Get Free Audit

15 Best Ecommerce CMS Comparison

Sep 9, 2021

8004 Tanya Shyrma

15 Best Ecommerce CMS Comparison

Let’s consider the characteristics of the best Ecommerce CMS platforms and compare them. We describe essential technical features, advantages, and disadvantages, available versions, and pricing. Read on and get insights on what CMS to choose for your website.

Table of Content

How to Choose CMS
Magento 2
PrestaShop
Shopware
Shopify
SAP Commerce Cloud
OpenCart
BigCommerce
Shifts4Shop
Drupal
Volusion
Squarespace
WooCommerce
Zen Cart
Joomla
OsCommerce
Conclusion

How to Choose CMS

Looking for a CMS platform, you might be overwhelmed with the variety. It is significant to take into account the default features and opportunities to customize them in the future. Moreover, the choice hugely depends on your budget and the scale of the business.

We singled out several criteria you need to consider before choosing:

  • Popularity – most popular CMS platforms are high-quality. But they can be unsuitable for your specific business that is why it is always clever to look for brands that use the CMS. If they resemble your business the chances are high that the CMS is accurate for you.
  • Type – it’s important to know whether the Ecommerce platform you choose is hosted or self-hosted. Note that with a self-hosted platform your coding knowledge must be much more comprehensive.
  • SEO-friendliness – if you want to have more customers, you have to be on the first page of Google. And it might be a challenge to get organic traffic when your CMS does not provide basic SEO tools.
  • Cost – it’s important to understand the full cost of CMS, including monthly payments, cost of development hourly rates, hosting, and transaction fees for using different payment gateways.
  • Support – technical team and a vast community allow you to fix the bug when it occurs without losing much money.
Magento support

Magento Support

Ensure the smooth work of your website with professional Magento support

Visit the page
  • Customizability – some contact management systems allow great customization of your store, including complex integrations, checkout or menu customization, implementation of unique features.
  • Design – in industries like fashion, website design plays a huge role. This is why the range of themes that each CMS offers matters.
  • Extensions – The more extensions you find, the more chances you have to customize your store at no extra cost.
  • Features – in-built marketing or sales functionalities lower the time and money expenses as you do not have to find and buy extra third-party extensions.

To protect you from launching your business on an unsuitable platform, we have created a list of the top Ecommerce platforms with their pros and cons and reviewed them on every feature described.

Magento 2

The CMS is known all around the world. For more than three years, it has been staying in the Gartner Magic Quadrant among the leaders.

It has two versions. The free one is Magento Open Source that you can download from the official website and use. The second one is called Adobe Commerce, former Magento Commerce.

These two editions have some differences.

Magento Open Source: Key Features

You can download the CMS for free and customize it according to your needs.

The key features are:

  • Responsive themes and intuitive user interface (UI), enhanced site and catalog management options, easy product and catalog browsing
  • One-page checkout, guest checkout, saved shopping cart, and multiple payment gateways
  • Integrated shipping rates from UPS, UPS XML, FedEx, USPS, and DHL
  • Extensive order management instruments, international support, and comprehensive customer service
  • Advanced analytics, SEO, and marketing tools

Adobe Commerce: Key features (compared to Magento Open Source)

Adobe Commerce is a paid edition of Magento that provides some extra features, including the following:

  • More personalized shopping experience and audience segmentation
  • Dynamic rule-based product relations, instant purchases, content staging, and preview options
  • Drag-and-drop visual merchandising
  • Magento Business Intelligence
  • Integrated B2B functionality with such tools as custom catalogs and price lists, company accounts, company credit, and quotes

Advantages & Disadvantages of Magento

Advantages

  1. Magento 2 is deeply customizable.
  2. It is one of the most secure CMS both for store owners and buyers.
  3. As your business grows, the high scalability of the platform lets you extend the functionality of the store.
  4. A large community of users can always provide the necessary assistance.
  5. Magento 2 functionality can be enhanced with several available integrations.

Disadvantages

  1. Magento 2 is complex and heavy, so it is not suitable for beginners.
  2. Often professional help is needed and it may take more development hours to create a feature compared to some other platforms. Due to the complexity, the developer rates may also be higher than with other solutions.
  3. If you decide to switch from Magento 1 to Magento 2, it will be pricey. Not all the modules and themes can be migrated directly.

Top brands using Magento

Ford, Christian Louboutin, Landrover, Monin, Ahmad Tea, Helly Hansen, Liverpool, Sigma Beauty, Vizio, Nestle Nespresso, Björn Borg, Jaguar, Cox & Cox, Olympus, Barbour.

Pricing & Versions

The Adobe company does not charge fees for downloading the Magento Open Source platform. However, you have to pay for professional Magento development. The prices vary in different regions: the hourly rate goes from $40 to $149 per hour.

magento custom development

Magento Development Services

Get a deeply customized webstore from the Magento-certified developers

Learn more

Magento Commerce is a solution that costs from $22,000/year. This software is for enterprise-level businesses. You get additional features like Page Builder, B2B functionalities, and dedicated support from Magento.

Conclusion

Magento is a robust CMS with robust SEO and marketing tools. It is suitable for businesses that need high flexibility and customization capabilities.

Magento best Ecommerce platform for Enterprise

PrestaShop

PrestaShop open source solution has powerful features, yet it is easy to use. The CMS is among the top-10 of most popular open source platforms. But most of all it is popular in France, where it was created.

Features

Prestashop is considered to be a flexible platform suitable for international sales.

The key features are:

  • Availability of 75 different languages
  • Vast variety of themes and 4,000+ apps at the PrestaShop marketplace
  • Easy product management options and the ability to configure payment and shipping methods, content, and navigation on the website
  • Advanced SEO and marketing tools
  • Easy order management, checkout configuration, and customer groups

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  1. PrestaShop owns a user-friendly backend interface and does not require additional technical knowledge to run the website and monitor payments. It fits startups or medium-sized online stores.
  2. As the platform supports multiple currencies and languages, localization is simple.
  3. Payment transactions are secured by processing through the SSL protocol system.

Disadvantages

  1. The scalability is limited, so Prestashop is mostly used in small and medium stores.
  2. Another drawback is the basic design, which is often considered to be unattractive. That is why most of the shops customize them to make them more engaging.
  3. PrestaShop dedicated support is not free. The pricing plan starts from $200.

Top brands using PrestaShop

Danone, Monsieur Chaussure, Papier Tigre, Foot Shop, Maniac-Auto, Bobbies, Charuca, Kumulus Vape, Freshly Cosmetics, Le Chocolat des Français.

Pricing & Versions

PrestaShop is free to download, but professional development will add extra costs. You also have to pay for web hosting and the domain name of your shop. If you decide to enrich the functionality of your store and buy modules and themes, it also will bring you additional expenses.

There is also a solution called Prestashop Platform – a hosted, fully managed platform. Its cost starts from $200 per month, depending on the plan you are comfortable with.

Conclusion

Prestashop is a smart choice for small to medium Ecommerce businesses that need an easier solution than Magento but with good customization potential.

Prestashop CMS review

Shopware

Shopware is popular in European countries, especially in Germany. It is suitable for B2B and B2C models available both on premises and as a cloud solution. And in 2020, the CMS made it to the Gartner Magic Quadrant as a niche player. It is the 5th most popular solution for Enterprise on the entire Internet.

Features

Shopware is an Ecommerce CMS known for its scalability and stable operation on all types of devices.

The key features are:

  • Powerful PWA and API so sellers can connect with clients across multiple channels and devices
  • Integrations with various sales channels like Facebook or Instagram
  • Extensive marketing options, so users can assign a campaign to definite target groups, as well as specify a group or an individual seller and set fixed prices and discounts on shipping costs
  • Reliable SEO tools and advanced media management integrated
  • Plugin Manager that allows managing extensions in an easier way
  • Various payment gateways including PayPal, Klarna, credit cards options.
  • 100+ currencies and 200+ markets all over the world.
  • Such features as customizable products, extensive sales channels, and manufacturer support for the professional edition
  • B2B suite for complex business models, unlimited staging environments, as well as individual and developer support for enterprise edition

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • The CMS provides a combination of advanced technologies and design, thanks to which the platform offers a user-friendly backend and structured frontend. There are over 1,500 free and paid themes and templates available on the marketplace.
  • Shopware offers both cloud and on-premise solutions and relatively easy management tools to supervise the shop.
  • Users can choose the pricing plans suitable for them and reach out to a large Shopware community for advice if needed.

Disadvantages

  • There are Shopware competitors like Magento which offer a wider selection of plugins.
  • With its strong focus on the German market, the majority of the Shopware community is located in the DACH region, and, as a result, it is rarely used in other countries and most of the materials and guides are in German.

Top brands using Shopware

Philips, Discovery Channel, Mars, M&Ms, Euronics, Dorothee Schumacher, Bruno Banani, Chio, Aston Martin, Mywalit, Borussia Dortmund, Jägermeister and Haribo.

Pricing & Versions

  1. Starter edition is a basic free cloud option;
  2. Community is another free edition;
  3. Professional edition costs €199.00 per month.
  4. Enterprise edition is the most expensive option, the exact price is provided upon request.

Conclusion

A young but promising platform offers deep customization possibilities and improves its offer every year.

Shopware CMS features

Shopify

Shopify is a hosted Ecommerce platform that helps online merchants set up and manage an entire store easily. If it is not the best CMS for an Ecommerce website, then surely it is the most known – according to Builtwith, it is the most popular Ecommerce CMS in the world in 2021.

Features

Shopify is known for its simplicity. The users do not have all the control over the appearance and functionality, but it is one of the best Ecommerce platforms for startups and beginners.

The key features are:

  • Reliable blogging instruments, customer ratings, several payment gateways, updates, and traffic analytics to manage the store
  • Mobile responsibility and fast-loading pages
  • Support of more than 100 different payment methods, including PayPal and CryptoCurrency, unlimited products, many app integrations, and an SEO guide
  • 24/7 technical support through live chat, email, phone, and even Twitter
  • Various sales channels that provide an opportunity to sell on online marketplaces and social media
  • More than 80 themes and 6500+ third-party Shopify apps with additional features for online shops

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantage

  • The most significant advantage of Shopify is its simplicity, along with extensive features that are logically structured and can be implemented by users who do not possess in-depth technical knowledge.
  • Thanks to responsive design and high scalability, it is possible to create shops for either small or large businesses.
  • The themes are beautiful, simple, and modern, even free ones.

Disadvantages

  • One of the frequently listed disadvantages of the platform is the limited multilingual features. Only 5 languages are available by default and 20 – for Shopify Plus users. For other languages, if store owners decide to sell worldwide, they have to use additional apps.
  • Extra fee is charged whenever a payment gateway other than Shopify Payment is used to complete the transaction, and Shopify Payments is available only in certain countries.

Top brands using Shopify

General Electric, Amnesty International, CrossFit, Tesla Motors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Foo Fighters, GitHub, Bulletproof, The Economist, Heinz, Penguin Books, Harper Collins, BBC, Red Bull, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, David Beckham Eyewear, Victoria Beckham.

Pricing

  • Basic Shopify offers a standard set of tools for $29 per month and is suitable for new businesses.
  • Shopify per $79 usually fits growing businesses with 1 retail store.
  • Shopify Advanced will cost $299 monthly, suitable for merchants with several retail stores.

Conclusion

The CMS is a good choice for those businesses that do not require in-depth flexibility and customization, as the platform is not open source, and profound changes may only be implemented with the help of Shopify.

Hosted Ecommerce CMS Shopify review

SAP Commerce Cloud (former SAP Hybris Commerce)

SAP Commerce Cloud (former SAP Hybris Commerce) is an omnichannel platform for B2B, B2C, and B2B2C businesses. It has remained in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for more than three years.

Key features

The SAP Cloud Commerce provides omnichannel commerce, customer support, and optimized search with the help of many integrated capabilities, high efficiency, and optimized business processes.

The key features are:

  • Cloud accelerators that help grow in B2B, B2C sectors, and industries like financial services, telecommunication, and media, travel industry, or public sector
  • Out of the box modules that enhance product content and customer experience with the help of personalized recommendations, promotional campaigns, marketing strategies, and storefront customization
  • Better order management with flexible sourcing to optimize shipments and order versioning for better visibility of order statuses
  • Multi-store, multi-language и multi-currency capabilities

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • The platform is suitable for any business domain with industry-specific prebuilt accelerators and is considered one of the most reliable solutions due to its cloud nature.
  • SAP Commerce is praised for its data management power, marketing, and analytics tools. Internationalization and extensible architecture allow businesses to expand globally.

Disadvantages

  • The users often complain that the platform is over-complicated, with several steps for actions that are usually one-step.
  • The platform is expensive, considering yearly fees and the cost of the development team.
  • The platform can be customized only by a developer, but the developer community is not large, comparing to other platforms.

Top brands using SAP Commerce Cloud

Faberlic, Henkel, Bosch, GE Capital, Americas, Deutsche Post, Unilever, Groupe Casino, Centrica, Schindler.

Pricing & Versions

There are 2 versions available:

  • Standard edition is for online commerce businesses;
  • Professional edition is suitable for omnichannel commerce.

The initial cost is about $54,000 annually. The precise cost of the license is provided upon request.

Conclusion

SAP Commerce Cloud is a hybrid CMS known as one of the enterprise Ecommerce platforms that can give lots of opportunities for global growth.

SAP best Ecommerce Platform

OpenCart

OpenCart is an open-source platform that is free to install. The CMS is in the top-10 of most popular Ecommerce technologies.

Key features

OpenCart is a light platform and requires add-ons for better functionality.

The key features are:

  • A user-friendly administrator dashboard, that shows an overview of total orders, sales, customers, sales analytics, and people online
  • Unlimited number of categories, products, and manufacturers
  • The opportunity to set user privileges and separate access for users and groups of users
  • 20+ payment gateways, 8+ shipping methods, and free documentation
  • Technical support via email, phone, live support, training, and tickets.
  • Possibility to integrate with the majority of popular shipping methods such as USPS, Australia Post, Royal Mail, FedEx, UPS, etc.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • OpenCart is affordable enough for all business scales.
  • Pretty easy installation and configuration compared to other solutions.
  • It is user-friendly and customizable enough for most businesses.
  • It uses an MVC module which is easy to learn.

Disadvantages

  • The platform has a steep learning curve and limited inbuilt features.
  • It is often considered too lightweight. Many add-ons are required to enhance the limited default functionality.
  • It can be buggy, and different add-ons are often incompatible when installed together.
  • The checkout process is slow.

Top brands using OpenCart

Shore Lines, British Red Cross (Gift Shop), Missy Empire, Missy Empire, Arrowfile, Kleshna, Marmalade (Asset Store), Everbuild.

Pricing & Versions

OpenCart is an open source platform that you can download for free, but merchants have to pay for web hosting, a domain name, SSL certificate, extensions. The price for OpenCart extensions starts from 20$.

Conclusion

The platform is open source, meaning it is highly customizable, but the customization sometimes requires a skilled developer. It can also fit the businesses on a budget, as the CMS is free, and hosting can be very cheap if your store does not require something sophisticated.

Open Cart Open Sourc CMS Platform

BigCommerce

BigCommerce provides extensive instruments such as various payment integration, reliable hosting, advanced marketing, and security tools. For more than three years, the platform has been in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. It was in a Challengers section in 2020.

Key features

BigCommerce is considered a highly customizable and flexible solution with the possibility of multiple integrations.

The key features are:

  • Possibility to integrate different sales channels such as Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram
  • Integrations with brick and mortars like Square, ShopKeep, and Springboard Retail
  • Abandoned cart feature that sends automated emails to website visitors who did not complete the checkout and left without a purchase
  • More than 40 pre-installed payment gateways that can be used in 100 countries, including PayPal, Amazon Pay, and Apple Pay, Square, Adyen, Stripe, Authorize.net, Klarna, and credit card payments powered by Braintree
  • Possibility to create ads banners, personalized discounts, and exclusive coupons to promote their shops with targeted marketing

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • BigCommerce offers an integrated knowledge base on how to manage an online shop.
  • Easy design and intuitive built-in features allow adding and deleting products, managing inventory, payments, analytics, and orders.
  • Integrated marketing potential includes such tools as Google Shopping, eBay store integration, Google Ads ad generator, and SEO-friendly setup.
  • The competent support team is always ready to help via email and phone if the clients need any professional advice.

Disadvantages

  • Annual online sales are limited, and if sellers exceed them, there is a need to upgrade to a more pricey plan.
  • Free themes are too similar, the number of typefaces in them is limited, and they are difficult to edit.
  • In regards to shipping, no discounts are offered on any pricing plan.
  • The built-in blog doesn’t facilitate RSS feeds.

Top brands using BigCommerce

Pandora, Skullcandy, EZPZ, Rollie Nation, Natori, Camelbak, tmbr, YETI, Ben & Jerry’s, San Lorenzo, The Bearded Chap, Kelty, Native Union.

Pricing & Versions

There are 3 available pricing plans for BigCommerce:

  • Standard Plan allows you to create a decent store with basic Ecommerce features. It costs $29.95/per month.
  • Plus Plan has additional marketing tools to grow your online business, such as abandoned cart saver, persistent cart, and stored credit cards. The license costs $79.95/month.
  • Pro Plan includes Google customer reviews and Custom product filtering. It is available at $299.95/month.
  • Enterprise plan has the most advanced characteristics such as unlimited API calls, customer reviews, express routing, priority support, API support, and customer success management. It is the most expensive one, and the pricing is available upon request.

Conclusion

The platform is suitable for both small and large businesses and allows growing within the same CMS.

BigCommerce CMS feature review

Shift4Shop (former 3DCart)

Shift4Shop, formerly known as 3DCart, is one of the oldest Ecommerce platforms launched in 1997. It is a good choice for sellers who aspire to get into the online market quickly.

Key features

Shift4Shop’s functionality is versatile enough to leverage multiple Ecommerce business models.

The key features are:

  • No transaction fees, fast load time, and unlimited product listings.
  • Basic SEO tools, abandoned cart emails, coupons, subscription, recurring billing, and cross-selling options.
  • Ratings and reviews, as well as a wide selection of payment gateways including PayPal and Amazon checkout.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • The 15-day free trial allows you to experience the platform before upgrading to one of the four available plans.
  • It has SEO features for Google, Bing, and Yahoo and social media integrations (Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter) that help drive more traffic to your store and promote its visibility.
  • Large selection of mobile-responsive templates and themes.
  • There are extensive built-in marketing tools, unlimited storage, the absence of transaction fees, and a variety of checkout options.
  • Experienced users consider the interface to be user-friendly.

Disadvantages

  • The number of free templates is limited and most of them have plain visuals.
  • The only out-of-the-box multi-channel selling feature is Facebook sync, so if you decide to integrate Amazon or eBay, you will have to pay extra money.
  • It is not an easy solution for newbie merchants and it can be challenging for them to navigate and master it.

Top brands using Shift4Shop

Sturdy Built Online, Unicus Decor, Outfitter Satellite, Water Polo Gear, PMF Suspension, Beverly Hills Orchids, Under The Carolina Moon.

Pricing & Versions

There are 4 pricing plans available:

  • Shift4Shop Basic plan is suitable for businesses that aspire to branch out to eBay and Amazon and manage more customers with a built-in CRM. The price is $29/month.
  • Shift4Shop Plus has a complete marketing suite with even more features including email newsletters, a loyalty rewards program, abandoned cart saver, gift registries, and targeted social media advertising. It is available at $79/month.
  • Shift4Shop Pro is an Ecommerce automation solution with automation rules, email autoresponders, pre-order functionality, and an autoship subscription system. It costs $229/month.
  • Shift4Shop End-to-End Ecommerce you pay no fees and use Shift4Shop payment processing. Here you get everything that Pro plan offers and even more security, but you pay about 2.9% + $0.30 as a pre-approved credit card rate.

Conclusion

The platform isn’t as popular as Magento or BigCommerce although it’s older. The reason might be the complexity of CMS but with Shift4Shop acquiring the 3DCart the situation might change.

Shift4Shop Secure CMS

Drupal

Drupal is a CMS with a powerful content management framework focused on user-friendliness. The CMS is within the top-5 of the most popular open source solutions.

Key features

Drupal is not designed particularly for Ecommerce, but it can be combined with different plugins and frameworks to make it work for online stores.

The key features are:

  • High-quality content presentation and implementation of new ways to make data structures, build APIs, and add multilingual capabilities
  • Use of a flexible, fast, and secure theming engine called Twig
  • Mobile responsive built-in themes that adapt to different screen sizes
  • Pre-installed translations in the admin interface
  • Possibility to create pages with language-based views filtering, and block visibility
  • Improved loading speed, menu handling routines, and theme function adjustment

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • The localization is easy.
  • Drupal has plugins, content, and cache as a set of APIs to support the developers in creating the custom application.
  • A high personalization level allows the platform to cater better to the needs of the customers. It is easy to scale, has multiple themes, and is SEO-friendly.
  • The user community is large and can provide valuable advice.

Disadvantages

  • Users sometimes complain about excessive memory consumption of the platform.
  • It is a complex flexible solution, and it can be hard to master if users do not have advanced technical skills.
  • New versions of the platform introduce drastic changes. For example, Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 have huge differences from a developer’s point of view. It is considered a drawback as the product updates are better perceived by the users if they are improved gradually.
  • New versions do not have many built-in modules.

Top brands using Drupal

General Electric Company, Cobra Electronics, Tesla Motors, Whole Foods, Timex, Nokia, McDonald’s Australia, Nasdaq, BAC Credomatic, Voya Financial, Charles Schwab, Webster Bank, Harvard University, University of Chicago, The Economist.

Pricing & Versions

Drupal is free to download, but professional development is required. The cost to implement and customize the Drupal website can vary between $15,000 to $100,000. It depends on the scale of the project and the developer hourly rate.

Conclusion

As the CMS is not designed for Ecommerce, it is better to use another one if you are creating an online store from scratch. But if you already have the website on Drupal and want to add the Ecommerce functionality, it makes sense to use the CMS.

Drupal best Ecommerce platform for startups

Volusion

Volusion is an all-in-one Ecommerce solution that was created in 1999 and became one of the first Ecommerce software.

Key features

The CMS is dedicated to the Ecommerce market and provides many tools to make a decent online store.

The key features are:

  • Customizable responsive themes that adapt to any device
  • UX that is enhanced with several navigation styles, intuitive Easy Editor tool, and advanced search tools
  • Product display customization, recurring pricing, dropshipping integration, and tax rate calculator
  • Advanced SEO tools, ROI tracking, and admin social management
  • Gift cards, discounts, and deal of the day options

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • Volusion has an intuitive dashboard and is easy to use thanks to built-in education and professional services.
  • The clients often praise its customer support, speed, and security.

Disadvantages

  • Monthly costs can get way too high as you have to add platform transaction fees, credit card fees, the price for add-ons or themes, and support expenses.
  • Volusion lacks advanced content management and a built-in blog.
  • The developer community is limited and is no rival to more popular platforms like Magento or Shopify.
Magento store.belvg.com

Magento 2 Migration

Let's discuss how migration can help your business grow

Migrate to Magento 2

Top brands using Volusion

Intel, 3M and Slickwraps, MSLGROUP, DECIDE CONSULTING, Zimmerman Advertising LLC, CSC, Dogstuff, Michigan State University, Niagara Faucets, Toni&Guy, Windsor Circle.

Pricing & Versions

  • Personal plan has basic functions such as 100 products available, online support, secure checkout, built-in SEO tools, and social media integrations. It costs $29/month.
  • Professional plan includes additional features such as 5,000 products, ratings and reviews, newsletters, abandoned cart reports, phone orders, and CRM. It is available at $79/month.
  • Business plan has an unlimited number of products and such features as Amazon and eBay Integrations, API Access + Batch Order Processing, Deal of the Day and Customer Loyalty Plan, Dedicated Success Team, 3rd Party Shipping Calculated Rates, Advanced Report Builder, and 3rd Party Gateways. It costs $299/month.
  • Prime Plan has all the features of Business plan + Unlimited staff accounts and VIP support. The fee is calculated upon request.

Conclusion

Volusion CMS might not be as popular as Shopify and Magento, but it has all the features necessary for an Ecommerce website.

Volusion Ecommerce CMS comparison

Squarespace

Founded in 2003, Squarespace has become the third most popular CMS in the world in 2021. It has a drag-and-drop website builder, solid design capabilities, and everything a small and medium business needs to create and maintain a decent web store.

Key features

Squarespace is one of the hosted Ecommerce platforms. It runs on its servers.

The key features are:

  • User-friendly shopping cart system
  • The ability to sell an unlimited number of products, including physical goods, digital goods, services, and subscriptions
  • 0% transaction fee, automatic abandoned cart recovery, gift cards, and discount codes
  • Point-of-sale functionality that is available for US customers
  • 115 fully responsive templates that the user can add to the free Unsplash image library.
  • Possibility to configure a template according to your taste, add cool video backgrounds, and use a logo designing app
  • Easy content management that allows adding images, text, forms, and videos.
  • Easy integration of social media points like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to the online store
  • Possibility to create many blogs on Squarespace

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • Among the primary advantages of Squarespace, you can find appealing modern design and reliable web support.
  • The pricing is comparatively low.
  • Decent analytic tools help to track traffic.
  • It is easy to edit and update the website as well as customize the web pages.
  • Integrated SEO capabilities are extensive.

Disadvantages

  • The platform is not a suitable tool for large online stores.
  • There is no proper navigation system to organize an unlimited number of pages that almost any plan allows.
  • Squarespace does not facilitate multi-currency transactions.
  • Automatic tax calculations are available in the US only.
  • Stripe and Paypal are the only payment gateways available.
  • Point-of-sale functionality is currently limited to the USA, only iPhones are supported.
  • In regards to dropshipping, it is limited only to Printful.

Top brands using Squarespace

New Inc, A+I, Fighting Eel, Darren Booth, Wired, Bandsintown, The Hatch Institute, The Chicks, Alder, Robbie Shackelford, Lucia Balcazar, Werbewelt.

Pricing & Versions

  • Personal plan has such features as unlimited bandwidth and storage, two contributors, SSL security, SEO features for site visibility, 24/7 customer support, and some Squarespace extensions are available by default. It costs $16 per month.
  • Business plan includes an unlimited number of contributors, premium integrations and blocks, advanced website analytics, promotional pop-ups, and banners. It is available for $26 per month.
  • Basic Commerce plan has such features as customer accounts, limited availability labels, and powerful Ecommerce analytics and merchandising tools. It costs $30 per month.
  • Advanced Commerce is enriched with abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping, discounts, and commerce APIs. It costs $46 per month.

Conclusion

The functionality of the platform is quite wide, including extensive built-in SEO and marketing tools. But the software is hardly enough for large stores.

Squarespace hostet Ecommerce CMS

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free Ecommerce plugin for WordPress – the most popular CMS in the world. The plugin is the second most popular Ecommerce technology on the entire Internet. However, to start your online shop, you need to find your hosting.

Key features

WooCommerce provides WordPress users with all the basic features an online shop needs. And it is simple so the novice merchants can learn how to manage online stores quickly.

The key features are:

  • Easy adaptation and user-friendliness
  • Possibility to customize and enhance a website with more than 325 paid extensions and dozens of paid and free themes
  • Easy integration with Google Analytics to track and report website traffic and measure your advertising ROI
  • Basic security features and SSL support for website protection

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • As the most well-known CMS, WordPress has a large community of users and extensive documentation.
  • It is pretty easy to handle, and users with basic WordPress knowledge can cope with it.

Disadvantages

  • Although it is an open source platform creating a store is free, shop owners have to pay extra money for web hosting. And if your business is large and you choose advanced hosting packages, it can become pricey.
  • The themes and extensions are quite expensive, along with the necessity to obtain your SSL certificate.
  • The platform is not as secure as other solutions.

Top brands using WooCommerce

All Blacks Official Store, Aeropress, Orange Guitar Amps, Weber South Africa, Awesome Inventions, The Spectator Magazine Shop, WorthPoint, Blue Star Coffee, Forage & Graze, Björk Enterprise, South African Rugby Shop, Downtown Vision Inc., Six Flags Great Escape Lodge.

Pricing & versions

WooCommerce is a free plugin, but you have to care about the following details before installing it:

  1. Get a WordPress site where you will install the WooCommerce plugin.
  2. Choose a host for your store and buy a plan. Average hosting is around $120 per year.
  3. Register a domain, or site name, which usually costs about $15 per year for one domain.
  4. Decide whether to get a paid theme. It costs $20 – $100 per year.
  5. Decide whether to add advanced shipping extensions or not. Out of the box, WooCommerce provides options for flat rate shipping, free shipping, or local pickup. Advanced extensions cost up to $108 per year on average, and payment gateway extensions will cost: 2.9% + .30 cents per sale plus a monthly fee of $0 – $30 per month on average.
  6. Install software for customer communication, which costs up to $348 per year, SEO optimization for up to $79 per year, and security for about $300 per year to run a successful Ecommerce store.
  7. Hire a Woocommerce developer to make further enhancements to a website, it will lead to more costs.

Conclusion

If you already have a working website on WordPress but want to turn it into an Ecommerce website, installing WooCommerce is for you. It is much easier than migrating a website from one CMS to another.

Best Ecommerce CMS WooCommerce

Zen Cart

Zen Cart is an open source Ecommerce solution. It is in the top-10 of the most popular open source CMS.

Key features

The platform allows easy website editing, and as it is open source, you can customize it as you wish.

Key features are:

  • Marketing features such as discounts and coupons, gift certificates, featured products, newsletters, and product notifications
  • Several payment gateways: Square, Payeezy, PayMeSecure, Beanstream, PayPal Business Account, PayPal Express Checkout, Authorize.Net or install third-party integration

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • Zen Cart is free to download, is pretty customizable, and has an active user community.
  • Thanks to multi-currency and multi-language features store owners can sell their goods internationally.

Disadvantages

  • The users express dissatisfaction with the outdated UI and often find it complex to handle the platform.
  • Not only is the coding part complex, but the admin navigation is far from perfect as well.
  • Frequent updates are released if you decide to upgrade your platform, there is a risk that all the custom features will get lost.
  • There is a lack of proper customer support and SEO tools.
  • If you decide to run multiple extensions, it may be hard to ensure their smooth coherent work.

Top brands using Zen cart

Wesley Mission, Infinity Technology, Inc., BeneCard PBF, CAREER CLUB, VERSA PRODUCTS, INC., KnownHost, Epigentek, Webkeon Technologies, Akra Tech, Mind Digital Group.

Pricing & Versions

Zen Cart is an open source software that can be downloaded for free, while plugins and themes are available separately. For example, the prices for themes are usually about $50.

The merchants also have to pay for web hosting, a domain name, and an SSL certificate. If you hire a professional technical specialist or buy third-party add-ons and templates, you will pay extra.

Conclusion

The platform isn’t bad and can handle a small to a medium Ecommerce shop. But compared to more modern solutions, this platform is a bit outdated.

Zen Cart CMS systems list

Joomla

Joomla is a cloud web-based SaaS. It is the third most popular open source solution in the world.

Key features

The CMS is not made for Ecommerce, but many extensions can help you build a store on Joomla.

The key features are:

  • Easy content management thanks to a simplified system of articles
  • Multiple user groups with different levels of permissions to access, edit, publish and administrate content
  • Support of multiple authentication protocols, including LDAP, OpenID, and Gmail
  • Features as The Media Manager that assists in handling media and the Contact Manager that helps find the right persons and their contact details
  • Possibility to set up banners with Banner Manage for promotion purposes
  • A search feature that helps guide users to the most popular items and offers search statistics to the online shop admin

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • Joomla has an extensive knowledge base, FAQ forum, and a large community of users.
  • Technical support is provided via email or phone.
  • It has powerful SEO tools available out of the box, unified configuration, a mobile-friendly admin area, and frontend templates.

Disadvantages

  • Some customers are not content with limited customization opportunities.
  • There are compatibility problems between the installed plugins.

Top brands using Joomla

IKEA, Lipton Ice Tea, LINUX, The Fashion Spot, Holiday Inn, The Hill, Guggenheim, Monaco Yacht Show, PragueClassicConcerts, Nintendo.

Pricing & Versions

Users can create online stores on Joomla for free if they are hosted on their servers or a Joomla subdomain. If you choose a domain name, get a hosting provider, care about design and maintenance, the total pricing will start from $700 per month.

Conclusion

Joomla is a solid CMS that allows you to create simple yet efficient online stores.

Joomla Ecommerce CMS review

OsCommerce

OsCommerce is a robust Ecommerce platform that provides free tools to build a self-hosted online store. It is used by 40,000 websites.

Key features

The CMS is suitable for small, medium businesses, and large enterprises.

The key features are:

  • Advanced customization options, order processing, and inventory management, reporting, and analytics tools that help learn more about your audience, tax handling, and accounting
  • Catalog management for unlimited products with lots of product categories available
  • Possibility to adjust the platform according to your taste with enough coding skills

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

  • OsCommerce allows sellers to set up a store for free, and then extend and customize the experience however they choose.
  • The platform is considered a cost-effective solution.
  • OsCommerce can support several international stores thanks to multi-currency and multi-language features.

Disadvantages

  • Users report that the platform is sometimes prone to errors and often requires additional backend work.
  • There is no inbuilt way to protect the administration area of osCommerce with a password.
  • OsCommerce is not template-driven, so changing the look of the website is not easy.

Top brands using OsCommerce

BLUE CHIP MARKETING WORLDWIDE, LLC., Column Technologies, Inc., Vocantas, Inc., Social Security Administration, Bay-Bay Water LLC, New Directions Aromatics, Dynamic Racing Transmissions, NoGOV Shop, Neocarbon, Sirius Sunlight Glass Studio, Vigorous Innovations.

Pricing & Versions

OsCommerce is an open-source Ecommerce platform that you can download for free. You will need to find a hosting plan and pay a monthly or yearly cost for it. You will also need a domain name for your online store, install necessary third-party add-ons, provide security and maintenance.

Conclusion

osCommerce is a highly scalable CMS that has the necessary tools to build a robust online shop.

OsCommerce CMS comparison

Conclusion

There is a wide selection of Ecommerce platforms that can help start your online business. The main difference is always price and functions. Choose the one that can solve your business issues and allow you to grow.

Andrey Dubina
Partner With Us Looking for a partner to grow your business? We are the right company to bring your webstore to success. Talk to Andrey

4 Comments

  1. Thanks for the great information! With the advent of e-commerce, the buying process has become much easier by reducing time and costs. However, given the ever-growing needs of users and companies’ plans to expand their capabilities, it would be better to find alternative sales options, or at least adapt existing ones. Thus, it is important to apply the right technology in your ecommerce applications.

Post a new comment

BelVG Newsletter
Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.
Email *