Neatly

The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business 2017

Jon

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to migrate your site to something new (in which case check out our guide to migration), you need to find the ecommerce platform that suits your business.

There are a huge range of ecommerce solutions available, and trawling through each of them to find which features you need and work for you can be difficult. So we’ve done the hard work for you!

We’ve looked through 14 of the top ecommerce platforms and analyzed all of the features for you. From price, integrations and features we’ve covered everything to help you decide which platform to choose.

Want to compare specific features, skip ahead:

Costs & Hosting

Possibly the most important aspect of choosing your ecommerce solutions is knowing what it’s gonna cost you. That’s not just looking at how much the solution itself costs but the other costs involved such as hosting and storage.

Prices can vary from free to $15,000 per year depending on the platform; depending on our budget that will immediately rule out some platforms. That can also be without considering the cost of actually hosting your site too, which could vary from an extra $5 to an extra $100 per month.

Deciding how you’d like to host your site is another key aspect that can affect costs. Hosted or SaaS sites are generally a lot simpler to setup and manage, with little technical skill required.

If you’re not technical, self-hosted or deployed platforms might require you to work with a developer to get setup and for ongoing maintenance. However, they do tend to offer a lot more potential for customization because of this.

Finally, consider the level of support included. For some of the ecommerce solutions below, the only support available is that of the online community which can be tricky if you have limited technical skills and advice around you.

Platform Pricing Free trial? Saas or Deployed Cost to Host Storage Support Included
Community Edition Free – deployed $100-$200 – Community
Enterprise $15,000 per year – deployed $500/m unlimited Yes
$29 – $499 a month yes saas non unlimited Yes
Free – deployed $20-$50/m unlimited Community
$29 – $250 per month yes saas none 3gb – unlimited Yes
Free – deployed $20-$30/m – Community
$15 – $135/m yes saas none unlimited Yes
$20 – $30 per month – ? none 20gb Yes
$30 – $40 per month yes saas none unlimited Yes
Free – deployed $5/m – Community
$9.99 – $29.99 – SAAS  – Unlimited Yes
$19 – $199 Yes SAAS none Unlimited Yes
$29 – $229 Yes SAAS none Unlimited Yes
$24.95 – $299 SAAS none Upto 50Gb yes

Design

Particularly for new sites, using the range of templates available to get your site ready for sales is the simplest way to get started. All of the tools we’ve researched here included free templates for you to use, with most of them customizable.

If you’re after something a little more unique, there’s also paid templates available. With prices starting from $10 and up, you can find something that fits the personality of your website.

Though it should go without saying these days, all of these platforms were mobile friendly so that you’ll be able to serve your mobile-only customers.

Platform Free Website Templates Paid Templates Cost of paid templates Mobile Friendly
Community Edition 500+ yes $10-$300 yes
Enterprise 500+ yes $10-$300 yes
20+ yes $80-$180 yes
14+ yes $39 yes
115+ yes $39-$139 yes
Commerce 500+ no – yes
35+ yes $180 yes
40+ no – yes
 60+ no – yes
280+ yes $10-$600 yes
10+ no – yes
20+ no Included Yes
20+ no Included Yes
50+ Yes $95 Yes

Integrations

As we know very well here at neatly, people like yourself are using more and more cloud applications to help you run your business. It’s super important then for everything to be able to integrate your platform with these tools so that you’re making the most of your data.

A lot of the platforms we covered feature their own marketplace to list all of the apps that they integrate with. If you’re just starting out, it’s a great place to look to see which tools work with your chosen platform so that you everything works together smoothly.

Platform Social Media Integration Facebook Shopping/Amazon/Ebay integration Marketplace? Add-ons 
Community Edition paid extension paid extension https://marketplace.magento.com yes
Enterprise yes paid extension https://marketplace.magento.com yes
paid extension amazon/facebook apps.shopify.com yes
paid extension paid extension yes yes
yes paid extension yes yes
Commerce free extension no no yes
paid extension all 3 https://www.volusion.com/marketplace yes
yes facebook http://www.wix.com/app-market/main yes
yes no See Support yes
yes paid extension https://help.bigcartel.com/apps/ yes
Yes Facebook https://help.bigcartel.com/apps/ Yes
Yes No Via Zapier yes
Yes Yes No No
Yes Facebook https://www.sparkpay.com/ecommerce-apps Yes

Payment

As an ecommerce store, another hugely important element is payment. All our platforms bar one included a payment gateway within their service such as Paypal, Stripe or Sagepay.

As a retailer you’re also required to be PCI certified to help protect your customers card details. While hosted solutions such as Shopify and BigCommerce have included this within your subscription, a self hosted solution like WooCommerce and Magento will require you to take the necessary steps to make sure you’re PCI compliant.

As well as protecting your customers, it’s important to protect yourself, so Fraud Protection is a worthwhile feature.

Platform Abandoned Cart Payment Gateways included Subscriptions Fraud protection PCI certified POS App
Community Edition paid extension 5+ paid extension paid extension no paid extension
Enterprise yes yes paid extension paid extension yes paid extension
paid extension 50+ paid extension yes yes Yes
paid extension yes paid extension paid extension no yes
paid extension yes paid extension yes yes Yes
Commerce free extension no yes free extension yes no
yes* yes but only US no paid extra yes
no yes no part of extensions no No
yes yes no no yes No
paid extension 50+ paid extension no no no
no 5+ no No no Yes
No 95+ Yes No Yes No
Yes 100+ No No yes Yes
Yes 50+ Yes Paid Extension yes No

Other Features

Payments and Integrations won’t be the only things you need from an ecommerce platform, extra features such as Multi Language, Real Time Shipping and APIs may all be useful to your business too. We’ve covered the most obvious ones below.

Platform Multi Language Real Time Shipping Responsive Admin Panel Dropshipping Open Source API Enterprise Edition Inventory
Community Edition yes paid extension free extension paid extension yes yes See Magento Enterprise Yes
Enterprise yes yes paid extension yes yes this is it yes
yes yes yes yes no yes Yes shopify plus yes
free extension paid extension paid extension paid extension yes yes no yes
no paid extension yes paid extension no yes yes yes
Commerce no paid extension no paid extension yes yes no no
no no yes paid extension no yes* yes yes
free extension no yes no no no no no
no no mobile app no no yes no yes
no paid extension yes no yes yes no no
no no Yes No No No No yes
No Yes No Themes Yes Yes No
No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No
No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No

Sales & Marketing

There’s no doubt that when it comes to getting your store out there and increasing your revenue, you’ll need more tools than are built into your ecommerce store. However, every little help, particularly for small businesses, is welcome.

Platform Blog Customer Reviews Loyalty Program Affiliate Program SEO Customer Segments Upselling & Cross Selling Advanced customised reporting

Community Edition

 no yes paid extension no paid extension paid extension yes paid extension
Enterprise no yes yes paid extension yes yes yes yes
yes yes paid extension yes yes paid extension paid extension yes*
yes yes paid extension paid extension yes paid extension yes yes
no yes paid extension paid extension yes paid extension free extensions yes
Commerce no free extension paid extension free extension yes yes free extension no
no yes* yes yes yes paid extension paid extension no
yes yes paid extension no yes no no No
yes no no no yes yes no no
yes yes paid extension paid extension yes no yes no
Yes yes no no Yes no yes No
Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes yes
Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes
Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes

Which platform should you choose?

As I haven’t used every platform out there, it would be difficult to choose a particular platform to recommend, plus a lot of it will come down to your individual needs.

If you’re looking to manage it all yourself and have little technical experience, a hosted platform such as Shopify may be your best bet.

Have you got any experience of these platforms? Which would you recommend? Let us know below.