Top 5 Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses

1. Shopify

With over 500,000 active online stores, Shopify is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms out there. Its extremely user-friendly interface allows business owners with practically no IT skills to build beautiful, customized online stores. Shopify caters to small businesses just starting out, as well as large ecommerce operations generating millions of dollars.

Shopify offers over a hundred shop themes to choose from, all of them easily displayed on cell phones as well. You can select from more than 1,200 apps to add to your store. Plus, Shopify has a database of experts who can help you design your webstore, and it offers 24/7 customer support.

In addition, Shopify charges no transaction fees, and provides fraud analysis as well as comprehensive SEO packages.

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce with 70,223,355 downloads, WooCommerce powers over 28% of all online stores. WooCommerce is an open-source, completely customizable eCommerce platform for entrepreneurs worldwide. Go beyond the confines of traditional eCommerce solutions, and be limited only by your own imagination. 

Is a free WordPress plugin. It requires hosting and a working WordPress installation to run. Have thousands of store designs available (through WordPress themes). It is Open source – you can modify your store freely. There are no limitations.

With hundreds of free and paid WooCommerce extensions, spanning all your logistical & technical requirements, you can rest assured there's an extension for your specific needs.

Physical, digital, or both: Sell physical products that will ship to a customer, digital products they can download or any combination of the two.

Affiliate products: Show products available on other sites with an affiliate link for customers to purchase them.

Unlimited variations: Offer any number of variations (like color, size, fabric and so on) for a product with the option to set prices, stock and images for each variation.

3. OpenCart

OpenCart powers over 342 000 eCommerce Entrepreneurs all over the world. The OpenCart marketplace features 13000+ modules and themes to jump-start, grow and expand your business. You can find beautiful themes for just about any sector, service integrations, payment providers, shipping methods, social media, marketing, accounting, reporting, sales as well as language packs.

Administrator Dashboard
All the important information available at a glimpse. Get a full overview of what is important with total orders, sales, customers, people online, sales analytics and many more widgets

User Management
In order to successfully organize an online store you will need to cooperate with many people, each performing different roles. OpenCart allows you to set advanced user privileges and separate access for user groups and users.

Multi-Store
Manage multiple stores from one admin interface. Set products to appear on different stores. Choose a different theme for each store. Localize store settings. Set per store product prices.

4. SquareSpace

SquareSpace offers sophisticated webshops for small businesses with simple ecommerce needs. It was only a SaaS-based content management system (CMS) which offered a designer-friendly website builder, blogging platform and hosting service. Now Squarespace has spent some time in the ecommerce space to make it an experienced contender in terms of ecommerce platforms. Its platform is called Squarespace Commerce, and it offers beautiful templates, an easy way to launch a store, and some solid features. In this detailed Squarespace review, we'll talk about things like pricing, features, and what type of customer support you can get for your store.

In addition to beautiful store themes, Squarespace offers inventory management, unlimited product uploads, coupons, shipping configurations, email list management, and much more. If your business needs a classic ecommerce platform without the integration of payroll, accounting, and other business management softwares, Squarespace is a viable option for you at a lower cost than Shopify or BigCommerce.

5. Wix ECommerce

Wix is known for its simple website builder, with a drag and drop interface and a development wonderland for complete beginners. Wix ecommerce has also seen some success, with competitive pricing and decent-looking themes.

Ease of use is a strong area for Wix since the drag and drop editor is simply flawless. Wix has always had this for their its site builders. Now it's integrated in for ecommerce sites. The dashboard has just a few buttons to choose from, helping beginners hone in on the tasks that are most important.
You can move around every component on your homepage and product pages with just a quick drop of your mouse. This way you don’t have to worry about messing with code to make your customizations. You also receive a nice taskbar at the top to publish or save your work, ensuring that you don’t lose anything.

The five buttons on the left of the dashboard allow you to modify pages, add components, design items, go to the app market and mess around with your settings. There's also a dedicated button for Wix stores, which is extremely helpful for quickly checking on orders, customers, and inventory. Overall, the interface is simplistic, kinda fun and easy on the eyes.

I have one thing to say about the Wix ecommerce templates: They're quite modern.

And you can now use them to rapidly scale up your store if you would like. Yes, the templates allow for beginners to still make a basic website and not worry about the complications of coding. However. Wix now offers something called Wix Code, which opens up the API for advanced customizations and integrations.