10 best e-commerce platforms in 2024

Wix Business offers standard e-commerce functionality, including a marketing suite, dropshipping support and product reviews by KudoBuzz. Entrepreneurs can create a stunning store with scroll effects and animations. We chose Wix as the best e-commerce platform for site customization because of its advanced design features, hundreds of templates and intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

We appreciated the higher video upload limits of its Business plan, which allow web designers to add video to more pages than Squarespace permits. Wix Business also supports video and music streaming, ideal for creators wanting to sell digital or audio artwork.

In addition, Wix Core includes Wix Bookings and the Wix Fit platform. Both systems support online scheduling, payment and client management. These innovative services offer more client-focused tools than competitors.

Shift4Shop, formerly 3dcart, is a feature-rich e-commerce solution. It has hundreds of built-in tools for marketing, inventory, customer service and store management. Shift4Shop is the best e-commerce platform for retailers processing over $500 monthly because its lowest-tier plan is completely free.

Online stores with lower processing volumes will pay $29 monthly, which is more expensive than Weebly’s Professional package. However, Shift4Shop provides an expansive list of features, including many options not found with many competitors’ solutions, like a gift-wrapping module and auto-ship recurring orders.

The nearly unlimited choices may overwhelm beginners or shop owners looking for a quick setup. Shift4Shop also lacks the booking and scheduling tools offered by Wix.

Shopify is an all-in-one e-commerce platform. Aside from online store functionality, it has a content management system (CMS), inventory editor, order tracking and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Although Shopify Basic supports fewer collaborators or editors than other e-commerce solutions, it can automate many online retail and marketing tasks, making it the best e-commerce platform for solopreneurs.

Solo business owners can use Shopify Basic to message customers before they place an order or after they receive a delivery. Likewise, e-commerce workflows automate customer review requests and reordering for low-stock items. Shopify provides built-in tax liability and fraud monitoring tools, perfect for individuals without a department dedicated to tracking the particulars.

Some competitors (and Shopify’s Basic package) charge 2.9% per transaction. But, the Shopify subscription lowers this rate to 2.7% plus $0.30 for online transactions. Retailers with $10,000 in monthly sales could save $360 annually. The additional benefits of high-quality fraud detection and tax liability tracking can reduce risks for e-commerce merchants.

However, Shopify doesn’t have a free plan and the three-day free trial is shorter than Squarespace’s 14 days.

Weebly by Square is a beginner-friendly website builder and e-commerce platform. Its Performance package allows unlimited storage and products. It has a fast checkout option so your customers can order within seconds. Our user testing and evaluation of feedback revealed that Weebly earns high ratings for user-friendliness, making it the best e-commerce solution for quick setup and ease of use.

In our experience with the platform, we found Weebly’s installation and design process intuitive. In addition, the Performance subscription includes inventory management, unlimited storage and products, digital goods and a shipping calculator.

Aside from Shift4Shop (which requires retailers to process $500 monthly), competitors charge $14 to $89 more for an e-commerce subscription. We were pleased with Weebly Professional’s features, which include fast checkout, item badges and multiple coupon options. Its marketing tools (pop-up notifications, SEO tools and lead capture forms) are a nice bonus. We also liked that Weebly doesn’t limit storage as Wix does.

Although Weebly costs less than some rivals, retailers must use Square, Stripe or PayPal for payment processing. It also has fewer online store templates than Squarespace.

Ecwid by Lightspeed offers e-commerce software with centralized order management and inventory. The Business package includes dimensional shipping rates and scheduled order pickup, making it a great choice for online-only or brick-and-mortar stores.

However, we chose Ecwid as the best e-commerce platform for upgrading an existing website because you can copy and paste a few lines of code to turn a standard site into an online store.

We were impressed with Ecwid’s flexibility. Retailers can add single product cards, an entire store or buy buttons to a blog, website builder or custom site. It works with many popular platforms and content management systems (CMSs), including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Blogger.

Ecwid by Lightspeed’s Unlimited plan enables a brick-and-mortar store to add e-commerce capabilities to an existing website without product or staff account limitations. It works with your current payment processor, helps you automate nearly everything and integrates with point of sale (POS) systems.

Regardless of your store’s size, any number of team members can manage inventory, view customer notifications or handle marketing. We appreciate Ecwid’s scheduled order pickup and multilingual product catalog options. Moreover, the Unlimited package includes six hours of custom development support.

A great thing about WooCommerce is that, even in its lower-tier plan, it offers unlimited staff accounts. This can be good for businesses that need multiple employees on the e-commerce platform. The website builder also doesn’t require coding skills, which means it will be much easier to train your staff on.

WooCommerce offers two plans: Essential and Performance. Essential is $39 per month (or $25 per month when billed annually) and comes with many features, including built-in payment processing, automated tax calculation, automated site backups, hosting from WordPress.com and a mobile app to manage your store.

The Performance plan is $70 per month and adds discounted shipping rates, customizable product kits, 200 GB of storage, abandoned cart recovery and event-based email marketing.

Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder and e-commerce platform with professional templates and marketing tools. It provides unlimited bandwidth and storage. The Squarespace Commerce Advanced package has sophisticated merchandising features, including free shipping options and special promotions.

Its partnership with Printful makes Squarespace Commerce Advanced the best e-commerce platform for selling custom merchandise. Printful’s print-on-demand service doesn’t require any upfront payment. You create the design and Printful oversees production, fulfillment and shipping. The artificial intelligence (AI) features help write product descriptions, whereas you can organize shopping pages quickly with the drag-and-drop sorting tool.

However, Weebly offers a less expensive subscription without the Printful integration, and Ecwid allows retailers to add e-commerce functionality to an existing site. Likewise, Squarespace’s 30-minute cap on video storage is restrictive compared to 10 hours with Wix Business.

OpenCart partners with PayPal to allow you to offer a lot of payment options to potential customers. It also has an easy setup, according to OpenCart, through PayPal’s onboarding. This can be beneficial to businesses that already use PayPal for business transactions. However, it might be better for more established businesses, as plans are a bit expensive.

OpenCart offers a seven-day free trial. After that, you will need to choose one of its plans: Bronze for $59 per month, Silver for $99 per month or Gold for $199 per month. The company doesn’t distinguish what each plan offers but claims that Bronze is better for small stores and Gold is better for enterprises.

Square Online offers many e-commerce features, along with orders and fulfillment features, with its free plan. You can sell on social media, order with Google, manage multiple websites, offer in-store and curbside pickup and print shipping labels. You can also receive shipping rate discounts.

Square Online offers many shipping features for online businesses, like in-house delivery and on-demand delivery. If you upgrade to the company’s middle-tier plan, you can take advantage of pre-orders, text alerts for orders, item quantity limits and QR code ordering. 

However, if you want 24/7 customer service, you will have to pay $79 per month for the company’s Premium plan. The other plans offer phone and live chat support options from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT, Monday through Friday. Also, if you need professional branding to remove any Square branding, you will have to pay at least $29 per month for the middle-tier plan.

BigCommerce is best for businesses that need help with marketing and SEO. The platform has a built-in metadata and allows you to customize robots.txt files, which makes it easier for search engines to know what pages to index. You can also customize your URL, which gives you the ability to shorten URLs when developing SEO strategy.

The company also gives you access to reporting features on all of its plans, has unlimited staff accounts, has integrations with marketplaces and social media accounts, a mobile app and real-time shipping.

However, BigCommerce doesn’t have any free plans. Its Standard plan is $39 per month with plans going all the way up to $399 per month. This can be expensive for businesses that don’t have a large budget for an e-commerce platform.