5 Best eCommerce Platforms for Small Businesses
Quick links for the Best Ecommerce Platforms
1) Best Overall 🏆
Shopify
An E-commerce platform simplifying online store creation, management, and sales for businesses of all sizes.
2) Most Popular🥈
Amazon
A global online marketplace offering a vast range of products, from electronics to books and more.
Read Review
3) WordPress Plugin 🥉
Woocommerce
A WordPress plugin enabling seamless creation and management of online stores for businesses.
So, you are in the market for an eCommerce platform that suits small businesses.
Ideal, because in this article we have our compilation list for our top picks, and we compare the features and pricing for you.
If you just want the best choice, we’ve added that right at the top of the article as this was what is most requested by our customers and what we see the best feedback with. So, that’ll be the “can’t go wrong” option.
Otherwise, feel free to explore all the options we’ve reviewed on the market to find something that might fit you a little better.
Enjoy the list!
The Best eCommerce Platform for Small Businesses
Small businesses usually struggle to build a stronghold in the market and can only make local sales through in-person selling. However, they can gain more visibility by building an online presence through eCommerce stores. An eCommerce platform that offers affordable rates and sales conversions will be the perfect fit for this category. Have a look at the products below to choose the best eCommerce platform for small businesses:
1. Volusion
Volusion is an eCommerce online selling platform that lets you expand your online store with a multitude of advanced features and add-ons. You can use the expertly-designed themes and custom domains to increase conversions. Additionally, Volusion lets you add custom elements to your online store and enhance the customer experience.
Volusion Features
Here are some exclusive features of Volusion:
Branding and Customizable Layouts: Volusion ensures that your online store adapts to all devices and provides a swift shopping experience to your clients. You can showcase your branding across your site by uploading logos or using built-in promotional tools. With Volusion, you can incorporate testimonials, reviews and image galleries into your online store.
Warehouse and Firewall Settings: Volusion allows you to block certain traffic from your online store to avoid spam and provide reliable tracking data. Additionally, you can set up warehouse locations and calculate shipping rates to manage your inventory. With Volusion, you can easily ship and process orders from multiple warehouses.
Inventory Management: Volusion automates inventory management and displays product status, stock reorder and quantity verification. It automatically updated the inventory database based on recent additions and purchases. Volusion ensures that your online store only displays products that are actually available.
Product Variant Pricing: With Volusion, you can set different prices for every variant of your product. You can set up recurring payments for subscription-based products and generate store gift cards. Additionally, Volusion lets you display related products to your customers based on abandoned carts and recent purchases.
SEO: Volusion offers in-house SEO to help you improve the visibility of your online store. You can do site indexing and examine investment values with a full return. Moreover, Volusion offers a Robots.txt file that prevents certain pages from search engine crawling to improve your SEO strategy.
Volusion Pricing
Volusion offers 4 Pricing options for its eCommerce platform.
The “Personal” plan is priced at $35/month and offers free responsive themes, site editing tools and inventory management.
The “Professional” plan is priced at $79/month and offers abandoned cart reports, a customer loyalty plan and an advanced report builder.
The “Business” plan is priced at $299/month and offers priority support, built-in SEO, batch order processing and CRM.
The “Prime” plan charges based on your gross merchandise value. It offers VIP support, newsletters and third-party gateways.
2. Weebly
Weebly is an e-commerce platform that helps entrepreneurs set up professional online stores and have the freedom to increase clientele. It allows you to customize every granular detail and elevate the visual look of your e-commerce store. With Weebly, you get powerful designer tools at your fingertips to design a robust, responsive online store.
Weebly Features
Here are some exclusive features of Weebly:
Smart Marketing: Weebly offers customizable email templates that let you connect with the clientele to save abandoned carts or verify a purchase. Additionally, it optimizes your store for SEO to make you more discoverable on search engines. With Weebly, you can track your store performance and further enhance your sales numbers.
Shipping: Weebly provides a reliable shipping tool so you can easily send your products domestically and internationally. Moreover, you get real-time shipping rates dynamically by carrier, address, weight and quantity. Weebly stores the shipping information for w every order so the system can identify the replacement or return requests from the customers.
Inventory: With Weebly, you get an inbuilt inventory management system that automatically updates the items based on availability. Additionally, you can do bulk imports to save time on entering products into the database. Weebly ensures your inventory system is always up-to-date with the latest orders and returns.
Coupon Builder: Every online store owner will admit that providing coupons on special occasions or personal milestones is a great way to build trust with clients and increase sales. Weebly offers a coupon builder where you can provide discounted deals and make custom gift cards for your prospects and get the sales over the line.
Checkout and Customer Reviews: Weebly broadens your payment acceptance capabilities by offering integration with Square, Stripe, and PayPal. It offers a fully connected shopping cart and an automatic tax calculator. Additionally, you can feature customer reviews to help prospects learn about a product and elevate interest.
Weebly Pricing
Weebly offers 3 Pricing options for its online store-building platform.
The “Pro” plan is priced at $12/month upon annual billing. It offers free SSL security, shopping cart and site search.
The “Business” plan is priced at $25/month upon annual billing. It offers inventory management, an automatic tax calculator, item reviews and a shipping calculator.
The “Business Plus” plan is priced at $38/month upon annual billing. It offers real-time shipping, advanced site stats and abandoned cart emails.
3. OpenCart
OpenCart is an eCommerce platform that offers all the prerequisite features to create, scale and run your online store. Its marketplace features over 13000 modules and themes to jumpstart and expand your business. Additionally, OpenCart comes with free lifetime updates and built-in SEO to drive traffic to your online store.
OpenCart Features
Here are some exclusive features of OpenCart:
Admin Features: OpenCart offers an administrator dashboard that provides all the important information at a glimpse. You can set advanced user privileges and separate access for user groups. Additionally, OpenCart lets you manage multiple stores from one admin interface and localize store settings.
Unlimited Everything: OpenCart does not have any limitations and makes it simpler to sell digital products. You can run reward programs that drive results and increase the customer’s lifetime value. Moreover, OpenCart comes with a robust integrated comment, reviews and ratings system.
Customer-Oriented: OpenCart lets you create filters so your clients can refine and narrow down the search results. You can make sales in any currency, set up different taxes and get automatic rate updates. Additionally, OpenCart offers an easy way for clients to get subscribed to your newsletter and email marketing campaigns.
Shipping, Payments and Reports: With OpenCart, you can set up recurring payments for your customers and offer discounts or promotional codes. It integrates with the leading shipment methods like Australia Post, FedEx, Royal mail and UPS. Moreover, OpenCart comes powered up with a sales report and offers external reporting extensions.
Mobile & SEO: OpenCart is responsive by default, meaning your site looks awesome irrespective of the device. You can use SEO extensions to enhance your visibility on search engines. Additionally, OpenCart offers a marketing dashboard to help you track the campaigns.
OpenCart Pricing
OpenCart is completely free to use. You can click the “Download” tab and install OpenCart on your device.
4. Zyro
Zyro offers a robust eCommerce builder with all prerequisite tools to start, manage and grow your online business. It helps you unleash the power of AI tools and third-party integrations to scale your online store. With Zyro, you can sell physical or digital products and services plus collect donations or accept bookings.
Zyro Features
Here are some exclusive features of Zyro:
Drag & Drop Editor: Zyro offers professional designer-made templates with full customization. You can use the drag-and-drop functionality to input elements from your online store. Additionally, you can include blog posts in your eCommerce store to share thoughts and attract new traffic.
eCommerce Functionality: Zyro offers a centralized platform to process all your eCommerce tasks. It provides a multi-functional dashboard that handles your inventory, shipment tracking, orders, reporting and customer service. Moreover, you can optimize your online store with simple SEO settings and marketing integrations.
Universal Payment Solution: Zyro eCommerce supports various payment methods to offer your clients flexibility in the checkout phase. Additionally, you can store the card details to fasten the checkout experience for your clients. With Zyro, you minimize the risk of abandoned carts and failed orders.
Domain & Hosting: Zyro offers free hosting with every pricing option. It uses cloud servers to guarantee your visitors a fast and reliable experience. Moreover, Zyro automatically scales your online store according to your clientele base and ensures your eCommerce store is always operational.
Search Optimization: With Zyro, you get speedy loading mobile optimization, cloud hosting and encrypted SSL security. You can take control of your on-page SEO by editing the page titles and meta descriptions. Additionally, Zyro provides an AI writer tool to help you generate relevant content in seconds.
Zyro Pricing
Zyro offers 2 Pricing options for its website builder and eCommerce platform.
The “Website” plan is priced at $2.99/month and offers SSL security, blogging tools, Google analytics, AI logo maker, plus visitor remarketing.
The “Business” plan is priced at $3.99/month and offers order management, inventory management, email notifications, plus online payments.
5. Wix
Wix is a website and online store-building platform for people who don’t necessarily have coding skills or designing experience. It’s an extremely flexible platform that provides absolute control over layout customization. Wix is a design-driven eCommerce tool that helps you build an online presence and churn out more sales.
Wix Features
Here are some exclusive features of Wix:
Wix Editor: Wix offers an innovative drag-and-drop online store builder with over 500 designer-made templates. You can bring your eCommerce store to life with animation, video backgrounds and scroll effects. Additionally, Wix helps you drive organic traffic with built-in SEO tools and custom meta tags.
Store Manager: With Wix, you can track orders and manage inventory from a centralized platform. It ensures your product database is regularly updated with the latest orders and item availability. Moreover, you can showcase your products and in-stock inventory with a beautiful layout.
Wix Music: Wix offers a personalized online store option for musicians to showcase their albums, tracks and playlists. Your listeners can buy your music directly from the store without any hidden commissions. Moreover, you get advanced statistics showing your most popular songs and trending albums.
Social Tools and Email Marketing: Building a social following is necessary for individual business owners to amplify their reach. With Wix, you can keep your site content fresh and post regular blogs to increase your social presence on the internet. Additionally, you can send personalized emails to prospects regarding abandoned carts or upcoming promotions.
Visitor Analytics: Wix provides insights into your store traffic and visitor behaviour. You can see which products generate more clicks or trigger purchases. Wix ensures you’re on top of the analytical data and enhances the effectiveness of your eCommerce store. Additionally, you can get periodic reports regarding sales, inventory and lead conversions.
Wix Pricing
Wix offers 3 Pricing options for its website building and eCommerce platform.
The “Business Basic” plan is priced: at $3.99/month upon annual billing. It offers a free domain for 1 Year and 20 GB of storage space.
The “Business Unlimited” plan is priced: at $4.99/month upon annual billing. It offers unlimited bandwidth and 35 GB of storage space.
The “Business VIP” plan is priced: at $7.99/month upon annual billing. It offers customized reports and 50 GB of storage space.
Why use an eCommerce platform at all?
In today’s world, online shopping is highly prominent among consumers. Businesses need an online store that reflects their brand and provides a seamless shopping experience to the customers. With an eCommerce platform, you can start selling online and improve your sales conversion.
eCommerce platforms allow you to set up an online store and manage your inventory or process orders. You can create personalized promotional codes for your prospects to save abandoned carts and make more sales. Additionally, eCommerce platforms enable you to build an online presence and drive more traffic to your online store.
Why should Small Businesses use eCommerce Platforms?
Nowadays, every business wants to sell products online, but some can’t spend the time and money building an expensive eCommerce system from scratch. When it comes to finding the perfect eCommerce software for your small business, you want to ensure reliability and low set-up costs.
eCommerce platforms make it easier for you to have an up-and-running shopping cart, checkout process, store credit card reader or payment processing solution in no time. It helps you manage and scale your business by expanding your clientele.
With eCommerce platforms, it’s easier than ever to create your digital storefront. You can generate more customers by reaching a global audience without any technical skills. Additionally, it handles all store management tasks to let you focus on growing your business through marketing.
Nowadays, eCommerce platforms boast a modern design and intuitive interfaces, making shopping a breeze. You can instantly convert your store into a fully functional online marketplace without a steep learning curve.
eCommerce Platform for Small Businesses, A Summary
Small businesses require an eCommerce platform to build a clientele outside their demographics. It helps them attract more visitors through SEO marketing and social media promotions. Moreover, eCommerce platforms enhance the revenue generation of small businesses while minimally affecting budgets.
Volusion offers affordable pricing options with several advanced features that can help small businesses set up their online store without hassle. It is our suggested pick for an eCommerce platform that suits small businesses.
What Ecommerce Platform would you recommend?
In short, It’s Shopify.com
Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform simplifying online store creation and management. It offers a user-friendly interface, customizable templates, and robust tools for inventory management, payments, and shipping. Trusted by businesses worldwide, Shopify enables seamless online sales for entrepreneurs and established brands alike.
“🚀Try Shopify.com For Free, It’s my favorite Ecommerce Platform to use and recommend.” -Scott Max
It has robust tools for product management, allowing easy catalogue setup, customisation, and inventory tracking. Its secure payment gateways and seamless checkout process enhance customer experience. Shopify’s responsive themes ensure a visually appealing online store, making it a preferred choice for e-commerce entrepreneurs.
For more details, read our Shopify.com Review.