Which Platform Should You Choose for Your Webstore?

There are multitude of ecommerce platforms out there, all of which perform one central function – allowing the user to set up and manage a web store. In our previous post
we wrote how important is to determine,
which platform is best suited for your needs.

Here we offer you
a big comparison table
for the most popular ecommerce platforms.

	Price
Shopify	Monthly fee. From $29 per month, or $9 per month if you don't have an online storefront and sell via social media or other channels. No maintenance or update costs. Premium themes starting at $80 14 days free trial
BigCommerce	Monthly fee. Standard from $29.95 per month, most popular Plus $79.95 per month. No maintenance or update costs. 15 days free trial.
WooCommerce	Free to download and install. Extra expenses: extensions, domain $10 per year, hosting from $4 per month.
Magento	Free, open source software. Monthly costs ranging from $5 to 100s of dollars. Premium themes starting at just $1.
OpenCart	No monthly fees, but costs will vary depending on your hosting, design, and development needs. Open source.
Wix	Free as long as you want, you can experiment with most of the features. If you require professional features (your own domain name or priority support), you must choose from premium plans – the cheapest costs $11 per month.
PrestaShop	Free, open source software, hosted in the cloud.

	Offers
Shopify	One of the biggest App Stores (over 100 apps) Everything is handled from a single dashboard You can create additional pages and run your own blog Support of multi-channel retailing, i.e online, offline, social Organized reports, direct Facebook and Pinterest integration Includes secure, unlimited ecommerce hosting 2 staff accounts: Unlimited number of products Unlimited file storage Fraud analysis Abandoned cart recovery (contact visitors who have left their details but didn't complete purchase) Options for calculation of shipping charges Amazon integration.
BigCommerce	Unlimited products, orders, file storage, and bandwidth Ability to sell either physical or digital goods Point of sale (POS) Visual store builder Migrate your store and import products Manage orders and inventory You can sell via Facebook, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon and Erply POS Multiple marketing features Built-in blog API Product comparison sites Encourage return visits with email marketing Search engine optimisation (SEO) features Seatch data reports.
WooCommerce	Lots of features: coupons, discounts, membership sites, contact forms Product ratings, reviews, product sorting and filtering Over 400 extensions and thousands of WordPress plugins.
Magento	Has the most extensive feature list: 5000+ apps and add-ons Marketing, promotions, and conversions Site management Catalog management Catalog browsing Product browsing Checkout, payment, and shipping Order management Customer service Mobile commerce Persistent shopping Private sales Gift registries Store credits Allows flexible options for calculation of shipping charges Discount code creation and calculation functionalities In-built multi-lingual support.
OpenCart	Has multi-store support Self-hosted Large marketplace of themes, plugins, gateways, and more Community and dedicated support Plenty of integrations The platform itself is free and does not come with large ongoing development costs (up to even $300).
Wix	Free website builder Huge selection of designer-made templates User-friendly, easy to grasp You can manage your inventory, process payments, manage shop settings Discounts and coupon codes etc. A great tool to build a complete website with multiple modules e.g. blog, portfolio, and etc.
PrestaShop	Over 5,000+ additional modules and professional themes Includes 600 free features and a customizable, mobile responsive default template Translation of the software into 65 languages

	Suits for
Shopify	Perfect for beginners who: do not have a massive budget or are just starting out do not need POS capabilities, perhaps don't own a physical store have the ambition to start blogging and want to build a community around their store want the ability to recover abandoned carts at a competitive rate.
BigCommerce	Merchants who want to investigate their options for global coverage, pricing, and support.
WooCommerce	For every business, no limits. Easy to use, open source.
Magento	Suits better for businesses that are not on shoestring budgets. Not easy to use if you’re a beginner.
OpenCart	Suits for every business, from corporations to local businesses.
Wix	Designed for small businesses, restaurants, online stores and artists such as musicians and photographers. Users who want to be able to do everything on their own, without having to hire a web admin person.
PrestaShop	From goods and services to downloadable products, reservations and marketplaces, PrestaShop is designed to fit all types of businesses.

	Payment gateways
Shopify	Shopify Payments (able to identify suspicious orders with unique built-in risk tools) and integrates with over 100 payment gateways (like PayPal, Amazon Pay, Stripe, and more).
BigCommerce	Payments via PayPal powered by Braintree, Stripe, Apple Pay, Pay with Amazon and dozens more.
WooCommerce	Connects to all major payment gateways: PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, Pay Gast.
Magento	Relatively lower number of gateways, but bigger number of gateways can be added via third-party add-ons.
OpenCart	All the world's most renowned payment gateways and shipping methods.
Wix	Automatically connects you to the most suitable payment provider available in your region, based on your preferences and location.
PrestaShop	Supports most of the favorite payment gateways.

	Pros
Shopify	The most thought-out feature set You usually don't need to pay extra money for installing an app You can test your store before it goes public.
BigCommerce	Single page checkout Offers built-in selling across Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, Facebook and Pinterest User friendly, easy to use.
WooCommerce	Product ratings, reviews, product sorting and filtering Unlimited products, images, galleries You can import/export unlimited product lists Automated e-mails, tax options, built in payment prcessing, and more.
Magento	Large collection of themes and templates (the number of free themes provided by Magento is significantly bigger than that of Shopify).
OpenCart	Dashboard gives an at-a-glance view of important metrics like sales, customers, and more Use specific themes for each online store, and localise your websites.
Wix	Free plan allows you to see if the platform fits your individual needs, and then upgrade later on Has a powerful multilingual app.
PrestaShop	Easy to migrate your store from any other e-platform User friendly Scalable, functioinal Dedicated community E-commerce SEO.

	Cons
Shopify	Basic Shopify doesn't offer gift cards and professional reports No free plan available (only free trial) Additional transction fees for using external gateways No B2B capabilities out of the box.
BigCommerce	Unlike some other e-commerce solutions, no iOS or Android apps are available for store owners to use to manage their stores on the go Price and limits on annual online sales (if you exceed them, you'll need to upgrade to a more expensive monthly plan) No native POS features (integration required).
WooCommerce	Not for beginners cause it needs some technical knowledge and developer skills.
Magento	While free itself, Magento requires you to purchase hosting and carry out all the software/system setup and installation procedures yourself.
OpenCart	Not always easy to customise Limited built-in marketing features Not the fastest solution Self-hosted nature means you’ll be in charge of hosting, development, maintenance, etc.
Wix	Recommended for smaller websites – it’s not very convenient to manage a larger site with Wix (30+ pages) Also, the more pages you add, the slower the editor tends to load.
PrestaShop	If you do not have highly developed programming skills or time, then you have to prepare for expenses related to the implementation and development of eCommerce (however, these costs will be much lower than in case of dedicated or Magento-based stores.)

	Dropshipping
Shopify	No problem. Find a product and sell online without worrying about inventory or shipping.
BigCommerce	You'll need to install a third-party app to facilitate it.
WooCommerce	You'll need to install a third-party app to facilitate it.
Magento	Dropship extensions from $0 to $950.
OpenCart	Has a Dropship module for $99, and three months free support.
Wix	Currently it is not possible to connect Wix Stores with a drop shipping service.
PrestaShop	Lets you create a merchant site and integrate dropshipping.

	Help and Support
Shopify	24/7 live chat, phone, e-mail, Twitter
BigCommerce	24/7 live agent support, e-mail, phone
WooCommerce	Forum, links, helpdesk
Magento	Free open source tool: blog and forums for chatting with other users, and a hosted (and paid) enterprise service from the Magento team.
OpenCart	Active forums and ticket support system, technical help starting at $99 (one time fix) or $99 site/month.
Wix	Forums, tickets
PrestaShop	Forum is a place to find answers and exchange advice

	Mobile-readiness
Shopify	Yes
BigCommerce	Yes
WooCommerce	Yes
Magento	Yes
OpenCart	Yes
Wix	Yes
PrestaShop	Yes

	Transaction fees
Shopify	Does not charge any additional transaction fees if their own payment gateway is used.
BigCommerce	No transaction fees on any BigCommerce plan, however, you do have to pay credit card transaction fees to the company you select to process payments.
WooCommerce	Doesn't take any extra transaction fees. Supports over 100 other payment gateways, so you can choose which one works best in your region or for your budget.
Magento	No transaction fees are charged other than the gateway provider’s fees.
OpenCart	Transaction fees for each sale through selected payment gateways
Wix	No transaction fees other than the gateway provider's fees.
PrestaShop	Transaction fees for each sale through selected payment gateways.

	Design
Shopify	Modern-looking, able to cover pretty much any niche or type of business. But there are only ten free themes available, the price tags on the paid themes hover around $160-$180 a piece.
BigCommerce	Gives you a set of nicely-designed online store designs, few free themes and a lot of paid themes, those can get quite expensive – often $145-$250.
WooCommerce	No special design - you can keep using your current theme. Thousands of WordPress themes are available on the web, which makes WooCommerce store setup really flexible.
Magento	Doesn't offer any themes of its own, so you have to go to third parties to get anything.
OpenCart	Themes are available from third-party design companies and the collection is on OpenCart’s extensions page.
Wix	The most design-intensive platform, nice range of modern designs, templates and pre-made designs which are categorized. And you can create many more additional pages.
PrestaShop	Platform enables you to build and launch a modern online store.

Interested in integrating your webshop or plan to start a brand new webshop?
Contact our ecommerce specialists at help@erply.com or by calling +1 917 210 1251.

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