Dedicated ecommerce platforms offer you full functionality for selling your products online. For this buyer’s guide, we looked at the most popular platforms and rising stars and decided to review Shopify, Zoey, and BigCommerce. These companies covered the range for small businesses in terms of price, selling tools, and ease of use. Read on for our comparison and review of these three options, as well as our top recommendations.

Best Dedicated Ecommerce Platform: Shopify

Shopify offers every feature a small business needs to sell online, plus an incredibly easy to use interface. Starting at only $29/mo., Shopify’s all-in-one multichannel selling solution includes a full suite of web store, marketplace, social, and in-person selling tools. Store management is all-in-one, too. From tracking inventory to processing orders to printing shipping labels, you can do it all within Shopify’s intuitive dashboard.

Visit Shopify

Best Small Business Ecommerce Platform – Shopify vs. Zoey vs. BigCommerce Summary

	Shopify	Zoey	BigCommerce
Price & Fees Learn More	$29 - $299/mo	$199 - $599/mo	$29.95 - $249.95/mo
Recommended Plan	Shopify Plan: $79/mo	Business: $199/mo	Plus: $79.95/mo
Online Payment Options & Transaction Fees Learn More	If using Shopify Payments for payment processing: 2.4%-2.9% + 30¢/transaction fee. If using a third-party processor, Shopify charges: .5% - 2%/transaction. Choose from Paypal, Stripe or 70+ third-party payment gateways	Does not charge a transaction fee for using a third-party processor. Choose from Paypal, Stripe or 25+ third-party payment gateways	2.2%-2.9% + 30¢/transaction fee. Does not charge a transaction fee for using a third-party processor. Choose from Paypal, Stripe or 35+ third-party payment gateways
Point-of-Sale (POS) Integration Learn More	Shopify Retail	Integrates with various POS systems	Square
Free Trial	14 day	14 day	15 day
Ease of Use Learn More	Easy	Medium	Medium
Product Listings	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Design Templates Learn More	9 Free theme designs + plenty of premium designs starting at $100	16 Free mobile-friendly templates, all customizable with a drag & drop editor	2 Free theme designs + plenty of premium designs starting at $145
Promotions, Coupons & Gift Cards Learn More	Yes	Yes	Yes
SEO Features & Built-in Blogging Learn More	Yes	Yes	Yes
Social, Multichannel & Marketing Integrations Learn More	Facebook Store, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon, & More	Facebook Store, eBay, Etsy, Amazon & More	Facebook Store, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon, & More
Advanced Shipping & Inventory Integrations Learn More	Print shipping labels with Shopify Shipping or manage shipping + inventory through: Ordoro, ShippingEasy, ShipStation & More	Print shipping labels or manage shipping + inventory through: Ordoro, ShippingEasy, ShipStation & More	Print shipping labels or manage shipping + inventory through: Ordoro, ShippingEasy, ShipStation & More
Customer Service, Tutorials & Documentation Learn More	24/7 phone, email, and live chat	M-F 9-6 EST phone, email, and support tickets. Extended hours for urgent needs	24/7 phone, email, and live chat
	www.Shopify.com	www.Zoey.com	www.BigCommerce.com

How We Chose Which Ecommerce Platforms to Review

Ecommerce solutions come in many shapes and sizes, but all can be grouped into three major categories.

1. Add-ons that enable online selling functions on website builders like Wix and Weebly. These offer ideal solutions for occasional or low-volume online sales.
2. Plugins that add online selling features to WordPress blogs and websites. These allow WordPress site owners to add full ecommerce functionality to their WordPress blog.
3. Dedicated ecommerce platforms with loads of selling tools and management features. These cater to businesses who want a website where the primary focus is selling products.

For this guide, we focus on the dedicated ecommerce platforms designed to help stores attract and manage a significant amount of online sales. If you sell in lower volume, or just want to know more about the other selling options, you can learn about selling on a WordPress site here, and on Wix and Weebly sites here.

If online sales are your main goal, then a dedicated ecommerce platform is likely right for you. Of the many choices out there, feature-rich Shopify and BigCommerce consistently lead the pack for new store launches, and have for over a decade. Zoey is the new kid on the block but already is turning heads. It boasts terrific scalability plus a load of next-gen ecommerce features that seasoned online sellers will appreciate. Let’s take a look at all that our top three have to offer.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Small Businesses: Shopify

Picking an overall Top Pick from our field of three is difficult. They are on par in many ways, plus each has certain strengths. But one is used by more small businesses than any other, and that’s Shopify. After a careful review, there are three things that put Shopify at the top of our list. These are:

1. Shopify is as turnkey as it gets. It makes every essential selling function simple. From quick setup to daily management, Shopify provides a turnkey solution that covers every selling need, even at the basic $29/mo. plan.
2. Shopify provides sitewide HTTPS security on every plan. Google is starting to give priority rankings to fully secure sites, so this matters. Here both Shopify and BigCommerce deliver over Zoey, which only offers sitewide HTTPS on more costly higher-level plans at this time.
3. Shopify delivers a connected all-in-one store management solution. You don’t have to cobble together payment, shipping, and point-of-sale solutions from different providers. Shopify Payments, Shopify Shipping, and Shopify Retail work seamlessly together to connect every facet of online sales and shipping with in-store and mobile sales.

These are just the top three reasons. There are plenty of others that make Shopify a stellar choice for any small business owner looking to expand into online sales. Integrated social selling tools like a Facebook Store and Pinterest Buyable Pins is one. Another is Shopify Shipping, which lets you print UPS and US Postal shipping labels right from Shopify’s dashboard. You even receive US Postal discounts.

As great as Shopify is, compared to our other top picks it has a few shortcomings that bear mentioning:

• Pricing is one. While Shopify’s monthly fees are competitive with BigCommerce and less than Zoey, Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on every order if you don’t use their Shopify Payments plan. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but it can add up so you need to be aware of this. We discuss this further below.
• Store design cost and lack of customization is another. For store design, Shopify offers nine free themes but these are pretty basic. If you want more bells and whistles, you’ll have choose from paid themes which start at $100. Customizing your store theme is possible, but it requires coding expertise. The same is true of BigCommerce. Here, Zoey beats them both with 16 amazing themes plus a drag-and-drop editor for full customization.

Shortcomings aside, Shopify is hands-down the easiest way for anyone, regardless of web expertise, to launch a powerful online selling tool. And for easily connecting mobile and in-store sales, and putting products in front of customers on social sites, it’s practically unbeatable.

Visit Shopify

Best Ecommerce Platform for Customization & Scalability: Zoey

Zoey is built on the Magento ecommerce platform which is used by many top internet brands and high-volume power sellers. In the world of ecommerce, Magento makes every possibility possible, but you have to know how to put it all together. Before Zoey debuted in 2014, only those with big budgets and big development teams tackled Magento. Thanks to Zoey, sellers who outgrow platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce can now tap into Magento’s power without spending a fortune.

Feature-wise, Zoey offers all that Shopify and BigCommerce provide, but it really leaps ahead of the others in two areas:

1. Zoey is fully customizable. Any page can be modified using Zoey’s shockingly simple drag-and-drop editor. Move a button, change a color, add a text box, rearrange anything, you can do it in Zoey. Shopify, BigCommerce, and other dedicated ecommerce platforms require coding knowledge to make even simple changes. Even then, your customization options can be limited.
2. Zoey offers terrific scalability. Zoey streamlines Magento’s modular system to make it manageable for non-developers, but preserves Magento’s scalability. That means with Zoey, ecommerce function and feature possibilities are wide open. With module apps, you can add targeted and specific functions that deliver any customer experience imaginable and support a full range of volume selling needs.

This is why Zoey is a fast becoming the most popular move-up platform for sellers seeking a more customized user experience than Shopify and BigCommerce offer. If the others don’t deliver all that you want in an ecommerce store, Zoey is the tool that lets you expand your horizons. With Zoey, the real challenge is knowing what, and how, to implement the many options available. And that takes us into Zoey’s shortcomings compared to our other top picks:

• Zoey can be overwhelming if you’re new to ecommerce. While basic store creation is fast and easy, Zoey’s many custom features can be overwhelming to ecommerce newbies. But if you’ve already run an online store, are moving into volume sales, and have managed apps and add-ons, Zoey’s scalable solution may be just what you need.
• Zoey is a more expensive platform. Zoey starts at $199/mo., which is many times the starting price of the others. But feature-wise, Zoey’s starter level competes with the similarly priced mid-level Shopify and BigCommerce plans.

I admit it, I’m tempted to use Zoey for my next webstore project. With 16-plus years of launching and running ecommerce sites under my belt, I’m comfortable testing modules and functionality. You may not be ready to dive headlong into Zoey’s highly customizable ecommerce platform, but then again, you may. Either way, it’s definitely worth a look.

Visit Zoey

Another Top Ecommerce Platform: BigCommerce

As a platform, BigCommerce is more comparable to Shopify than Zoey. It offers a good set of features and functionality that increase at each price level and is very quick and simple to set up. It also provides nice starter store themes for free, plus an assortment of advanced store designs for a price. It’s very competitive with Shopify and Zoey in many areas, and even pulls ahead in two:

1. Monthly pricing and transaction fees. At the lower levels, BigCommerce matches Shopify’s monthly fee, but its top plan is $50/mo. less than Shopify’s and $350/mo. less than Zoey’s. Also, BigCommerce doesn’t charge a transaction fee on every order, whereas Shopify does if you don’t use their Shopify Payments. With BigCommerce, the only transaction fees you pay are those charged by your payment provider.
2. Built-in integration with Amazon and eBay. BigCommerce directly integrates your store with Amazon and eBay on every plan level at no additional cost. Shopify integrates directly with Amazon on every plan level too, but requires installing an app to support eBay. With Zoey, you need a paid third-party app to connect your store to these and other major seller marketplaces.

Like both Shopify and Zoey, BigCommerce makes store setup easy and offers many necessary online selling features, including product listing options, checkout security, and terrific inventory and store management tools. But it doesn’t top the others in a few key areas:

• Store design cost and lack of customization. For store design, BigCommerce offers just two free themes, plus a few variations of each. This is less than both Shopify and Zoey. The free themes are modern and responsive, but pretty basic. If you want more bells and whistles, you’ll have choose from paid themes which start at $140. Like Shopify, customizing your store theme is possible, but it requires coding expertise. Here, Zoey beats both with 16 amazing themes plus a drag-and-drop editor for full customization.
• Built-in shipping label printing isn’t as robust as Shopify Shipping. BigCommerce supports in-dashboard shipping labels for US Postal shipments on every plan level, but Shopify Shipping tops this by supporting both USPS and UPS label printing. To ship with UPS or FedEx, you’ll need a third-party solution like ShipStation, Ordoro, or ShippingEasy. All are great shipping tools, but they do come with added costs and integration. Here Zoey comes up short because it doesn’t offer any free built-in shipping label platforms at all.

Despite the differences, web newbies and web-savvy store owners alike will enjoy BigCommerce’s easy to use dashboard, store setup utilities, and their clean, mobile-friendly free store themes.

Visit BigCommerce

In-Depth Review: Shopify vs. Zoey vs. BigCommerce

Monthly Costs

Monthly fees for our top picks start at $29 and reach as much $599 for premier plans. For most small businesses, the lower and mid-tier price levels offer every feature you need to sell successfully. With all three, you can save 10% on fees if you pay for the full year in one payment. On Shopify, if you pay two years up front, you’ll save 20%.

Shopify:

The Shopify Plan at $79/mo. is our recommended plan for most small businesses. It provides unlimited products, unlimited storage, professional reporting, abandoned cart recovery, multichannel and social selling, and much more. But Shopify offers other plans to meet different needs and budgets, and even has a $9/mo Shopify Lite Plan for a Facebook-only store. Learn more about Shopify’s pricing here.

Zoey:

At $199/mo, Zoey is the most expensive starter plan of the three, but it competes with the others’ mid-tier recommended plans. It provides unlimited products, bandwidth, storage, and reporting, plus a host of custom features. However, some selling tools that are free with Shopify and BigCommerce can cost extra to enable since they require a third-party app. These include social and multichannel integrations for Facebook stores, Amazon, and eBay.

See all of Zoey’s features at every price level here.

BigCommerce:

At $79.95/mo., the Plus Plan is our recommended plan for most small businesses. It provides unlimited products, bandwidth, and storage, plus professional reporting, abandoned cart recovery, multichannel and social selling, and more. Note, BigCommerce’s top Pro Plan is the cheapest top-level plan of the three.

See all of BigCommerce’s features at every price level here.

Credit Card Payment Options

Of our top three, only Shopify offers an in-house payment solution, Shopify Payments. It’s a very simple and competitively priced way to process credit card payments on Shopify stores. In contrast, BigCommerce and Zoey use only third-party payment options.

All three of our top picks integrate with the most popular payment providers and gateways, including Paypal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. Shopify and Zoey both support Amazon Payments, too. BigCommerce partners with payment gateway Braintree to offer discounted PayPal credit card processing rates. All three provide secure, PCI-compliant checkouts at every plan level.

Point-of-Sale (POS) Integration

If you have a physical store or sell using mobile devices, point-of-sale system (POS) integrations will matter to you. All three of our top picks offer POS integration in some way. Of the three, Zoey supports integrations with the widest variety of POS systems, but they can take work to set up. Both Shopify and BigCommerce make it easier, but offer fewer options. Shopify offers its own retail package, Shopify POS, and BigCommerce partners with Square. Read on for details.

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Ease of Use

All three of our top picks make it easy to pick a design, add products and some customer service information, hook up a payment solution, and launch your store. In fact, each platform walks you through a complete step-by-step store builder and launch checklist. Plus, all three let you import product data from a spreadsheet or migrate your product listings from another platform. With Shopify and BigCommerce, you can view real-time updates in a separate window or split screen. With Zoey, all design changes can be made drag-and-drop, right on your screen.

Shopify:

I figured out Shopify’s store building and product entry screens in about five minutes. Now I’ve done this before but that’s fast, even for me. If I had just a few products to enter with photos already sized and ready to upload, I believe I could launch a Shopify store in about an hour.

Zoey:

Zoey’s step-by-step launch process leaves nothing out. Choose a design, pop in your products, set your shipping rates and taxes, hook up your payment processor, and you’re ready for launch. However, things like social selling on a Facebook store and multichannel feeds to Amazon and eBay require third-party apps to enable. We explore that later in this guide.

Here’s a look at Zoey’s amazing drag-and-drop design editor. I’m changing the button color, size, placement, and text — all right on-screen. This is a mighty nice feature, but note that the editor works best in the Google Chrome browser:

BigCommerce:

BigCommerce offers a simple interface and step-by-step launch process that leaves nothing out. Choose a design, pop in your products, set your shipping rates and taxes, hook up your payment processor, and you’re ready for launch.

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Store Design & Themes

To create different looks on ecommerce platforms, you choose a store design which is called a theme. In this category, Zoey is the clear winner. All of Zoey’s themes are free, modern, and responsive, meaning they work on mobile devices. Plus they’re completely customizable in Zoey’s unique drag-and-drop editor. Shopify and BigCommerce provide a core selection of free themes which are modern and responsive, but rather plain. They’re also hard to customize if you’re not a coding expert. However, both offer a nice selection of themes for purchase if you’re looking for styling or features beyond the free themes.

Shopify:

Shopify offers nine free themes, each with style variations, giving you a total of 17 looks to choose from. The free themes are clean and tidy, professional quality, and responsive, but they may lack features you want. If so, Shopify has a huge selection of premium themes starting at $100. Many are designed to target different selling categories too, such as Home & Garden, Health & Beauty, and Electronics. See all of your Shopify theme options here.

Zoey:

Zoey beats both Shopify and BigCommerce in free themes. They offer 16 free themes with six more in development now. Each features cutting-edge design comparable to the top-of-the-line paid themes of the others. Plus, unlike the other two, you can dive right in and edit your theme to your heart’s content with Zoey’s drag-and-drop visual editor. Zoey does not list any paid themes, but the free themes and customization options provide all you need to launch a stunning site on Zoey. See all of your Zoey theme options here.

BigCommerce:

BigCommerce only offers two free themes. With style variations, you have a total of 7 looks to choose from. The free themes are clean and tidy, professional quality, and responsive, but a bit cookie-cutter in styling. BigCommerce has a nice selection of paid themes, and like Shopify, many are designed to target specific selling categories. Most paid themes run between $170-$235, but there are a few at $145. See all of your BigCommerce theme options here.

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Promotions, Coupons & Gift Cards

All of our top picks offer robust website and sales promotion features, including discount codes, coupon management, free shipping offers, and gift cards. A few offer these selling tools only at certain plan levels, which we detail below.

Shopify: Shopify offers discount codes, free shipping options, and coupon code management at every level. Gift card management, both physical and digital, is available at the $79/mo. plan level and up.

Zoey: Zoey offers a number of customizable promotion, coupon code management, and gift card tools through their Zoey Features add-ons, which you can see here.

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SEO Features & Built-in Blogging

All three of our top picks offer a great suite of SEO features. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of formatting certain aspects of your site so it ranks higher in Google and other search engines. Things that affect your site’s ranking include customizable H1 tags, title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs. Sites that are mobile-friendly, provide customer reviews, and offer site-wide HTTPS security tend to rank higher, too. Perhaps one of the best ways to boost your search ranking and keep customers coming back for more is regularly adding fresh content. For this, a built-in blog is the ideal tool, and all three provide that as well.

Shopify: Shopify includes everything needed for SEO success, including H1 header tags, title tags, meta descriptions, and mobile-friendly themes, to name just a few. They also support a built-in blog, customer reviews, and provide site-wide HTTPS security with a free SSL certificate at every level.

Zoey: Zoey also is designed for SEO success. But unlike Shopify, site-wide HTTPS security is only available at the upper Business and Premier levels (though you can separately purchase an SSL certificate for your site). Otherwise, its SEO features are on par with the other two. You can easily create H1 header tags, title tags, and meta descriptions. All of Zoey’s themes are mobile-friendly, plus their customer review and built-in blog features help with your search engine rankings.

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Social, Multichannel & Marketing Integrations

All three of our top picks let you put your products in front of millions of shoppers on sites like Amazon and eBay, and on Facebook Stores and other social sites. However, each handles these integrations a bit differently.

Shopify: Shopify offers tidy integrations with social media selling powerhouses Facebook and Pinterest. Want a Facebook store? No problem. Need to add Buyable Pins to Pinterest? Easily done. It also provides a Buy Button feature that lets you insert single item listings or full collections anywhere, onto blogs, into emails, and more. Amazon selling integration is available on every plan level too. However, Shopify falls behind BigCommerce in eBay integration. For this, you need a third-party app.

Zoey: Shopify and BigCommerce top Zoey in direct integrations for social and marketplace selling. You can do it with Zoey, but it takes third-party apps to enable integrations, often with added costs. For marketplace selling, Ordoro and others integrate well to sell and manage Zoey inventory on Amazon and eBay. For Facebook Stores, StoreYa’s Magento integration can connect your Zoey products for social selling.

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Shipping, Advanced Inventory & Accounting Integrations

These are the important integrations that make your business manageable and efficient. It doesn’t matter what you sell; if you can’t efficiently ship packages, track inventory, and manage your money, you have a mess. Luckily, our top three have great dashboard management features for inventory and sales reporting, and Shopify even lets you print US Postal and UPS shipping labels from your store dashboard. If you need more features, you can use an integrated solution.

Shopify: For accounting, you can import/export various files and spreadsheets which are compatible with most business software, or see if your package has an app here. If you use QuickBooks, Quickbooks Online syncs directly with Shopify using their free app here.

For shipping orders, Shopify Shipping supports in-dashboard shipping label printing for both USPS and UPS, which is mighty convenient. It even supports USPS commercial discounts rates, which are based on your store plan. Higher plans receive higher postal discount rates. If you need more advanced shipping and inventory control features, ShippingEasy and Ordoro both are good options.

Zoey: This is where Zoey’s shortcomings come into play. It integrates with a wide array of third-party providers to fill all of your business needs, but you have to find the right fit. You can browse Zoey’s entire suite of shipping and accounting integration apps here. If you want to use Zoey and need a sure-fire solution that addresses Amazon and eBay selling, printing shipping labels, QuickBooks integration, inventory management, and more, check out Ordoro.

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Customer Service, Tutorials & Documentation

All three of our top picks offer good setup tutorials and plenty of documentation to help you implement each and every feature. For customer service needs and questions, I found Shopify’s customer service to be the winner, and various user forums and reviews seem to agree. BigCommerce comes in at a close second. With Zoey, I interacted via email only, but my questions were answered promptly.

As referenced in the summary table, 24/7 support is available with both Shopify and BigCommerce. Zoey is a smaller operation and support times are limited to business hours, as detailed below.

Shopify: All levels provide phone, email, and live chat support 24/7. Visit their support desk here.

Zoey: Zoey offers phone, email, and support ticket customer service between 9am-6pm, EST (US), M-F. But they do respond to emails after hours for urgent needs. Visit their support desk here.