Top eCommerce platforms to start an online business for 2017

An online store builder can help you create and manage your store without having any web development experience. And because of the growing competition, e-commerce companies continue to innovate and offer increasingly powerful features on their platforms including Mobile Shopping.

Before you begin, it's crucial to decide whether you will use a platform hosted on your Host or you will use a self-hosted solution. Each has its advantages, but most users tend to look for the use of a hosted solution because of their simplicity.

There is a big advantage to using an automatically hosted platform for beginners with no experience in the web and those who will find it difficult to install the platform on their Hosts. However, using independent hosting allows you to customize your store.

2- THE FACTORS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER:

What you sell: The type of products you sell can determine which ecommerce platform is right for your business.

The size of your Business: There are platforms for Small Businesses and others for Large Businesses.

You will use independent hosting to install your platform or you will use automatic hosting.

Method of payment: Do your target customers use Paypal to make their purchases or another method of payment?

to make a better choice, e-commerce platforms must be classified according to their functionalities

1- SHOPIFY:

  After +10 of its creation, Shopify offers a simple interface to create your eCommerce store. Today more than 500K companies use Shopify all over the world thanks to its features including social commerce and mobile shopping.

the benefits of Shopify:

The Facility: You can create your shop very quickly and without any experience in web development.

• a lot of themes to choose from.
• a large number of applications and extensions to add new features to your store.
• Multilingual and multi-currency store.
• Mobile support

• 24/7 support, you can easily contact Shopify's experts and designers to ask for help.

 Despite these advantages, Shopify has disadvantages. For example, if you do not use Shopify Payment, there will be additional transaction fees for each sale. In addition, several extensions and additional features are not free, indeed, the customization of your store on Shopify could cost a little more than you expected. Adding that Shopify has its own coding language called "Liquid", so any customization in the system entails additional expense.

For beginners, Shopify remains the ideal eCommerce solution. You can choose between different packages ranging from $ 29 to $ 299 per month within your budget.

2- BIGCOMMERCE:

 Launched in 2009, there are currently more than 55,000 online stores on BigCommerce, which is one of the leading e-commerce software providers. Big names like Martha Stewart and Toyota use BigCommerce, the platform is for stores of all sizes. BigCommerce is considered the best option for those who do not have technical knowledge, or do not have the time to do the coding.

why BigCommerce?

Many built-in features, including email marketing, newsletters, coupons, shipping, taxes, analytics and more.

The themes are responisive and support the mobile.

Offers a number of SEO tools to help you increase organic traffic.

The ability to integrate your store with your Facebook and Ebay account.

THE DISADVANTAGES OF BIGCOMMERCE:

The annual sales volume is limited on each plan (for example, $ 50k per year for the Standard Plan, $ 125k per year for the Pro Plan, $ 1 Million per year for the Plus Plan and Unlimited Enterprise Plan Revenues).

The lack of free themes. Currently, BigCommerce offers only 7 free themes, while most of their competitors offer more than 20 free themes.

3- MAGENTO:

 Magento is the world's most popular trading platform, with nearly a quarter of the market share and over 250,000 merchants worldwide selling more and stimulating innovation. For its reliability and scalability, many popular brands use Magento to manage their online stores, including Burger King, Huawei, and Liverpool F.C. This platform is considered the best option for large online stores.

WHY MAGENTO?

• Magento is free, you can download the latest version from their site to install it on your host.
• Magento offers more than 9000 extensions to personalize your store.
• It supports the different means of payment such as paypal and others.
• It is open-source, indeed you can customize your shop freely.
• Magento is a feature-rich platform that allows you to manage multiple storefronts and add multiple currencies and languages ​​to your store.

THE DISADVANTAGES OF MAGENTO:

you must use your own accommodation to install Magento.

you have to update manually and it can lead to errors.

WHEN TO USE MAGENTO?

Magento is considered the right option for companies with a large volume of products. Considering the complexity of Magento store configuration and management, the platform is not recommended for beginners.

4- WOOCOMMERCE:

Do you have a Wordpress site? so WooCommerce is considered the best option for you. You can simply integrate your Blog with your online store by installing the WooCommerce extension.

The advantages of WooCommerce:

You can install your store on a wordpress site that already exists. This fact will help you to enjoy your blog to increase sales using Content Marketing.

You can sell on your shop all you want freely and without limits, product degital, Fashion, health ...

WooCommerce is free.

Compatible with the wordpress version you use.

Thousands of free and paid themes.

You can use different means of payment such as paypal, credit card, ...

THE DISADVANTAGES OF WOOCOMMERCE:

You can not use WooCommerce without Wordpress.

You must use your personal accommodation.

You must install extensions to customize your shop.

Have experience in web development and coding to install your shop.

5- 3DCART:

3dCart provides a complete web shopping solution for anyone looking to start an e-commerce business online.

THE ADVANTAGES OF 3DCART:

3dCart Integrates well with payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe, ... etc.).

It supports the shipping system (Drop Shipping) and large orders.

Offers strong marketing features and a number of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools.

The new ecommerce features will be added automatically to your store.

3dCart offers you 68 free ecommerce themes and 45 high-end ecommerce themes.

A 15% discount on all levels.

THE DISADVANTAGES OF 3DCART:

3dCart offers a limited bandwidth.

a number of the bugs in the admin panel.