We want to help you find your way around all that noise and point you towards the top ecommerce software in the market so that you can make an educated decision when building an online store.
Some of the ecommerce software featured here is going to be free, some premium, but you'll surely find a tool that fits your individual needs perfectly!
Overall rating: 10/10
Also, this is only going to remain a budget solution if you don't plan on extending your store with custom features, which will cost you additionally. So please keep that in mind.
Apart from that, WordPress is incredibly extensible, beautiful, and versatile enough to be able to run any type of online store.
Overall rating: 8/10
To say it simply, ecommerce software is the operating system (OS) of your online store.
Just like your smartphone has its OS – most likely iOS or Android – your online store needs an OS as well. This OS works behind the scenes and makes it possible for customers to buy from you, and for you to manage incoming orders, process them, and communicate with customers effectively – helping you generate more sales.
Possibly the best thing with the top-of-the-line ecommerce software is that it doesn't require any expert knowledge to be used.
👉 Shortcut: Click here to jump straight to the comparison.
Why listen to us
Here at ecommerce-platforms.com, we live and breath ecommerce – not an exaggeration (okay, maybe just a slight one). Nevertheless, we've been experimenting with different ecommerce platforms for years now, and we're on a constant search for what's best out there.
Personally, as a web designer and site builder, I've spent hours upon hours building and then managing ecommerce stores for my clients – making sure that all of them have the tools needed to run an effective business venture online.
Every time a new platform comes around, I'm the first to get my hands on it. Reviewing them here on the site is only one aspect of the job. It all begins with understanding what a given platform is meant to do and what type of user it aims to help.
During this research, I run through the software as if I were to use it for my own store. This method of trying to see a platform through the customer's eyes gives a better overview of the strong and weak points of each platform.
For this article, I tested 20 different ecommerce software solutions. Some of them were meant for niche stores, while others were designed to support gigantic enterprises. With everything in between covered as well. To compile this final list, I narrowed it down to just a handful of the absolute best solutions available based on a number of criteria.
What to look for in ecommerce software
Not all ecommerce software is created equal. While all of them will claim that they are “all you'll ever need,” sometimes that's just not the case. There are tons of different features available, and some of the more specific stuff comes at different price points.
Though, universally, here are the things to expect from your perfect ecommerce software:
The shortlist: 5 of the very best ecommerce software compared
Here's the final line-up we've picked – based on testing ~20 different ecommerce software tools:
Here's a quick comparison table to give you an overview of what's up:
| Shopify | BigCommerce | WooCommerce | Easy Digital Downloads | Volusion | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price from | $9 / month | $29.95 / month | $6-$10 / month | $6-$10 / month | $15 / month |
| What it is | Signup-based online system | Signup-based online system | Self-hosted ecommerce software | Self-hosted ecommerce software | Signup-based online system |
| Sell | Physical products, digital, services, dropship | Physical products, digital | Physical products, digital, services, dropship | Digital products | Physical products, digital |
| Features | 9/10 | 8/10 | 8/10 | 6/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of use | 9/10 | 7/10 | 5/10 | 5/10 | 8/10 |
| Designs | 9/10 | 9/10 | 7/10 | 7/10 | 5/10 |
1. Shopify
- Price: from $9 / month
- What it is: signup-based online system
- Sell: physical products, digital, services, dropship
- Features: 9/10
- Ease of use: 9/10
- Designs: 9/10
Shopify is probably the most well-known ecommerce software of them all. Users love it for its ease of use and the overall set of features it delivers.
Shopify is quite excellent no matter what you want to sell – be it physical products, digital products, services, even drop-shipped products, Shopify can handle them all.
Shopify also does a good job in terms of staying in the middle and being friendly both toward beginners and more advanced enterprise users, which makes it perfect if you're planning to scale up your ecommerce efforts over time.
Design-wise, Shopify offers various templates to choose from, many of which are catered directly to niche industries. For instance, a quick search in the Shopify theme store reveals several themes for jewelry stores, clothing, furniture, and even wineries.
Shopify also has very reasonable pricing. There are five distinct pricing plans/tiers based on the scope of features that your store needs:
- Getting started with a basic setup is very cheap – only $9 a month. It gives you the tools needed to insert Shopify Buy buttons on any existing websites. You can also sell your products in places like Facebook and Facebook Messenger.
- The Basic plan goes for $29 a month. This is probably the one that most people will choose. It allows for unlimited products and a full ecommerce store with all the essential features (and access to the app store).
- For $79 a month, you get to set up more staff accounts and use things like gift cards and professional reports. Plus, there are also a bit smaller credit card fees.
- Advanced Shopify goes for $299 a month. It is meant for bigger-volume sellers on the rise.
- Lastly, there's Shopify Plus – a plan providing enterprise-grade solutions for high volume merchants
Some notable features you get with Shopify:
- Everything unlimited: orders, products, file storage, bandwidth
- 24/7 support
- Level-1 PCI compliance
- Ready for mobile commerce
- Point of sale equipment
- Mobile app
- Free SSL certificate for your store
- You can process credit card payments
- Let Shopify figure out shipping rates and taxes automatically
- Build your online store website with drag-and-drop
- Blogging module included
- Works with multiple languages
- Set up customer profiles
- Your customers can have their accounts
- Optimized for the search engines
- Built-in social media integration
- Inventory management
- Set up product variations
- Reporting module
See Shopify in action:
Some examples of existing ecommerce stores built on Shopify:
Why use Shopify?
The main strength of Shopify's is that setting up your store takes mere minutes. All you need to do is just sign up at Shopify.com, fill out a couple of forms, pick your store design, and you're good to go.
👉 To learn more about Shopify and its strengths, check out our in-depth Shopify review.
👉 Click here to get started with Shopify.
2. BigCommerce
- Price: from $29.95 / month
- What it is: signup-based online system
- Sell: physical products, digital
- Features: 8/10
- Ease of use: 7/10
- Designs: 9/10
BigCommerce is another very popular solution among ecommerce software. It offers much of what you'd expect from a quality ecommerce platform and does so in an easy-to-use package.
The way you begin your adventure with Bigcommerce is very similar to getting started with Shopify. All you need to do is sign up at Bigcommerce.com, go through the setup wizard (where you get to indicate what you want to sell and how you want your store to look), and you'll have your store running in no time.
BigCommerce lets you sell any type of product, and even configure quite a lot of different parameters that describe those products.
There's a lot to choose from in regards to themes and store designs as well – particularly if you'd like to save some money and use a free design – those are really nice-looking! Many consider Bigcommerce's templates to be the best in the industry. They look modern and professionally designed.
The overall pricing is similar to Shopify's, but you don't get any $9 a month plan. The majority of the features are already built-in. For example, the marketing tools are far more advanced with BigCommerce.
Here are some of the features you get with BigCommerce:
- Unlimited products, orders, file storage, and bandwidth
- 24/7 support via live chat
- Level 1 PCI compliance and multi-layered security and DDOS protection
- SSL certificate included
- Point of sale equipment
- Visual builder for your online store website
- Migration tools for bringing in your store data from another system
- Handle payments from PayPal / Braintree, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Payments and others
- Inventory management
- Optimized for the search engines
- Tools to sell on Facebook, Pinterest, eBay, and Amazon
- Developer API
- Integrations with product comparison sites
- Email marketing module
See BigCommerce in action:
Some examples of existing ecommerce stores built on BigCommerce:
Why use BigCommerce?
The feature sets of both platforms are similar, and getting started with each is similar as well. Even though the differences are small, each platform will inevitably resonate better with a certain type of user.
👉 To learn more about Bigcommerce, check out our in-depth BigCommerce review.
👉 Click here to get started with BigCommerce.
3. WordPress + WooCommerce
- Price: from $6-$10 / month
- What it is: self-hosted ecommerce software
- Sell: physical products, digital, services, dropship
- Features: 8/10
- Ease of use: 5/10
- Designs: 7/10
This entry is our first case of dealing with self-hosted ecommerce software. What's different about it compared to Shopify or BigCommerce is that instead of signing up for a user account, what you get is a raw software package called WordPress, which you need to install on a web server by yourself.
In other words, to get started with WordPress, you have to buy a web hosting plan, and then set things up somewhat by hand. I'm saying “somewhat” since most web hosts have easy installer scripts that make your life easier. For example, if you use a company like SiteGround, you'll get a working instance of WordPress right from the get-go.
Now, about the other part – WooCommerce.
Under the hood, WooCommerce is a plugin that you install in WordPress to enable ecommerce features and turn your website into a fully-fledged online store.
The strong point of WooCommerce's is that it's really versatile and allows you to sell anything you wish. You also get full freedom when it comes to how you want to configure your store and what you want to add to it (extra features). This isn't something you get with either Shopify or BigCommerce.
At the same time, setting up WooCommerce is a bit more manual in nature, so you need to be aware of that.
Also, for things like dropshipping or some advanced payment processing, discounts, gift cards and etc., you generally need extra plugins (add-ons). While they can be installed quite easily, it is another step that you need to take care of on top of the standard setup.
Price-wise, both the WordPress platform and WooCommerce are free and open source. You can download them with no strings attached. However, what you do need to pay for, as I said earlier, is web hosting. Without that element, you can't have a working online store on WordPress. Usually, this will set you back around $5-$20 a month. For instance, using a host we recommend – SiteGround – you'll pay $3.95 / month.
WordPress offers a huge abundance of themes (design packages) to choose from. There are literally thousands of them on the web, both free and paid. The only difficulty is finding the right one. You can also either build your own theme or hire someone to do it.
Here are some of the features you get with WooCommerce:
- Everything unlimited: orders, products, file storage, bandwidth
- Support only from your web host, which may or may not be helpful (it is with SiteGround)
- Optimized for mobile
- SSL certificate via your host
- Accept PayPal by default, and you can also install extensions to process credit cards
- Shipping and taxes handled by extensions
- Good drag-and-drop builder for site content
- A top-of-the-line blogging platform included
- Works with multiple languages
- Set up customer profiles and accounts
- Optimized for the search engines
- Social media integration via extensions
- Inventory management
- Product variations
- PCI compliance depending on your host
See WooCommerce in action:
Some examples of existing ecommerce stores built on WooCommerce:
Why use WooCommerce?
The only difficulty with WooCommerce is that it's you who has to handle the initial setup and then the ongoing maintenance. If you don't feel intimidated by that – but rather excited – you're going to love it.
👉 To learn more about WooCommerce, check out our in-depth WooCommerce review.
👉 Click here to get started with WordPress and WooCommerce by signing up with SiteGround.
4. WordPress + Easy Digital Downloads
- Price: from $6-$10 / month
- What it is: self-hosted ecommerce software
- Sell: digital products
- Features: 6/10
- Ease of use: 5/10
- Designs: 7/10
WordPress + Easy Digital Downloads is our other self-hosted ecommerce software on this list. As you can see, the core element of the setup is the same – that's WordPress. But here, the ecommerce portion of the job is done by a plugin called Easy Digital Downloads.
Setting aside all that is cool about Easy Digital Downloads, the one downside is that it's only meant to sell digital products – downloadable goods. While such feature set can be considered a bit limited, for some online stores this might be all they need. And Easy Digital Downloads is really good at its job!
Easy Digital Downloads lets you sell software, documents, photos, ebooks, songs, graphics, and any other type of media file. Then, it also handles the part where you make that product available for the customer to download directly from your site.
The same hosting requirements exist here as well – similarly to how it works with WooCommerce. Meaning, you need to buy a web hosting account separately, which will set you back $6-$10 a month. Again, we recommend SiteGround.
The story is also the same when it comes to designs – as in, you can choose from thousands of ready-made themes from around the web.
Here are some of the features you get with Easy Digital Downloads:
- Everything unlimited: orders, products, file storage, bandwidth
- Lets you sell all types of digital products
- Support only from your web host
- Optimized for mobile
- SSL certificate via your host
- Accept PayPal and Amazon Payments by default, and you can also install extensions for processing credit cards
- Good drag-and-drop builder for site content
- A top-of-the-line blogging platform included
- Works with multiple languages
- Set up customer profiles and accounts
- Optimized for the search engines
- Social media integration via extensions
- PCI compliance depending on your host
See Easy Digital Downloads in action:
Some examples of existing ecommerce stores built on Easy Digital Downloads:
Why use Easy Digital Downloads?
At the same time, you can't be intimidated by the need to set up the bulk of everything on your own.
👉 To learn more about EDD, check out our in-depth Easy Digital Downloads review.
👉 Click here to get started with WordPress and Easy Digital Downloads by signing up with SiteGround.
5. Volusion
- Price: from $15 / month
- What it is: signup-based online system
- Sell: physical products, digital
- Features: 8/10
- Ease of use: 8/10
- Designs: 5/10
Volusion is another signup-based ecommerce software platform – meaning that in order to get started, you only need to register for a new account and then you can start working with your store right away.
Volusion is basically another direct alternative to Shopify and Bigcommerce. The main idea in which Volusion works is very similar, but it just does some of its things a tad bit differently.
It has a pretty nicely structured dashboard, making it easy to find all of the most important areas and actions you might want to perform – like manage your products.
However, Volusion isn't that strong in the design department. There's only a handful of themes available and just 10 of them free. There's certainly not as much variety compared to Shopify or Bigcommerce.
That being said, Volusion can be a cheaper solution in some cases, with the most affordable plan at $15 a month. This one allows you to have up to 100 products, which should be enough if you're just getting started with a fresh new store.
Here are some of the features you get with Volusion:
- Lets you sell between 100 and unlimited products (based on your pricing tier)
- Handle unlimited orders and file storage
- Monthly bandwidth in the range of 1GB to 35GB
- 24/7 customer support via live chat and phone
- Dedicated account manager for higher pricing tiers
- Build your online store website with a visual builder
- Point of sale equipment
- Tools for importing and exporting products
- Option to accept credit cards, Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon payments
- Product reviews and ratings
- Integrated newsletters
- Optimized for the search engines, plus good SEO tools
- Social media integrations
- Integrations for eBay and Amazon
- Supports phone orders
- Store reports (including reports of abandoned carts)
- Developer API
See Volusion in action:
Some examples of existing ecommerce stores built on Volusion:
Why use Volusion?
Keep in mind, though, that you don't get as much freedom as you get with the two WordPress solutions.
At the end of the day, consider Volusion if for some reason you like neither Shopify nor Bigcommerce.
👉 To learn more about Volusion, check out our in-depth Volusion review.
👉 Click here to get started with Volusion.
Which is best
So there you have it! These have been the top ecommerce software platforms in the market. While you really can't go wrong with either of them, some will be better suited based on the specific online store that you want to launch and your requirements:
- If you're just getting started and want to set up a store as soon as possible, use Shopify. If you don't end up loving Shopify, try out Bigcommerce or Volusion as an alternative.
- If you'd like to have more control over your store and be able to self-host it on a web server of your choosing, go for one of the WordPress solutions: for digital products, use Easy Digital Downloads; for everything else, use WooCommerce. No matter which path you take, you can set your site up with SiteGround hassle free.
If you're still not quite sure what to do, check out Shopify first. You'll probably end up loving it. They have a 14-day free trial to test the waters, and the app/template store is too good to pass up.
Lastly, if you have any questions and would like me to help you set up your store based on the ecommerce software described in this guide, hit me up here. I'll be happy to help and recommend you the right people to work with!
