From buying cheap plane tickets to stylish footwear, eCommerce is used by everyone, for everything. The global growth of eCommerce has been steady at about 20% for the past few years, and the future is equally promising.
To take advantage of this boom, the primary need is an attractive marketplace where buyers can scroll through hundreds of items without any lag. There also needs to be a shopping cart, wishlist, and seamless checkout and payment through credit or debit card.
Unlike Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon and what is arguably the first and most successful eCommerce company you don’t have to build your build eCommerce website from scratch. There are off the shelf solutions that allow you to create an online shopping website in few weeks with virtually no headache.
With easy to navigate UI, customizable themes, and helpful plugins, the best eCommerce builder websites have made life a lot easier for webpreneurs.
We take a look at the top five eCommerce website builder platforms and discuss the pros and cons in detail.
Shopify
Using Shopify, you can create your own online store in a matter of hours. There are a wide variety of templates that you can choose from. The main advantage of this platform is that you do not need to have an expert understanding of HTML. But for those who are able to code, the templates offer plenty by way of customization and editing.
Shopify comes with its own hosting. There are three pricing plans ranging from $29 to $299 every month. There is no need to worry about website maintenance at all since tech assistance is prompt and efficient.
The popularity of Shopify has led to the proliferation of 800,000 online stores that use its services. The SaaS model has been successful at establishing Shopify as the most popular eCommerce solution. The company claims that together its stores have generated $ 100 billion in sales and has over a million users.
Pros:
- Huge range of free and paid themes.
- Integrated Shopify Payments gateway for credit cards.
- Can be easily integrated with Paypal.
- Search engine optimization possible.
- Provides a Buy Now button that can be placed on another blog or website.
- AMP can be used in the blog and also product pages.
Cons:
- In-depth reporting only available on pricier plans.
- Unless you’re using Shopify Payments, there’s a transaction fee.
- Shopify Payments is available in only 11 counties. Sellers elsewhere have to use third-party solutions.
Bigcommerce
Bigcommerce was founded in 2009 and is based out of Texas. It is also a SaaS model shopping platform, which means you rent the software instead of owning it.
Bigcommerce is available with an array of templates that can be suitably modified for your store. Bare set up of a shopping site does not require any technical knowledge but to make it easily navigable, you would need someone who is an expert at website design.
The SaaS model is, in a way, risky. If the company closes, there would be no easy way to migrate the website. But having said that Bigcommerce has a client roster that reads like a Who’s Who of brands including Toyota. And the only way out of renting SaaS solutions is to build your own online store, which is quite impossible for most people to finance.
Bigcommerce offers four plans – Standard, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. The first three are priced between $30 and 250 per month. The last one is for large companies and negotiated.
What do you receive for this amount – several free templates and accompanying software to sell physical or digital goods. Bigcommerce also integrates well with many email managers such as MailChimp and Constant Contact.
A substantial feature set means that you get a lot of functions for $30 and access for unlimited staff accounts.
Pros:
- It is easy to create custom fields, and capture data through file uploads up to 500 MBs in size. This is useful for businesses such as digital printing.
- Easy to use and intuitive UI.
- A menu that gives quick access to the most essential features such as storefront and analytics.
- Point of sale integration in collaboration with Square and Shopkeep.
- Uses AMP for a quick load of the mobile version of the website.
- Image optimization through the use of Akamai Image Manager.
Cons:
- Quite expensive if you want to use the abandoned cart email prompt facility.
- No mobile apps to manage your store from a smart device.
- The plans have an upper ceiling of sales. If sales rise you have to migrate to a more expensive plan.
Volusion
An eCommerce site is a lot more than a product page with images, description, and a checkout button. It has to be professional and beautiful looking and work without any glitch.
Volusion scores are high on these fundamentals. It has all the right tools for creating an online store, invent tory management, category population, and logistics. Unlike Shopify, you can host it on your own servers and have complete control.
It used to be far cheaper than its rivals, but since rolling out unlimited bandwidth feature, it has become more expensive. The most affordable plan is Personal and costs $29 monthly. It allows a ceiling of $50,000 in sales. The most expensive plan for small businesses is priced at $299 each month and allows $500,000 in sales each year.
Having been a part of eCommerce for almost two decades, the platform is exceptionally stable. There are also a plethora of guides and how-to videos on the internet that help the beginner.
Pros:
- Very easy to use and set up. It is effortless to build a store and manage an eCommerce business using Volusion.
- There are hundreds of templates that can be used.
- The reporting tools are perfect for understanding any aspect of the business.
- There is access to 24×7 tech support.
- Supports dozens of third-party apps.
Cons:
- The new pricing plans have made it as expensive as Shopify and BigCommerce.
- The ceiling on sales means increased overheads.
- There are some user complaints about the platform not being as smooth as it is claimed.
Wix
Wix is a cloud-based website builder. It has over 100 million users worldwide. Wix is not only an eCommerce store builder but can also be used as an online community and blog.
You can sell online using Wix for as little as $23 every month. It is possible to use the Wix app and manage your store using a mobile device. The software also allows you to insert tracking information from your courier.
The most innovative feature is the fully functional abandoned cart tool that allows you to reach out to shoppers who left in the middle of a purchase and entice them to return with a discount code.
The company supports most of the popular payment gateways, including Stripe and Square. There is a vast array of tools for SEO implementation. It is easy to fill in fields about meta tags, product page, descriptions, redirects, and more.
Pros:
- Highly affordable online shopping solution.
- Very simple to use being part of a WYSIWYG editor.
- No ceiling on sales.
- Possible to sell both physical and digital goods.
- Admirable abandoned cart recovery system.
Cons:
- Not suitable for product lines with more than 100 varieties.
- Some elements, such as metrics cannot be fully customized.
3dcart
The ease of opening an online store means that there is no lack of competition in every category. Your website needs to look polished and offer unmatched performance.
3dcart provides a plethora of useful features for every online store owner that includes a complete CRM suite to be in touch with customers at all times. The dashboard has an intuitive setup and offers ease of access to all the essential segment of the store from design to order tracking.
The platform makes it possible to sell through social media such as Facebook and also online giants such as Amazon.
For those who are just dipping their toe in online retailing 3dcart offers a Nano plan priced at only $10 every month. It allows you to host 25 products and receive 2,000 visitors. The most expensive Professional+ plan costs $100 per month and allows 50,000 monthly visitors.
The plans also provide access to a free domain as well as over one hundred payment gateways. There are almost a hundred templates that can be easily optimized to suit your needs.
Pros:
- Very affordable to use.
- Robust feature set at par with any shopping platform.
- Nil fees on sales value.
- The largest number of payment gateways.
- Very easy to scale up.
Cons:
- Requires expertise in HTML and web design to set up.
- The number of visitors is limited.
Conclusion
Based on key criteria such as ease of set up, template design and pricing, among others, the best among website builders for online stores is Shopify.
The ease with which it can be integrated with various apps and provide extra functionalities is the reason why it tops the list. The use of AMP throughout the site and unmatched security is the reason why Shopify has established itself as the global leader.
Print on Demand
Here at Printsome, we’ve always supported creative endeavours. Through our print on demand services, we are helping agents, artists, entrepreneurs, designers and content creators who have their own T-shirt line.
With dropshipping we deal with all the inventory and logistics headaches so you have more time to do what you love. We offer very fast dropshipping services in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world.
No matter where you want to sell merchandise on demand. We deliver anywhere.
If you want to sell quality garments, Printsome’s Print on demand service is exactly what you are looking for. Our garments are handpicked and thanks to our +6 years of experience in the T-shirt printing industry we ensure the highest print quality. You can take a look at our items here in our catalogue.
We don’t have minimum orders and we can print any design with no colour limitations. From the moment you connect your online shop with our Shopify T-shirt fulfillment platform, anyone can buy one of your designs.
If you have any doubt, you can contact us here. Our friendly team of printing advisors will help you. Print on demand worldwide has never been easier!
