21 Best E-commerce Platforms in 2024: Breaking Ground Online

E-commerce platforms, the backbone of online commerce, have revolutionized the way we shop, enabling businesses to reach a global audience and seamlessly facilitate transactions.

However, with a multitude of e-commerce platforms available, each with its unique features and functionalities, selecting the right platform can be a daunting task. Moreover, factors such as scalability, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use play a significant role in determining the suitability of a particular platform.

This blog will provide you with the top 21 best e-commerce platforms, providing a comprehensive overview of each platform’s features, strengths, and limitations. We will guide you through the intricacies of each platform, empowering you to make an informed decision that will propel your online business to new heights.

1. Magento

Many businesses consider Magento to be the best open-source e-commerce platform, but what are the reasons that make Magento an industry leader? Because it can handle a large amount of traffic and has so many great features that can support a business.

Magento is based on a PHP framework that enables building online businesses easily. This platform offers different plans to allow easy integration of the 3rd party app into the e-commerce store. According to 6Sense, Magento has a market share of 2.35% in the e-commerce-platform market.

Magento open-source is the free version that allows downloading, customizing, and running on the Magento host or business’s server. However, the free version of Magento has some limitations that can affect a business.

For large corporates, their choice is Magento Commerce which comes with plenty of built-in advanced functions. Furthermore, e-commerce businesses can also consider Magento POS software from third-party merchants to make sure their sites integrate well with the store operations

Due to its focus on e-commerce functionality, Magento presents a more intricate development process compared to alternative platforms. Consequently, businesses often seek assistance from skilled professionals.

If you ever find yourself in such a position, our expert team at Tigren provides Magento web development services to ensure optimal performance, and fast loading speeds, and incorporate advanced e-commerce features into the website we create.

Pros:

Flexible and adjustable to different businesses’ needs
Many features than the others
Optimal scalability
A large community of users
Mobile-friendly
Suitable for SEO
Allow anyone to start their online business fast
Able to handle the increase in products and sales

Cons:

Require coding knowledge
Limited product support for basic package
Difficult set-up process
Expensive

Price:

Free, Magento Commerce up to $24,000 a year.

Best for:

Medium to large businesses that have developer resources.

2. WooCommerce

Based on the PHP programming language and built on the WordPress management system, WooCommerce is considered one of the best free e-commerce platforms. According to Statista reports, WooCommerce was the world’s leading e-commerce software platform in 2023, with a market share of 39 percent.

It powers more than 30% of online stores and is proud to be the most popular e-commerce platform by far. It can turn any WordPress site into an e-commerce business, and it is suitable for any size business.

WooCommerce has a lot of benefits to offer, but it also brings some negative sides as well.

Pros:

Built for all types of business
Free and open-source
Able to add countless product lists in a variety of categories.
Accept almost all sorts of payment
Professional look
Allow to diversify and customize themes
Provided resources to take care of SEO
Does not require much technical skills and knowledge to get started

Cons:

Require users to pay for extensions for more features
Pay for hosting
Having WordPress knowledge
Does not include legal texts such as conditions and terms, shipping regulations, etc

Price:

Free for WordPress account, but requires hosting and plugin fees.

Best For:

Sites that make use of WordPress, from small to medium-size businesses.

3. Shopify

Shopify is one of the biggest names in the e-commerce platforms game. It is easy for business owners to set up and launch their e-commerce site with many available templates. According to Statista, as of June 2023, Shopify was the biggest name in the U.S. e-commerce software market, used by roughly 28 percent of websites that use e-commerce technologies.

It offers you the choice to use the existing templates, customize them, or design your own store site’s look. Besides, Shopify supports a wide range of payment methods and is great with data protection.

Shopify would be the best choice if an e-commerce business depends on Facebook and Instagram marketing, but a bad choice if they focus on SEO. Like everything else, Shopify has both advantages and disadvantages, so let’s have a look at them.

Pros:

Easy and quick to set up
Several pricing plans
Quick downloading speed
Clear interface and beautiful storefront themes with varied designs
Take care of transaction processing time
Provide 24/7 support

Cons:

Provide weak SEO
The checkout process is not customizable
Can be expensive if apps add up
Require a developer to develop and upgrade advanced features

Price:

From $9 to $299 a month, with Shopify Plus, pricing is varying.

Best for:

All sizes of e-commerce businesses, from small to large level e-commerce businesses.

4. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a leading hosted SaaS e-commerce platform that provides online stores with various customizable templates and extreme scalability. Compared to other competitors, it has more built-in sales tools and it is also SEO-friendly.

According to 6Sense, BigCommerce has a market share of 1.01% in the development tools market. BigCommerce competes with 198 competitor tools in the development tools category.

Depending on a business’s needs, BigCommerce offers different payment plans with a variety of features to build an online store easily. Designed to help boost large and fast-growing businesses, it can be a perfect solution for any business that desires to increase its sales.

Pros:

Convenient to add products
Simple user interface
Quick customer support
Able to include a lot of products
Fast loading time on all devices
Multiple payment options
Allow integration with third-party apps

Cons:

Bad at tracking customer information for their orders
Limited shipping options
Have to do the work manually
Do not have many design templates for small businesses

Price:

From $29 to $299 monthly, Enterprise pricing varies

Best for:

Ambitious e-commerce businesses who wish to go bigger, online stores that sell through other platforms such as Etsy, eBay, etc.

It is not suitable for businesses that have small-scale selling and a few products.

5. OpenCart

Well-known for being one of the most popular PHP e-commerce platforms, OpenCart suits the needs of small online businesses that do not have much technological knowledge. According to 6Sense, OpenCart has a market share of 0.14% in the e-commerce-platform market. OpenCart competes with 287 competitor tools in the e-commerce-platform category.

OpenCart is easy to manage, with 13,000 extensions, 36 payment methods, more than 8 shipping methods, and so on. Due to its ease of use and setup, it enables businesses to start selling online fast with hundreds of ready-to-use options.

Pros:

Free and open-source to download and use
Customized easily
Easy integration with a variety of extensions
Fast and lightweight
Easier for business owners to manage their stores
Compatible with almost all payment gateways and allows choosing preferred shipping methods

Cons:

Create some SEO issues
Provide a slow checkout process, which might annoy some customers
Require Add-ons
Have a limited feature set
Offer limited customer support

Price:

Free for the open-source version, requires additional fees for the OpenCart Cloud version.

Best For:

Startups or small businesses that do not have many technological resources.

6. PrestaShop

PrestaShop is a very popular open-source e-commerce platform among online retailers. Based on the PHP programming language, PrestaShop offers hundreds of features to help you manage your product catalog, online store, multi-shop setup, and more.

According to 6Sense insights, PrestaShop has a market share of 0.35% in the e-commerce-platform market.

It is free to download and you can customize it as how you like it to be. Another thing about PrestaShop is that it does not require much technical experience to install and create your own online shop. That’s the reason why PrestaShop is an ideal solution for any startup or small business.

Pros:

Lightweight platform
Good performance and smooth functionality
Allow switching languages
Support multi-currency
Self-hosted and hosted options
Allow customizing
Compatible SEO and supports SEO perfectly
Large community

Cons:

Add-ons are costly
Still requires some development skills
Customizable templates are quite expensive
Require fees if you need support
Lack features if you use the hosted version

Price:

Free, plus other fees.

Best for:

Small businesses or startups with some web experience.

7. Wix

Compared to other platforms, Wix is a new name in the market. However, it has gained its reputation for being one of the most popular cloud-based website builders with extremely easy-to-use features.

As of 2023, provided Statista, Wix is the leading website builder in the world – the Israel-based company accounting for over 43 percent of a global market share. Squarespace and Weebly ranked as the second and third most popular website-building platforms, each of which accounted for over 30 percent of the total market share.

The best thing about this platform is the fact that even people with no coding experience can create their own websites in no time. This means you can build a basic website in just a few minutes.

Its free plan is perfect for new businesses that need a powerful tool to create and manage their online stores. You can get access to a variety of pre-designed templates and you can customize them as you want.

However, Wix Commerce will put a lot of ads on your website and the only thing you can do to avoid it is by upgrading your free plan to one of its premium plans, starting at $4.5 monthly.

Pros:

Easy to use
Do not require any coding experience
Affordable
Have creative templates
Allow multiple payment methods with no commission
Support product videos

Cons:

It is weak at SEO
Lack features than other platforms
Suitable for small businesses
The free plan comes with countless ads, which can annoy your customers
Do not provide access to the underlying code
Do not offer abandoned cart recovery
Poor inventory system

Price:

Free for the free plan, premium plans vary from $4.5 to $25.

Best for:

Small businesses that do not have much coding experience.

8. Yo!Kart

While the choices of e-commerce platforms mentioned in this blog, cover most of the solutions, there is also a unique third category 一 self-hosted, license-based platforms. Provided by 6Sense, the top three of Yo!Kart’s competitors in the Shopping Cart Software category are Ecwid with 25.63%, Big Cartel with 25.18%, VirtueMart with 8.00% market share.

Yo! Kart is a leading e-commerce platform that falls under this category. To add to the uniqueness, the software is a multi-vendor marketplace solution out of the box. It lets entrepreneurs to enterprises launch an online marketplace like Amazon, Etsy, Alibaba, and others 一 where multiple sellers sell to customers and the portal owner manages the website and the business.

Pros:

Lifetime ownership with a one-time payment and No hidden or transaction
Full source code ownership.
Multiple third-party APIs are pre-integrated for seamless e-commerce business operations.
Complete feature set for the admin, sellers, and buyers.
Separate vendor storefronts with personalization options.
Product catalog system with elastic search module.
Readymade buyer mobile apps for iOS, and Android platforms.
20+ Pre-integrated payment gateways, and other popular payment options.
Scalable with the support for unlimited product listings.
Up to 1 year of Free technical support.
For the growing B2B e-commerce market, there is also Yo!Kart B2B with B2B-specific functionalities.

Cons:

Changes in design via themes are limited. Further customizations are paid.
Updates have to be purchased. But the need arises only if the updates come with features essential for a business.

Price:

Starts from $999 (one-time payment).

Best for:

Startups, SMBs, and Enterprises that need expert e-commerce services with the solution, SaaS-based e-commerce businesses considering re-platforming.

9. osCommerce

Being known as one of the oldest open-source and self-hosted e-commerce platforms, osCommerce allows anyone to create their desired online store’s website. Your store on osCommerce can be customized and extended to your preference.

Provided by Statista, osCommerce has a market share of 0.01% in the e-commerce-platform market. It has developed a community of over 26,000 online store merchants and a lot of developers and users. To consider it thoroughly, let’s have a look at its advantages and disadvantages.

Pros:

Amazing online support
Free to launch a website
Easy to set up and manage
Have a lot of plugins available enabling you to customize your e-commerce store
Can take advantage of more than 7,000 free features
Beautiful templates

Cons:

Require developers to get started
Not easily scalable
Prone to bugs

Price:

Free.

Best for:

Small to middle businesses that have developer resources or web experience.

10. Square Online

Square Online is a simple-to-use and affordable e-commerce platform for anyone who wants to create a website for his/her online store. Famous for being a versatile payment solution, Square Online has every it takes to build an e-commerce site. First, let’s look at the benefits it brings and its downsides. According to 6Sense, Square has a market share of 30.76% in the POS-systems market.

Pros:

Easy to set up an e-commerce site from scratch
Allow third-party apps integration
Great features at a reasonable price
Keep track of product sales, customer journeys, and abandoned cart recoveries easily
Inbuilt marketing features that can support almost all kinds of marketing

Cons:

Only suitable for simple e-commerce websites
Lack customization
Do not have a completely reliable customer support system

Price:

From free to $72 a month.

Best for:

Small businesses that want to build a basic e-commerce website.

11. VirtueMart

VirtueMart is an open-source e-commerce platform designed to use the Joomla management system. It is a unique solution to make a website from scratch, with easy setup and management. According to Enlyft, VirtueMart has a market share of about 0.3%.

Business owners have the option of running it as a shopping cart and in a catalog mode. VirtueMart allows you to access a lot of features and change the look and feel of your website using Joomla templates.

VirtueMart is a perfect solution for any business that wants to sell overseas since it supports multiple languages. Besides, it is famous for being SEO-friendly, which can help business owners gain more organic traffic. You should always work closely with your SEO consultant to implement your products into VirtueMart.

Pros:

Multi-language capabilities
Third-party integrations such as payment gateways, accounting applications, social networks
Allow adding unlimited products and categories
Support SEO significantly and can increase the amount of organic traffic for your business

Cons:

Only work on the Joomla content management system
Do not provide as many features as other platforms
More complex than other platforms

Price:

Free.

Best for:

Businesses that have existing Joomla CMS sites.

12. Jigoshop

Based on CMS, and WordPress, Jigoshop is also an ideal solution for anyone who is into WordPress and an easy-to-use platform. It is often compared to WooCommerce because of its ease of use and the similarity of the interface.

Provided by 6Sense, Jigoshop competes with other products in the Project Collaboration and e-commerce Platform categories. It has a 0.00% market share in the e-commerce platform category, and Jigoshop has 56 customers in 10 countries.

Paying for additional themes and extensions is a must if you want to create an effective and convenient online store. But if you just want a simple online store, the free templates will work for you. Jigoshop provides you with a wide range of plugins add-ons and other tools that make your website stand out.

Pros:

Have a simple and quick setup
Install Jigoshop on WordPress sites easily, which means it is easy to edit the code
Is easier to use than other platforms
Have some of the best-looking themes on the market at a reasonable price
Have up to 40 free extensions

Cons:

Do not have customer support
Have no free SEO options
Do not allow the creation of a single product with variations
Cost some money to make use of this platform
Do not have a lot of partners at the moment

Price:

Free, other plans vary.

Best for:

Small to large-sized businesses that make use of WordPress.

13. X-Cart

Considered one of the best shopping cart software available at present, X-Cart has helped more than 35.000 business owners create their online stores. According to Enlyft, X-Cart has a market share of about 0.1%.

This platform is free, open-source, and self-hosted and it can offer something that you won’t find on other platforms. If you use this platform, you will get access to a lot of shipping options, payment modules, and unique features.

X-Cart also has good customer support that is available to help anytime you need it. To suit the needs of users, this platform always tries to update itself daily.

Another thing about X-Cart is that it offers users lifetime subscriptions instead of month-to-month ones. And if you want to upgrade your plan, it will deduct your previous payment which can help you save some money. X-Cart also offers different hosting payment plans and there will be no transaction fees when using it.

Pros:

Offer a lifetime subscription
Extremely customizable
Scalable
Multi-language and multi-currency capabilities
Completely secure and safe
Good customer support

Cons:

Require fees for direct customer support, which is quite expensive
Require development and coding skills to make use of it
Pay for hosting in case you use one of the paid plans
The premium and upgrading plan starts from $495, which is expensive compared to other platforms

Price:

Free, paid plans vary from $495 to $5,995 one-time fee.

Best for:

Mid-sized and growing businesses to Enterprise-level businesses with development resources.

14. Zen Cart

Based on the origin of osCommerce’s code, Zen Cart focuses more on the templates. It provides business owners with a host of features and a page user’s manual, over 1800 add-ons in 16 categories, and so on.

Zen Cart is much more user-friendly than other e-commerce platforms, so it is suitable for people who don’t have advanced development skills. According to Enlyft, Zen Cart has a market share of about 0.2%.

It also has many users and a large support community. The greatest benefit of Zen Cart that must be mentioned is its great product management. However, if your business has so many products, you should consider other platforms since Zen Cart can only handle a proper number of products, or else the system will slow down.

Pros:

Secure system and it protects the website as well as the customer information.
Great for scaling up an online business
Various features and customization options
Strong community
Easy to update
Great multi-language options

Cons:

Do not provide any dedicated and formal support
Average and not-so-unique templates
Fewer additional modules than others

Price:

Free, other plans’ pricing varies depending on providers and extensions.

Best for:

Small to mid-sized businesses.

15. Drupal Commerce

Used by more than 60,000 websites, Drupal Commerce is among one of the most well-known open-source e-commerce platforms when it comes to designing any kind of website. Provided by Enlyft, Drupal Commerce has a market share of about 0.1%

Drupal Commerce has a really good security system that can ensure safety for customers when shopping online. It is not only customizable but also very SEO-friendly.

Drupal Commerce is a big competitor of WordPress on the market. If you have a Drupal website, this solution is for you. However, it is quite complicated to use and not suitable for beginners, so consider it before you choose this eCommerce platform.

Pros:

Have a professional design
Have better overall speed and performance than other e-commerce platforms
Contain complete product management and administration system
Allow third-party integrations for gateway payment, social networks, and so on

Cons:

Not meant for beginners since it is pretty complex
Cost money if you need direct support
Only work with Drupal websites
High hosting price

Price:

Free, you only need to pay when you hire an agency to help you.

Best for:

Big-sized businesses and large enterprises.

16. nopCommerce

nopCommerce is a completely free and open-source e-commerce platform for online businesses. It has been powering more than 60,000 online stores and has been downloaded more than 3 million times. According to W3 Techs, nopCommerce is used by 0.1% of all the websites whose content management system

You can add an unlimited number of products and accounts using nopCommerce, and it also accepts popular payment and shipping methods. NopCommerce is so flexible that it can support multiple stores across different domains, which is a big plus for online businesses. It can meet any business’s requirements thanks to its flexible architecture.

Pros:

Open-source platform and is completely free to use
Different options for downloading: the simplified one-click install version for people with no programming experience and the source code version for developers
Include all essential features to create an online store
Support multiple stores

Cons:

If you want to remove the “Powered by nopCommerce” link from your online site, you will need to pay an additional fee of $250
Limited customer support
May take a lot of money to hire a development agency, third-party add-ons, and pay for web hosting

Price:

Free, but there are some additional fees.

Best for:

Businesses that have development resources.

17. Weebly

Weebly is one of the best free plans and largest site builders on the market right now. It has been powering more than 40 million websites and it offers the most generous tools for payment processing. Provided by Statista, Squarespace, and Weebly ranked as the second and third most popular website building platforms, after Wix each of which accounted for over 30 percent of the total market share.

Weebly provides users with a lot of responsive design templates and unique features. For anyone with no technical skills, they can take advantage of the drag-and-drop customizability feature. For people with some coding experience, Weebly also offers a code editor for them to customize the site.

There are different pricing options when it comes to using the Weebly platform, starting from $0 to $25 per month. For an eCommerce business, it is recommended that you use the business plan for e-commerce, which will cost you $25 a month.

Pros:

Easy to use, especially for beginners who do not have any coding experience
Straightforward e-commerce tools
Free and the business plan is affordable
Mobile-friendly
Allow adding unlimited products, so you can sell as many products as you want

Cons:

Take a 2.9% transaction fee and 30c processing fee
Have weak SEO
Some of the features are quite basic
Do not support multi-channel selling
Put ads on your site
Lack third-party integrations

Price:

From $0 to $25 a month.

Best for:

Beginners, startups, and small-sized businesses.

18. Ecwid

Ecwid is a SaaS e-commerce platform that offers similar features as other SaaS solutions. However, there is a special thing about Ecwid, it is the fact that it can be implemented on any existing platform such as WordPress or Drupal. According to 6Sense, Ecwid has a market share of 1.47%.

This will help you save the time of building a brand-new website, but it will require some lines of code to get there. Ecwid is not a powerful website, but it would be helpful for small businesses with a tight budget, with a free version and a business unlimited plan version for $99 a month.

For the free version of Ecwid, you can only add a limited number of products, whereas the unlimited plan will support unlimited products. Therefore, if you have a few products to sell, the free version is fine for you. If not, you can purchase its unlimited plan.

Pros:

Allow implementation of the store on existing sites
Easy to use
Affordable for small businesses
Offer management tools
Optimized for mobile
Do not charge any transaction fee

Cons:

Not a powerful e-commerce platform
Limit the number of products for the free plan
Weak at SEO
Not a complete e-commerce website (it does not offer advanced e-commerce features)
Require some coding experience

Price:

From $0 to $99 per month.

Best for:

Small businesses with existing websites, businesses that do not focus on e-commerce.

19. Squarespace

Among all e-commerce platforms and website builders, Squarespace is famous for having nice and well-designed templates. It is an all-in-one hosted platform offering more than 100 drag-and-drop templates. Provided by 6Sense, Squarespace has a market share of 42.75% in the site-builder market.

It comes with a better blogging tool and support than most of its competitors. This is the reason why it is perfect for beginners and small online stores.

There are two options for e-commerce: the basic and advanced plans, starting from $26 to $40 per month depending on each business’s needs. With Squarespace, anyone can start their own beautiful online store sites and sell their first products easily and quickly.

Pros:

Convenient, quick, and easy to get started
Good for SEO
Have impressive template designs
Affordable for most businesses
Good at supporting blogging tools

Cons:

Lack of some features for e-commerce businesses
Have no phone support
Lack of third-party integrations such as Amazon, Paypal

Price:

From $26 to $40 per month, but you will need to pay it annually.

Best for:

Startups and small e-commerce businesses.

20. Spree Commerce

Based on Ruby on Rails programming language and built for multi-langue and multi-currency global brands, Spree Commerce is one of the best open-source e-commerce solutions that are completely free to use. Followed by Enlyft, Spree Commerce has a market share of about 0.1%.

Its no-cost feature has made it a popular choice among e-commerce businesses and is used by more than 45.000 online stores. It is perfect for developers, but it will be a nightmare for beginners to get to know it.

With Spree Commerce, you can add and replace any functionality you need for your site, meaning you are not stuck with a normal and boring e-commerce site.

You will get exactly what you want for your business thanks to Spree Commerce. However, you will need at least a dedicated developer to help you with the work since it requires someone with experience to handle it well.

Pros:

Completely free of charge, meaning you don’t have to pay any fee to download it
Feel free to customize it as much as you want to create your ideal online business
Allow third-party integrations
Compatible with SEO
Fast and flexible
Have solid and reliable support

Cons:

Require someone with a technical background
Have limited themes at the moment
May need to hire some specialist web developers to support

Price:

Completely free.

Best for:

Global brands and businesses with development resources.

21. Bagisto

Bagisto is considered to be one of the best open-source e-commerce platforms due to its basic and advanced features available for merchants. Built on top of the PHP Laravel framework, it offers a wide range of features and options without requiring any extensions, making it a go-to for startups and beginners.

According to 6Sense, Bagisto has a market share of about 0.1%. It allows making a multi-vendor marketplace and has powerful SEO, and it is doing a great job in helping new e-commerce businesses get their places on the market.