Best Ecommerce Software to Quickly Build Your Online Shop

Last updated on March 26, 2017 @ 1:00 pm

If you are researching for the best ecommerce software to build your online store then you’ll probably save some hard work and time reading this review. We owned, built and managed several e commerce businesses over time and we’ll give you an insight of how you can build your own online store too using the top ecommerce platform out there and most importantly, which one to choose depending on your requirements. You might be under the assumption that your soon-to-be online business has some unique feature that is too complicated for an ecommerce platform to handle, or you might be under the assumption that using such a platform would be too complicated for you.

Well, both of these assumptions are wrong. Back in the day when we were building online stores we knew nothing about ecommerce and how to sell products online. We didn’t have a clue where to start from and thought we needed to hire a programmer and spend a huge sum just to get our foot in the door. We didn’t know how we would build a good ecommerce website that would be manageable without too many overheads. We discovered that our so needed special features are basic practice in most ecommerce software platforms and using these providers to build our store was pretty much easy and simple.

In our time consuming research we discovered that in general, to build an ecommerce store there are two options to choose from:

  1. Hosted ecommerce platforms (managed and friendly with no experience needed)
  2. Self-Hosted shopping cart (flexible due to it being open sourced but more advanced)

 

HOSTED ECOMMERCE SHOPPING CARTS

Building your website store on a hosted shopping cart has never been easier. Basically, all you need to do is create an account with one of the providers (the big four leaders in the space are listed below) and they set up your ecommerce online store. They take care of all the nitty-gritty stuff that you don’t want to waste time on. The coding, configuration of online payments, server setup and all other technical settings happen in the background. Generally, you are left to use the provider’s website builder. You use it to choose your store’s name and handle the layout settings using a friendly drag and drop interface. You can then upload your products to the store and start selling quickly. The key upside when using an ecommerce provider to host your website store is that you don’t need to have technical skills and your website will function much the same as the big online stores do.

In our experience, we believe using a hosted solution is the way to go even if you’re capable of hosting it on your own. Simply upload your products and start making business without spending hours coding and configuring your server, weeks tweaking compatibility issues and spawning new servers when your store scales up. Let the hosting provider deal with that and accomplish the same result in less time and less cash spent.

Our recommendation is to use one of the big hosted shopping carts:

1) Shopify (Over 100,000 Online Stores)

Shopify is almost a synonym for ecommerce website builder these days.

More than 100 professional themes to choose from.

Storefront customization with a web-based website builder.

70+ payment gateways and 24 hour support.

Shopify is one of the best ecommerce software used by tens of thousand of online stores and has proved to be one of the biggest hosted ecommerce platform in the world. Small to large businesses sell their products through websites powered by Shopify. It suited both to beginners and experts and you can establish a store and accept orders in minutes.

2) Bigcommerce (Over 55,000 Online Stores)

Bigcommerce as its name suggests takes ecommerce website builders to a whole new level.

100+ features such as analytics, reporting and marketing tools included.

Multiple design templates for different website categories.

Advanced set of tools to help build your online store.

Bigcommerce is a juggernaut filled with features that you haven’t even thought about before seeing them. Their process of building a store is intuitive just like Shopify.

3) Weebly eCommerce (Over 90,000 Online Stores)

Weebly is a reputable website builder with which you can easily configure your shopping cart.

The key features hosting your shopping cart with Weebly are:

Integration with mobile devices such as Android and iPhone.

Offer services, digital and physical products to your customers.

Multiple shipping options to choose from.

Their drag and drop interface is friendly and beginners to experts alike use it to build their stores. So much so that large known companies are powered using Weebly.

Weebly’s eCommerce features are well integrated and all in all it’s a great service to jumpstart your online business.

4) Squarespace Commerce

Squarespace is known for it’s customization capabilities. Their mission is to help users make a complete unique website without coding. National brands use Squarespace to create an online store. The store owner has full control of the layout and design and can upload unlimited digital or physical product to the store.

Squarespace is affordable and they don’t charge up front. Design perfectionist gravitate towards Squarespace and with a full stack of social, analytics, template variation and support they earned their name in the startup/digital space.

 

SELF-HOSTED OPEN SOURCE SHOPPING CARTS

The other option to build your online store is to host it by yourself. This will usually include:

Setting up a server with a provider (such as Bluehost).

Installing an open source shopping cart such as Magento, Open Cart and osCommerce.

Installing a free or premium template/theme for design.

Configuring the payment system.

Maintaining the server on a regular basis.

The upside is that you have full control of your store. For example, you can edit the source code if needed at any time. Stores starting with a self hosted solution also because it’s completely free. The problem with using a self hosted shopping cart is that updates to the open source software can conflict with third party plugins. You’d probably encounter compatibility issues in the future and you’d need a programmer to solve them.

In addition, you’d have to maintain the server when your store grows. The most crucial of all is that you don’t get to have a drag and drop website builder to help you along the way and every step in building your self-hosted website requires more time than it would with a hosted ecommerce shopping cart.

 

BEST ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE – CONCLUSION

The best ecommerce software an online store really comes down to your requirements.

It’s safe to say that if you’re a SMB or an entrepreneur you’d rather build your ecommerce website using a hosted shopping cart solution. It’s relatively cheap and it will save you a bunch of headaches along the way. The hosting providers already include most features anyway and you’d be surprised of what can be accomplished in literally minutes.

The hosted website builders we recommend each have a dedicated team to help in time of need and you can start right away using their ecommerce software:

Shopify

Bigcommerce

Weebly

Squarespace

David Brandon

David Brandon

I'm a web developer & blogger enthusiast, helping novice users with the principles of site creation.

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