Although thinking about how to start an eCommerce business seems like a confusing idea, it doesn’t have to be so. 

According to Statista’s analysis, eCommerce Business stores have been on the rise since 2014. Along with a rise in the no. of eCommerce business stores, we also see a huge increase in revenue as well. 

eCommerce is one of the fastest-growing industries and anyone like you can make sustained profits. But, the condition is – you need the right knowledge and training. Today, I’m gonna give both. So, follow me amigos! 

How Much Does It Cost to Start An eCommerce Business?

Okay, open your notebooks or create an Excel sheet. It’s high time to assess the total amount of startup money you need. And yes, don’t forget the calculator! 

eCommerce Website Builders & Online Tools

Depending on your business needs, the costs vary across the spectrum. A basic eCommerce store will be priced around the range of $25 and go all the way up to $299 per month. 

But listen, you don’t need all these heavily priced plans for your new store. Start small but start strategically as this would allow you to scale smartly. 

Here are some approximate monthly costs of popular eCommerce website builder: 

WordPress: $25 to $45

Shopify: $29 to $299

Wix: $17 to $35

Now you may ask me if there’s a free way out. Well, there’s one, but you will need to build your eCommerce website from scratch and then pay for hosting. But, coding and designing a website from scratch takes a huge amount of time and effort. And… As you know, time is money. So you can skip that free way  

Licensing And Permits to Start an eCommerce Business

This depends on your state laws and fees. Some states may have prices as low as $30 and some might have ultra-high fees for licensing and getting permits. 

Although most beginners don’t face a lot of fees, it doesn’t mean you should neglect it from your budget. I would recommend you keeping $100 aside for licensing and permits. 

Never let these fees discourage you as these costs are always an initial investment. 

Domain Name And Hosting

When you build your eCommerce website using the popular eCommerce website builders, you get the domain name and hosting included in the package for your first year. However, in the subsequent years, you have to pay for the hosting and domain registration separately. 

The costs can range anywhere between $25 to $100, depending upon the type of features you require. 

Beginners don’t need to worry about the higher costs on the spectrum because the features with the basic plans are very useful and are priced reasonably.

Payment And Processing

Most eCommerce payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, and others will charge you with a transaction fee. Although I hate it too, still the simple logic here is that they need the fees to run their businesses, so it makes sense. 

With that being said, a general estimate would be around 2-3% of the total transaction. 

Here’s some info from Shopify: 

Marketing And Outreach

If you’re planning to be the all-in-one person (like me), your marketing and outreach will be absolutely free. But, I keep reminding myself that time is money, so you should outsource the graphics and editing. 

If I had to put a number on how much you should ideally invest in marketing and advertising your eCommerce store, it would be 5-8% of your annual revenue. For example, if I make $10,000 sales per year, I should invest around $500 to market and advertise my store.

Your expenditure depends on what you’re financially comfortable with. So, don’t find yourself compelled to invest several grands into your eCommerce business. If you don’t have adequate funds, you can always take the route of Dropshipping and experiment your way through while building funds. 

To learn more about how you can get started with Dropshipping, click here.

Now that we have a general idea about the costs related to starting your eCommerce store, let’s see how can we start an eCommerce store. 

Let’s follow a smart sequence. 

1. Let’s pick an eCommerce business model and do some product research. 

2. Once we end up doing the first step, we will craft a proper business plan, taking care of the permits and all that legal stuff. 

Don’t get overwhelmed by the steps. I’ve made the article as detailed as possible so that you don’t get confused. 

Step 1: Research On Various eCommerce Business Models

When it comes to eCommerce, there is a huge range of business models. However, it should not stop you from trying those. Let’s see the most popular and profitable business models applied in eCommerce: 

Service-based eCommerce 

Services basically involve selling your time or expertise rather than a physical product. And what qualifies for a service? Here’s a quick list: 

1. Professional services like SEO, copywriting, designing logos, accounting, photography, videography, animation, and any hobby. 
2. Art, dance, music, yoga, online workout, and other creative classes
3. Training, consulting, workshops and seminars

There are a lot of businesses that run on this model. For example, we have Coursera, MasterClass, EssayShark, MasterPaper, and much more. (Note that this article is not affiliated with any of these websites. These examples are for illustration purposes only.) 

Digital Product Sales

Whether it’s a music playlist, ebook sales, or anything that’s non-tangible and you want it, can be classified as a digital product. 

What I like the most about these digital products is the quantity multiplication. Yes, you don’t have to invest a lot for product creation. A couple of clicks can make you a million copies in no time. 

Easy isn’t it? Well, think again. Selling these digital products requires extensive effort because people are not looking for the products you’re selling. You have to first make them aware of your product and yourself, only then you can get a sale. 

Physical Products

Physical products form a considerable portion of goods sold through eCommerce websites. You can sell anything from subscription boxes to pretty pendants fairly easily. Besides, if you’re a homemaker and are looking to earn the extra cash to support your family’s finances, you can also set up a cooking or baking business and take orders from customers online in your nearby location. 

Along with this, you can also sell handmade goods, paintings, and custom gift boxes. The possibilities are endless!

Here’s a store that sells bookmarks for a luxurious reading experience. 

Here’s a store that sells goodies and eatables! 

Did you get all the business models? That’s great if you did, let’s just move to the next section. 

Step 2: Research for Winning Niches On eCommerce

Choosing a product that you want to sell isn’t as difficult as it seems. First, lookout for trends and see what’s selling the most. But hey, don’t forget to strike the right balance between passion and profit. 

For example, if I l run an online toy store for kids, I will expect to make sales every day or every week at least. 

However, if I sell exclusive paintings in my store, I can’t expect people to make purchases every day. I can generate decent monthly revenue, selling 2-3 expensive and exotic paintings. This is the key concept that you should keep in mind before choosing your product. 

Let’s see other smart factors that would drive your decision-making. 

Solve People’s Problems

No, I am not asking you to start the next NGO. You can release products or services that solve people’s problems. For example, let’ say I would like to eat healthy food, but my job doesn’t provide me with enough time to make my own lunches. 

So what I can do is purchase a monthly subscription from a service that offers healthy meal boxes. And tada! My problem is solved. 

As long as there are problems or requirements that people need to solve or fulfill, any business can succeed, provided it knows how to solve the problem. 

Find Product Ideas in Reviews

During the pandemic, masks were easily customizable and came in all shapes and sizes, except for one. Can you guess the exception?

The reviews section on Amazon was filled with comments about how these masks are not at all useful for those who maintain long beards. 

This is how a smart seller leveraged the opportunity and provided people right with what they needed. 

The key takeaway is that you should keep an eye on comments and reviews to find products that people need. 

Although the products can be restricted to a particular niche, they would sell a lot because people are looking for something like that. 

Best Sellers

In any niche, best-selling items allow you to see what exactly customers demand. It’s easy to locate the best-selling items on most platforms. For example, Amazon has the ‘Best Sellers Rank’ and allows you to see which product performs best. 

eBay has a similar feature called ‘Trending,’ and in Etsy, it’s called Most wanted or Best Selling Item. 

Test it Before You Mess it

In the business world, the simple way to test a product is by making a prototype. Now, what is a prototype? Basically, it’s a simple water-down version of your original product and idea. 

For example, if you already have an idea but don’t want to invest heavily. You can test whether your idea will succeed by building a small landing page to promote your potential product and run a few ads or do some marketing to drive traffic to it.

This will give you a general idea about how your market will respond to your product. 

Step 3: Set up your eCommerce Business

This has to be the most exciting part of starting an eCommerce business. It brings in a range of decisions to make, like choosing what your store should look like, what should you name it, how should you connect with your audience, and much more. 

Have A Great Brand Name

There are 2 key points that you should consider for setting a name for your business: 

1. The name should reflect what you’re trying to sell. 
2. It should either make sense to the audience or it should be unique and memorable. 

Don’t get overfocused on creating a memorable name. Yes, a few brand names sound like honey to the ears but that shouldn’t stop you from naming your store on something you admire. 

Also, note that your website name is very likely to be your domain name. So, before you finalize a name, check the availability of your domain here.

Add in a name that you like in the form of a website. For example www.realisticbooks.com    

And it’s available! 

You can do the same with the name of your choice. 

Create A Logo 

Your business logo makes people feel connected with your brand. You don’t really need to spend a lot on getting your logo done professionally. Most market prices range from $15 to $50, depending on the level of expertise you require. 

Sometimes, the prices may go higher depending on which agency or graphic designer you hire. 

I personally prefer Looka because I don’t have to go through the hassle of designing the entire logo and can easily mix & match elements to make my logo. 

Looka

You can also check out: 

NameCheap’s Logo Maker

Hatchful by Shopify

Design Your Store

With so many eCommerce website builders, you can pick the one that suits your needs. Here’s a guide to picking which eCommerce website builder will be the best for you, depending upon your business needs. (Link the How to Build eCommerce Websites – Best Methods in 2021 article here) 

Prepare Promotional Content

Before you launch, try to build a social media presence that keeps your followers updated with your business’s purpose. 

You can use picture editors like Canva, Adobe Spark, Pablo, Snappa, and many more. Visuals attract potential customers. In that case, make sure to use them wisely and beautifully. 

Step 4: Apply for An EIN, Business Permit & Licenses

Employer Identification Number (EIN)

When you have completed the above steps, you can register for an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Every online business doesn’t need to have one. The key benefit of an EIN is that it allows you to separate your personal and professional finances. 

You can apply for an EIN for free with the IRS using online, mail, fax, or phone methods. Using the online method, you can easily receive the nine-digit EIN right from the comfort of your home. 

Obtaining Business Permits and License 

Now that you have a business permit, you can easily apply for business permits and licenses. The purpose behind obtaining permits and licenses is that you can operate legally within your state. 

Unless you’re filing a DBA to operate under a specific business name legally, you don’t actually need to register your business with the state to establish your eCommerce business as a sole proprietorship or general partnership. 

However, for the other business entity types, you will need to register with your state and receive a general operating license. 

Generally, most eCommerce businesses are home-based, they don’t require as many business licenses and permits as brick-and-mortar stores. To always be on the safer side, you should determine the specific requirements in your area. It’s pretty easy to find them using your state or local government website. The Internet saves you well from such troubles these days.

Even I had a similar question as yours when it comes to “Why on Earth should I register a business that I run in my own home?”

More than a few governments are corrupt across the globe. Anything might happen, so why give anyone a chance to say something? 

So here’s a small list of business licenses and permits that you may need depending upon your business:

• Trade and professional licenses for certain businesses
• Sales tax permits
• Signage permits
• Health, safety, and environmental permits

Step 5: Preparing to Launch Your eCommerce Business

Yay! Now you’ve done around 75% percent of the work, just a little push is required to launch your business. 

Shipping

Your Shipping Rates

Are you going to make your customers carry the full shipping cost or will you offer free or flat-rate shipping to reduce the cost? How will you get orders to your local and international customers? 

If I were you, I would increase the price and give the free shipping. 

Product Weights

Please measure and update the weight of each product you sell. This saves you from the last-minute hassle of weighing everything. You may not know this but if you don’t pay attention to this, you may end up paying an extra $$. 

Choose Your Preferred Packaging

You can order free packaging from some carriers such as USPS, UPS, or DHL or invest in branded packaging. In short, do what suits your business. 

Note: Communicating shipping speeds (as in “Arrives at your doorstep in 4 days) at checkout to your customers can help provide clarity to your clients and does wonders to increase consumer confidence.

Deal with Returns

You might offer the best, sweetest, and the loveliest product in this big wide world. Somehow, an odd customer will pop up out of nowhere, asking for a return. This isn’t to discredit the most valid reasons like damaged products, wrong shipments, and more! 

So, you should be prepared to deal with returns. 

You can do this by: 

1. Offering exact cost pricing for returns
2. FREE returns
3. Flat-rate returns

We love receiving free returns as customers but things go south when it comes to giving free returns as business owners. Well, did I say that you should offer free returns just because people like so? 

Perhaps no. If you repeatedly offer free returns, some (a few like these always exist) buyers may try to use this incentive for unfair practices and return goods that are perfectly okay.  So, always create policies that are fair to both the buyers aswell as you.

Install An Analytics Tool

Analytics are not just for highly complex operations. You should make data your best friend as that would help you draw up a nice future plan. 

Most eCommerce stores will have their own set of analytics reporting built-in so that you can easily track a lot of key metrics. 

Step 6: Post Launch Process You Should Engage In

You’ve done all the hard work in the world now. Don’t slack off at this crucial moment. Just a little consistency and a little bit of advertising and brand engagement can go a long way. 

Promote Your Store on Social Media Platforms

Let’s dive straight into my top 3 tips that can put your brand out in the spotlight for sales: 

Tip 1: Consider offering a discount code to attract people to check your store out and make purchases.

Tip 2: Put effort into the content that you post on your social media platforms. Don’t spam your social media followers with repetitive and low-quality promotional content. 

Tip 3: Every action you take online has the potential to drive traffic back to your store. Don’t forget to add your store URL to your personal online profiles, such as your Instagram stories, Twitter bio, or Facebook status update. 

Wanna Know How to Start an eCommerce Business? – Have These things in Mind!

1. A high bounce rate (visitors that come to your site and leave without buying) may mean that your page took too long to load, or maybe you had targeted the wrong audience.

2. Visitors don’t usually make purchases when they just don’t trust your store enough to buy or if you have targeted the wrong audience. 

3. Abandoned carts during checkout mean you probably need to reconsider your shipping. 

A Few More Things You Can Do to Enhance Your Sales & Get More Customers: 

1. Write and submit a guest post. Share your expertise about a topic and use the author bio box to describe & link your business.

2. Ask for product reviews using sites like TrustPilot or by adding a plugin in your own eCommerce store. 

3. Give your product to a blogger or influencers for free so that they can give a shoutout in return. 

Winning Tips on How to Start an eCommerce Business Successfully

So, let’s play a simple game. I’ll show you a few pictures related to my top tips, you guess the answer, and then I’ll reveal whether your answer is right. 

After all, why should starting an eCommerce business be boring and scary? We can always make the things we do a little bit more fun by adding our own sparkle! 

Tip 1: Hint – We Can Help You Create Brand Name

Yes, you’re right! It’s social media engagement. 

Millennials and Gen Z-ers spend most of their time tweeting, texting, and tagging. In all this social activity, you can easily slide in promotional content about your store and engage your followers. Also, make sure you increase your activity right before a festival because that is when people buy gifts for their friends and loved ones. 

Tip 2: Hint – I Am the Foundation of Any Online Business

The answer is – Building Trust.

You need to build trust between your brand and your customers to retain your business over time. People usually trust their intuition while buying something, so if your brand can generate trust (in terms of a credible-looking website and a good social presence), your sales will grow well. 

Final Tip: Here is Your Best Business Friend 

Yes! It’s data and analysis. 

Just like in any business, you must back your eCommerce store with facts and data. You need to know your customers, their demographics, what things they are buying from your store, and what things they are not. This will not only enhance your business skills but also make you capable of making decisions when the time calls for it. 

Ready to Start an eCommerce Business?

There’s a lot of planning, insight, and execution for starting your own eCommerce store. 

And that is the fun part about it! As long as you follow these tips, tricks, and insider insights listed, you can definitely set up your perfect eCommerce store. 

Your next big success might be just an eCommerce store away. Your eCommerce store can only become successful if you decide to make it a successful one. So, push your doubts aside, follow the steps and let’s get started!

When it comes to Magento vs Shopify comparison, things go nothing but complex. Read ahead so that you can equip yourself with some solid points. 

Without ingredients, you can’t make a recipe. Similarly, without knowing about these two, you can’t get to a conclusion. 

Today we’re gonna discuss both platform’s features, pricing, and what makes one different from the other. Sounds pleasing enough? Yes, it is.. So without any further ado, let’s get started. 

Magento vs Shopify – Which is More Powerful?

Shopify Overview 

When you’re looking for an eCommerce platform, it’s all rainbows and butterflies with Shopify as it’s pretty straightforward to use and it offers 24/7 customer service. 

They’re always ready to answer, even when you mess up with your store at 3 a.m. More importantly, it has a bunch of integrations that make it super powerful for eCommerce. 

Point of Sale 

Point of Sale simply means it’s an app or software that tracks your inventory when you’re gonna set up an in-person or a physical store. Besides, it can also be installed for a physical store that you currently own. 

Shopify POS syncs with Shopify to track your orders and inventory for all of your active sales channels, retail locations, and online stores. 

Easy Sales Analysis

You don’t have to hire a data analyst for your website’s performance analysis. With Shopify, it’s easy to analyze sales, traffic, purchase rates, and customer demographics. Not only this, if you integrate to advanced apps like Profiteer, HIT analytics, Xporter, etc, you will get more detailed reports. 

Supports Different Languages & Currencies 

The world is a global village. In that case, let your products fly far and wide with Shopify as it makes this possible by adding multi-currency and web interface translation options.

Magento Overview

Magento is definitely one of the intuitive and robust eCommerce platforms on the market. The fun fact is – most people don’t know that Magneto is an open-source platform with a solid community. Along with this, it offers a huge range of powerful tools for building, marketing, and managing your online store. 

Engage Your Audience

It comes with advanced customer engagement tools like Multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts and Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) to organize your selling activity.

Generate Sales By Strategizing

The platform can generate flexible coupons and modify to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories. 

Magento vs Shopify Comparison 

Benefits of Shopify

1. Quick and intuitive store setup that makes it easy to launch your eCommerce store

2. 24/7 customer support and technical assist 

3. A mobile responsive storefront includes a built-in mobile eCommerce shopping cart that increases your sales

4. No web hosting or server maintenance charges because Shopify takes care of it 

Did you know Shopify has an inbuilt payment gateway that charges 0% transaction fees?  

Benefits of Magento

1. Guest checkout enables visitors to purchase a product without the hassle of registration quickly

2. A friendly and seller-supportive open source community 

3. Magento permits shipping to multiple addresses in one order

4. Authorized payment gateways and  integration with Authorize.net 

5. Gives you the ability to alter the  price of the specific product depending upon the group of customers

Shopify Advantages Over Magento

Basic Setup 

When it comes to Magento, the learning curve is pretty steep compared to Shopify. You will have to interpret the jargon and use code to build the online store you want. At some point, you might feel the need for hiring a developer.

Whereas Shopify’s easy customization saves you time and peace of mind. So you can tune in to your favorite song, open your browser, and start customizing your store. 

Beginner’s Sales Tools

Magento’s overall extensions cost installation for sales can get a little bit more pricey and a lot harsher on your pocket. In addition, it relies on its marketplace to enable extra features for your store. 

Being an all-in-one seller, SEO expert, marketer, and designer can be a tiring task. Why don’t you let Shopify carry some tracking and analyzing sales while putting your energy into the business you do? 

It has features like Abandoned cart recovery, which pings your customers that they’ve left a great product in their carts without purchasing it. And speaking of carts, its Multi-channel selling (selling on Facebook, Insta, and more) makes your sales journey a lot easier. 

Web Hosting 

When it comes to web hosting, Magento expects you to be an expert which is time-consuming. With Magento,  you should arrange your own hosting, install, setup, and configure everything before you can actually start your store. 

With Shopify, you can go straight to the customization as it itself hosts your Shopify store.

Read more about Shopify plus vs regular Shopify packages here in order to get better comparison between Shopify packages and prgrams.

Magento Advantages Over Shopify

Advanced Customization

In Shopify, some elements can be modified. However, most features like the checkout process cannot be customized. 

Whereas Magento is versatile for advanced customization and provides integrations that allow for marketing automation systems, CRMs (Customer Relationship Management), and ERPs (Enterprise resource planning). Don’t let the lengthy terms confuse you because Magneto makes it easier for you. 

Open Source 

Shopify is not an open-source platform. It makes use of a proprietary coding language with limited developer support, and you’re pretty much on your own with the help center assistance. 

On the other hand, Magneto is more inclined towards giving assistance for customization and seems to have better developer support. In fact, Magento boasts having  “260,000 developers worldwide who are continually generating new innovations and functionality.”

B2B Friendly Builder

Shopify is usually made to attract visitors and customers (B2C business). They’re not much business-friendly for transactions and heavy operations.

Magento vs Shopify Pricing Comparison

How Much Does Shopify Cost?

There are 3 different plans for 3 different needs!

• Use Basic Shopify for getting started

• Standard Shopify for building a good customer base

• Advanced Shopify for businesses that have started achieving big volumes of orders. 

Additional Plans Offered By Shopify

Shopify Lite: It’s definitely worth investing in, especially when you run another blog or website. It allows you to pop that ‘Buy Now’ button for all of your products on different websites. Customers can quickly checkout in a few clicks and you can easily gain the extra eyes (a.k.a. visitors) for your fabulous store. 

Pricing: $9 per month

Shopify Plus: It’s not for most small businesses, and honestly, it’s not really required until you need highly complicated and advanced features for your Shopify store. 

Pricing:  $2000 per month 

How Much Does Magento Cost? 

Although Magneto is free to install, before you give me a big smile after reading the word FREE, let me pop that bubble and say that web hosting, extensions, and your domain is NOT FREE. 

If we calculate, it would cost anywhere between $10 to $100 per month to host your website on different domain providers. The variation in price exists because the services offered by multiple providers differ. 

Here are the monthly hosting packages offered by SiteGround, which is a well-known web hosting service and goes well with Magneto:  

• Startup: $6.99
• GrowBig: $9.99 
• GoGeek: $14.95 

There are costs associated with buying your own domain, which usually costs around $10-$20 per year. To buy a domain name, you can visit popular domain registrars such as Domain.com, Namecheap.com, and GoDaddy.com, to register your new domain.

Setting Up Shopify

Step 1: Register for Shopify

Step 2: Fill In the Details

After completing this step, wait for a few sections and that’s it. Now you will be able to access your brand new dashboard. 

Step 3: Add In Your Product Or Import Product 

If you’re selling your own products, you can manually add the products. If you’re a dropshipper, you have to import using Oberlo or Google Chrome extensions. 

Step 4: Customize How Your Store Looks! 

Step 5: Set Your Payment Methods

There are a wide range of payment options that you can set up with Shopify. Choose the one that fits well for you and your eCommerce business. 

Step 6: Set Shipping Rates

You can click on manage rates and set your rates accordingly. 

Congrats! You’re pretty much done with setting up the basics of your Shopify store. 

Setting Up Magento for eCommerce

To setup Magneto, you have to install it manually and such a process can be a little time-consuming. However, time-consumption is not an indicator of difficulty here, don’t worry it would be easy and I’ve simplified the steps for you: 

Step 1: Find a Web Server 

A web server is basically where you host your website on the internet. SiteGround is a great choice for setting up your Magento store because it offers free and automatic Magento installation. 

Step 2: Download Magento

Before you can install Magento on the server you just purchased, you need to download the Magento software onto your local computer. 

Let’s go to Magento’s download page. Here, you will see three different Magento installation options: Composer, Git, and Archive.

This tutorial will cover how you can set up the Archive version of Magento. Relatively, it’s easy to install and pretty beginner-friendly.  

Scroll down on the same Magento download page and you will find this ‘Archive’ section. Click on that download button. 

You don’t have an account and I know that too. So go ahead and create a new one. 

Fill in the details: 

After adding details, check your given email ID to see an email from Magento. Once you get it, click on ‘verify your email.’

After validating your email, you will be prompted to your dashboard :

Come back to the Magneto Download site and hit on the ‘download’ button again. 

This time, the file will be downloaded. 

Step 3: Create a Database

Magento installation needs a database on your web host. If you’re using SiteGround, follow these steps: 

1. Create a New MySQL Database: To do this, go to your hosting account’s control panel and find the database section. In the SiteGround control panel, you will find the database section under Site Tools > Site > MySQL. Now click the ‘Create Database’ button.

2. Create User Account: Once your database is ready, find the ‘Users’ tab. Click on ‘Create User.’ After this step, you will receive an automatically generated new username and password. 

3. Set User Permissions: For you to manage the database, the user permissions need to be set. First, click the ‘Add New Database’ button next to the new username. When the page opens, go ahead and choose the desired user privileges and click ‘Confirm.’

Step 4: Run Magento Installation

Once the database is created, run the Magento installation, go to the web browser and specify the URL of the Magento folder. After entering the URL, you will see something like this: 

After all of this, you will get a page like this where you need to click ‘start readiness check.’ 

If you’ve followed the previous steps right, you will see something like this. Yes, click on Next. 

Add Your Database Details Now. I hope you have saved it all, didn’t you? 

Take Care of the Magento Web Configuration

Add your Store Address, Magento Admin Address, Encryption Key type and any other thing that you see. And remember, under encryption Key, you can either use Magento generated-key or a custom one.

Now you can customize your store!

Add the details of your store, like its default time zone, default currency, and language. Don’t worry, you can change these values anytime. 

Create Admin Account

This page will allow you to create an Admin account to manage your store. Note down these credentials for your future reference because you will need them to access your Magento backend.

Install Magento

The favorite part after all the hard work! You’re ready for installation. Press that gorgeous ‘Install Now’ button to get ahead.

Yay, and we’re done! Now you will be able to access your dashboard. 

Here’s a quick summary of the Magento installation process: 

1. Get Your Server Ready: You can use SiteGround
2. Download Magento – Download the Magento software from its official website
3. Create a Database on Your Host
4. Unzip and Upload Magento – Upload the Magento files to your new database
5. Set Up Magento – Add in the details and customizations 
6. Install and Finish – Tada! 

Shopify Vs Magento – Who is the Winner? 

After analyzing the various features of the two eCommerce website builders, I’ve reached a conclusion for Shopify Vs Magento. Shopify is excellent for small businesses and beginners because of its intuitive, easy-to-set-up, and rich in-built features. 

Whereas Magento is targeted towards experienced eCommerce stores and established businesses, who have the budget and time to build an eCommerce store from pretty much scratch. Magento plays around with coding and designing, so if you’re ready to invest your time into setting up and going the DIY route, then Magento is your best bet. 

Both these features are amazing for businesses who have high aspirations and are looking to set up their perfect eCommerce store. Choose the platform that best suits your business needs and get started! 

With the rise in stay-at-home and work-from-home culture, there has been a great rise in the number of people who shop online. From buying groceries in one click to purchasing cutesy gifts for your loved ones, everything and anything can be bought online. 

According to KPMG, eCommerce stores have created a trillion global online shopping arena where millions of consumers no longer go shopping but literally are shopping — at every moment and everywhere.

This growth of eCommerce sales is also supported by facts and figures, which you can see right above. Now that eCommerce sales are growing rapidly, let’s see what are the best eCommerce platforms in the market that might help you in the long run. 

10 Best eCommerce Platforms in 2021 – Among the Good Ones! 

There might be hundreds of cake samples in a cake shop. However, you would order the cake that you think would taste well. The same applies to these best eCommerce platforms, except for the taste part haha. 

Let’s see the 10 best eCommerce platforms available in the market and what features make these platforms stand out. 

Shopify – One of the Best eCommerce Platforms for Scalability

Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake started Shopify selling snowboarding equipment online. Being dissatisfied with the options they had, they decided to establish Shopify in 2006. Currently, Tobias Lütke is its SEO and the headquarters is in Canada. 

Features of Shopify

1. Customize your Shopify store to match your product and brand image using templates, and customizable CSS & HTML.

2. Sell internationally on Shopify in multiple languages and currencies.

3. Easily analyze sales, traffic, purchase rates, and customer demographics via Shopify’s Sales Analytics.

4. Shopify comes with a 0 transaction fees platform called Shopify payments. 

5. Comes with a mobile app that allows you to track sales, inventory, and much more while you’re on the go.

6. Offers unlimited bandwidth and online storage so that your store can have the fastest browsing experience for your visitors. 

Pros of Shopify

1. Seamless integration of extensions
2. Customizable templates for stores
3. 70 payment gateways and custom domain name
4. Supports secure cart shopping along with discount codes and coupon generator 

Cons of Shopify

1. Comparatively, transaction charges are high 
2. Not easy to migrate your Shopify store to other platforms 

WooCommerce – Best User-Friendly Platform

WooCommerce is an eCommerce website builder plugin that was introduced in 2011. It’s a customizable and open-source plugin which works with WordPress. 

Features of WooCommerce

1. Embed products and enable checkout on any page for quicker sales with WooCommerce.

2. Set the right currency, language, and measurement units for your business.

3. Use WooCommerce to integrate eCommerce with WordPress for promotional content and a strong brand. 

4. Have unlimited products and admin profiles as WooCommerce is an open-source plugin. 

5. Built-in blogging features to engage your visitors so that you can turn them into customers. 

6. Add custom tags and categories to help customers find what they want. 

Pros of WooCommerce

1. Auto-detect the customer’s location to simplify shipping and make tax calculations simpler
2. Enable guest checkout for those customers who don’t want to register
3. Mobile app makes it easy to manage your store from anywhere 
4. Allow other team members to work on the store using admin logins 

Cons of WooCommerce

1. Plugin updates make it difficult for the store owner to keep the website up to date manually
2. Few integrations in WooCommerce are expensive and might exceed your budget

Wix- Best Drag and Drop Website Builder Platform

Wix is an Israeli based website building platform which was started in 2006. Currently, it’s led by Avishai Abrahami who offers a range of features like Wix Stores, Wix Bookings, Wix LogoMaker, and much more.

Features of Wix

1. Wix comes with an optimized mobile view that can be altered for mobile audiences.

2. Drag & Drop website editor makes it easier for beginners to get started.

3. Versatile in-built Image Editor with Text Editor and Free Fonts.

4. Enables you to attract repeated visitors and engage them with newsletters and blog posts.

5. Interact with visitors via live chat and create loyalty programs using Wix Ascend feature.

6. Lead generation gets easier as you can add customizable forms to collect contact details or to ask for product or store feedback.

Pros of Wix

1. Mobile-optimized website can build smoother interfaces for a mobile audience that drive more revenue 
2. In-built contact forms save your time and can generate leads easily
3. Convert visitors to members, allowing them to create personal accounts using their own login credentials
4. Wix Ascend Feature makes it easy for you to connect with customers at a deeper level 

 Cons of Wix

1. eCommerce stores can’t be migrated and you will have to build another eCommerce store from scratch, in case you wanna migrate to other platforms 
2.  Templates can’t be changed once you use one for your store. 

BigCommerce – Best Enterprise-friendly Platform 

BigCommerce was started in 2009 and its headquarters is in Texas. Being an established company, it has many deep roots. For now, you can see many expensive plans on BigCommerce. But, those are worth it considering the features we get. 

Features of BigCommerce

1. Ability to distinguish customer groups and target the most profitable audiences for the business.

2. Preview the website design before you choose it for your store.

3. Simplify the checkout with one-page and retain your customers with shopping cart recovery.

4. Supports payment options like  PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, etc. Besides, it won’t penalize or restrict you from using other third-party payment options.

5. Sellers that sign up for BigCommerce’s Plus plan can create automatic discounts for customers tied to customer groups. There wouldn’t be any need for third-party extensions.

6. BigCommerce grants you the ability to create default URLs (products, categories, and webpages) to improvise your store’s search rankings.

Pros of BigCommerce

1. Brings one of the fastest web browsing experiences for visitors as it uses Google Cloud Platform for hosting
2. Bulk pricing and product editing options to organize store inventory
3. Customize the user experience and enable customer interaction with impeccable plugins 
4. Unlimited staff accounts on any plan

Cons of BigCommerce

1. Not very beginner-friendly because its  pricing is higher than usual market prices
2. SEO options are limited on BigCommerce and you might need to hire a professional for your store

Squarespace – Best Customer Engagement Platform 

Squarespace was launched in 2004 and its headquarters is in New York. The company was established by Anthony Casalena and this guy is still running it. 

Features of Squarespace

1. Adding a customized announcement bar to engage your audience and attract their attention towards what’s hot on your store.

2. Promotional pop ups to promote best-selling items or to convey a message to store visitors.

3. Abandoned cart recovery and advanced funnel analytics for Commerce plans.

4. Squarespace provides you with the unique ability to create Custom Redirects from your store or social media handles.

5. If you provide services on your eCommerce store, you can benefit from Squarespace’s podcasting support that uses Audioblocks and iTunes tagging.

6. Efficient drag and drop feature that makes the designing easier. 

Pros of Squarespace

1. Automatically post promotional content on social media right from your Squarespace dashboard
2. Incredible live chat customer service that is always ready to answer your queries
3. Intuitive website interface and a range of templates to choose from
4. Can add a bunch of widgets from Squarespace extensions marketplace 

Cons of Squarespace

1. Lacks the depth of navigation for larger inventories 
2. The website takes quite a long time to load on the mobile interface

Magento – A Design Oriented Platform for eCommerce 

Magento positions itself as an open-source eCommerce store. It was initially released in 2008 and was acquired by Adobe Inc. in 2018. The biggest feature of Magento is – it’s programmer and designer-friendly.

Features of Magento 

1. Advanced customer engagement tools like Multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts and Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) to organize your selling activity.

2. Ability to generate flexible coupons with the ability to modify stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories.

3. Provides the ability to edit meta-information for products, categories, and content pages.

4. SSL security support for orders on front as well as back end.

5. Gifting options during checkout for customers.

6. Comprehensive features allow us to add unlimited addresses and wish lists with comments.

Pros of Magento

1. Set tax rates per location, product type, or customer group easily
2. Allows guest checkout and also permits shipping to multiple addresses in one order
3. Integration with multiple PayPal gateways and Authorize.net 
4. Contact Us form to generate more customers and create & edit orders from the admin panel

Cons of Magento

1. Customization is a little difficult because of Magento’s slow loading time
2. If you’re a startup, you might have to pay a little higher for technical experts to set your Magento store because it’s not as easy compared to other eCommerce website builders 

Shift4Shop – Best Customer Engagement Platform 

Shift4Shop was known as 3DCart before November 2020. To look back into Shift4shop’s history, we learn that it was founded back in 1997 and was headquartered in Florida. In today’s marketing era, it’s known for its point of sale retail stores. 

Features of Shift4Shop

1. It offers integration with Amazon, Quickbooks, eBay, and many more eCommerce giants.

2. Customers can have a safe checkout without worrying about any compromise on sensitive customer data.

3. Streamline your workflow using the Quick Edit Tab and make instant changes without navigating through your dashboard.

4. It makes dropshipping easy, allowing you to automatically email a supplier when you receive a new order.

5. In-built GDPR Toolkit makes your store GDPR compliant and good enough for customer privacy.

Pros of Shift4Shop

1. Built-in affiliate program allows your store to spend less time strategizing and more time doing
2. Display unlimited products and get unlimited bandwidth for certain paid packages 
3. Integrate all feedback and review systems at one-stop 
4. Visitor IP restriction to prevent fraudulent activity or to enable geolocation restrictions

Cons of Shift4Shop

1. The interface is not very intuitive and it has a steep learning curve for beginners
2. It’s not up-to-date with the customizable templates that are used for eCommerce websites in 2021 
3. Although the platform is free of any transaction cost, you have to pay for the transaction costs of the payment providers.

OpenCart- Best Payment Security eCommerce Platform

OpenCart was officially launched in 1999 and it’s an open-source platform, which is well known for its anti-fraud security mechanisms and ensures customer data security during checkout. 

Features of OpenCart

1. Despite being open-source, it has free dedicated community support and also has a paid service that guarantees fixes for any concern that may arise. 

2. Most add-ons on OpenCart are free of cost. Who doesn’t like freebies?

3. The interface is quite simple and intuitive for beginners.

4. OpenCart has a huge marketplace of themes, plugins, and gateways to enhance your storefront.

5. Offers backup, restores tools, and printable invoices so that your store data can always stay secured.

6. Easier store management with advanced user privileges and separate access for users.

Pros of OpenCart

1. Complete reports and metrics regarding business performance and visitor habits
2. A large number of themes to improvise store experience for shoppers
3. Supports most payment gateways and offers quick checkouts

Cons of OpenCart

1. Some add-ons might be incompatible with another, causing you some trouble while starting your eCommerce store 
2. Since it runs on an SQL database, it might get difficult to import your inventory list without going for the premium package

Ecwid – Best Seller-friendly Platform 

Ecwid was started in 2009 by Russian Entrepreneur Ruslan Fazlvey. The best part about Ecwid is its free forever plan which allows beginners to pay 0 fees until they need to buy advanced features. 

Features of Ecwid 

1. No need to abandon your existing site, whether it’s on WordPress, Wix, or anywhere, it can be added anywhere! 

2. The free forever package is an attractive deal for beginners who wish to test the waters before running a fully-fledged website.

3. 0 transaction fees saves you the extra costs whenever a customer purchases something. But please note, this fee is different from the one that payment providers charge. 

4. Sell your products on Facebook and Instagram in a few clicks to increase your sales.

5. Automatic language detection for your international customers.

6. Ecwid provides a POS functionality that allows users to accept online product payments in physical stores. 

Pros of Ecwid 

1. One-tap checkout with Apple Pay
2. Integrate Ecwid with any existing website without ever worrying about site migration 
3. Budget-friendly paid packages
4. Customer service is beginner-friendly and offers detailed answers to platform-related queries

Cons of Ecwid 

1. Customization can get a little expensive and the templates are limited 
2. Not easy to customize URLs of the products 

Volusion- Best Easy-to-Maintain Platform 

Volusion is an eCommerce solution that was first started in 1999. Its headquarters is in Texas and offers a range of products in the eCommerce industry like Shopping Cart Software, Search Engine Marketing, Custom Website Design, Credit Card Processing, etc. 

Features of Volusion

1. With an in-built Barcode Generator, you can create custom barcodes for your products.

2. Allow or deny certain traffic to your site with customizable firewall settings.

3. Expand your eCommerce store to Facebook, eBay, Amazon and customize your Facebook store right from your Volusion dashboard. 

4. Make your product descriptions detailed by adding subcategories and uploading product images for those subcategories.

5. It offers an in-built homepage slideshow to feature your top products and discounts.

6. Specify shipping types, offer special discounts, and set overall shipping rates.

Pros of Volusion

1. Simple and intuitive instructions to help eCommerce  beginners get started
2. Allows Subscription or Recurring Payments for regular customers
3. The page load time is less and has inbuilt functions to promote the visibility of your store
4. Deals of the day feature automatically update the products that are best-selling in your store

Cons of Volusion

1. The site search function is pretty unhelpful
2. Lack of themes and drag & drop feature makes it less customizable 

The Best eCommerce Platform in 2021 – Let’s Do the Rating! 

Which eCommerce Platform is the Best One for You? 

After assessing a host of eCommerce platforms, the best ones for building your eCommerce store have to be Shopify and WooCommerce. 

Shopify provides an ever ranging list of features with such analytics tools that enable you to make data-driven business decisions. 

On the other hand, WooCommerce is an incredible platform for those who want to do blogging on their store. As you know, when it comes to blogging, nothing can compete with WordPress. 

Anyway, these 2 are great but we shouldn’t underestimate others. What you should pick totally depends on your needs

When it comes to building the best eCommerce website for your business, we understand that you are faced with an overwhelming range of choices. Not only this, I get that a lot of choices can actually make the decision confusing and tiring for you.

To make your decision simpler, we have analyzed a range of eCommerce website builders and poured all our insight and personal experience here. So, let’s just look at the 5 best eCommerce website builders that you can use in 2021 to build your perfect eCommerce store and boost your sales. 

Time to Build An eCommerce Website with the Almighty Shopify

Shopify is a lifeline for those online sellers who wish to build their own eCommerce stores. It allows you to customize your store just the way you want it to look. You can tweak how your store looks to suit your personality, your customer’s preference, or both! 

For example, you can make the shop more elegant with the help of stunning graphics that come with it. 

Or, you can experiment with pretty and loud colors that can reflect a sentiment: 

(Note that this article uses these stores as a reference only. This article is in no way affiliated with the illustrated stores) 

Do you want to see what makes Shopify stand out? Alright, here we go! 

Features of Shopify eCommerce Website Builder

Shopify Store Can Be Completely Customized to Reflect Your Brand Image

In simple words, you can DIY your way, setting up a store the way you want it to look.  

Supports Different Languages And Currencies 

The world is a global village. In that case, your store shouldn’t be restricted to just one country and language. 

Here’s just a quick demo on how to make a Shopify store multilingual: 

Customizable CSS And HTML 

Want to awaken the designer and coder within you? Shopify got you covered with a bunch of features. Go ahead, edit, design, and customize your eCommerce store using the Template Editor, which you can find right in the Shopify administration area.

Auto Calculate Shipping Prices for Each Customer

Adding shipping costs for each customer is a daunting task. On Shopify, you don’t have to deal with such problems as it can automatically calculate the shipping cost for you. 

Create Discount Codes Automatically

Gone were the days when you had to sit with Excel sheets to track discounts codes for each customer. With Shopify, you can easily create different kinds of discounts and it will do the tracking for you. 

Sales Analysis 

Shopify tracks your sales and visits to the store so that you can have a greater insight into your store’s performance. 

In addition to this, it also generates reports so that you can get into that ‘ultra-analysis’ mode and make data-driven decisions. 

Although these features look complex to grasp, don’t worry as these exist to ease up your work. 

Just because these Shopify features make eCommerce website creation absolutely simple, let’s see what payment plans Shopify provides. 

Shopify eCommerce Website Builder Pricing

The Shopify eCommerce builder comes with 3 different plans to meet your eCommerce needs: Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. Please note this, the stated prices are in US Dollars and are not inclusive of state taxes.

Basic Shopify

The basic package is pretty much amazing for people who are just getting started with their online business. If you have just started out, there’s no need to overspend on Advanced plans unless you build a strong customer base. 

Cost:  $29 per Month 

Shopify Standard Plan

This plan is made for sellers who have been selling online for quite a while now and have an international presence.

Cost:  $79 per Month 

Advanced Shopify

This plan is for those eCommerce sellers who would like to expand their business to a large audience and already have a strong customer base. 

Cost:  $299/Month 

Additional Plans Offered by Shopify

Shopify Plus

This plan is an expensive one, which would cost you $2000 per month. It’s not really required until you need complicated advanced features. So, don’t go for it until you have a huge revenue already. 

Undoubtedly, we can say that Shopify Plus is mainly for high revenue-generating businesses to integrate large and personalized tools.

Shopify Lite 

I personally vouch for ‘Shopify Lite’ because it allows you to pop that ‘Buy Now’ button for all your products on different websites. Whether you run a fashion blog or you post a back-to-school article, you can easily link your products and let your customers purchase your product in a few clicks. 

Plus, it comes at a super cheap price of $9 per month. 

Pros and Cons of Shopify

Pros

1. Simple and Intuitive Interface: Simply setup an attractive store without any hassle of coding or designing the entire layout. 

2. Appstore: Just when you thought Shopify couldn’t get more customizable, I am here to tell you that it has over a thousand apps that can let you automate and improvise your eCommerce store’s overall outlook.

3. Completely hosted by Shopify: There’s no need to grind extra for domains or registering an SSL certificate because you will get it all from Shopify. 

Cons

1. Advanced features come at a higher price: The advanced Shopify package may be a little heavy on our pockets. However, with a little bit of analysis and insight, you can easily overcome the costs and see this price as an investment for your eCommerce store. But really, don’t go for overpriced packages until you need them for your business expansion. 

All in all, Shopify is an amazing eCommerce store builder for those who are getting started with their online businesses. The ease of customization and setting up makes it a great platform for any startup. 

Try WooCommerce to Build eCommerce Websites

Before we get into what WooCommerce can do, let me tell you that it’s a plugin that only works on WordPress. 

Yes, it’s nothing but an eCommerce website builder plugin that is customizable and open-source. More importantly, it’s built on WordPress and comes with a bunch of features for FREE.  

Features of WooCommerce 

1. Ease of Payment: WooCommerce accepts all major credit cards, bank transfers, checks, and cash on delivery. Apart from that, it also supports 140 region-specific payment gateways, including Stripe, Google Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and Apple Pay.

2. Mobile App: WooCommerce comes with an iOS and Android mobile app that enables store managers to update products and fulfill orders.

3. Customizable Interface Using Extensions: The platform’s marketplace is loaded with hundreds of free and paid extensions that add multiple features and functionality to your store.

It’s super easy to get started with building a WordPress website. In case you already own a WordPress website, WooCommerce would work like a charm for you. 

With WooCommerce, you can avoid the extra effort that goes into the setting and establishing a store, integrating it to your personal or professional website. All you have to do is approve WooCommerce to integrate with your WordPress website like this: 

After answering a few questions, you will be prompted to this page: 

Being a new member, you can choose the Get WooCommerce pre-installed option so that you can build your eCommerce website from scratch. 

Choose the Auto Install option if you already have a WordPress site. 

Note: You should have an upgraded Business or eCommerce plan on your existing WordPress website to use this Auto Install feature. 

Go for the DIY route only if you consider yourself as a well-experienced person who has no problems with coding. 

WooCommerce Pricing

As I told earlier, WooCommerce is pretty affordable and definitely doesn’t burn a huge hole in your pocket. However, what I have not told you so far is this – when it comes to register for a Business or eCommerce package on WordPress, it takes a different cost. 

Cost of WordPress packages: 

Plus, if you go for additional feature upgrades in WooCommerce, the costs would quickly add up. 

Pros and Cons of WooCommerce

Pros

1. It’s free to use it as long as you don’t think about upgrading
2. Amazing accessibility when you already own a WordPress site

 Cons

1. Plugin updates are annoying for almost all WooCommerce users because it’s time-consuming
2. The hidden costs of purchasing the eCommerce or Business package on WordPress + the costs for installing additional extensions. 

My take on WooCommerce is – it’s a pretty good eCommerce website builder for those who already own a WordPress website. 

Wix eCommerce Website Builder

You might have tolerated so many Wix ads popping while watching your favorite vlogs on YouTube. The ads might have been annoying, but Wix is a versatile platform for sure. 

Features of Wix

Storefront And eCommerce Website

It has over 500 Professional Templates that allow you to tailor every aspect of your site like a storefront. Besides, you can make your own customized cart for your customers.

Multichannel Sales 

You can sell your products on Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, eBay from a single dashboard. So we can say, Wix is the ultimate time-saver. 

Express Checkout

Express Checkout feature enables customers to purchase your products faster by directing them straight towards the checkout process. 

Customer Profiles

Wix analyzes the customer profiles and habits based on your customers’ order history, shopping habits, and contact information. This feature lets you build an idea about what kind of target audience you would like for your brand. 

How Much Does Wix Cost?

Wix comes with 3 different plans. My top tip for eCommerce beginners would be – always start with the Basic plan because it will allow you to understand the eCommerce playing field without emptying your wallet.

Pros and Cons of Wix eCommerce Builder

Pros

1. A huge template collection to choose from.
2. Intuitive interface that allows you to drag and drop elements.
3. Marketing and designing your website becomes absolutely easy.

Cons

1. The eCommerce site isn’t transferable. In simple words, if you wish to take your store away from Wix, you have to build it all over again on another platform. 
2. Once you choose a template, you get stuck with it. Uh oh. 

Choose Wix if you would like to have the breadth of functions and the ease of making your eCommerce website. 

Squarespace Makes eCommerce Website Development Easy

Squarespace has been around in the eCommerce website building for quite a long time. It’s best known for adapting to market needs and introduces extensions & integrations that enhance the overall experience of its users. 

Features of Squarespace

Enhance Brand Engagement with Simultaneous Posting and Unfold App

Squarespace allows you to auto-post your content to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Tumblr. All post entries and images are optimized and tagged automatically so that you can stay stress-free. 

Unfold App is a Squarespace feature that grants access to basic template collections and editing tools, including standard fonts, filters, stickers, and more. These features help you engage with your audience through your brand.

Analyze Your Store Performance

As you can see, it provides a comprehensive insight into your traffic, visitor demographics, and sales. You can track your visits, unique visitors, pageviews count, growth, and loss over time. 

This feature also tracks how key performance metrics, such as Revenue, Units Sold, Orders, Visits, Conversion Rate, Average Order Volume, and Revenue Per Visit change over time. 

SquareSpace Extensions

Squarespace has a large variety of useful extensions that improve your eCommerce store. For example, it has extensions that handle the financial aspects of selling online. These extensions reconcile sales transactions and manage accounting. 

When it comes to the extensions offered by Squarespace, that’s just the tip of the iceberg! 

How Much Does Squarespace Cost? 

As compared to other eCommerce website builders, Squarespace has similar pricing. For now, it comes in 4 different pricing packages: Personal, Business, basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. 

• The personal plan is priced at $16 per month and doesn’t support eCommerce sales, so it’s not wise to pick that for a trial. 

• The business plan is priced at $26 per month, which is a good deal for beginners. The thing to note here is- it charges a 3% transaction fee per sale.

• The Commerce plan is divided into 2 categories: Basic ( $30 per month) and Advanced ( $46 per month). The Basic plan isn’t actually ‘Basic’ in its true sense. It does offer a host of features that you shouldn’t overlook just for its name. This category is specially built for those who already have some idea about eCommerce sales and are looking to scale their business. 

• Advanced Commerce plan is for those sellers who already have an established store and are looking for enhanced functions and features. 

For Squarespace, I believe that a Business plan is best for those who are freshly starting with building their eCommerce store because it offers multiple features at a reasonable rate. 

Highlighting this point again: it has a 3% transaction fee (transaction fee is pretty common in most eCommerce website builders, so don’t take that off as a surprise, but it’s definitely something you should know.)  

Now let’s discuss the pros and cons of Squarespace!  

Pros and Cons of Squarespace

Pros: 

1. Quickest customer service! (I loved their instant chat service) 
2. Squarespace’s blogging feature is quite versatile as it comes with multi-author functionality and allows you to schedule posts in advance. 

Cons: 

1. The website takes a long time to load… Yeah, it‘s  s l o w . . . 
2. Squarespace isn’t much SEO-friendly.

Overall, Squarespace makes a good website builder, especially if you need continuous support while setting up your eCommerce store. 

BigCommerce eCommerce Website Builder

BigCommerce markets itself as “Ecommerce For A New Era.” Their slogan is partly true because BigCommerce does offer a lot of features for relatively low or no cost. 

However, it doesn’t mean that BigCommerce comes for free. So don’t let that disappoint you. It still has a host of functions that make it an attractive deal for startup owners. 

Features of BigCommerce

Fast Performance

BigCommerce uses Google Cloud Platform to bring the fastest experience for your store. And when it comes to lowest page load time, it seems to be the best available option in the market. 

Preview Before Publishing

Unlike Wix, BigCommerce is an absolute lifesaver for theme selection. On BigCommerce, you can always preview how a theme is going to look on your fabulous store before hitting that ‘purchase now’ button. 

Customer Groups

This has to be the best and unique feature for eCommerce store owners. This feature allows you to segment your customers for pricing, product access, and promotions without maintaining a second site. Sounds like an amazing deal, isn’t it? 

How Much Does BigCommerce Cost? 

BigCommerce comes in 2 different versions. The first one is Essentials and the second one is Enterprise. Once you see on top left corner, you will see two options: 

From my perspective, Essentials package is the one that beginners can easily afford, manage, and scale. Here’s the pricing chart that you will find inside the Essentials. 

Now if we talk about the Enterprise, well that’s quite expensive and there’s no fixed price for it. If you want to find out what Enterprise plans feel like, contact the sales team for it. 

Pros and Cons of BigCommerce

Pros

1. It contains a ton of advanced features like ‘Customer Groups’ and ‘Previews before Publishing’ that a lot of other eCommerce website builders don’t provide. 
2. An unlimited number of staff accounts on any plan.
3. Provides the fastest shopping experience for large inventory stores because of its Google Cloud Platform offerings. 

Cons

1. The pricing is really expensive for the ones that are seeking budget-friendly eCommerce website builders.
2. The free themes are very similar to each other.

This package is the best pick for those who already have an established eCommerce businesses or those trying to scale their businesses to a higher level. I wouldn’t recommend BigCommerce to beginners only because of its high costs. 

Best Method to Build An eCommerce Website in 2021

After a lot of analysis and trial and error, we have a winner here: 

It is… 

Shopify because it’s the most efficient and seller-friendly eCommerce website builder around. On top of everything, it offers a host of features, a reasonable pricing, and a 14-day free trial. 

Choose it if you love it. This gives you a lot of flexibility and doesn’t make you feel restricted to one platform just because you paid the money for it.