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Online shopping is rising so quickly that the global online shopping market size is expected to cross 4 trillion in 2021. These stats give attention to the debate on the best ecommerce platforms. While some people prefer Shopify Plus, some side with Magneto 2, and others enjoy their ecommerce experience on WooCommerce.
Are you also confused about selecting the best ecommerce platform among these? We are here to knock that confusion away by getting into the details of all these platforms in this article. Let's take a look at the market share of the best ecommerce platforms.
Best ecommerce Platforms Market Share in 2020
- Woocommerce: 32%
- Squarespace Commerce: 17%
- Shopify: 15%
- Magento: 4%
- Wix Stores: 4%
- Others: 28%
Now, let’s analyze each of these best e-commerce platforms individually:
Shopify Plus
Shopify provides cloud-based ecommerce platform to a large number of businesses. It is quite popular with small-scale businesses, but it also powers big ecommerce organizations.Shopify emerged as one of the most successful startups in 2006. There are currently over 500,000 stores on its platform, including Tesla Motors, Wikipedia, Mozilla, and Google.
Image Source: IceCubeDigital
Shopify stores are operated by the ecommerce business itself, unlike Wix, Squarespace, and Magneto. Although Shopify needs less maintenance than alternatives such as WooCommerce, it can still be a little more costly and constrained in certain situations. Shopify is a CMS, like WordPress, made to build online stores. It is very easy to use and can be handled effectively by a non-technical person. It lets your store go live in less than 20 minutes with a working e-commerce shop. The shop's personalization is as simple as possible. You can render any look for your website and bring in the vibe you want.
Image Source: WebsiteBuilderExpert
Shopify Plus is a "Pro" edition of Shopify, a publicly-traded Canadian-based business e-commerce website that originated to support small retailers. With its ability to automate complicated technologies and still maintain product lists of up to 100 variants through many platforms, Shopify Plus is one of the strongest ecommerce applications for business enterprises. Shopify Plus provides more technological assistance, onboarding and automation resources for facilitating the process of products.
Shopify Plus gives you the following benefits:
- A Secure and Fully Hosted Platform
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Shopify Plus Customisation
- Time-Saving
- Better Scalability
Although Shopify provides the basic tools that retailers need to start and develop in e-commerce, Shopify Plus is the answer to consumers who have grown significantly larger than their expectations and want to expand without spending large amounts of time, money, and energy.
Magneto 2
Magento is an ecommerce platform made for medium to large online stores. It provides one of the most durable feature sets, making it perfect for aspiring online stores. Magento is among the most scalable website designing tools in the world. However, it needs a lot of developer expertise and substantial investment. If anyone has no programming background, he should not opt for Magento as it is not recommended for beginners. It's best for businesses that have good budgets.
Image Source: AlanStorm
The Magento UI is considered by developers to be very practical since there is a simple, easy configuration and the Navigation Menu includes clients, items, promotions, sales, and reports. Magento Open Source includes the following features:
- Mobile-optimized shopping
- Instant purchase
- Global selling
- Site search
- Extended Functionality via App marketplace
- Integrated checkout, payment, and shipping
- Customization options available
- Catalog management
Image Source: MagePlaza
Magento provides ecommerce store owners with protection and security, which is a core priority for online stores. Being one of the most used ecommerce platforms, Magento has a broad customer base that helps enterprises get quick support.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most common tool of building an eCommerce store with a 32% market share placing it at #1 in the e-commerce market share list of 2020.
Automattic bought WooCommerce in May 2015 for $30 million, according to the reported deal.
Automattic is the company behind WordPress.com as well. WooCommerce is the perfect ecommerce platform for small companies who already own a WordPress site. It is also ideal for those who want a comprehensive web store but are on a budget. It also has tons of third-party themes and plugins, making it versatile to meet most requirements.
Image Source: WordPress
The free version includes the following features:
- Mobile-optimized shopping
- Inventory management
- Search engine optimization
- Shipping options and calculator
- Catalog management
- Product reviews
- Coupons and discounts
- Geo-location support
Even though the UI of WooCommerce is very simple, you need to have the basic HTML or CSS experience to run and maintain your online store on this platform. It also includes SSL support. However, it requires you to obtain your own certificate.
Image Source: NextCart
Being an open-source solution, it gives you a lot of features on its free version. However, you may enjoy its advanced features like product comparisons, pop-up notifications for the latest orders placed, multiple payment methods, products displayed before purchasing, quick browsing, etc.
Which one is the best ecommerce platform among Shopify Plus, Magneto 2, and WooCommerce?
Regardless of your businesses' size, you can get numerous benefits by selecting the right e-commerce solution. Moving to a different platform will result in high costs and require many efforts, hard work, and time. So, it is wise to choose the right e-commerce platform for your business in the very beginning. Many considerations play a role in assessing which eCommerce platform to use. It depends on your technological expertise, budget, the scale of your business, and appropriate features required. That being said, you may pick the desired e-commerce platform as follows:
- You should choose Shopify Plus if you have little technical knowledge and are merely searching for the best way to start your shop with unlimited bandwidth.
- Go for Magento 2 if your budget is not restricted and you are looking for a strong place to launch your large store.
- If you want to learn to do your stuff yourself and want an option that can expand your business without compromising its potential, you should opt for WooCommerce.
Conclusion
A specific ecommerce platform could take one business to the top and may restrict another one. So, choosing the best ecommerce platform for your store depends upon your requirements, budget, user interface, and many other factors. Carefully analyze your needs and then proceed with testing an ecommerce solution. After testing, opt for the one that you feel is the best for your specific business needs.
