Choosing the best e-commerce platform is not an easy task as there is a huge market and many factors involved. The choice of web hosting for your e-commerce store can havea huge impact on your business, so you must double-check every point and feature.
To help you out, we have listed the top web hosting platforms for e-commerce websites. This article will help you to make a wise decision that which platform is right for you.
An e-commerce platform is a place where you are creating and developing your own online shop.It provides you with all the tools to develop and manage your e-commerce site with those products that will be helpful in your day-to-day operations.
Now you might be thinking that why you should use good web hosting platforms for e-commerce.
Well, the first and foremost reason is that you don't need to be aweb developer to create a good-looking online shop and below we have mentionedmore of the important reasons to use e-commerce platforms:
Easy to use– In earlier dayscreating a shopping cart was not easy. Before there were shopping carts but youstill need top developers' skills to incorporate them into your e-commerce site. Well, now we have plugins to do that with e-commerce platforms, you get everythingin one hand and can get started right away.
Cheaper – Most the thee-commerce platforms are not that expensive that they don't even fit in yourbudget some of them cost nothing. Well, you have a lot of expensive going on while running an online store but it is a lot less than creating and developingyour website from scratch.
One solution fits all –Especially when going with a hosted solution, you can let go of more parts of running your site. No need to deal with web hosting, security, updates, and the likes. Instead, you can concentrate all of your focus on growing the business.
Availability ofcustomer support – With the additional customer solution, your website willhave extra professional support. Some open-source solutions like WordPress areoften run by a community so to thrive you also need to be dependent on thecommunity.
All right, now that you have a better idea of what to look for in an e-commerce platform, it's time to talk about what's out there. In the following, we will cover 4 most popular e-commerce platforms which you can use and which one will be better for you.
Wix Stores
Wix is formerly drag and Drop's website builder. It is a simple platform to use and quick to setup. There is no coding required, you can drag content anywhere on your site with the user-friendly editor. What's cool is that they have over 500 templates specifically made for online stores and even provide stock images you can use right away.
It offers a fully equipped shopping cart and also hundreds of applications in its official app market. Also, the service is fully hosted so there's no need to worry about this part. One thing that you need to keep in mind is that Wix is not a pure e-commerce platform therefore the e-commerce capabilities can be a bit basic.
SiteBuilder
It is one of the best platforms to start your e-commerce store for beginners. It is quite similar to Wix as you have to purchase the highest plan for online shop feature.
Their drag-and-drop interface is intuitive, simple, and comprehensive. It has all the essentials that are required by you like domain, hosting, analytics tools, SEO, and necessary e-commerce tools. It comes with unlimited bandwidth and storage space.
BigCommerce
This e-commerce platform allows you all the e-commerce solutions both as a SaaS and an online store. It's probably most similar to Shopify. The two of them are often mentioned in the same breath.
It offers a large number of tools and features,e.g. promotions, unlimited product variants, options to handle returns, coupons, and discounts. Additionally, Big Commerce integrates with Amazon, eBay, and social networks which allow you to sell across different platforms.
Shopify
Shopify is a well-known e-commerce platform around the world. It's a fully-featured host solution with hundreds of thousands of users. We also have a full article about it, if the information below is not enough for you. It is super simple to use this platform as all you need to do is sign in and start selling your stuff.
Shopify offers dozens of free mobile-optimized, elegant themes. More are available on purchase. There is no need for coding skills as you can create a Shopify store drag and drop. It also offers top-quality 24*7 customer support via phone, email, live chat, and Twitter.
It also supports a lot of third-party payment gateways and has a large app marketplace with over a thousand offers to add functionality to your site with a few clicks.
Finally, they offer additional sales channels by providing you with the software and hardware to sell inside physical store locations, social selling, and integrating with marketplaces like Amazon.
