E-commerce hosting platforms are revolutionizing the business world by expanding their online retail presence, ushering in a new era of commerce. It has been the game-changers in today’s rapidly evolving business world. There are many prospects involved in a successful eCommerce portal development and optimization, such as:
- Developing and enabling advanced payment gateways on the sit
- Present the products under the domain holistically
- Shaping up great-looking web portals
- Managing the product delivery arrangements
- Controlling the B2B dealings meticulously
- Scaling the business by leveraging the internet
The digital market is growing at a flash-like speed. It is creating numerous opportunities for all business owners, entrepreneurs, and small/medium merchants to emerge enormously and get results in increasing returns to scale.
To see how the eCommerce hosting platforms are economically maximizing the profit numbers and spawning their big names in due time, we study the top twelve eCommerce hosting platforms and how they impact online businesses.
Table of Contents
12 best-performing eCommerce hosting platforms:
1. Shopline
Shopline allows small and medium-sized businesses to create online stores quickly and efficiently. It offers various tools and features that allow merchants to set up and manage their e-commerce websites without extensive technical knowledge.
Features:
- Shopline has a user-friendly website builder with customizable templates.
- It has multiple tools for managing product listings and stock levels and tracking inventory to avoid overselling.
- You can connect with different payment gateways, ensuring secure and seamless global transactions.
- Multiple marketing tools assist merchants in advertising their products, organizing promotions, and enhancing customer involvement.
2. Webflow
Webflow is designed to meet the needs of diverse users, ranging from designers seeking greater design process control to non-technical individuals and businesses searching for a simple method to create stunning websites.
Features:
- Webflow’s visual editor enables users to design websites by dragging and dropping elements.
- Users can create custom animations and interactions without the need for JavaScript coding.
- Webflow offers a powerful CMS enabling users to manage their website’s content easily.
- Webflow provides hosting for the websites created on its platform, simplifying the deployment process.
3. Shopify
Benefits: The success factors of this entailing firm are that it offers a lot of excellent, useful apps and gives many professional themes. It also has a neglected and unused cart recovery in its offing which comes at a price. There are unlimited products & bandwidth present.
Features:
- A proper mobile app to accept payments and manage the eCommerce firm.
- Easily merge the end-to-end needs of the businesses
- POS to handle all transactions
- Help to carry on business
Shopify aims to cater to the needs of small businesses on the internet.
It is considered one of the most popular platforms. Shopify is easy to set up, has faster internet speed, and safe payment gateways. What is more, there are customizable templates for the landing page. In relevance to SEO, it provides customer support for store owners and meta tags.
4. BigCommerce
This one is a popular eCommerce hosting platform and is an online shopping space offing more than any of its peers.
Benefits: The features are a cut above the rest with gift cards, 24/7 customer care support, and real-time shipping quotes at an excellent price. Unlimited products, bandwidth, and storage are within the $80 plan.
Features:
- Easily merge with eBay, Google Shopping, and more.
- 24/7 round-the-clock assistance
- Google Trusted store certification assurance
BigCommerce is directed to cater to small and medium retailers. It is identical to Shopify but has many other additives, like advanced features, bandwidth & unlimited storage.
It also has essential eCommerce features that offer reviews & ratings to customers and various marketing tools that give your store a distinct look.
5. Volusion
Volusion is the 2nd biggest e-store after the Yahoo store. It is voluminous as its range spans large numbers transcending it to the leading site among the top 10000 sites.
Benefits: It is the cheapest online space for abandoned recovery carts and can be found at a $15 monthly charge. It is the best site for beginners as it offers all the features peers offer but is restricted to about one hundred products and 1GB of data usage. Compared to BigCommerce, its Pro plan comes at $75/month.
Features:
- Rewards or in-built loyalty program
- In-built Day Deal option
- E Bay and Amazon integration
6. Wix
Benefits: It has a brilliant visual design interface and all facilities that keep the store running. The sales pages are visually attractive; one can design them in any color.
Features:
- The visual editor provided live examples, including template reference
- Reasonable pricing structure and simple interface, perfect for beginners
- No transaction charges, only monthly fees
- Annual charges are as high as 120 dollars only.
7. 3DCart/Shift4Shop
It is also a popular site on the web and is quite rich. It boasts of a facility for research of clients by web designers.
Benefits: No transaction fees are charged, which is a big boon. It also boasts of having a mobile back end and front end. It also has been provided with a comprehensive range of related services, such as Facebook or SEO marketing, available in web stores.
Features:
- The option is to sell off the rebranded stores, including an extensive range of permission systems.
- Plenty of shipping choices compared to any of its competitors.
- A plethora of other services are included.
8. Big Cartel
Big Cartel is a smaller company than Shoplift and caters to the needs of indie brands and artists, and is “built for makers.”
Benefits: The price points of Big cartels are known to be lower and can be compared with Wix and Shoplift. There is a free plan offering unlimited features in five products. It is just about $9.99/month that the paid plans start.
Features:
- Caters to small merchants, makers, and artists
- Quick installation as well as integration to sell in-person
- Every plan of it comprises incredible integrations and features.
9. Squarespace
Established in 2004, this fully integrated eCommerce solutions provider boasts one million users that speak of the durability of this platform and focus on providing customer satisfaction.
Benefits: It has a rich, visually appealing platform perfect for stores requiring rich, beautiful imagery and designer templates with the product listing. Both plans offer unlimited products, a significant advantage for any sized merchant.
Features:
- Advanced and Basic plans have unlimited products.
- Unlimited blogs, galleries, pages, storage, bandwidth, and contributors.
- Site builder offering drag & drop facilities.
10. LemonStand
This platform is relatively newer, comparable to the best options available, like BigCommerce and Shopify. It is highly customizable and lets retailers modify the store’s every aspect to create that unique and new online shopping environment.
Benefits: A significant advantage is the usage of off-page and on-page SEO, giving insights into things that can help improve social media perceptions. Moreover, including SSL encryption on every site page is a boon.
Features:
- Customized checkout without any redirection to provide a better shopping cart facility.
- In-built support is provided for digitized products and offers recurring subscriptions.
- Complete design flexibility, especially over the presentation of contents.
Plans are available from $99/ monthly to about $399/ monthly in premium plans.
11. X-Cart Cloud
It provides users with a range of services, such as VPS Hosting from X Cart, that is fully managed and comes with an X-Cart license. This is the hosted feature that belongs to X-Cart Downloadable.
Benefits: The XCart product is open-source and continuously updated by the team, although updates may be less frequent for the hosted version. A new Cloud Search feature has been added, and pricing plans start at $99.95 monthly.
Features:
- Cloud Search, with products appearing instantly after being keyed within the search box.
- Transaction fees are not charged, with well-known alternatives ranging from 0.5% – 2.5% per transaction.
- The POS modules are provided with the Standard Edition.
12. Etsy
Etsy is entirely different. If the desire is to shop vintage goods, handicrafts, and craft supplies, then Etsy is the place to be.
Benefits: Enlisting of products is done in a good-looking manner to woo the audience. It is a good and safe way to start and happy selling following the guidelines.
Features:
- It offers immense opportunities to help establish the brand.
- Currently, Etsy boasts of having more than 30 million users to be accessed to sell your products.
- Plenty of social interactions, along with professional design.
Each listed item will be a one-time charge of $0.20 and an additional 3.5% per transaction.
So, what makes an eCommerce hosting platform a success?
The solution lies in a standard feature that keeps resonating in the ears. For instance, it’s reasonable to charge justified fees for a secure and visually appealing platform that generates significant sales and offers valuable tools to boost market shares.
Entrepreneurs look for the right mix of all the marketing parameters that make a cocktail of earning big profits in the web portals hosted by eCommerce platforms.
Technology is a great leveler. Tech stacks like digital marketing, web designing, SEO, and application of technology are the key prospects that define the game’s rules and create waves in eCommerce.
Final Words
Today, Flipkart, Myntra, and Amazon are excellent eCommerce development firms with multi-crore valuations. They have become popular and a part of everyone’s shopping sites.
In the post-2010s, the eCommerce industry experienced significant growth with the widespread availability of eCommerce hosting platforms. However, several news outlets suggest that the eCommerce bubble may have burst. It remains to be seen whether businesses operating in this space will experience gains or losses and whether B2C and B2B businesses of this type will ultimately succeed.
