Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms For Small Businesses

E-commerce has become very popular nowadays. A few years before there weren’t many ecommerce stores and people were somewhat reluctant to buy and sell online. Now there is numerous eCommerce business hosting eCommerce sites. Even the popular conventional stores are shifting towards the online market. With the online stores becoming more popular anyone can start an ecommerce store within days.

E-commerce stores are built on different platforms and the one of the best reasons to opt for one of the platforms  given in the list below is that you will save on hiring a website maintenance company. Deciding on the perfect platform for your ecommerce store can be confusing as it involves some technicalities. Hosting on the platform that suits you will help you run your business smoothly for a long time.
There are many types of platforms for you to choose from. You can either go for a custom made store using the CSS, Html javascript programming or you can start your online store with readily available templates from websites like Shopify. Here is a list of platforms that would help you to build your online store.

1. Shopify
Shopify has redefined the eCommerce store building. Shopify offers a variety of packages on website building. There are many themes available readily for customer usage. They have templates with drag and drop options. You can select the templates yourself and start creating your eCommerce store.
With Shopify, you can immediately start your business. You will spend, a lesser amount of money compared to building the website from scratch. For a small business budget and time are the two most crucial elements. Shopify covers all the aspects of an eCommerce store from SEO, customer support, SSL certificate to colour themes and updates.
Any kind of business can use Shopify, it has options for both small and large eCommerce stores.
There’s even a trial plan of 14 days, in which you can build the website for free and test its performance.

2. BigCommerce
Large eCommerce stores can be built using big commerce. It is a very powerful platform to host your eCommerce store with a strong SaaS service. Anyone can design a website using Bigcommerce whether you are a professional or a beginner. It has free hosting options for you to choose from.
BigCommerce helps you in creating a complete website with shopping carts and payment Gateways. The websites created using big commerce are automatically mobile friendly. They don’t charge any transaction fee and have partnerships with PayPal, ApplePay etc. The only drawback is they only have a limited number of templates.

3. WIX
Wix offers a large collection of ready-made templates to create a website. They also provide registration and hosting services for your website. Wix allows you to create your website in the DIY( Do It Yourself) method. This way you can create the website of your imagination.
It has numerous templates, designs and themes to create the desired website. But it does not work well with big eCommerce stores. They don’t charge any transaction fee and have good customer support. Its bandwidth is low and cannot hold big eCommerce stores.

4. Volusion
Volusion allows you to create websites on your own. It’s specifically designed for eCommerce stores and can hold huge volumes of data. Volusion has all the professional tools to create an online store. It even has a designer assigned to each one of the clients. It contains more than 300 themes to choose from. They provide the user with tools that help them in building the website from scratch.
They provide customers with SEO, Google analytics, warehouse management services, inventory management, delivery services.
The mobile version of the website is not very responsive and there’s no room for blog creation.

5. Square Space
Square space has a multitude of options on templates, design, colour, font, size etc. Its templates are highly sophisticated. Square space offers a free trial. It is one of the best platforms to create blogs. Creating blogs is the main feature of square space. It does not charge any transaction fee and has an adaptive design but creating an online store using square space can be quite complicated and it does not have a free plan. But square space offers a 14-day trial plan.

6. 3D Cart
3D cart is a website builder suitable platform for small and medium scale online stores. It has many templates to choose from. It provides some of the best marketing tools for Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
You can customize blogs and newsletters using 3Dcart. There are no bandwidth limitations so you can hold a multipage website. 3DCart does not charge transaction fees. Using 3Dcart can be difficult as its features are hard to learn.

7. Web.com
Web.com is a complete package in terms of creating an eCommerce store. The website provides you with website development tools worthy of creating websites from scratch, it offers a complete marketing strategy for Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Web.com has an excellent customer support service.
It has a number of payment options. It takes care of everything including Google analytics and SSL certification. Web.com has a huge collection of templates. It does not have a free plan option and it is very complicated to use.

8. Wazala
Wazala has a drag and drops options with the admin panel. This enables the user to create a customized online store with all the options like shopping carts, payment services, discount systems and a gallery.
It has a variety of templates and plugins used to create your eCommerce stores. Even a complicated online store can be built using Wazala. It has a 15-day trial option.

9. SITE123
SITE123 is easy to use while creating a website. It covers all the aspects of an eCommerce store including templates, google and Facebook marketing, shopping cart, payment Gateways, Google analytics, SEO etc.
It is not very professional to use this site for online store building.

10. Sitebuilder. Com
The site builder is the most suitable option if you are a beginner. It has a drag and drops options making it easier for the user to build the website. It covers everything from the domain, hosting, SEO, Google analytics, social media marketing etc. It has only limited eCommerce tools to build a website.

I hope you found the list of ecommerce platforms to be useful. If you want more information or consultation you can talk to us about out ecommerce development services as we are the best ecommerce development company in chennai