5 Best Ecommerce Platforms for 2021

Shopify Standout Features

Shopify’s menus, like this one for adding a new product, are sleek and easy to use.

• Website builder: A big part of what’s made Shopify so successful is the powerful website builder that is very easy to use. User menus, like the one for adding a new item, are sleek and streamlined, providing just the right amount of detail. For example, whenever you change the URL of a webpage, there’s an option to redirect the old URL to the new one—a simple but often overlooked step.
• Inventory management: Shopify has one of the best inventory management systems, although the most advanced features will require a paid upgrade. All account levels can import items, manage returns, and view basic inventory reports. With POS Pro (additional $89 per month), you can create purchase orders (POs), receive orders with a barcode scanner, and run much more advanced profitability and product demand reports.
• Shipping: You can set up flat-rate, weight-based shipping, or charge actual shipping rates from USPS, UPS, or DHL. While Shopify’s pricing page indicates that the latter feature is available only to Advanced accounts, the platform will enable it upon request for anyone who’s on an annual plan. All accounts can print discounted postage labels directly from Shopify for the aforementioned carriers. Shopify also integrates with hundreds of third-party fulfillment apps, should you be using an alternate delivery service, such as ShipStation, or dropshipping.
• Multi-channel selling: Simultaneously sell your items on Amazon, eBay, Facebook Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and many other websites. Shopify offers more multi-channel selling options than any other platform.
• Marketing tools: Abandoned cart recovery is included with all accounts $29 per month and higher. Email marketing is also included with 2,500 emails provided per month, and additional emails priced at $1 per 1,000. Shopify has by far the best built-in email marketing tools, as it allows you to segment customers based on their purchase history, geography, and other variables (third-party apps may be required).
• Analytics: In addition to all the standard sales reports, Shopify provides much more detail about website visitors, like demographics, and which page they first clicked on to access your site. Shopify’s standard plan ($79 per month) includes website cart analysis, which tells you which items a customer is likely to be interested in based on what they’ve previously added to their cart.
• Customer support: Phone, live chat, and email support are available 24/7.

BigCommerce Standout Features

SEO (the ability to set up and implement from the backend) is one of BigCommerce’s strongest features.

• Website builder and design tools: You can customize how your website looks and feels using its page builder visual editor, fully-customizable themes, checkout customization tools, and WordPress integration.
• Sales channels: BigCommerce offers multiple ways to sell your products outside of your storefront—like on social media platforms (Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram). You can also list your items on ecommerce marketplaces—such as eBay and Amazon.
• Order management: This feature lets you access all your orders and sort them according to which fulfillment process stage they are in—like awaiting payment, fulfillment, and shipment. Incomplete, refunded, and archived orders are categorized in this dashboard, and all order information can be exported as a CSV file for use with other services such as third-party fulfillment companies.
• Inventory management: The “Products” tab offers an at-a-glance view of your stock status. Here, you can update products, add new items, and edit product descriptions and prices. You can also be as detailed as you want with your products’ metadata descriptions and both product and category URLs—allowing you to take advantage of SEO tools.
• Multi-currency and multi-language capabilities: The platform accepts over 100 currencies and offers local payment options with your preferred gateway. You can also localize your store’s front-end according to the language of your market.
• SEO features: Features such as automated image optimizer, on-page SEO capabilities, sitemap generation, and site speed enhancers are advantageous for SEO. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is implemented on all of BigCommerce themes as well.

Ecwid Standout Features

• Sell Anywhere: You can sell either online—through Ecwid’s storefront, an existing website, social networks, on mobile—or in person. In-store or in-person sales can be done by connecting your store to a POS platform of your choice. Additionally, its Buy Button feature can be added to any web page and links directly to your product. It automatically adapts to the website’s colors and style without the need for coding knowledge.

The Buy Button feature allows you to customize what information you would like to reflect when the product is linked to your website.

• Storefront Customer Experience: Ecwid makes it easy for your customers to buy products by providing a drag-and-drop “add to cart” feature, an easy “checkout without creating a store profile” option, a customer address book, and the ability to save favorite products. Language is easily detected and can be translated to over 45 different languages, and real-time shipping rates are adjusted based on the customer’s IP address.
• Store Management: Ecwid allows you to sell both physical and digital products, and you can categorize those goods based on their features, such as colors, sizes, etc. Promotions can be done with discount coupons and volume discounts, whereas different shipping options can be calculated in real time based on carrier rates. In addition, inventory tracking is synced for online and offline purchases.
• Mobile App: Ecwid provides a store management app (iOS and Android) for paid subscribers through ShopApp. You can also manage your store through the app by updating inventory, managing orders, and receiving notifications. Images, prices, availability, and any changes that you make online automatically sync with the mobile app.

Square Online Standout Features

Square Online works a lot similarly to Shopify, and they both offer user-friendly POS software, online store, and ecommerce functionalities, and integrated payment processing with industry-leading omnichannel and contactless payment tools. The biggest difference between Square Online and Shopify is that Square Online’s POS and online store products are free to use, whereas Shopify requires a monthly subscription. Read more about Shopify vs Square here.

If you run a restaurant and would like to launch online ordering for delivery or curbside pick-up, you can set up a free ordering page using Square Online. Online orders instantly display in your restaurant POS and kitchen printers, so there’s no disruption to your standard order process.

• Website builder: Square Online allows you to build a full-blown website with multiple pages, contact forms, an email sign-up, and much more. The website can be custom branded with your logo and colors, and you can choose which features you want to appear—and in what order. However, you cannot fully edit the layout or add integrations as you can with Shopify.
• Inventory management: Square Online lets you import your inventory with categories, variants, and modifiers and set up low stock alerts. All of this needs to be done from the Square Item menu, however, and not the website item library, which can be a little confusing. Unlike Shopify, Square Online does not provide inventory reports or let you automate customer returns.
• Shipping: Square Online requires you to set up your own shipping rates (which can be flat-rate or based on weight)—unless you upgrade to the Premium edition ($72 per month), which lets you charge the actual prices from mail carriers. With the Performance edition ($26 per month) or higher, you can also buy discounted postage labels for USPS, UPS, FedEx, or DHL straight from the dashboard.
• Multi-channel selling: Sell items on Instagram or Facebook, and manage the order through Square.
• Marketing tools: Abandoned cart recovery (available to $26 per month accounts and higher) automatically sends reminder emails to customers who stopped before checking out. Square Online also has email marketing features available, starting at $15 per month.
• Built-in Analytics: Square Online provides a range of sales reports, including sales by category, discounts applied, and tax collected. Paid versions of Square Online also provide some basic website analytics—like page views, search terms, and referring sites.
• Customer support: Email, live chat, and phone support are available weekdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time, and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. During my evaluation, it took about 30 minutes to get connected to a live support agent who was very knowledgeable and helpful.

Squarespace Standout Features

An example of a Squarespace template for an ecommerce website.
(Tudor Squarespace Theme Preview Image) You can view more samples here.

• Website builder: Squarespace is one of the easiest website builders to use and also one of the hardest to mess up. Its highly acclaimed website templates are among the most stylish and best designed. While you do not get nearly the same customization options as Wix, many users will find they can simply enter their product details and are good to go.
• Inventory management: The platform lets you import your items via a spreadsheet or add them manually with photos and a description. You can create variants for products (such as different colors or sizes) and set up low stock alerts. Another unique feature worth noting is that Squarespace lets you set up forms for products, so you can request additional information from customers when they make a purchase.
• Shipping: With Squarespace, you’ll need to set up your own shipping rates, which can be flat-rate or based on weight. To calculate real-time rates from USPS, FedEx, or UPS, you’ll need to be on the Advanced Commerce plan ($46 per month). However, unlike the other ecommerce systems we reviewed, Squarespace does not let you print postage labels directly from the program, but you can do so through a ShipStation integration.
• Multi-channel selling: Squarespace lets you tag your items on Instagram with a link to purchase, and create dynamic Facebook ads for your products. Unlike Shopify, there is no integration with Amazon, eBay, or other ecommerce channels.
• Marketing tools: Abandoned cart recovery is available with the Advanced Commerce plan ($40 per month). Squarespace also has email marketing available for an additional fee, or you can integrate Mailchimp.
• Analytics: It includes a few very basic reports, including sales by product, traffic sources, and geography of visitors (by country or state). The Commerce plan ($30 per month) provides a purchase funnel report, telling you what percentage of visitors are viewing products, adding them to their cart, and making purchases.
• Customer support: Squarespace offers email support 24/7 and live chat support on weekdays, from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time.