TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

TOP 5
ECOMMERCE
PLATFORMS
FOR SELFSTARTRS

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

TOP 5 ECOMMERCE
PLATFORMS
By Darren DeMatas, MBA & Christina Boyes

Darren DeMatas
Darren DeMatas has an MBA in Internet Marketing, but hangs his
hat on a decade of experience making retail brands profitable. He’s
marketed global Fortune 500 companies and small 1-man ecom-
merce niche brands.

Christina Boyes
I’m a fan of honest words, clarity, and impact. A copywriter, editor,
and translator, I spend my days guzzling coffee like a champ. The
brains behind the email and web copy at a handful of eCommerce
brands.

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

You’ve seen how we tested each platform and how they scored. We even filled
you in on our favorites for UX, value, and overall performance. Now it’s time to take a
closer look at the top 5. You’ll find the info you need to make a decision in the next few
sections, but if you’re still indecisive, keep an eye on the blog. We’ll be adding more in-
depth reviews and comparisons in the near future.

About The Scoring System

This should give you an overview on how I came up with the scores. I didnt pull the num-
bers out of a magic hat :)

Scoring For Most Features

• 100 = Yes, Included Out Of The Box
• 75 = Free App Needed
• 25 = Paid App Needed
• 0 = Not Possible

Scoring For SEO Tools

• 100 = Segment XML Sitemap + Bulk Editing and Below
• 75 = Meta Data, Friendly URLs, Easy 301
• 50 = Meta Data, Friendly URLs
• 25 = Meta Data (Editing Page Title, Descriptions)

Scoring For Payment Gateways

• 100 = 70+ Gateways
• 75 = 30 + Gateways
• 50 = 10 + Gateways
• 25 = 1-9 Gateways

Scoring For Additional Support

• 100 = More than 500 certified companies/partners
• 75 = 251-499 certified companies/partners
• 50 = 51 - 250 certified companies/partners
• 25 = 1-49 certified companies/partners

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Scoring For Free Templates

• 100 = More than 50 free templates
• 75 = 25 - 49 free templates
• 50 = 11 - 24 free templates
• 25 = 2 - 10 free templates

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

BigCommerce - Best Overall

After extensive testing, BigCommerce proves itself the clear winner for ecommerce plat-
forms with an overall score of 90 points. Designed to help you get rolling even if web
development isn’t your area of expertise, you’ll still get under-the-hood access to HTML
and CSS options. This is a huge help for anyone with a business that’s looking to grow
extensively over time - you may not need or want to play too much with design and devel-
opment at the start, but as your store grows, you’ll have the option.

Four affordable pricing plans ($29.95 - custom quotes) make BigCommerce an accessi-
ble ecommerce platform for most ecommerce entrepreneurs. Despite being more expen-
sive than Shopify or Volusion, BigCommerce proves its worth in the feature department.

Package Overall Performance Features Scalability Ease Of Use

Overall 90 84 86 95 93
$29 87 84 78 92 93
$79 91 84 88 97 93
$199 92 84 97 97 93

Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
2.41s 63 96 86

Features
Feature Type $29 $79 $199
SEO Tools Must Have 75 75 75
Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 100 100 100
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 0 100 100
Blog Must Have 75 75 75
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 100 100 100

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100
Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 25 25 25
Drop Shipping Nice To Have 100 100 100
Fulfillment By Amazon Integration Nice To Have 100 100 100
Real Time Shipping / Tracking Nice To Have 100 100 100
Reward Points Nice To Have 25 25 25
Google Trusted Stores Nice To Have 0 0 100
Payment Gateways Scalability 25 75 75
Paypal Checkout Scalability 100 100 100
Amazon Checkout Scalability 100 100 100
Amazon Sync Scalability 100 100 100
Ebay Sync Scalability 100 100 100
Facebook Sync Scalability 100 100 100
Google Product Data Feed Scalability 100 100 100
Open API Scalability 100 100 100

Ease Of Use
Feature $29 $79 $199
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 75 75 75
Phone Support 100 100 100
24/7 Support 0 100 100
Chat Support 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 75 75 75
Free Templates 100 100 100

What We Like: BigCommerce is fast to setup and loads quickly. The free themes, al-
though limited in number, are beautifully designed. Oh, and the UX is a dream come true.

What We Didn’t Like: There’s not much we can criticize with BigCommerce, but one of
the sites we tested did crash due to bandwidth issues. Another thing we noticed was the
Sitemaps could be improved. Right now they are PHP based. It also doesnt seem to have
the ability to have child sitemaps. Something important for larger stores.

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Shopify - Easiest To Use

The Wix of ecommerce platforms, Shopify is taking the web by storm. We were skeptical
at first, but looking at the features this platform offers, we can see why. Shopify scored a
robust 84 points overall in our tests.

Shopify’s main benefit is its attractive out-of-the-box store designs. Sales are often im-
pacted by great visuals, so that’s nothing shabby to boast about. The platform offers 24/7
support for users, and more than 1,000 apps in their app store - a huge benefit for many
ecommerce retailers. Priced between $9-179/month, Shopify easily adapts to even the
smallest budgets, but its features are capable of serving large enterprises, as well.

Package Overall Performance Features Scalability Ease Of Use

Overall 84 80 77 83 97
$29 83 80 70 83 97
$79 85 80 80 83 97
$179 85 80 82 83 97

Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
1.98s 63 94 59

Features
Feature Type $29 $79 $179
SEO Tools Must Have 100 100 100
Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 0 0 0
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 0 100 100
Blog Must Have 75 75 75
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 100 100 100
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100
Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 25 25 25
Drop Shipping Nice To Have 25 25 25

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Customizable Products (like engraving) Nice To Have 75 75 75

Fulfillment By Amazon Integration Nice To Have 25 25 25
Real Time Shipping / Tracking Nice To Have 0 0 75
Reward Points Nice To Have 25 25 25
Google Trusted Stores Nice To Have 25 25 25
Payment Gateways Scalability 100 100 100
Paypal Checkout Scalability 100 100 100
Amazon Checkout Scalability 100 100 100
Amazon Sync Scalability 25 25 25
Ebay Sync Scalability 25 25 25
Facebook Sync Scalability 100 100 100
Google Product Data Feed Scalability 100 100 100
Open API Scalability 100 100 100

Ease Of Use
Feature $29 $79 $179
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 100 100 100
Phone Support 100 100 100
24/7 Support 100 100 100
Chat Support 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 100 100 100
Free Templates 50 50 50

What We Like: A ridiculously fast setup and excellent site speed performance keep cus-
tomers around and the attractive designs can help you project a professional image while
raking in sales.

What We Didn’t Like: Many of the plugins are billed monthly, including product custom-
izer to sell personalized products, instead of a one-time or annual fee. Adding recurrent
billing costs and additional $20/month. Otherwise, it’s safe to say we found ourselves
falling in love with this ecommerce platform.

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

3D Cart - Feature Rich and Fast

This Florida-based ecommerce platform company has been around since 2001, which
has given them plenty of time to perfect the art of the online store. Coming in third with
an impressive overall score of 83 points, 3D Cart is a great choice for most business-
es, regardless of size. Pricing ranges from $19.99-$129.99/month for basic ecommerce
plans, and $999.99/month for larger enterprises.

Although 3D Cart doesn’t offer automatic display detection, it does provide a buffet of
more than 60 free themes to choose from. Downside? The only responsive themes 3d
Cart offers are Premium themes - luckily the pricetag for those appears to be under $199.
24/7/365 phone support and more than 100 payment gateways sweeten the deal.

Package Overall Performance Features Scalability Ease Of Use

Overall 83 70 90 83 88
$19 81 70 90 78 88
$35 81 70 90 78 88
$65 81 70 90 78 88
$99 87 70 90 83 88

Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
1.82 62 84 52

Features
Feature Type $19 $35 $65 $99
SEO Tools Must Have 100 100 100 100
Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 0 0 0 0
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 100 100 100 100
Blog Must Have 100 100 100 100
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 100 100 100 100
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100 100

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 100 100 100 100

Drop Shipping Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Customizable Products (like engraving) Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Fulfillment By Amazon Integration Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Real Time Shipping / Tracking Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Reward Points Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Google Trusted Stores Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Payment Gateways Scalability 100 100 100 100
Paypal Checkout Scalability 100 100 100 100
Amazon Checkout Scalability 100 100 100 100
Amazon Sync Scalability 0 0 0 100
Ebay Sync Scalability 0 0 0 100
Facebook Sync Scalability 100 100 100 100
Google Product Data Feed Scalability 100 100 100 100
Open API Scalability 100 100 100 100

Ease Of Use
Feature $19 $35 $65 $99
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 100 100 100 100
Phone Support 100 100 100 100
24/7 Support 100 100 100 100
Chat Support 100 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 100 100 100 100
Free Templates 50 50 50 50

What We Like: The definition of a feature rich platform, 3D Cart also makes it easy to set-
up out of stock messages at the product level. It’s one of the fastest loading ecommerce
platforms, and you can easily edit the HTML template and CSS files and do bulk metada-
ta updates.

What We Didn’t Like: Unfortunately, 3D Cart has a visitor quota - something we hav-
en’t seen elsewhere and we hope they remove in the near future. The platform also only
makes multichannel available on higher cost plans.

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Volusion
Created in 1999 and continuing on a steady growth trend, Volusion now serves more
than 40,000 stores - several of which are household brands. During our testing, it placed
high, with a solid 82-point overall score.

Priced between $15-135/month with a 10% discount for ecommerce retailers who pay
annually instead of monthly, it’s an accessibly-priced complete ecommerce store solution.
You will, however, need to buy your SSL certificate separately.
The built in rewards program is a fun perk to have, and useful for creating return custom-
ers. Where design is concerned, the back end is great. There are plenty of demos and
tutorials to work with, and although you can access advanced features, you don’t have to
reinvent the wheel every time you want to do something simple.

Volusion is continuously updating, which means that the experience in always improving
for merchants. On the front end, you have several free templates - including responsive
ones - to choose from, but premium themes can cost as much as $900. Integrations are
a bit behind the competition, but they’re getting there. You’ll still have the basics, like
MailChimp, Quickbooks, and Shipwire.

Package Overall Performance Features Scalability Ease Of Use

Overall 62 70 85 83 88
$15 78 70 76 67 88
$35 87 70 86 67 88
$75 87 70 89 100 88
$135 87 70 89 100 88

Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
3.5 55 81 86

Features
Feature Type $15 $35 $75 $135
SEO Tools Must Have 100 100 100 100

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 100 100 100 100
Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 100 100 100 100
Blog Must Have 25 25 25 25
Mobile Store Must Have 100 100 100 100
Coupons Must Have 100 100 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 0 100 100 100
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100 100 100
Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Drop Shipping Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Customizable Products (like engraving) Nice To Have 100 100 100 100
Fulfillment By Amazon Integration Nice To Have 0 0 0 0
Real Time Shipping / Tracking Nice To Have 25 25 25 25
Reward Points Nice To Have 0 0 100 100
Google Trusted Stores Nice To Have 0 0 100 100
Payment Gateways Scalability 100 100 100 100
Paypal Checkout Scalability 100 100 100 100
Amazon Checkout Scalability 100 100 100 100
Amazon Sync Scalability 0 0 100 100
Ebay Sync Scalability 0 0 100 100
Facebook Sync Scalability 100 100 100 100
Google Product Data Feed Scalability 0 0 100 100
Open API Scalability 100 100 100 100

Ease Of Use
Feature $15 $35 $75 $135
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 100 100 100 100
Phone Support 100 100 100 100
24/7 Support 100 100 100 100
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 50 50 50 50
Chat Support 0 0 0 0
Free Templates 75 75 75 75

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

What We Like: Volusion offers excellent product display options (especially the custom-
izable swatch feature), helping you sell, sell, sell. It’s also one of the few platforms we
tested with a decent search function.
What We Didn’t Like: Load times are slower than I’d like. Don’t count on upsells and
cross-sells with this platform - it’s weak in both areas. You also can’t configure which re-
lated products to display. Integrations are a bit behind the times, too. That said, Volusion
has a reputation for continuous improvement.

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Prestashop (Best Free Platform)

With an overall score of 67 points, Prestashop hails from a very different corner of the
world - it’s a French platform that’s grown in popularity so much over the years, the com-
pany opened offices in Florida. Open source like our next entry, WooCommerce, it’s free
to download and has a supportive and active community of coders and merchants who
work to help each other succeed. You could call it the Linux of ecommerce.

Unless you’ve got strong coding skills and a lot of free time, you’ll probably want to hire
some help if you choose this platform. We’d recommend a skilled web developer at the
very least. Self-hosted, you’ll need to pay for hosting or put it on your own server. Loaded
with hundreds of out-of-the-box features, it’s clear this software was made by people who
know the problems you’ll be facing because they’ve been there. At the same time, you’ll
probably want to add on a few plugins, and those can be costly.

The software itself loads quickly and has a great user interface that’s attractive and easy
for merchants to work with. At the same time, it’s not easy to scale and cross-selling ap-
pears impossible. Like all open source projects, customer service is at the mercy of other
users - there’s no phone number for you to call if you want help. You can, however, pay
a monthly fee to get support, but it’s probably cheaper to hire your own web team on an
as-needed basis.

Package Overall Performance Features Scalability Ease Of Use

Overall 67 59 80 67 62
Self Hosted (Free) 63 59 80 67 45
Hosted Saas (Free) 71 59 80 67 78

Performance
Loading Speed Mobile PageSpeed Mobile UX SEO Performance
3.75 58 86 50

Features
Feature Type Self Hosted Hosted (Saas)
SEO Tools Must Have

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Fuzzy & Exact Product Search Must Have 100 100

Abandonded Cart Email Must Have 100 100
Blog Must Have 25 25
Mobile Store Must Have 25 25
Coupons Must Have 100 100
Ratings and Reviews Must Have 100 100
Multiple Product Photos With Zoom Must Have 100 100
Subscription/Recurring Products Nice To Have 25 25
Drop Shipping Nice To Have 100 100
Customizable Products (like engraving) Nice To Have 100 100
Fulfillment By Amazon Integration Nice To Have 25 25
Real Time Shipping / Tracking Nice To Have 25 25
Reward Points Nice To Have 100 100
Google Trusted Stores Nice To Have 25 25
Payment Gateways Scalability 75 75
Paypal Checkout Scalability 25 25
Amazon Checkout Scalability 100 100
Amazon Sync Scalability 25 25
Ebay Sync Scalability 25 25
Facebook Sync Scalability 25 25
Google Product Data Feed Scalability 100 100
Open API Scalability 100 100

Ease Of Use
Feature Self Hosted Hosted (SaaS)
Set Up And Run Store Code Free 50 100
Phone Support 50 50
24/7 Support 0 0
Chat Support 0 0
Certified Additional Dev/Design/Marketing Support 50 50
Free Templates 75 75

What We Like: Fast loading, PrestaShop offers and excellent interface that’s easy to work

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TOP 5 ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

with. You can start your store totally free, including hosting with the cloud platform.

What We Didn’t Like: You either need to be a tech or IT geek, or hire one (or three) if
you want to use this ecommerce platform. Add-ons and plugins can get costly, although it
does come with an impressive suite of over 300 features.

Need Help? Email me darren@selfstartr.com

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