Pros: I like that it’s intuitive to operate from the backend as well as for the customer.
Cons: I don’t like the limited export log features.
– Justin Oliver, www.freebord.com
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Pros: Big Commerce has many good features and plug-in apps for small and home business. Seamless integration with many major credit and shipping providers. It’s very easy for the layperson to set up and go! Pick your theme, shipper, and payment provider, then plug in some images and content, and your up and running! It also integrates into QuickBooks for easy accounting.
Cons: Big Commerce is designed to handle small businesses. Larger companies will need to hire a programmer to create features like separate wholesale and retail shopping pages (no business wants their wholesale prices public!). They are often extremely slow in updating their themes and features. Getting a necessary feature through big commerce is next to impossible. For instance having a tax app that could handle sales tax in states like New York, once it was acknowledged as a problem took well over a year, and their clients had been non-compliant with tax codes for years.
– Sara Rudin, www.tidytotsdiapers.com
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Pros: Metrics for everything! And they’re super easy to monitor.
Cons: Unable to attach Google Analytics effectively
– Stacey Hawkings, www.TimeSavorSolutions.com
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Pros: Processing orders is easy and Big Commerce actively works on improving the back-end interface, including allowing customization of the HTML code so we can have a unique look without the extra expense of hiring a programmer.
Cons: The templates are great, but sometimes we need to deviate more than allowed and it’s really tough to be restricted. We have the same issue with the Big Commerce packing slip, which is mostly good, but unfortunately cannot be entirely customized to meet our fulfillment team’s needs.
– Sandra Harris, www.EcoLunchboxes.com
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Pros: Easy to edit and configure
Cons: Inflexible shipping options
– Tobi Kosanke, www.crazykfarm.mybigcommerce.com
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Pros: What I love about Big Commerce is their easy to use interface. I can change anything on my e-commerce site with their easy to use style editor. I don’t need any knowledge of Java or HTML to get the desired design that I want on the website.
Cons: What I don’t like about Big Commerce is their shipping design. It’s very complicated to use and it does not give me enough options to choose what kind of shipping I want.
– Lisa Chu, www.blacknbianco.com
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Pros: Big Commerce’s technical support and SEO team are fantastic and their platform is very easy to use. That is really 2 things but I feel they go hand in hand. Their team is always extremely
knowledgeable, helpful and pleasant to work with. When I hang up the phone with them, I am always able to cross things off my to-do list.
Cons: Any major changes to the template require an outside web developer.
– Colleen Corcoran, www.TheHandkerchiefShop.com
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Pros: User-friendly; easy access, reporting, printing. If you need help they answer right away via email or live chat. NO CONTRACTS, NO FEES TO SETUP.
Cons: Nothing at the moment
– Alex Camacho, www.regogear.com
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Pros: Looks professional, easy to use, comes with SSL built in, cheaper than other options
Cons: Hard to edit anything other than products, so I can’t change the overall look of my store with pics, text boxes, specials, etc. Also doesn’t have a good related products/cross-sell/up-sell option
– Adam Fried, www.Adamsurns.com
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Pros: It has superior modern functionality.
Cons: I think they need to revamp their theme selection a bit.
– Kenny Kane, www.stupidcancer.org
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Pros: It’s extremely easy to use and add new products. When you have a large inventory and adding new products daily that is VERY important for an e-commerce store.
Cons: One thing that I find frustrating is the response time to custom needed fixes to the web template take too long. I have needed the coupon code box moved for quite a long time as its not area that is easily noticed by customers.
– Nicole Spica, www.instantestore.com
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Pros: I love the value BigCommerce provides compared to building a site from scratch. Starting with BigCommerce can save a startup thousands of dollars with the amount of both front- and back-end features it provides.
Cons: Because businesses are so diverse and BigCommerce can capture everything every business needs, it’s at times impossible to fully customize your store exactly the way you want.
– Sean Miller, www.tieyoursocks.com
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28 Comments. Leave new
Thanks for breaking these down so well. I myself have used woo commerce and recommend it to anyone starting out who wants to experiment and test out ecommerce themselves. Also big commerce is great for scaling and larger businesses. All these are good choices as these companies are reinvesting in their software making ecommerce very easy these days.
What a great article! Very thorough! I wish I’d had all of this info two months ago before I switched to Volusion (which I’ve been fairly pleased with.) They have great customer service and chat tech support. Just FYI, when you sign up and make your first monthly payment, you have to pay for an SSL Certificate which runs around $99 a year.
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for sharing your experience with Volusion!
ON THE MONEY! Great list. 🙂
Thanks! It’s been a long time in the making!
I have a WP website with Woocommerce and Pay Pal. Pay Pal is free and WooCommerce is also free. My total cost per year are less than $100 for some plugins.
Yes that is 8 buck and change per month. If I ever could get rid of Quickbooks I would be a Happy camper. You don’t need all these nice shopifynand magento thingies for a couple of products.
Set up is easy and maintaining maybe 5 mins per week to check.
Xero is the best alternative to QuickBooks (and blows it out of the water). But if you’re looking to cut costs, use WaveAccounting; it’s free.
I’m using Weebly and it is reasonable in cost, has many templates to use and is easy to set up and use.
I just need to get my SEO worked up so that I can be more visible, but that’s not weeblys problem, it’s mine and it takes more time than I like due to my poor health.
Excellent post. You obviously put a lot of time in to this. Thank you for your work.
Great Post!
I conducted a similar study a few months back but only looking at how each eCommerce platform fared with regard to SEO. I weighted all of the key SEO features you need for an online store and then scored each platform accordingly.
Surprisingly, some of the most popular eCommerce platforms don’t allow you to apply even the most basic techniques you need to make your website look relevant to Google.
Really great list. There’s one that’s not listed here which I use – Weebly. The weebly ecommerce platform is fairly new, but I have no complaints. Very customizable features, and lots of themes to choose from. Social media sharing links/icons are added to your products. I pay $29/month, and if I’m not mistaken, this fee covers an unlimited amount of products. But please be sure to check this. You also have the option of paying a one time yearly rate, which is overall cheaper than a monthly payout rate. Look into it you’re interested! I personally love my website.
-Crystal
Excellent overview! I think it’s the best, clearest break down of e-commerce options that I have seen. Some that you mention I have never heard of. I will definitely pass this on as a resource in my community. I work with two groups that have online businesses, most of whom are studio artists. About half have shops on Etsy while others are using some of the platforms you mentioned above. BigCommerce, Shopify, Big Cartel and WooCommerce seem to be the most popular. I’m using WooCommerce on our tafalist site and have found it to be pretty straighforward and adequate for our needs.
One thing that I would add to what you have said: You don’t have to put all of your eggs into one basket. There is an advantage to being on a marketplace like Etsy. I’ve had my shop there since their second year and have an excellent track record with customer reviews that could be helpful if I decide to open a second shop on my own site. And, I have all of the email addresses of those past customers whom I could notify if I wanted to. It violates Etsy rules to contact customers after a transaction, but if someone wanted to do that, they could. And, with the About page on Etsy, you can refer people to all of those sites that you mention and people who are truly interested can go on over and follow you wherever you are. You can also include all of that info while you are in the process of fulfilling the order.
I tell people who are thinking of leaving Etsy to consider using it as a marketing tool to bring people over to their new site. Having a nice presentation there could bring in designers, buyers, etc. who might not necessarily find your stand alone shop or who might not trust someone they have never heard of. Having an umbrella like Etsy over your shop does give the customer some feeling of security in case things go bad. We have had several set and costume designers for movies buy our things through Etsy and they probably would not have found us otherwise. If you think of your shop on Etsy as an ad, it can be inexpensive marketing. But, I agree that if someone has a serious business with a defined brand and line of products, they should carve out their own turf, especially since Etsy can (and has) close down shops without notice, one of the worse problems that I see there.
The other thing that I would encourage people to do is to band together with other like minded folks to create your own associations or online chambers of commerce. That is what we are trying to do with Artizan Made. We have 60 participating shops and they all pay a small monthly fee of $10 which helps cover the cost of promoting them online. They run their businesses independently, but can rely on the group for support. We meet on a private group on Facebook which has been extremely helpful. Our TAFA group also has a private Facebook group and one of our members there posted a link to this article. Having many eyes on the web really helps figure out how to navigate a challenging and ever changing universe…
Many thanks for such a good presentation! Very useful and clear.
Rachel, thanks so much for sharing your experience with WooCommerce and Etsy! This is very helpful. And thanks for letting me know about Artizan Made – it looks amazing and it’s a great avenue to get your work our there!
I can’t believe that the best ever (FREEEEE) shopping cart isn’t in this list: Square Market.
From the amazing people who started the first card swipe system, the Square Register, is a totally awesome and ready to use market place/shopping cart.
No monthly fees. EVER. No set-up or upfront costs. FREE whether you do one sale a year or thousands. They charge only the merchant fee when you make a sale. 2.75 per sale. (By the way if you do thousands, it’s cheaper – that’s when Starbucks made the switch over at all their locations) NO extra costs no matter what kind of payment card. It’s the simplest and easiest thing I have ever used. And it can integrate with any website.
It also integrates with several apps. But there is NO FEE of any kind at all. Perfect for artists!
Super smart site from the super smart guy who started Twitter!
And no… I am not a affiliate – but I should be!
I like Square, but I’ve not been super happy with the user feel of Square Mkt. But it IS a cool free deal!
Love this post! Thanks so much for speaking to this subject in plain English 🙂 Lots of info to digest, and this will take me a while. I just went thru a similar analysis to find a home for my online shop, and I ended up with Indiemade. I’m very happy so far. Am still setting it up, but I like the fast system response, the real time update, the clean, modern templates, the speedy customer service.
btw, I happened to have tried Storenvy, and I’m not fan of their UI experience, also don’t like the way went about forcing everyone onto Stripe without publicly announcing it (unless they did, and I just can’t find it…) Oh well, it took me quite a while to jump thru hoops just to set up one test item, and in the end, I decided to pass on it.
Thank you so much Andreea for putting this together! After reading this I spent about a week testing a few of the carts and I ended up with Prestashop. I started out with Wix last year, but their shop options were quite limited and templates not responsive. So I just made the move! Prestashop has the amazing feature that allows customers to easily select product attributes. This is great, because I sell a lot of one of a kind rings, and this way they can search for their size with a few clicks. I have spent $130 so far on a responsive font, accordion style FAQ feature and editing software, and there are no monthly, annual or merchant fees! Although I need a little more time to get the website up, it ends up much cheaper than the other options I considered.
Thanks for reading it and I am glad that you found a shopping cart that works for you!!!! Thanks for sharing your experience and best of luck with your shop!
Thank you for this! It was just what I needed to help me make a decision on what ecommerce platform to go with. It has been a decision that has paralysed my business for too long, because I was overwhelmed by the options. After listening to the podcast, I decided to go with Bigcommerce, so was pleased when I went to sign up today, thinking the basic monthly would be $29 and finding it to be $14!
Wow, you’ve put together a very comprehensive list! I started with Volusion and now use Shopify. So far, I’ve been happy with them and doing deal coupons is easy on Shopify.
Glad you like it and thanks for sharing!
Great post, Andreea! You always provide so much great information! I’ve seen a few people mention it, but this review is missing Weebly as a major player. I’m moving to it now. It’s a lot less fussy than Shopify with 0% transaction fees at their top level (same price as Shopify’s bottom level), and it covers unlimited products. Also, they have great options like automatic product zoom, ability to add product video, and csv upload for people with Shopify and Etsy shops. Thanks as always for your advice! I’m always sharing your blog with others!
Wanted to let your readers know that IndieMade now offers an alternative payment system to PayPal, so non-PayPal customers can make purchases with a credit card 🙂
BTW, I love your content Andreea! Thanks for sharing.
I think Magento is one of the advanvced and best CMS for developing an eCommerce website now a days. Magneto is essentially an open-source (only community edition) PHP and MySQL based feature enriched platform. It has a wide range of template system and can empower your website with an impressive range of functionalities. The primary benefit with Magento is its flexibility that let you have complete control on your e-business. The extreme scalability of Magento further ensures that, as per your business growth you can create additional resources in your Ecommerce site.
Hello
So far I am using Ecwid, eshop, Shopify for addressing Japanese market in different niches. Even if if can read and understand, I am not a Native speaker so that is why I used such kind of solution rather than Japanese solutions like Ec-cube, thebase.in, stores.jp for the most famous. The only local solution I may try is the WordPress plugin Welcart which has a good documentation in English and well supported by its community.
The problem with Ecwid and Shopify are the monthly fees that can add up fast. Shopify is quite pricey in my opinion, so maybe not the best solution to start out a business if you have not a lot of cash or you want to test (as it is our case).
== Ecwid : ==
Pro :
* Ecwid integration with WordPress is nice. I keep the theme simple to avoid creeping the design
* You can start for free with 10 products – what I did.
* FB integration
* Multi-language ready
* Lot of payment gateways available
Cons :
* It can take some time to load the products in the WP site.
* Url are not very friendly
* Some features are not fully internationalized like shipment (Kuroneko Yamato, Sagawa for Japan would be great), payment (here convenience store payment) or auto-translated (thank you message, order reminder message)
== eShop : ==
I use it on a very simple shop for downloadable products, only paypal payment. I would to see a fork from it
Pro :
* A completely free plugin for WordPress quite robust actually – and apparently well coded. The author updates it time to time for security reason.
* Only paypal is supported for payment other gateways are deprecated.
* You can add gateway or other functions with some PHP knowledge. Indeed there are some sandboxes to see how it is coded.
* Quite easy to mix with themes.
Cons :
* You need to translate yourself the po file with poedit to get something good in your language.
* You need to be a little bit interested in development to fit your needs.
* Support exists but you must be patient … as it is free (there is a pro dev’ that created some add-on to it)
* Some themes recent themes are not well supported especially if they are not standard
== Shopify : ==
Pros :
* Lot of features for $29 with fb integration
* Their Liquid thing is not to bad
* Quite beautiful actually, even the bar bone theme (and responsive !)
Cons :
* Pricey if you consider the % on some payment gateways + monthly fees.
* Not possible to enter in your shop if you close it down : there is a 30 days period when the shop datas are stored, but you cannot enter inside your back end to extract data. You have to pay again to do that.
* No able to extract the content of the blogs or pictures by bulk, just the products can be downloaded.
* Theme is not easy to tweak
* I do not like the communication of Shopify “easy to create a store” “easy to earn money with ecommerce/dropshipping” because it is quite not the case. Of course they present “case studies” but very often when you read them, you quickly understand that the guys do not really start from 0 (but is not clearly stated and it is written as they “begin from scratch”) but with several thousands of bucks.
Thank you Andrea for this research. I’ve found it to be very helpful.
I have read that WooCommerce is perfect for beginners. WordPress is so easy to use and WooCommerce is simply an extension of that. Customizing your site through WordPress is really simple due to the number of plugins available. Plus, WooCommerce has tutorial videos to help with the set up. But Magento’s interface is also really easy to use and it comes with tutorial videos and documentation. It has a full installation wizard too. However, Magento’s difficulty is increased when you want to start adding extensions to your site. In this instance, you might want to think about hiring a Magento-specialist developer.
Please advise if you are familiar with both what to choose for small business – Magento or Woo-Commerce platform and why???
What a great read! Thank you for sharing this.