23 Best eCommerce Platforms for Small Business & Startups 2022

Are you wondering which are the best eCommerce platforms for a small business? Then, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ll be comparing different eCommerce platforms on the web and help you figure out the best from the bests for your online store. However, choosing the best eCommerce platform is really important if you want to make a successful online store for your small business.

To help you with this, we’ve talked about what you need to look for in your eCommerce platform. And then, prepared a list of the best eCommerce platforms for any small business on the web. We’ll compare its features, pros, and cons to help you figure out the best for you.

Let’s get started.

What to Look for in an eCommerce Platform?

There are tons of eCommerce platforms out there. And, they all differ according to the services and features they provide and what they are compatible with. Choosing the best is not as easy as it sounds as different stores and businesses have different requirements and goals.

So, it’s important to choose the best eCommerce platforms according to your need for a small business. For that, you’ve to keep the following points in your mind while choosing some of the best eCommerce platforms for your small business.

i. Ease of Use

The eCommerce platform of your choice needs to be easy to use and set up. It should be able to help you avoid all the hassle work and get into making your site look elegant easily. Having a simple and easy building tool with minimal setup and configuration is very crucial while choosing the best eCommerce platforms.

ii. Cost-efficient

If you’re just getting into making your site, then you probably don’t have much of a budget to invest in an expensive platform. There are many different platforms on different price ranges on the web. You’ve to properly research and go with the one that falls under your budget and still remains feature-rich.

To avoid any future problems, it’s also important to look into long-term costs and affordability before choosing a platform.

iii. Features

There are many features that an online store should have to grow at a faster pace. The eCommerce platform of your choice should include some of the most crucial features like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and marketing features to help you gather more traffic.

Also, it should have an easy drag and drop tool. Or simple design features to make your online store elegant and showcase your product.

Moreover, your platform needs to be able to add new and important features and extend the functionality of your store. You should be cautious of the extendibility and functionality the platform provides.

iv. Support

Your platform should provide you with good support and flexible timing so that your problems don’t stop your efficiency. It should provide flexible or preferably 24/7 support service and have good customer service and reputation. Having an active community with experts to help you is also very important while getting your eCommerce platform best for your small business.

23 Best eCommerce Platforms for Small Business & Startups 2022

These are some of the best eCommerce platforms on the web that can help you make an online shop for your small business. We’ll talk about its features, pros, and cons to help you easily decide what eCommerce platform you need to go for.

So, let’s start with the list.

1. WooCommerce

As one of the best eCommerce platforms out there, WooCommerce covers over 21% of all online stores on the web. It’s a free and open-source platform that works with WordPress to provide you with a great online store.

WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to extend its functionality and features using different plugins. Among them, WooCommerce is a very popular plugin and one of the best for eCommerce functionality.

You can easily craft an eCommerce shop that you want without much of a hassle. However, you have to take care of the hosting and domain name for it.

As WooCommerce is open-source, many people and developers are contributing to it. They work to extend more of its features and add more extensions to WooCommerce itself. You can find tons of different extensions for WooCommerce in its directory that you can use to make your store even more featureful.

If you are confident enough in your skill, then you can contribute to WooCommerce to make it a better platform.

Pros:

• Free and open-source platform.
• Highly customizable and easily extendible.
• Provides different marketing options and easy integration for third-party tools.
• Doesn’t share your sale details.
• Great community of WordPress experts and users to share and discuss.
• You can contribute to it.

Cons:

• You need to take care of hosting and domain name.
• Hosting can be expensive depending on options.
• The highly customizable aspect can be confusing for beginners to get familiar with.

Pricing:

It’s free of cost so you can install it right from your WordPress dashboard. Or downloading it from the plugin directory of WordPress.org or its original site is also possible.

But you have to take care of hosting and domain name which can start around $4/month. Also, there are several of its paid extensions available that you can use.

2. Shopify

With over 2.1 million users and 1 million running businesses, Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms for a small business. It’s a platform that includes everything you need to make your eCommerce store out of the box.

Shopify is a fully hosted platform and takes care of your domain and hosting needs. It comes with a huge number of tools and features to make your eCommerce site attractive and featureful. You can easily showcase your products and services and it also comes with a wide range of apps to integrate into your online store.

It requires no coding knowledge to get started and you can make an elegant online shop in no time. They also provide good support if you ever need one.

Pros:

• It’s very easy to make your eCommerce shop and require no coding knowledge.
• Provides you a 14-day free trial.
• Comes with different themes with varied designs.
• Comes with Shopify payment.

Cons:

• Charges transaction fees while using other than Shopify payment.
• Can be on an expensive side.
• Poor SEO.
• Advance feature integration requires a person of expertise.

Pricing:

This eCommerce platform is premium. So, you’ve to buy it by choosing one of its pricing plans as below:

• Basic: $29/mo, best for small businesses and startups.
• Shopify: $79/mo, best for growing online business.
• Advanced: $299/mo, great for scaling business with advanced reporting.

Have a look at the full comparison between WooCommerce vs Shopify.

3. Wix

A cloud-based website builder, Wix is one of the best eCommerce platforms for a small business. It comes with an easy drag and drop design tool that lets you create an online store easily. It’s an easy design tool that requires no coding knowledge and makes it very beginner-friendly.

Wix comes with different templates for you to showcase your products and services easily and is very easy to customize for your every need. It provides responsive website designs compatible with all sorts of mobile devices.

Moreover, it’s a fully hosted platform, so you don’t have to worry about hosting services. It also provides you with a free subdomain that looks like sitename.wixsite.com. It’s new to eCommerce so lacks some of the features that other eCommerce platforms use.

Pros:

• Comes with a huge number of templates to choose from.
• Fully-hosted platform.
• Requires no coding skills.
• Comes with a free subdomain.
• Different customization options using third-party integrations.
• Easy drag and drop builder.

Cons:

• Lacks some eCommerce features.
• Limited number of third-party add-ons.
• Not the best for huge businesses.
• Migrating to other platforms is tedious.

Pricing:

Wix comes in both free and paid plans. The free plan however is limited and doesn’t have eCommerce features.

So, the paid solution for the eCommerce platform contains the following plans:

• Basic: $17/mo, unlimited bandwidth, secure online payments, custom domain, etc.
• Unlimited: $25/mo, all Basic plan features, subscriptions, multiple currencies, and more.
• Business VIP: $35/mo, all Unlimited plan features, priority support, unlimited products, etc.

For more details, have a look at our article in Wix vs Shopify.

4. Dokan

Dokan is one of the best eCommerce solutions that can create a multi-vendor marketplace on WordPress. With 1.5 million+ downloads, 70K+ active online marketplaces are using Dokan.

Thus, using this platform, building a multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon or eBay becomes quite easy. You can not just start your small business to sell your products online. But also, later create a marketplace to sell your vendor’s products.

And the products can be ranging from digital, physical to variable products. Moreover, you can also earn through commissions via vendor commissions, product-based commissions, etc.

Pros:

• User-friendly front-end dashboard for vendors and customers.
• Great control to the vendors to customize and make their store as they want.
• Compatible with most of the best WordPress plugins and WooCommerce themes.
• Get detailed sales reports to get an overview of the store’s performance.
• Product review function to gain customer trust.
• Control over who can sell and who can’t.
• Good customer support options and comprehensive documentation.

Cons:

• May be quite expensive for startups.
• Beginners may find the setup process a little overwhelming.
• Requires improvement in support for multi-currency and multilingual stores.
• Compatibility issues with WordPress multisite system.

Pricing:

First, you need to set up WordPress on your hosting server. Then, you’ve to download or install Dokan for creating the eCommerce platform.

Luckily, Dokan is available in both free and premium versions. So, you can download the free version from the plugin directory of WordPress.org or its original site. After that, add it to your WordPress dashboard. Or installing it right from your dashboard is also possible.

To get the premium modules and features, you’ve to purchase one of the following pricing plans:

• Starter: $149/year, 1 site license, 2 pro modules, premium features like social login, product bulk edit, and more.
• Professional: $249/year, 3 sites license, 12 pro modules, everything in the Starter plan plus seller verification, vendor review, etc.
• Business: $499/year, 5 sites license, 21 pro modules, everything on Professional plan plus auction, product advertising, and others.
• Enterprise: $999/year, 20 sites license, live chat plus priority support, and all features.

Dokan also comes with lifetime plans starting from $596.

5. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)

In search of an eCommerce platform to sell your digital products? If yes, then the best eCommerce platform for your small digital store is Easy Digital Downloads.

This solution works alongside WordPress similar to WooCommerce and Dokan. But here, you can only sell digital products. And that can be downloadable items like eBooks, music, videos, WordPress plugins/themes, PDF files, or any other media file.

While talking about its features, it contains tons of options for adding a shopping cart or offering discount codes. Moreover, you’ll also get detailed sales reports to analyze your sales. Also, you’re able to manage the customer records to track every customer, and more. In the case of WordPress themes and plugins, it manages licensing and auto-updates for the products. 

Pros:

• Easy to set up and use.
• Supports integration to many payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.
• Give unlimited or restricted access to customers to download the purchased files.
• Integrates well with all the major WordPress plugins, themes, and tools.
• Take advantage of the complete RESTful API, making it a developer-friendly platform.
• Delivers good customer support.

Cons:

• A lifetime plan isn’t available.
• Comparatively, the price is costlier.
• Includes almost a hundred extensions so you need to use too many add-ons for adding features to your online store.

Pricing:

EDD has both free and premium versions. So, you can download its free version from the plugin directory of WordPress.org. Or, just directly install it from your WordPress dashboard.

In case you’re planning to use the pro version, then here are its pricing plans:

• Personal Pass: $99.5/year, 1 site license, perfect for beginners, includes email marketing tools, email support, and updates.
• Extended Pass: $199.5/year, 1 site license, includes payment gateways, sell subscriptions, etc.
• Professional Pass: $299.5/year, 1 site license, includes premium extensions, wish lists, marketplace functionality, and more.
• All Access Pass: $499.5/year, unlimited sites, includes 79 extensions, integration to Slack, Gravity Forms, etc.

6. BigCommerce

As the best overall eCommerce platform, BigCommerce is very versatile among other platforms. It offers a great range of features that allows you to start an online store of any business and niches.

BigCommerce allows you to easily design your online store using its highly customizable lists of a few free and premium templates. If you have some coding knowledge, then you can easily customize it further to make it look best for your small business.

Although preferred mostly by existing businesses, you can also completely start your online shop business using BigCommerce. It provides you with 24/7 support from experts to help you with any obstacle that you face. Many skillful developers can help you design your online store the way you want.

Pros:

• Allows you to edit and customize as you want.
• Mobile-friendly and responsive.
• Comes with different plans that are customizable according to your need.
• Very flexible and scalable.
• Provides a 15-days free trial.
• Abandoned cart saver features.

Cons:

• Lacks a number of themes.
• Expensive for higher volume packs.
• Abandoned cart saver features only on expensive plans.

Pricing:

As a premium platform, the pricing plans it contains are:

• Standard: $29.95/mo, comes with features like checkout, gift cards, reporting, etc.
• Plus: $79.95/mo, all the Standard plan features plus like persistent carts, stored credit cards, etc.
• Pro: $299.95, all the Plus plan features plus Google customer reviews, product filtering, and more.

Check out its comparison with other top platforms here: BigCommerce vs WooCommerce and BigCommerce vs Shopify.

7. Squarespace

Mostly preferred by any small online business, Squarespace is one of the best eCommerce platforms on the web to make your online shop. It is very versatile and provides great drag and drop design tools. You can also easily create a great online store without having to invest a huge amount of time.

Squarespace comes with a different elegant choice of templates that you can use to make your online store. It also comes with many different features to make your site featureful. Like customizable promotional pop-ups and banners, abandoned cart recovery, automatic shipping rate calculations, customizable discount rules, custom integration with APIs, and more.

Pros:

• Easy to set up and beginner-friendly. 
• Simple drag and drop design tool.
• Works great for small businesses and stores.
• Elegant design templates.

Cons:

• Limited in design choice and customization.
• Charges transaction fees.
• Only supports Stripe and PayPal.

Pricing:

As a premium platform, it comes with different plans. The initial plan i.e. Personal costs $14/mo however it doesn’t contain the eCommerce feature. Other than that, the plans are:

• Business: $23/mo, 3% transaction fee, sell unlimited products, accept donations, etc.
• Basic Commerce: $27/mo, no transaction fee, all Business features plus point of sale, eCommerce analytics, and more.
• Advanced: Commerce $49/mo, all Basic Commerce plan features plus advanced shipping, discounts, etc.

Quickly look at our article on Squarespace vs WooCommerce to solve your confusion.

8. Weebly

With over 40 million users, Weebly is a very famous website builder. Although it started focusing on eCommerce much later than others, it is one of the best eCommerce platforms for your small business online store. It’s a great option for a simple store that comes with marketing automation.

Weebly is a very easy eCommerce platform to set up that comes with a simple drag and drop tool to design your site. It’s surprisingly cheap for all the features it provides and is very versatile.

It requires no coding knowledge but you can also use HTML to customize it further. You can easily create a website for your business along with blogs but it lasts SEO as other platforms.

Pros:

• Easy drag and drop design tool.
• Reasonable price.
• Responsive and mobile-friendly.
• Requires no coding knowledge.

Cons:

• New to eCommerce so lacks some features.
• Charges transaction fee.
• Bad SEO.

Pricing:

It’s a very cheap platform that provides a basic plan for free. It also has paid plans and the first plan i.e. Connect costs $5/mo. But both the free and Connect plan doesn’t have the eCommerce features.

The plans containing eCommerce features are discussed below:

• Pro: $12/mo, all Connect plan features, unlimited storage, site search, shopping cart, and more.
• Business: $25/mo, all Pro plan features plus inventory management, shipping calculator, etc.

9. Magento

By Adobe, Magento is one of the best eCommerce platforms that work well for making high-end online stores of any big or small business. It’s a very versatile option that provides you with some important features and highly customization options.

Magento can be hard to get familiar with but it provides a huge library of tutorials and support to help you with that. There is also a huge number of developers available to help you with any obstacles in the Magento community.

It provides you with features like discounts, recurring payments, the ability to grind SEO, adjust content per user, and much more. Often people go with the free option as the paid can get really expensive and is only preferred by huge businesses and large eCommerce businesses.

Pros:

• Compatible with every kind of business.
• Allows integrating custom features
• Strong SEO.
• Highly customizable.

Cons:

• Very expensive.
• Not for beginners.

Pricing:

Magento can be expensive for its paid option and can go up to $2000 or more.

10. PrestaShop

Similar to WooCommerce, PrestaShop is an open-source and one of the best eCommerce platforms on the web to make your small business online store. It’s fully mobile-optimized and responsive and gives you good options for themes to choose from to showcase your products or sell them. It has both a free and paid version.

The free open-source PrestaShop you get comes with regular updates and more customization. However, it’s a self-hosted platform which means you have to take care of hosting, domain name, SSL certificate, and more to start with your online shop. And, to get the most out of its customization you have to have good coding skills or hire a developer.

The paid version, PrestaShop ready, is a fully hosted platform that comes with an SSL certificate. It also provides you with 16 days of a free trial. Prestashop requires you to have little knowledge of coding to customize it as you want to.

Pros:

• Open-source and flexible.
• Both hosted and self-hosted options.
• Easy integration with add-ons.
• Good SEO.
• Has a good community of contributors and experts for any queries.

Cons:

• Limited third-party marketing integration.
• Might need to hire a web developer.
• Slower.

Pricing:

You can get PrestaShop for free of cost but you’ve to take care of web hosting. However, you can also go with the PrestaShop-ready pro version starting at around $24.90/mo.

11. OpenCart

Like WooCommerce, OpenCart is an open-source eCommerce software that allows you to create an elegant and feature-rich online store. It supports more than 300,000 eCommerce stores and comes with a huge library of extensions to make your store work best for you.

OpenCart comes with many free and premium themes that are responsive and mobile-friendly. It also supports more than 30 integrated payment gateways for you to use in your online store.

For OpenCart, like WooCommerce, you need to take care of hosting, domain name, and the responsibility of creating your website yourself. As open-source, many developers and community members are working to make it better and you can keep your queries here to get good support from others.

Pros:

• Free and easy to use.
• Open-source so constant updates and new features.
• Integration of a large number of extensions.
• Supports different payment gateways.
• Has a large support community.
• You can create your custom feature.

Cons:

• You need to take care of hosting and domain name.
• The cost can add up when you take care of hosting and domain along with other important things.
• The marketplace is quite messy.

Pricing:

OpenCart is a free eCommerce solution but you will need to take care of hosting and domain name. And that might cost around $5.

12. Elementor

Elementor, one of the best WordPress page builders, also offers an eCommerce website builder. Using this full eCommerce suite, you get to easily build a complete online store. That means you can create every page for your visitor’s first interaction till their final purchase.

Moreover, Elementor gives you full freedom for designing your store. Either start from scratch or use one of its pre-designed beautiful templates. In addition to that, you get to customize the store the way you like from its live editor. This makes your shop match your brand.

Not to mention, it contains key promotional features as well. With that, you can boost sales with pixel-perfect product landing pages and popups for every customer type.

Pros:

• Intuitive landing page builder for high conversion.
• Popup builder to announce sales, offer coupons, or launch a new product line.
• Multiple layouts like full screen, modal, slide-in, and top/bottom bar.
• Offers 20+ eCommerce widgets like product title, product images, add to cart, etc.
• Form builder to create engaging forms.
• Responsive design and ability to optimize the store for all mobile devices.

Cons:

• May slow down your eCommerce site.
• Doesn’t have a lifetime plan option.
• Not the best customer support you get.
• Need to be careful with the updates as it can cause glitches.

Pricing:

Elementor is a freemium plugin that’s available in both free and pro versions. However, for using the eCommerce builder feature, you’ve to purchase Elementor Pro. Not to worry, the starting price of it is quite decent and best for creating your small business eCommerce website.

So, there are 4 plans for its premium version, and they are:

• Essential: $49/year, 1 site license, contains 90+ basic & pro widgets, 300+ basic & pro templates, 60+ website kits, premium support, and more.
• Expert: $199/year, 25 sites license, all Essential plan features, 20 expert website kits, and expert network profile.
• Studio: $499/year, 100 sites license, all Expert plan features, and VIP support.
• Agency: $999/year, 1000 sites license, and all Studio plan features.

13. Joomla’s J2Store

With over 350,000 downloads, Joomla’s J2Store is one of the best eCommerce platforms to make your online store for a small business. It’s a very flexible shopping cart and eCommerce solution that works best with Joomla.

J2Store allows you to easily create your online store and start selling your products in no time. It comes with more than 20+ eCommerce templates that are mobile-friendly and responsive. You can also include major features like reward points, bulk discounts, and integration with amazon using its 100+ extensions and plugins.

Moreover, it also provides great support for J2Store and has a great community support forum.  It also has complete guide documentation and demo for anyone to learn.

Pros:

• Free and easy to use.
• Comes with different important features.
• Supports multilingual.
• Mobile-friendly and responsive design.

Cons:

• Need Joomla to use J2Store.

Pricing:

J2Store is free of cost to start. So, you can easily start using this platform from its original site.

However, you can always go with its Pro plan that contains 2 pricing plans:

• Professional: $79/ 6 mo, 1 website support, core features plus coupons, vouchers, email templates, etc.
• Developer: $129/year, Professional plan features plus free installation and configuration of store.

14. Ecwid

Ecwid is one of the best eCommerce platforms for any small business and startup. Using this solution, you get the option to integrate your shop with a site you already have. Other than that, you can also start a new store with a domain name and then integrate Ecwid. 

The best part about it is that it supports all the other major platforms including Drupal, Weebly, Wix, Joomla, WordPress, etc. And to ease you with designing your store, Ecwid provides you with an intuitive builder with free customization options.

Not only that, but you can also sync your store to sell everywhere. Like on popular channels including social media, Google, and marketplaces like Amazon.com.

Pros:

• Easy order and inventory management from a single dashboard.
• Ability to create a mobile app for the App stores.
• Offers 50+ payment options.
• The translation is possible in 45+ different languages.
• Sell subscriptions or physical or digital products.
• Manages updates, SSL certificates, security, etc. itself.

Cons:

• Limits in the number of products you can sell when using the free plan.
• May face difficulty when setting it up with integrations.
• Relatively, not that good in customer support. That’s because of the lack of phone and live chat support in starting plans.

Pricing:

If you’ve got just a few products to sell for your small business, then using the free version of Ecwid can be enough. And you can get the platform right from its original website.

For more options, you’ve to purchase the paid version. And it offers the following pricing plans:

• Venture: $12.5/mo, free features plus discount coupons, advanced SEO tools, inventory management, social media tools, etc.
• Business: $29.17/mo, all the Venture plan features plus marketplaces, product dimensions, create orders, and more.
• Unlimited: $82.5/mo, all the Business features plus custom shopping app, point of scale, etc.

15. Volusion

Started in 1999, Volusion provides a great eCommerce experience with its different features. It is a very feature-rich and beginner-friendly solution for your eCommerce store needs.

Volusion comes from different free and premium themes to choose from for your online store. You can also use its easy drag and drop tools for designing a site. It also comes with a good list of materials for beginners to learn.

Unlike some other platforms, it doesn’t come with a blogging platform so you have to use a third party to connect your blog to the online store. However, this lack of a blog can cause your site to not be search engine optimized properly which is very important.

It can help you create a detailed online store for your eCommerce needs using its library of resources.

Pros:

• Auto generates Sitemaps that helps search engines scan your site easily.
• Drag and drop design tools.
• Clear inventory and marketing system.
• Built-in subscription payments.
• Good support and resourceful tutorials.

Cons:

• Limit on a number of products you can sell.
• Have to get your SSL certificate which costs extra.
• Lacks built-in blogging functionality.
• Not that good in SEO.

Pricing:

Volusion comes in premium plans. However, you can try and test them with a free trial.

To get its advanced features, you can choose one of its following pricing plans:

• Personal: $29/mo, add up to 100 products, features like social media integration, secure checkout, etc.
• Professional: $79/mo, all Personal plan features plus rating & reviews, newsletter, and more.
• Business: $299/mo, all Professional plan features and premium support, 3rd party gateways, etc.

16. Shift4Shop

Although not for beginners, Shift4Shop is one of the best eCommerce platforms to make an online shop for your small business. It requires a good set of technical skills to get the best out of the platform. However, this technicality comes with lots of advanced features and functions that work best to make high-end online stores.

Shift4Shop is best for making a functional and featureful online store so it might not be the best for an elegant design. But this also means more features like unlimited storage, no transaction fee, and more.

Although it might not be as appealing and famous as BigCommerce, it’s one of the top eCommerce platforms for advanced users to use their technical skills to make a featureful website.

Pros:

• Comes with great functionality and features like unlimited storage and no transaction fee.
• Supports all important integrations like Mailchimp.
• Provides unlimited storage.
• Charges no transaction fee.
• Helpful community with expert developers.

Cons:

• Requires technical skills to get started.
• Templates are outdated.
• Not visually appealing.
• Not for beginners.

Pricing:

Shift4Shop is also available in both free and premium plans. You can easily start an online store for your small business with the free plan.

But for better features, you’ve to purchase the pro plan. And each of them contains features including unlimited products, domain registration, shopping cart, secure hosting, etc. The pricing plans are:

• Startup Store: $19/mo, 1 staff user, integration to AWeber, Mailchimp, etc.
• Basic Store: $29/mo, 2 staff users, daily deals, group deals, and more.
• Plus Store: $79/mo, 5 staff users, newsletter, abondoned cart saver, etc.
• Power Store: $129/mo, 10 staff users, waiting list, back-in-stock alerts, and more.
• Pro Store: $299/mo, 15 staff users, autoresponder campaign, and others.

17. GoDaddy Online Store

Along with a website builder and domain registrar, GoDaddy also provides one of the best eCommerce platforms for you to make your small business online store. It’s a fully hosted shopping store that offers basic integration with eCommerce features.

You can easily make your online store using its easy website builder and design your professional-looking website. It comes with 100+ website templates to choose from which are responsive and mobile-friendly.

GoDaddy’s online store solution provides you with 24/7 support from experts to help you with any obstacle that you face. It also has many different important features like PayPal integration, SSL security, social media, email marketing integration, and many more. It also comes with abandoned cart recovery features that are much loved.

Pros:

• Easy to use drag and drop page builder tool.
• Comes with 100+ website templates.
• Offers SSL encryption.
• 24/7 expert support.
• Integration with social and email marketing features and google analytics.
• Built-in shopping cart with fast checkout and abandoned cart recovery feature.

Cons:

• Some of its features lack the quality and depth of other eCommerce platforms.
• Can’t sell products across social media directly.
• Limited creative control due to the use of ADI.

Pricing:

GoDaddy’s online store solution comes with all of its eCommerce features at $14.99/mo as a paid plan. The major features include product listing, flexible payments, shipping options, discounts, and promotional features.

18. Big Cartel

Big Cartel is one of those powerful eCommerce platforms best to make an online store for your small business on the web. Although it lacks a huge library of features like other platforms, it works great for artists and makers to start their online store.

Furthermore, it comes with a simple and easy-to-use dashboard interface that helps manage your online marketplace. It comes with 10+ online store templates that are responsive and mobile-friendly. However, you need another editor to customize your templates to make them fit your site.

In addition to that, it provides statistics of the visitors, views, category trends, and ratings along with Google Analytics integration. You can also easily include features like adding categories, managing inventory, creating discounts, and more.

Pros:

• Simple and easy to use platform.
• Mobile-friendly and responsive templates.
• Comes with different features.
• Perfect for artists to sell their arts and pieces.

Cons:

• Coding is important for further customization.
• Requires different builders to manage a store and customize a theme.
• Features lack depth and quality.

Pricing:

The free plan is called the Gold plan and using it allows you to sell up to 5 products.

While there are paid options also with the following pricing plans:

• Platinum: $9.99/mo, up to 50 products, bulk editing, shipment tracking, etc.
• Diamond: $19.99/mo, up to 500 products, all Platinum plan features.

19. Square Online

Another best-selling and affordable eCommerce platform for small businesses is Square Online. Actually, Square allows you to sell both in-person and online market ways. 

To turn your business into an online store, use Square Online that builds an eCommerce site. And the business can be of any type. According to which business type is yours, you can use one of its professional site designs available in categories: retail, service, non-profit, and restaurants.

Moreover, Square provides a Point of Sale (POS) system. If you use a POS system, then you can easily migrate your products from it and work for inventory management.

Pros:

• Easy-to-use store builder so you don’t have to do any coding. 
• Multiple order ways like shipping, pickup, delivery, QR code ordering, etc.
• Contains built-in SEO tools to ease shoppers finding your business on search engines.
• Built-in payment gateways that accept major credit cards, PayPal, Square Pay, etc.
• Free services like fraud protection, dispute management, etc.
• Able to sell unlimited products.
• Free domain for 1 year.

Cons:

• Limitation on the available customization options.
• Not great in customer support.
• Contains account stability issues.
• There’s a slight learning curve for beginners.

Pricing:

Square Online is available in free and paid plans. You can sell unlimited products even when using this free plan. The option to start using this platform is right on its original website.

There are 3 pricing plans also present in its premium version. And they are:

• Professional: $12/mo, features like custom domain, free domain for 1 year, custom fonts upload, no square ads, etc.
• Performance: $26/mo, all Professional plan features plus advanced reporting, product reviews, and more.
• Premium: $72/mo, all Performance plan features plus low processing rate and real-time shipping.

20. Zyro

Zyro is one of the best and most affordable eCommerce platforms for building an online store for your small business. It’s a solution from the popular web hosting company, Hostinger. Along with a site builder, you’ll also receive various AI tools to help you grow, promote, and maintain your online business.

It’s not that you can sell your items on your online site only. But, you get to sell them even on social media like Facebook & Instagram and marketplaces like Amazon.com. Moreover, with the autopilot marketing function, you can also run your ads on Facebook and Google shopping. 

Pros:

• Offers AI tools for automating and easily handling tasks.
• Free domain for 1 year.
• One of the cheapest eCommerce platforms.
• Contains 100+ site templates to choose from.
• Able to create a custom business email to increase your revenue.
• Easy to use and responsive.
• Great for a fast-loading site.

Cons:

• Limitation on the number of products you can sell.
• Lacks option for a free trial.
• Lesser customization options.
• The customer support isn’t that great.

Pricing:

This premium platform is available in 4 plans. However, the entry-level plan i.e. Website that costs $2.9/mo suits basic sites like blogs, portfolios, and other small businesses.

For eCommerce features, you’ve to choose among these plans:

• Business: $4.9/mo, best to sell as startups in eCommerce sites, sell up to 100 products, features like a free domain for a year, blogging tools, etc.
• Online Store: $8.9/mo, get professional online store tools, all Business plan features plus order & inventory management, gift cards, etc.
• Advanced Store: $15.9/mo, sell up to 2500 products, all Online Store features plus sell on Amazon & eBay, product filters, etc.

21. Sellfy

An easy-to-use website builder best for small business eCommerce platforms selling different kinds of products is Sellfy. A great thing is that you can also sell your own merchandise. So, you can design, create, and sell on-demand products from one storefront.

Moreover, there are 3 different ways you can sell your products with Sellfy. One is to connect your Sellfy store to your existing site. Another is to attach your store to a custom domain. 

The final option is to use the ‘Buy Now’ button and other embed options. With that, you can make sales from multiple platforms including sites and social media.

Pros:

• Optimized for mobile devices to provide smooth checkout on every device.
• Supports multiple languages and is translation-ready.
• Contains marketing features like discount codes, email marketing, etc.
• Doesn’t ask for transactional fees.
• Able to sell multiple product types like physical, subscription, digital, merchandise, etc.
• Supports custom domain, hosting, security, and email accounts.

Cons:

• Can improve for better SEO functions.
• Limitation on the integration of payment solutions.
• Should use Zapier to get most third-party tools.
• Able to sell only 10 products in its free plan.

Pricing:

There are both free and paid plans for Sellfy. The free plan allows you to sell up to 10 products and that can be physical products or print-on-demand products. You can get started with it from its original site.

The premium plans offer more features, they are:

• Starter: $19/mo, everything on the free plan, unlimited products, products can also be digital and subscription, able to connect your own domain, and 2000 email credits.
• Business: $49/mo, all features of the Starter plan, store design migration, 10K email credits, etc.
• Premium: $99/mo, all Business plan features plus product migration, priority support, and 50K email credits.

22. X-Cart

X-Cart is a scalable eCommerce solution that can suit any business type. And it can be from enterprise, multivendor marketplace, and international to retail and small business. 

The best part about it contains lots of features and tools. So, you’ll get shipping options, payment modules, and whatnot. And with its ready-made management system, you can upload your products and start selling easily.

As an open-source platform, it’s ideal for developers or users who know coding and setup. However, the X-Cart team is also there to help you with managing your online store.

Pros:

• Provides lifetime subscription plans.
• Able to integrate it with WordPress.
• Virtually intuitive interface with easy navigation.
• Includes great SEO features.
• Contains marketing tools, social media integration, popups, product reviews, etc.
• Translation-ready for 40+ languages.

Cons:

• Getting full support requires an extra cost to pay.
• With lifetime plans, the cost becomes relatively expensive.
• Need to have coding and setup knowledge.

Pricing:

X-Cart has both free and premium plans. The free plan suits best for startups. Some features include support for unlimited products, gateway support, etc.

For knowing the paid pricing plans, you’ve to create an account on its original site. As mentioned before, the plans are for lifetime use. So, the plans are:

• Business: $495, all free features plus multiple currencies, product filters, reviews, social login, and more.
• Multivendor: $1495, all Business plan features and others like commission rates, automated transfer, etc.
• Ultimate: $5995, extra features like paid memberships, recurring payments, backup tool, and others.

23. Quick eSelling

Quick eSelling is a smart and flexible eCommerce platform with 2 different solutions. They are B2C (Business-to-Customers) eCommerce and B2B (Business-to-Business) eCommerce. That means it can easily connect manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers with their customers. 

With the free platform, you get all the standard features such as custom domain configuration, inventory management, etc. With that, you can create an online store, native Android app, and add up to 1000 products to sell.

However, if you want to scale and grow your business, then it’s also possible. There are premium plans that offer more advanced features like custom site design, custom shipping methods, etc.

Pros:

• Comparatively, an easier platform to set up and manage.
• Able to manage your business with a single CRM.
• Contains a free version plus a free trial for paid ones.
• Integrates well with all major payment gateways.
• A fully hosted platform so no hosting charges.

Cons:

• Limit on the number of products to sell in the free plan.
• Unable to delete products in bulk.
• Not the best at giving customer support.

Pricing:

You can easily get started with the free solution for building your eCommerce solution. 

For the premium platform, the plans are:

• Standard: $199/mo, bulk product update, analytics & reports, and others.
• Pro: $399/mo, all Standard plan features plus advanced filter & sorting, live chat, etc.
• Premium: $599/mo, all Pro plan features plus unlimited products, dedicated account management, etc.

Conclusion

We hope this helped you know about the best eCommerce platforms on the web for your small business. If you are thinking of starting your small online business and want to use an elegant yet featureful solution, then you can use this article as a reference to choose the best for you.

In case you choose a platform in WordPress, then here’s the list of the best eCommerce WordPress themes for your help.

Despite this huge list of options, you have to choose the one that satisfies your requirement and works the best for your business and store. We wish you the best with your journey to starting an online store.

Also, check our latest articles on the best WordPress themes for education consultancy sites and Tutor LMS review.

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