48 Experts Share Their Best Tip on How to Choose the Best eCommerce Software Platform

Lindsay Kavanagh

~ Lindsay entered the marketing world as a web designer and developer. She now works as an SEO Specialist and E-commerce specialist for seoplus+ in Ottawa, Canada.

Shopify is definitely the leader in eCommerce software. It is simple enough for business owners to set up their online store but complex enough to allow for customization from developers and marketing experts. With countless APIs and app integration – Shopify has become my number one recommended eCommerce platform.

Shopify has everything required in order to start and grow online businesses. From the basics of SEO to the complexities of retargeting – Shopify has the abilities required to grow online traffic and optimize for conversions.

We have a combination of apps (like Receiptful, Shopping Feed, Orange App and Inventory Helper) to keep businesses on track and expanding. These apps allow businesses to keep in touch with repeat customers, expand to other online markets like Amazon and Ebay, complete user testing, while also keeping track of inventory to ensure sales can be fulfilled.

With the most user-friendly interface I have seen and unprecedented support, Shopify allows for marketers and developers to grow their businesses while keeping business owners in the loop with easy to read metrics and order fulfillment.

The main dashboard and back end of Shopify are easy to follow and supplies all the metrics business owners want to see when they log into their online store (traffic, sales, referrers, etc.).

This is a huge factor when recommending Shopify to potential clients as they all want to be in touch with business metrics and see when success happens and where it is coming from.

Other platforms like Squarespace, WooCommerce, and Magento all have limitations. Whether it be issues with tracking, price point, back-end functionality complexities for business owners or general user interface – I have hit road bumps with all three platforms in web design/development, SEO, and eCommerce growth.

Just earlier this month Shopify confirmed that they now have over 300,000 merchants using its platform. This growth confirms that expansion and growth are key.

As a marketer, I can expect that Shopify will soon be just as robust as Magento but maintain simple functionality it has now. The options and possibilities are endless for this ever-growing platform – making it the one I recommend to all clients.

Brock Ingham

~ Brock is experienced in e-commerce from concept to launch. He has managed online storefronts and operations, while constantly looking for new opportunities in the digital marketing space.

Having started with the height of all platforms and deciding this just wasn’t doing it for us, I have an appreciation for what Magento can do. That being said my all-time favorite platform for e-commerce would have to be Shopify.

There is a strong and ever-growing community supporting Shopify that is void on many other platforms. This resonates well with the app store as well as work around tutorials from a development standpoint. There are many great features built into Shopify, the following are what keep me from recommending another.

Plug and play themes:

Shopify has an easy to navigate developer side that fits nicely into the WordPress interface. Themes can be changed at the drop of a dime, and many aspects can be changed through their WYSIWYG editors. Keep in mind although HTML and CSS can be written to adjust static theme settings you will likely need the help of a developer if your skill set is a novice.

Tons of supporting Apps:

With an open source gives the rise of privately held apps. Cart to Cart which migrated one of my 5000 SKU sites I worked on with very few errors (despite the bad reviews). Other popular apps like Sumome and Recomatic plug and play just like a WordPress site would.

Although still in its infancy stage Shopify’s own “buy button” app has huge potential. Through dynamic auto-gen scripts, this app turns any outside site into your new side store with exterior carts to match (Java knowledge necessary).

Fraud protection:

While offering Shopify payments gateway, store owners gain the ability to easily oversee any fraudulent activity. This is great for anyone dealing with large volume orders that may be the target of fraudulent guests. Yellow flags for address discrepancies and multiple attempts, red flags for VPN’s and shady purchasing history. All in all a great tool to save your bottom line.

Yellow flags for address discrepancies and multiple attempts, red flags for VPN’s and shady purchasing history. All in all a great tool to save your bottom line.

Last but not least it’s a Canadian Company! As a proud Canadian, I love supporting a platform where I was born and raised.

Swadhin Agrawal

~ Swadhin is a professional freelance writer and blogger. He writes about search and social media visibility small businesses on his blog DigitalGYD.com.

For me, my favorite eCommerce platform is Shopify. I have my blogs and websites in WordPress which are great but for my eCommerce store; Shopify is what I chose.

Why did I choose Shopify?

Shopify is the perfect hybrid between WordPress (a lot of coding is necessary to get an eCommerce platform set up) and simple online stores like Wix.com (where you can’t scale your small eCommerce business to a bigger venture).

I actually have a guide for creating a simple online store with Wix which is perfect for beginners. But if you want a full-fledged eCommerce platform, I would go with something like Shopify.

Shopify, on the other hand, is easy, doesn’t need a few coding skills and can be scaled better than a platform like Wix.

Other two reasons why I opted for Shopify would be:

1. The backend control panel: It has everything from inventory control to order management inside one system. This makes it easy to have a bird’s eye view and save the hassle.

2. The availability of apps: If you are a coder, you can integrate almost anything with Shopify, but if you are a non-coder (like me), these apps are a big deal time and money saver.

Mohammad Umer

~ Umer is considered one of the top 10 popular bloggers in Pakistan. He has built many eCommerce sites for clients.

I have experience with some of my online product selling clients as they want any automatic system for their businesses. I provide them the website with great features and they become happy clients.

There are thousands of eCommerce platforms, themes, and scripts available on the internet and many of them are free to use with great features. It’s difficult to say that Shopify is king.

Yeah! But I’ve to say here. As this software or you can say platforms gives me the easiness to do things in a proper way. And believe me, they are the king with 100,000 stores power.

The features of Shopify I love:

1. We can easily set up a social media store on Facebook 2. Trial option so anyone can try its features to make sure it is a good fit 3. Plugins for your store (free and paid) 4. We don’t have to pay for transactions, and you can upload unlimited items for sale 5. Easy to set up for small business owners and newbies

There are many other features of Shopify.

In the final line, I would like to say that Shopify is all-in-one eCommerce platform.

Mitchell Callahan

~ Mitchell the Co-Founder and CEO of Saucal, an internet firm specializing in WooCommerce development. He began building websites while still in elementary school and first showcased his work nationally at the age of 14 during a live broadcast of a Canadian television show.

WooCommerce

• Open source
• Built for WordPress

At Saucal, all of our eCommerce websites are built using WooCommerce. Why? For one, we believe in open-source technology. More importantly, we believe in the ability to edit and own our code.

For that reason, we stay away from closed solutions, which can leave us restricted to basic features and configurations, or be shut down without our consent. Open source ftw.

Elliot Taylor

~ Elliot is an eCommerce and WordPress expert based in the UK. He is also the founder of YoGrow which provides simple eCommerce analytics for stores that want to grow.

Horses for courses! Which eCommerce platform is suitable for you depends on your requirements. That said, our most regularly recommended platform is WooCommerce because it is most flexible.

It is considerably easier to develop bespoke themes and functionality for a WooCommerce install. If you are just dipping your toe in the world of eCommerce, then you might prefer a hosted solution with everything working out of the box.

Once you’re more established and have determined specific requirements for your business, you will need a more customizable solution.

WooCommerce is an ideal option, and because it is built directly into WordPress, there are many WordPress integrations you can also capitalize on.

WooCommerce and WordPress are both open-source, and that also has advantages. It’s a misnomer to equate this to ‘free’. In fact, it will be more expensive to hire designers, developers, consultants and the like to take advantage of this software.

The main advantage is the community that has developed alongside WooCommerce. There is a vibrant marketplace of plugins and themes you can use. Developers are getting more and more familiar with the in’s and out’s of Woo.

The transparency ensures security is tight and best practices are enforced. WooCommerce, WordPress, and associated plugins are in constant development. Updates are regular.

This will mean you need to put aside the resource to manage the updates, but will also mean a more robust store for you to run your online business from.

If you are pushing the limits of your existing hosted system, or perhaps finding your more enterprise platform too bloated for your requirements, then we suggest looking at WooCommerce. It’s not the cheapest or simplest but is a safe and secure platform to build your business upon.

Magnus Högfeldt

~ Magnus is a Danish marketing specialist living in Sweden. Besides web development and online marketing, Magnus produces video and audio content and helps his customer selling their knowledge online.

I do have a favorite eCommerce platform, but it doesn’t suit everybody. It’s all about needs and willingness to compromise. For some shops, a turnkey webshop solution like Tictail.com or Shopify is the absolutely best choice– for other, a complex, tailor-made setup with multi warehouse stock management etc is needed.

I’ve found that the combination of the strength of WordPress and the flexibility of WooCommerce often suit my customers needs best. I seldom do large setups that need to handle thousands of products and orders each day, but more content is driven sites with shopping facilities. WooCommerce seems to hold up for those projects – and when my customer asks for specific functions, I can proclaim that there most certainly is a plugin for that.

WordPress + Woocommerce is a CMS with a shop on top, whereas Magento, PrestaShop, etc are shops with a CMS on top. If you have a webshop with much content and a limited amount of products, the W+W combination is ideal.

WooCommerce lets me create shops that sell a combination of physical products, digital downloads, memberships for a closed area of the site and access to courses, all with little to no custom coding.

That makes the solution cheap for the customer, and we can focus on creating the content rather than figuring out how to connect different platforms without making the buying experience suffer.

I can make affiliate deals with bloggers right there, inside the WordPress interface, and tracking sales with Analytics or similar systems is a breeze. Oh, and the SEO-facilities are second to none of the other systems I’ve seen if you set it up after the book.

The strength of WordPress and Woocommerce is also their weakness: The open source code can freely be analyzed by hackers, and the amount of WordPress sites that get hacked and injected with malware and spam is scaring.

You really need to keep your WordPress site secure and up to date, all the time!

Steve Gerencser

~ Steve has been building and marketing successful websites since 1997. He has a depth of real-world experience running wildly different businesses that give him a broad perspective on what a business needs to be successful online.

When it comes to eCommerce solutions, I’m a big fan of ‘it depends on ’.

Over the years we’ve built everything from single product sites with a PayPal Buy Now button to a completely custom rolled shopping solution for a client with international customers selling products as small as a plastic whistle to full containers being shipped by freighter overseas.

There are a lot of viable solutions out there, and each has its pluses and minuses. However, I do have a few ‘go to’ solutions that seem to fit most needs.

WooCommerce has become a great solution for smaller stores and sites that the client may not update very often.

It blends in seamlessly with WordPress, so it does not present a new learning curve to them and has all of the important features I like to see in a simple store. It sets up quickly, and we can get a store launched in hours if we need to.

For larger stores and my test sites, I tend to rely on OpenCart more often than not. Again, it is a very simple install, and we can get the framework of the site in place in a few hours and go live in less than a week depending on the product being sold.

OpenCart has a massive support community with nearly as many add-ons as WordPress so that it can be easily customized for just about any need. Plus, if there is a feature missing that we need, there are a host of developers willing to build that feature for just a few dollars.

The big thing is that it just works right out of the box after a few admin settings. If you can live with the default theme you can have a functioning storefront with PayPal processing in less than a day, but you can also take it the other direction into a full-featured shopping experience.

Zac Johnson

~ Zac is an entrepreneur and a super affiliate, with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work with multiple e-commerce platforms. From the early days of Yahoo Shopping Cart to simple one-page order solutions made for online marketers.

From my personal preference, I would like to have my setup be as simple as possible, while also offering the ability to track all angles of my site traffic, orders, and conversions.

For this to take place, my options would likely be to go with an expensive all-in-one solution or go with a WordPress driven solution like WooCommerce.

Since I’m a huge fan of WordPress and like the customization options, while also having the ability to connect with payment processors like Amazon, Stripe, and Paypal — I would stick with WooCommerce as my e-commerce platform of choice.

Neil Sheth

~ Neil has been creating and marketing websites since 2009. He is the founder of Only Way Online, a digital marketing agency which specializes in increasing website traffic and sales online. Neil also provides SEO coaching for smaller businesses through “Your Brand Found”.

Woocommerce hands down!

Around four years ago my wife and I wanted to launch a luxury gift store online and carried out at least a month of research. We decided to choose Woocommerce for the following reasons:

• WordPress is Great – it’s simple, concise, you can create beautiful sites, and the Content Management System is great for SEO and Content Marketing. I’ve been using WordPress for years, so when I found out I can make an eCommerce site with it, it was nearly a no-brainer.
• Low Cost – there’s no need to buy chunky, expensive software, instead, pick a theme, install WordPress and Woocommerce, link it up with your payment gateway and you’re good to go. Ok, probably not that simple, but you get the gist, right. Also, since it’s self-hosted, there’re no ongoing monthly fees, pay once and forget.
• Access to Developers – You will never struggle to find a WordPress developer, which also helps keep the entry price for a Woocommerce site reasonable compared to other platforms. I’m working with a client currently who spent thousands of pounds on a new site developed on a platform created by their marketing agency. That means every change they want to make to the site is a sizeable cost and a drawn-out process. The client has felt restricted, and that’s one big reason to choose a platform like WordPress that everyone has access to.

Rohin Dua

~ Rohin loves to dig into Affiliate Marketing, explore what’s possible ways to create a passive income online and share his knowledge with the like-minded community. He also runs an SEO Outsourcing Company and provides services to many SEO Agencies Worldwide

The answer to choosing the right eCommerce Platform really depends on your goal and interest. My all-time favorite eCommerce platform is without a doubt WordPress.

It has been considered as a standard in the industry now and when used with Woocommerce paid plugins will get you all the advanced features you ever want to see on your Ecom website.

The best part about WordPress is its Open Source, Free, its CMS is super easy to use, SEO friendly and not much technical skills are required to manage things. When integrating Woocommerce with some Paid Themes like Divi, one can get a stunning looking store in a couple of hours.

There are many big stores we work with still use WordPress and the only reason for their choice is the simplicity of the platform to add sales funnels and integration with popular marketing platforms.

Tip: Many paid WordPress themes these days comes with 1 Click Demo Import Features which helps you to create an eCommerce store with an option to tweak the details to match your product line in the simplest of manners.

Victoria Pavlova

~ Victoria is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Starligh MG, Polish digital brands company that owns and operates international online platforms in competitive verticals.

I am a big fan of WooCommerce. Firstly: WooCommerce is a free open source plugin with the code freely available to anyone. It means you can customize it in a way you want or even build your own extension.

Woocommerce is very flexible and easy to use. Even nontech users can master it in a week or so. The reason for that is that Woocommerce is a part of WordPress. Past users can enjoy user-friendly WordPress interface and logic.

Moreover, it means you can use all the free and paid plugins and themes available for WordPress users.Speaking of paid Woocommerce extensions, they are affordable and compatible with almost every WordPress eCommerce theme.

Although WooCommerce is free, it doesn’t mean it’s not professional. With WooCommerce you can build beautiful stores with functions such as coupon codes, detailed order tracking, delivery status, inventory tracking, taxes setting, customer engagement tools and much more.

Large community is another advantage. You can always get free support whenever you need it.

Farhan Syed

~ Farhan is a web developer specializing in SEO and a blogger. He helps people manage their online presence with social media marketing and search engine optimization.

I like WooCommerce enterprise for my eCommerce business sites. It gives me a huge advantage concerning flexibility and add-ons as opposed to other Ecom software providers like Magento or Shopify.

Something that I like about WooCommerce is that I can still blog on the same site as the shop. I can talk about the products, and I can personally vouch for them on the site. Also, I get to choose whatever theme I like that works with WC to make a shop.

The best part of WC is that it integrates right into the already built site and works very well with numerous plugins that I wish to add to the site.

Heena Shah

~ Heena loves to write and read about trending methods in online marketing. Her expertise is designing creative website and Facebook Marketing.

Usually, the best E-commerce platform is decided by several parameters such as client requirement, budget, ease of operations, etc. And Woocommerce fits the bill perfectly.

Our web design company has developed a couple of eCommerce websites on popular platforms like Magento, OpenCart, Drupal, and Woocommerce.

But, we prefer Woocommerce for clients who mostly vouch for DIY solutions, easy to handle functions and affordability. Using Woocommerce, customers can manage shopping, emails, product catalogs, stock, etc. with ease.

Magento and other Open Source Platforms offer almost the same type of functions as Woocommerce. But some features require expert help to execute. And it is not easy to get a qualified developer to handle Magento platform. Plus, they are more expensive than Woocommerce.

Phil Clerkin

~ Phil is a Web Designer for Cre8ive Online.

My favorite eCommerce platform is WooCommerce. I’d tried a few different ones over the years but found that the sheer number of people using WooCommerce meant that help could always be found.

If I came across a request for specific customization, I have always been able to find a plugin to help meet the user’ goals. There are a lot of developers out there making amazing add-ons for WooCommerce.

I have also found WooCommerce works well with a wide range of themes meaning great looking sites are only a few clicks away. The developer woothemes offer endless add-on plugins and while they are expensive they work flawlessly.

Mikhail Khorev

~Mikhail is an SEO expert. He has over 8 years of experience in web design and digital marketing for small and medium-sized businesses.

There are so many eCommerce solutions exist on the market but in the past couple of years, I’ve preferred to use WooCommerce for all my clients and projects.

Most of the small and medium-size businesses need an inexpensive, simple and customizable platform that can help them to sell 10-1000 products, and WooCommerce is the best choice for that.

From the developer point of view, it’s an open source plugin, which means you will have full access to the source code and can customize it the way you or your customer want. The largest library of available add-ons and extensions can help you configure any payment gateway and shipping provider in a matter of minutes.

The entire set up could take a couple of hours instead of days – critical when the client has tight deadlines to meet. Not to mention amazing and professional templates on ThemeForest, that will make an online store look stunning on all devices, improve conversion rate and create a positive brand image.

Other platforms just don’t provide this level of customization and usability, and in the past, I had to spend hours fixing and updating code on other eCommerce platforms (PrestaShop and OpenCart) because some of the connectors and extensions were outdated or didn’t exist.

To sum up, I always suggest WooCommerce because:

• Perfect for small/medium online stores
• The least expensive start-up cost
• Fast set-up time
• Full access to the code and database
• The largest library of add-ons
• Mobile and SEO ready
• Moderate hosting requirements (shared hosting)
• Low maintenance cost
• The largest community of users and developers (to find answers and solve issues)
• It’s also much more affordable and easier to find WordPress/WooCommerce developer if the customer decides to hire an internal developer.

Shaikh Aezaz

~ Shaikh has around 6 years of experience in website development. He develops websites with WordPress for more than 4 years.

My favorite software is WooCommerce because we can create our website quickly with available add-ons and extensions.

The most important thing is it’s free of cost.

One of the eCommerce websites I created for selling custom rubberstamp took only 3 days to complete.

Ban Markus

My favorite eCommerce platform is WooCommerce. I love to use WooComerce not only because is newbie friendly but also because it’s easy to set up and free.

It looks scary when you realized, how many plugins you have to buy/get to make it work properly, but ROI is way better than other platforms that offer you all the settings and functionalities for a commission.

It looks scary when you realized, how many plugins you have to buy/get to make it work properly, but ROI is way better than other platforms that offer you all the settings and functionalities for a commission.

Those platforms not only cut a chunk out of your profits but they make you live under their rules. Yes, it’s true that they make it look easy and cheap but in the long run, doing it yourself using WooCommerce is more satisfactory.

Venchito Tampon

~Venchito is a Manila-based link building strategist and is the CEO and Co-Founder of SharpRocket, a link building firm in Asia that offers white hat link building services for SEO agencies, eCommerce business owners and big corporations in English speaking countries.

One of my favorite eCommerce platforms, particularly for WordPress sites is WooCommerce. A few features that may come in handy for startup owners today are:

• Products can easily be categorized, given with sales prices and other independent attributes. It has a huge flexibility of selling a physical or even a virtual downloadable product.

• User-friendly WordPress interface. This can help you build an online store without having a confusion, so you can focus more of your time in creating great landing pages.

• Built-in analytics system that keeps your statistics crystal clear.

Yuvraj Wadhwani

~ Yuvraj is an E-commerce enthusiast that runs his own eCom business.

My favorite e-commerce platform is WooCommerce. The reason I chose WooCommerce is that it’s extremely easy and user-friendly to set up compared to the other platforms I considered.

It’s also very flexible, and you can create customized solutions very easily. Another advantage of WooCommerce is the extremely large number of free and premium plugins available.

Most of the customizations you need to start a store can be done by plugins which helps you launch faster and focus more on generating sales rather than worrying about the technology.

Al-Amin Kabir

~ Al-Amin is a multi-award winning entrepreneur, blogger, affiliate marketer and speaker who teaches how to build profitable niche sites.

I recommend WooCommerce.

It’s hugely flexible You get a whole lot of flexibility when it comes to features, customization and another technical side of things. You can use a WooCommerce platform to sell physical, downloadable, membership products, or even affiliate/third-party merchant based products.

Easy Integration with existing website, blogs WordPress is currently powering over 25.4% of all websites online and responsible for over 76.5 million blogs!

The thing I love about WooCommerce it’s based on WordPress, and you can easily integrate an e-commerce platform/ digital selling platform on your existing site. Bloggers can easily integrate an e-commerce store on their blog, and start selling online.

Hundreds of extensions

The requirement for everyone is almost unique, and you need extensions to fulfill yours. What I love about WooCommerce is, it has hundreds of extensions. Most of them are free.

Other Features of WooCommerce That Made Me Choose It

• Wide range of free and premium templates • Existing WordPress interface • Free, no one-time/ monthly fees

Ashley Faulkes

~ Ashley is the Founder of Mad Lemmings, a company that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses get more customers through their website

My go-to eCommerce platform for my clients is Woocommerce. Why? Because it is a very simple framework to use and is based on WordPress which gives you so much flexibility and control.

Woocommerce comes with all the basics you need to start an online store from product pages (with a variety of layouts via WordPress Themes), shipping, taxes, pricing, payment gateways, inventory, and localization.

Not only that, but you get all of the functions of WordPress like pages, posts, and rock solid SEO via plugins like Yoast or All in One SEO. It is almost too easy!

Of course, if you are running a massive and complex eCommerce site then Woocommerce & WordPress may (eventually) not satisfy all your needs, but for most online stores it is one of the easiest and best ways to go.

Aaron Jones

~ Aaron is an expert in affiliate marketing. He teaches his readers how to find a niche, start a site and to how to grow traffic.

I’ve always used the WooCommerce platform because of its ease of use and the way the platform is set up. Woo Commerce works with most themes and ingrates well.

If you’re a beginner and not interested in writing code than woo commerce is the way to go. I know there are others but the ease of use and integration are key factors in my business.

Your business needs to be strong and you need to learn your audience. With analytics included in this plugin or whether it is built in your theme can make all the difference in the world when it comes to conservations and your business.

Louie Luc

~ Louie is a full-time internet marketer who’s been working from home for some years now. He runs several niche/authority websites and a few eCommerce businesses.

My favorite eCommerce platform is WooCommerce. It’s the most popular eCommerce solution, being used by 39% of the sites with online stores.

It’s a free plugin that you can install on your WordPress, meaning it runs your own server. If you require additional features, you can add them as you need. These extensions are paid, but they are worth it.

Since picking the right eCommerce platform for your online store is a crucial business step, you need to choose the best: go with WooCommerce.

Ryan BeMiller

~ Ryan runs a website called Shopping Signals that is intended to help online merchants promote their sites and attract more business, through online marketing.

I would like to first caveat this with my belief that choosing an eCommerce platform is one of the least important choices for a new, small eCommerce website.

I understand that many would not agree with that statement, but I just think it’s like number five in order of importance, when it comes to the things you should be focusing on.

Make sure your products, audience, messaging and offers are all dialed in first, then choose an eCommerce platform that you’re comfortable with.

That being said, I tend to lean toward WooCommerce. Being a marketer and developer at heart, I love the flexibility of being able to really customize things and get under the hood. WooCommerce allows this flexibility.

I also value the fact that what you get for free with WooCommerce is fully capable and feature rich. You can run a decent eCommerce site with just the free, out of the box platform.

Additionally, if you want to ramp things up and make customizations, there is a whole community of developers offering free and paid add-ons.

WooCommerce is also very easy and straightforward to implement and manage. I find the user-interface to be friendly and self-explanatory, even for non-technical folks. Several of the folks I’ve implemented it for have a very little technical aptitude, yet they’re perfectly able to manage the store on their own.

There may be an even easier option out there, like Shopify for example. However, they may not be as affordable, and typically are much less customizable.

So to me, the value of what you get for free, plus the ease of use, along with the ability to customize, makes WooCommerce a really strong choice.