Top 6 Best Ecommerce Platforms (Ranked and Reviewed)

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Everyone wants to start a business right, a store will be a great idea in most cases, but wait, you don’t have the capital to build an entire shop from the ground up. But online you can and it is very easy to do so, you can have a shop up and running in hours. It’s possible by using these best ecommerce platforms, that do most of the heavy lifting for you.

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The best part is, You don’t have to be good at coding to start using these e-commerce platforms, you don’t even have to know to code at all, even the least tech-savvy person can get started with one of these platforms, especially the user-friendly ones, like Zyro.

Here at Lyncteck, we recommend Shopify to most people, for quite a number of reasons that we will talk about. Try their 14-day free trial and no credit card is required. Go check em out.

1. Shopify – The best all-rounder

The Jack of all threads, the best all-rounder, everyone can agree that Shopify needs no introduction. The big-name have earned their reputation. It is more like a baby Amazon on steroids, run by the people for the people.

This is by far the best eCommerce platform available in the market. The platform is beginner friendly, well at least according to most people who use it.

If you plan to dropship, selling through Facebook and Instagram ads, this is the platform you got to consider. It is not that good for SEO though and also for managing really big e-commerce stores.

Shopify comes with everything you need to build an online store, it’s got many apps you can use to extend the functionality of your ecommerce, and you can make a really complex ecommerce store in minutes, no other ecommerce platform has that number of apps, and integrations.

Shopify plans include access to incredible features, I’ll list some of them below.

• Abandoned checkout recovery (really cool feature)
• Countless Payment Gateways
• Advanced Inventory Management
• You can post unlimited products
• fulfillment centers
• Automatic tax calculations

And many other features, you can check them out at Shopify.

You can customize your shop with millimetric precision, at least in theory, if you are not a good designer, no need to worry Shopify got you covered. You can browse for a pre-built in their template library of over 80 starter sites. Pair that with over 6000 apps, and you can make your website look out of this world, internet…

PROS

• Fast Load Speeds
• Easy to use
• Extensive App library
• Excellent for Dropshipping
• Easy to Scale
• Deep Knowledge base

CONS

• Apps can drive up cost and complexity
• Weak at SEO

PRICING

Shopify comes with 3 plans listed below,

• Basic – Everything you need to create your store, ship products, and process payments – $24/mo
• Shopify – Level up your business with professional reporting and more staff accounts – $69/mo
• Advanced – Get the best of Shopify with custom reporting and our lowest transaction fees(in case you wanna go god mode on your ecommerce store) – $299/mo

2. Zyro – Best User Friendly

This ecommerce platform is not just cheap, it is really beginner friendly, I highly recommend this one for some who has never ran a website before. It comes at a scammingly(if that’s a word) low price, like you just can’t believe it’s that cheap. The pricing starts as low as under $5/ month. It’s that cheap. Cheaper than what you spend on a day. At Zyro they don’t have normal weekdays, I’d argue and say, every day is a Black Friday to them.

Don’t get me started on the features that come with this ecommerce platform at that low price.

This platform was built for smaller ecommerce stores, and this made it really simple and easy to use, You don’t need a developer to start selling. It is the best for those individuals who want to make a couple of hundred bucks per day. Only to pay back under $5 for hosting, how cool is that!

Zyro doesn’t give you a lot of customization and integration or plugins, but you gonna get everything required to build an ecommerce store and I mean everything. Zyro being Lightweight gives it the edge when it comes to speed. Users will experience fast loading times and speed is also good for SEO.

Zyro also comes with a library of pre-built templates that you can use on your ecommerce store. There are over 40 templates from Zyro optimized to build an online store.

Zyro also includes a CDN. A CDN is a content delivery network and what that does is store your website files on the nearest data centre to your users and this in turn increases your website speed. It is like an adrenaline boost to someone already on steroids, Zyro websites are that fast.

PROS

• Very easy to use
• Extremely Cheap
• Lighting Speeds
• 30-day money-back guarantee

CONS

• Fewer Integrations
• Inventory Limits
• Not really scalable

PRICING

Zyro pricing starts at $14/month if you’re only gonna test it out for that one month only, but there’s a huge discount of 73% when you opt to buy a 2-year subscription and you’ll save over $200. The discount is equivalent to just under $4/mo. Zyro is probably the cheapest ecommerce platform on the market. You better check them out.

3. BigCommerce – For large Ecommerce stores

BigCommerce is a fully hosted, Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that lets you build, run, and manage your e-commerce store, even if you are the least tech-savvy person on the internet. BigCommerce is well known for its scalability, hence the name.. You can turn your online store into something close to amazon…well not close but to something really big. Bigcommerce has the ability and the tools to manage large growing ecommerce stores handling multiple transactions per day.

BigCOmmerce offers high levels of security and flexibility.. You won’t have to worry about safety when ballin with BigCommerce. They also do their best in making sure the websites are SEO-friendly.

SEO can make a big difference, that extra boost of organic traffic from Google might be all you need to turn your business into a money-printing machine.

This platform has one of the finest technical support teams of all the ecommerce platforms in the market. You can reach out to them 24/7 if you run into roadblocks and they will be there for you.

BigCommerce is most suitable for…

New, ambitious ecommerce stores with big-ecommerce dreams. BigCommerce is super scalable, you can take your business to the next level with no problem. It is also for well-established ecommerce stores which have outgrown their current platform.BigCommerce has a range of helpful tools and guides for site migration from one platform to another.

PROS

• There are no platform fees/commissions on any plan
• Strong SEO support for enhanced organic growth.
• 24/7 Support
• Highly Scalable
• Impressive Security

CONS

• Annual Sales limit
• No Ability to block IP Addresses
• Not much customization
• lack of native POS feature

PRICING

• Standard- $29.95/mo -Sell online with your own beautiful online store
• Plus – $79.95/mo – Grow your online business with marketing tools proven to increase conversion
• Pro – $299.95/mo – Scale your growing business with a comprehensive set of features

4. Wix – For creative control

This one is for the artists. Wix offers a hell lot of creative control, which allows you to make any kind of ecommerce store you want. The Drag and drop experience is just out of this world. It is really easy to use, beginner-friendly and that is all you need if you’re just starting out.

Wix is perfect for small businesses that want to get a little creative. It also provides some awesome SEO tools for that organic traffic we all want.

The favorite question for all those who want to quickly have their ecommerce store up..” Does it have prebuilt templates”, I thought you’d never ask. Wix provides a template library of over 800 templates.

Security is one of the top things we look at when choosing a website builder especially if the category is in the ecommerce space, Wix comes with a lot of security features built-in and these include:

• Inbuilt SSL(secure socket layer….tells chrome your website is safe to visit)
• PCI compliant
• Two-factor authentication for online payments

PROS

• Awesome Site Speed
• A shit ton of features
• Good Support
• Massive Template Collection

CONS

• Website not transferrable
• tracking requires a paid plan

PRICING

The Wix Business and Ecommerce Plans Pricing is structured as follows

• Business Basic – $17/month
• Business Unlimited – $25/month
• Business VIP – $35/month

5. Squarespace – If you prioritize the looks

When I mention the word Squarespace, I hear people mentioning the sick modern template library it offers, I guess people no longer want to build things from scratch, I mean…. Why reinvent the wheel, it can’t be any more circular. All we can do is improve the wheel, tweak the templates to our taste, put on our own color palette, and make the website look unique that no one will guess you took a template and smashed your brand onto it.

I can go all day about the importance of templates, and how modern Squarespace templates look.

Squarespace wasn’t originally made for ecommerce, I’d say it targeted artists, creators, and designers, people with an eye for good looks. When it joined the ecommerce space, you can guess how good-looking the ecommerce stores are.

Squarespace isn’t the best option when selling physical products as it does not provide some cool shipping and fulfillment features like Shopify. It is also limited when it comes to payment options and other features like automated tax calculations are not provided for non-US residents.

The reason for all this is that they are starting out, Rome wasn’t built in a day and with time we will see these feature rollout and those features paired with the modern template library,…You think about it.

PROS

• Dope template library
• Good Blog Integration
• Can sell services/ Subscriptions
• Great For Social Media

CONS

• Not Ideal for international Stores

Pricing

Squarespace has a 4 plan pricing tier that caters for all business sizes

• Personal – $16/month
• Business – $23/month
• Basic Commerce – $27/month
• Advanced COmmerce – $49/month

6. Bluehost – Best for WordPress Lovers

Bluehost??? – Ecommerce???

Well surprise, if you didn’t know yet, Bluehost has support for running large ecommerce stores by pairing their WordPress websites with the WooCommerce plugin. The WooCommerce plugin has some amazing features that will take me the whole day to list, let me just mention a few

By Activating the plugin, your website immediately gets a store and all that will be left is to add products to it. The store will already have some features like advanced filters, even category filters will be provided. This gives your customers a seamless experience when searching for products to buy on your ecommerce store.

Woocommerce also gives you the ability to add a subscription service to your products in case you have a digital product. WooCommerce has a lot of add-ons for providing multiple payment methods, there is Razorpay if you’re from India, there’s Paynow if you are from Zimbabwe, and there is PayPal if you’re from Mars, I am confident you will find something for your country, and if international, there’s Stripe and PayPal. Even Wire Transfers are an option.

Many themes integrate well with the Woocommerce plugin, a popular option that works well with Woocommerce is Astra, you can find other popular WordPress themes that work well with the WooCommerce plugin, there are lots of them.

PROS

• Another Cheap option
• WooCommerce analytics
• Can integrate well with a website already up and running
• Can work with almost any theme on WordPress
• Enjoy Bluehost Features

CONS

• Little Knowledge of WordPress required

PRICING

• Online Store – Perfect for selling products and services online, booking appointments & reservations. -$9.95/month if you subscribe to the 1 year plan, you get up to 70% off from what is normally $24.95.
• Online Store + Marketplace – Perfect for – selling products and services online + selling across marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, eBay, and more. – $12.95/month if you subscribe to the 1 year plan.

Conclusion

You won’t go wrong with any of these, especially if you’re starting out unless you want a really big big store online, then Bluehost and Bigcommerce, and probably Shopify too can handle all your enterprise-level needs.

Good Luck on your Ecommerce Journey, If you’d like to know other online business ideas please read this article on 17+ online business ideas for beginners.

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