Starting an eCommerce business isn’t a new idea anymore. Much like a visiting card was once essential for establishing professional credibility, an eCommerce website is now crucial for any business, whether retail or wholesale.

Even a decade ago, building eCommerce websites was quite difficult and expensive. But today, the widespread internet, low technological costs, and advancements in AI tools have eased the process of creating and managing different types of eCommerce websites.

In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the best eCommerce platforms and tools by which you can kick-start your online-based small businesses and startups right away. Let’s get started!

eCommerce Evolution: A Short Historical Overview

eCommerce has a long history and many great milestones. One of the first written electronic transactions happened in 1971 when a student from Standford University sold a record to a student at MIT. However, eCommerce didn’t emerge as a giant industry until the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1991.

Customers started to trust online when SSL encryption was introduced in 1994 to secure online purchases. We witnessed the rise of Amazon and eBay during that time. In 2000, the eCommerce industry experienced its first solid foundation, with sales of around $25 billion globally.

As of 2010, the global eCommerce sales surpassed $680 billion. During the 2010s, mobile commerce started being popular. All the popular marketplace giants launched mobile apps to simplify product exploration and buying.

Although the entire world went into lockdown during the breakout of COVID-19, the eCommerce industry experienced massive growth in sales, around $4.28 trillion. Since then, this industry has kept growing constantly and is expected to reach $8.1 trillion by 2026. 

Here’s a discussion on the future eCommerce trends.

Why eCommerce Is So Important for Businesses Today

Let’s now have a quick discussion with some statistical features of why eCommerce has become so important in today’s modern-day businesses.

a. Expanding Market Reach

eCommerce enables businesses to break down traditional boundaries and connect with wider audiences.

By 2030, the global eCommerce industry market is predicted to reach $47 trillion, and over 40% of the population will be active buyers (researchandmarkets.com).

b.  Cost Efficiency  

To open an eCommerce, you just have to pay only a few costs – domain, hosting, and several applications – remarkably lower than the brick-and-mortar store. Research shows that this cost can be reduced by 30%, enabling numerous entrepreneurs.

e. Increasing Diversity

eCommerce is not limited to selling products through websites. It has undergone many diversifications. Social commerce is one of them. Lots of products today are also sold through Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, which will increase further.

d. Growth of Mobile Shopping

Over 50% of eCommerce purchases today happen through mobile devices, which is expected to grow in the coming years. So, having an eCommerce site can help you a lot in the marketing and sales of your products.

e. Resilience During the Crisis Time

Suppose there is a pandemic or natural calamity. In such a situation, even if the brick-and-mortar store is closed, there is no need to close the eCommerce site. As a result, customers can explore and place orders on your site while you are sleeping.

Best eCommerce Platforms for Small Businesses & Startups

We are now into the main part of this article. In this section, we’ll cover the best eCommerce platforms for small businesses that you can consider using to begin your startup. We’ll list and explain them with their key features. Keep reading!

1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a completely free, powerful, and flexible plugin for building eCommerce websites on WordPress. The plugin currently has 8+ million active installations, meaning around 8+ million eCommerce sites are built with it.

WooCommerce is open-source by nature. So, if you are a developer, you can modify this plugin to fit in with your desired eCommerce site. No matter if you aren’t a developer. Because you’ll find a wide range of free and premium extensions of the plugin in various repositories by which you can also increase and customize the functionalities of your site.

Some popular extension types it offers are payment gateways, shipping options, and marketing tools. The plugin is so user-friendly that you can manage your entire store from a single dashboard. You can manage different types of products like physical goods, digital downloads, and subscriptions with it.

Learn how WooCommerce is excelling in the eCommerce industry.

Key Features of WooCommerce:

• Supports various product types – physical, digital, and variable
• Integrates 100+ payment gateways
• Customizable shipping methods – flat rate, free shipping, and real-time carrier
• Analytics to track sales, customer behavior, and store performance
• Inventory management helps track stock levels and product visibility
• Easy to create discount codes and coupons
• Built-in SEO features help optimize product pages for search engines
• Offers a user-friendly interface for easy management of products and orders
• Simplify tax calculation

Who It’s Best For

The biggest benefit of WooCommerce is that it is completely free. As a result, you can create your eCommerce site at a very low cost. But the problem is that you have to build the entire site from scratch, starting with a domain-hosting setup, which is challenging and time-consuming for beginners.

So, if you have minimal technical experience with WordPress, going with WooCommerce is recommended. But if you don’t like to take any technical hassles and kick-start your eCommerce as quickly as possible, you may look for other solutions.

2. Shopify

Shopify is a SaaS and cloud-based eCommerce platform on which businesses and individuals can build their online stores without requiring any technical experience. It’s an all-in-one solution for registering domain hosting and managing applications to optimize website functionalities.

As of today, when we are writing this post, Shopify holds a 4.6% market share of the global web industry. So, if the number of active websites online is 1.7 billion right now, then the number of sites built with Shopify would be 7.5+ million.

Its strong ecosystem has made it stand out. From marketing automation to customer support tools, the Shopify App Store features thousands of applications to meet your various business needs. Moreover, the platform supports multiple payment gateways and offers Shopify Payments, simplifying the payment process.

Key Features of Shopify:

• Includes domain and hosting registration
• Easy to unlimited product management
• Has a vast app store
• Integrates multiple payment systems (PayPal, Credit Cards, and Shopify Payments)
• Comprehensive analytics to track sales, customer behavior, and store performance
• Allows to sell on multiple channels (Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, etc.)
• Comes with built-in SEO features and marketing tools
• Completely mobile-responsive
• Secured checkout process
• Easy to manage coupon codes and promotions
• Offers 24/7 customer support

Who It’s Best For

Shopify is best for anyone from small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs looking for a hassle-free way to set up online stores. If you don’t want to manage domain, hosting, and website setup separately but rather want to manage everything together, Shopify could be the best solution.

3. Dokan Cloud

If you are interested in creating a multivendor marketplace like Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress, you can consider Dokan Cloud. By using this platform, you can create an online marketplace that’s able to handle unlimited vendors and products. Because you can instantly scale up your site in case of any need.

In addition to marketplaces, you can even create simple online stores as well with Dokan. So, if you are thinking of just exploring the eCommerce world, you can kick-start with a simple online store. If you start getting success and want to grow big after that, you can transform your site into a multi-vendor platform.

Key Features of Dokan:

• Offers a feature-rich unified dashboard
• Allows the creation of a team of multiple members to manage the marketplace
• Set up a custom domain and hosting
• Easy to customize the frontend
• Flexible subscription plans
• Simple tax management systems
• Hassle-free refund management systems
• Lets you verify sellers to keep the platform safe
• Provides boundless shipping opportunities
• Flexible and versatile payment options
• Built with SEO and marketing options in mind

Who It’s Best For

If you are planning to create a simple eCommerce platform at the beginning and convert it into a multi-vendor platform afterward, you can consider Dokan. As a result, you don’t have to switch to another platform during the transformation stage.

4. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a cloud-based website builder dedicated to eCommerce. You can build online stores with this platform for businesses of all sizes. It was founded in 2009 as a suit of tools that you can use for designing, customizing, and scaling up your eCommerce websites.

It offers multi-channel selling, powerful Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and a comprehensive collection of payment options so you can serve a wide range of audiences. BigCommerce currently holds 0.2% of the market share, meaning 3.4 million websites are built with this platform.

Key Features of BigCommerce:

• Sell on multiple platforms (Amazon, eBay, Social Media)
• 160+ themes and 75+ plugins in the repository
• Allows to handle B2B and bulk pricing
• Mighty analytics to track customers, the store, and sales performance
• Includes strong security features
• Works with 65+ payment systems
• Perfectly responsive for mobile devices
• Able to handle unlimited products
• Offers advanced SEO features
• 24/7 customer support for premium users

Who It’s Best For

BigCommerce is great for large-sized businesses and enterprises. If you are planning to launch a B2B business where you have to manage bulk pricing for lots of products, you can use this platform to build your store with reliability and assurance.

5. Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce is popularly known as Magento. It’s an enterprise-level eCommerce platform that offers almost everything you need to create and operate highly complex online stores. With this platform, you can equally handle B2B and B2C businesses that require extreme customization and scalability.

We are not sure about Adobe Commerce’s current market share. But so far, we have learned that around 150,000 merchants are using this platform worldwide. You never have to worry about its performance and scalability because it’s cloud-based.

Key Features of Abode Commerce:

• Handles large volumes of products and transactions
• Easy to manage product catalog, descriptions, images, pricing, and more
• 2,500+ themes and 3,000+ plugins in its repository
• Includes domain and hosting packages
• This is a free and open-source platform
• Works with many payment gateways
• Advanced analytics track customer behavior and sales performance
• Provides strong security features
• Support omnichannel fulfillment

Who It’s Best For

Adobe Commerce is also equally great for creating B2B and B2C online stores. If you are thinking of creating a wholesale store where you have to handle lots of products and bulk pricing, you can choose this platform.

6. Wix

Wix is a cloud-based website-building platform that was first released in 2006. It’s a drag-and-drop tool that allows you to create any type of website without coding experience. Like any other platform, it offers readymade templates and functions, such as blogging, SEO, eCommerce, and more.

Currently, Wix has a market share of 3.2%, meaning around 5.5 million websites worldwide are built with this platform. And obviously, a significant portion of them is eCommerce. Wix also has an app marketplace where you will get almost all the necessary tools to customize your store for seamless operation.

Key Features of Wix:

• Drag-and-drop editor
• 900+ website templates
• 500+ powerful web apps
• Robust analytics and reporting
• Supports domain and hosting
• Multilingual support
• Social media integration
• Works with 100+ payment gateways
• 24/7 customer support

Who It’s Best For

Wix is also great for anyone from small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs looking to start their business without needing to handle any technical issues. Besides, it’s one of the cheapest web-building platforms with top-notch services.

Learn how to build a multi-vendor marketplace with Dokan on WordPress.

7. Squarespace

Squarespace is a cloud-based website building and hosting platform primarily designed to handle B2C. It’s a drag-and-drop web development platform released in the year 2003. Although it focuses more on B2C, you can use it to create and manage B2B websites as well.

It provides a good collection of customizable templates and necessary eCommerce functionalities. At present, Squarespace has a market share of 2.2%, meaning around 3.4 million websites are built with this platform. Not only eCommerce but also you can build other types of websites as well with Squarespace.

Key Features of Squarespace:

• Offers an AI-based website builder
• Has 110+ templates and 150+ apps
• Supports Stripe, Square, PayPal, Afterpay, and ClearPay
• Provides detailed reporting with the built-in analytics
• Includes custom domain and cloud hosting supports
• Comes with SSL and other security facilities
• Integrates popular social media platforms
• Allows to run email campaigns
• 24/7 customer support for premium users

Who It’s Best For

If we think of eCommerce, this platform is good for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. Besides, people like artists, photographers, and designers can leverage Squarespace to build their websites.

8. BigCartel

BigCartel is a hosted eCommerce platform developed mainly to create B2C online stores. It’s specialized for creative people to sell things like arts, music, crafts, and inventive services. The reason for saying this is that the platform offers many features that are designed only to serve the class of creative entrepreneurs.

In addition, BigCartel maintains a community of artists and creative people so you can have peer support in managing your business and facing upcoming challenges. It has a free plan included with the ability to manage a limited number of products so you can explore the platform well.

Key Features of BigCartel:

• Offers a user-friendly interface to manage online stores
• Easy tools for adding, editing, and managing products
• Works with PayPal and Stripe
• Integrates numerous tools to simplify promotional efforts
• Built-in analytics help in tracking sales and user behavior
• 15 pre-designed templates and 70+ plugins are available
• Perfectly optimized for mobile and tablet devices
• Simplifies tax collection and managing orders

Who It’s Best For

BigCartel is great for creative people, independent artists, photographers, fashion designers, etc., who want to get their online stores ready within very limited technical hassles.

9. Square Online

Although you may not have heard about the Square Online platform, we are considering it in this post because of its promisingness, in terms of features, functionalities, user-friendliness, and easy payment systems. It’s equally suitable for B2B and B2C enterprises.

Its powerful feature set enables you to handle versatile products, effectively segment customers, and promote products in ways that generate revenue in return. Square Online has its own POS system integrated with the platform which simplifies inventory management and order processing.

Key Features of Square Online:

• Promotional tools support discount codes and easy selling to attract customers
• Enables to track inventories both online and offline
• Supports multi-channel selling
• Integrates many email and marketing tools for customer management
• Flexible shipping options, including local delivery and pickup
• Works with various payment methods, including credit cards and digital wallets
• Provides a good number of customizable and responsive templates

Who It’s Best For

No matter whether you are a B2C or B2B business owner, if you are looking for an integrated POS system to track inventory offline, you can consider this platform.

10. Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop, previously known as 3dcart, is a complete eCommerce solution for businesses to build and manage their online stores. The great thing about this platform is that it offers a feature-rich free plan, which could help small and startup businesses save money.

It’s easy to scale up this platform for almost any type of business, no matter its B2B or B2C. As of today, around 10,000 online stores are built with Shif4Shop because not many people know about it yet.

Key features of Shif4Shop:

• Storefronts are fully customizable
• Support many payment methods, including credit cards and digital wallets
• Built-in SEO features to drive visitors and engagements
• A comprehensive suite of tools for product and inventory management
• Enables to sell on multiple channels
• Provides detailed reports with built-in analytics

Who It’s Best For

Among all the platforms listed in this post, Shift4Shop is the most cost-saving platform for kick-starting an eCommerce business. If you are just starting out and planning to gain experience, you can leverage this platform to grow your knowledge base.

Finishing Remarks

Once your site is ready, visitors are coming, and you are making a good amount of sales, it’s difficult to change/move to another platform. So, it’s better if you invest enough time in researching to select the right eCommerce platform. This will save you from facing countless troubles and challenges afterward.

We have tried our best to list the top-most eCommerce platforms in this article to ease your research process. Hope you will be able to find your desired one from this write-up. If you have any unanswered questions, let us know through the comment box below. Our team will get back to you very soon with a viable answer.