricing starts at $3.59 per month but, in typically Hostinger fashion, will increase after the promotional period. For the Business (Ecommerce) plan, expect to eventually pay $14.99 per month.

Other than that, we consider it one of the best ecommerce platforms if you like a simple setup, intuitive inventory management, and automated selling tools.

You get paid instantly using methods like Google and Apple Pay, and have hundreds of ecommerce templates to choose from.

Not only that, but the shipping and delivery gets handled within Zyro, with automated shipping statuses, payment tracking, and order histories.

What is an Ecommerce Platform?

Let’s start with the basics – what actually is an ecommerce platform?

An ecommerce platform is a software solution, designed to provide business owners with the tools they need to set up a digital store and begin selling online.

Each platform on the market today comes with its own unique set of capabilities.

However, virtually every ecommerce tool will have the core functionality companies need to manage an online retail business.

Most solutions will allow you to build online stores (with your own custom domain name), complete with blog pages, product pages, and checkout options.

They’ll also feature tools for managing transactions, order fulfilment, customer support, and returns.

Some offerings can also include advanced solutions for specific business needs, such as POS integrations or options for multi-channel selling across marketplaces and social media platforms.

The overall “best” ecommerce platform for you will depend on your business model, sales strategy, and overall plan for growth.

We’ve chosen the best options above based on their ability to appeal to a wide range of business types.

Keep reading to learn about which are the best ecommerce platforms for:

• General use
• Beginners
• Mid to large businesses
• Creatives
• Retailers
• Small businesses and startups
• Selling digital goods
• Running your site on an open source system
• WordPress sites
• No-code store design

What to Look for When Choosing the Best Ecommerce Platforms

It's important to recognize that not all ecommerce platforms are equally suitable for all brands.

Therefore, it's recommended to compile a list of essential features that you require before beginning your platform search.

What may be the best ecommerce platform for one store could potentially result in higher expenses for other businesses in the future.

Here is a list of must-have features to guide your search:

• Reasonable, scaleable pricing: within your budget and flexible enough to grow with your business
• Support for enough products: do you need to sell 10 or 1,000 products?
• Payment gateways that work for your business: some payment processors only work in some countries, or for certain industries. Make sure you check to see that your ecommerce platform supports the payment gateway you want.
• Design elements suitable for your skill level: are you a developer who wants full coding customization, or a complete beginner? Do you want a drag-and-drop builder or a visible section-based builder? And does the platform provide quality templates?
• Integrations and built-in tools: You want to ensure that your ecommerce platform has all the unique features you need to run your business. If not, make sure it has a large collection of apps or integrations to complete the construction of your store.
• Great customer support: online documentation is good; chat/email support is better; phone support is best, especially when money is on the line.
• Marketing tools: like email marketing, social selling, and search engine ads.
• Ways to source products and ship them to customers: these often come in the form of apps or integrations.

Keep reading to learn all about the best ecommerce platforms from our in-depth testing.

Frequently asked questions 🤔

If you encounter specific questions during your research, read through the following FAQs to help you along the way.

In this section, we provide honest answers to the most pressing questions. This way, you have ideas for which ecommerce platforms to utilize based on your industry, the size of your business, and which types of features you may need.

Many of the FAQs serve as summaries of what was outlined above, but we also touch on the best ecommerce platforms for things like SEO, dropshipping, and more.

So, if you're still struggling to narrow down your search, use the FAQs to help!

“Can you help me to create a store using Shopify / BigCommerce / Wix?”

Yes, I do work with experts knowledgeable in each of these popular ecommerce platforms. Please fill out this form to make sure I will be able to recommend you the right people to work with.