Advantages and disadvantages of Ecommerce platforms

1. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a SaaS platform with highly flexible APIs and a strong headless commerce offering. Core platform components enable extension and connection to any other environment. Because BigCommerce falls on the more flexible end of the spectrum for SaaS products, it can have a somewhat higher learning curve than some of the alternatives. 

Advantages

  1. Flexible and scalable
  2. Excels with multi-channel selling
  3. Strong SEO Performance
  4. Fantastic Theme Designs
  5. Comprehensive abandoned cart feature

Disadvantages

  1. Inconsistent speeds in consecutive studies
  2. Gets expensive for high volume stores
  3. Cart abandonment isn’t on entry plan
  4. No 1-click Selling or Upsells

 

2. Shopify

Shopify is a hosted ecommerce software, offers a low technical barrier for building a store with basic functionality out of the box. This makes the setup and store management part easy.Some non-native tools require a separate subscription.

Advantages

  1. Lighting fast load time
  2. Super easy to set up
  3. Lots of certified partners to help you
  4. 1-Click selling
  5. Allows multiple channel and social selling
  6. Great themes with varied designs

Disadvantages

  1. Rated poorly in SEO in consecutive studies.
  2. Unable to customize the checkout process
  3. Apps can add up and become costly
  4. Need a developer for advanced features

 

3. Wix

Wix is a SaaS platform geared toward small businesses. It’s quick and easy to get started, and you can drag-and-drop to create your site. Design is simple with Wix, as you’ll have access to 500+ templates.

Advantages

  1. Tons of free amazing themes.
  2. Really simple to use and set up
  3. On-page support for numerous needs
  4. 72 free themes

Disadvantages

  1. Trying hard to fight a bad SEO reputation. Made improvements, but tested very poorly.
  2. Many sites were not secured
  3. Lacks upselling features and advanced automation
  4. Difficult to fully customize template

 

4. Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop comes stacked with more out-of-the-box features than most SaaS platforms, but that can make it somewhat challenging to use.

Advantages

  1. Better blog feature than other SaaS ecommerce
  2. Supports all the integrations you would need
  3. Great business user management tools such as email, QuickBooks, inventory

Disadvantages

  1. Templates are inline with trends, but never at the cutting edge
  2. Negative feedback on customer support
  3. Potential issues upgrading
  4. Not for beginners

 

5. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a popular self-hosted, open source framework for WordPress websites. Developed and maintained by Automattic, WooCommerce has a decent starter selection of essential ecommerce features for checkout. Because it’s open source, you have complete control over customization and store management. You’ll also find a large community of WooCommerce Meetup groups that you can tap into for help managing your store. 

Advantages

  1. WordPress is the best platform for SEO
  2. 1 Click selling app available
  3. Lots of WordPress experts available
  4. Highly customizable
  5. Many marketing options and plenty of other integrations

Disadvantages

  1. Good hosting can be pricey
  2. Have to deal with blame game for troubleshooting.
  3. Virtually zero support
  4. You need extensions for simple stuff

 

6. Volusion

Volusion was one of the original contenders in the SaaS ecommerce space. Operating since the early 2000s, their shopping cart solution provides a mix of core commerce and SEO/marketing tools for starting and growing your business. In July 2020, Volusion filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to a blog post on Volution’s website, the company is still open and operating as usual.

Advantages

  1. Great onboarding and help center
  2. Great flexibility with Sitemaps
  3. Built-in subscription/recurring payments
  4. SMB friendly
  5. Well laid out dashboard
  6. Clear inventory and marketing system

Disadvantages

  1. Lacks up/cross selling features
  2. Many sites had poor URL structure
  3. One of the slower SaaS platforms
  4. Many of the sites I studied looked VERY dated
  5. No built-in blogging functionality

 

7. PestaShop

PrestaShop is an open-source and cloud-hosted ecommerce platform that gives the best overall value. While the word “free” automatically makes most of us salivate, the other costs you will accrue with the free version might make the PrestaShop Ready look like a better option especially if you don’t have the technical skills.

Advantages

  1. Tons of apps or integrations available
  2. Strong SEO
  3. Open source very flexible
  4. Large and ready-to-help community

Disadvantages

  1. Slower than the other builders
  2. Add-ons can add up
  3. Limited third-party marketing integrations
  4. Developer skill needed to tweak
  5. No multichannel functionalities on the hosted version

 

8. Weebly

Weebly is a great option for someone looking for a simple store with marketing automation built in. But if you plan to do any type of marketing, you’ll quickly outgrow Weebly. Don’t use Weebly if SEO is important to you. Until recently, there hasn’t been a solid focus on ecommerce, and as such, you wouldn’t find some of the sophistication that other top platforms have. Nevertheless, it remains an excellent choice for startup entrepreneurs or those who do not wish to hire a developer.

Advantages

  1. Excellent value
  2. Lowest price for ecommerce marketing automation
  3. Stunning low cost and free designs
  4. Powerful email tools
  5. Simple dashboard that’s easy to use
  6. Mobile app

Disadvantages

  1. Charges an additional transaction fee
  2. Sucks with SEO
  3. Amazon doesn’t seem to be on their radar
  4. Inventory management is still very basic

 

9. Squarespace

Squarespace enables quick and easy site updates and media management rather than requiring an outside developer. This SaaS framework offers  template designs and built-in inventory tools. 

Advantages

  1. Easy To Set Up
  2. Great For Simple Stores
  3. Stunning Designs
  4. Solid SEO tools
  5. Integrates with ShipStation and ShipBob

Disadvantages

  1. No dropshipping
  2. No marketing automation integration
  3. No Amazon integration
  4. Could be faster for the price
  5. No app store for more features and functionalities

 

10. Magento

Magento is open source software that can be deployed on-premise on your own servers or in the cloud (PaaS). Written in the PHP programming language, Magento is highly flexible and scalable. If you know your way around open-source PHP development, that is. It’s also now part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, so integrates with Adobe products like analytics, a customer data platform and more. Magento has a large community of experienced developers, but many businesses have migrated off of Magento because of its high dependence on developers to set up, maintain and update your store.

Advantages

  1. Robust and feature rich
  2. Strong SEO
  3. 1-Click selling
  4. Lots of users and community
  5. Scalable and highly customizable
  6. Flexible to choose where you want to host the software

Disadvantages

  1. Pricey themes.
  2. Easily Slowed Down
  3. Requires Development Skills
  4. Virtually no support.
  5. Requires ample space and memory to perform well

 

References

  1. 10 Best Ecommerce Platforms Compared & Rated For 2021. (December 2021). Retrieved from https://www.ecommerceceo.com/ecommerce-platforms/.

  2. Choosing Among Today’s Ecommerce Frameworks: How to Determine Which One is Right for You. (December 2021). Retrieved from https://www.bigcommerce.com/articles/ecommerce-website-development/ecommerce-frameworks/.

More Article's For You

Tag: mobile-development

What is Universal Windows Platform apps (UWP)?



Tag: web-development

What is a Single Page Application? Pros and Cons of SPAs



Tag: web-development

The 5 Most Important Skills a Web Developer Needs



Tag: server-domain

Websockets and SSE (Server Sent Events)



Tag: web-development

Principles of modern web application development



Start A Project
Start A Project With Us
Your message has been sent. Thank you!