15 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business of 2024

Having a list of the best eCommerce platforms for small business at your disposal is essential as people turn to the internet in droves to buy the products and services they need.

In fact, eCommerce has taken the world by storm. It is projected that online sales will account for over $6.5 trillion by 2023, or 22% of all retail sales globally.

So, as a small business owner it's critical to have an online presence to reach your customers, and eCommerce platforms make it easy for you to set up your own online store without having to design it from scratch.

However, there are many different eCommerce platforms available today, each with its own unique set of features and benefits.

So, in this article you'll find the 15 best eCommerce platforms for small business, fully ranked and reviewed plus recommendations to find out which one may be best suited to your needs, including a summary of the top 3 editor's picks below for your convenience:

What is the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business?

1. Shopify

Shopify is a popular eCommerce platform that offers a large number of ready-made themes, drag-and-drop design, extension apps and live support so you can create a store that can grow with your business.

It also makes it easy to manage your inventory, process payments and track orders and has built-in tools that help you create, execute, and analyze digital marketing campaigns to grow your pipeline.

Shopify Features that Stand Out

• Over 70 professional themes designed for dozens of retail categories
  
• Includes a built-in mobile commerce shopping cart so your customers can browse and buy from your store using a mobile phone or tablet
  
• Use your own domain name or purchase one through Shopify
  
• Every template comes with its own intuitive settings so you can customize every facet of your storefront to match your brand
  
• You can host your entire website on Shopify. Your online store comes with a full-featured content management system
  
• Every Shopify store includes a free 256-bit SSL certificate. All pages, content, credit card and transaction information is protected by the same level of security used by banks
  
• Shopify integrates with over 100 external payment gateways from around the world
  
• Your online store checkout comes in over 50 languages
  

2. Ecwid

Ecwid is an easy to use cloud-based eCommerce platform that helps you start selling online even if you have no coding experience.

You can set up your Ecwid store once and then sync and sell across a website, social media, marketplaces like Amazon and live in-person.

It's free to use for up to 10 products, with paid plans available for larger stores.

Ecwid is the great option for people who want to start selling online with a simple storefront but don't have the time or resources to build a website from scratch.

Ecwid Features that Stand Out

• Connect to any existing website in seconds, and your storefront will automatically integrate with your website’s existing design. No coding required
  
• Customize images, select fonts, pick colors, add content and more with the built-in site builder
  
• Connect your store to sell on popular channels like Google Shopping, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Amazon, eBay, etc. from the Control Panel
  
• Your customers can shop from their mobile devices with your own dedicated native app and utilize advanced features like Apple Pay
• Add digital products to your store just as easily as physical products
  
• Create subscription products to build regular recurring revenue. Let customers schedule refills of popular products, offer curated subscription boxes, sell memberships to exclusive content, etc.
  
• Ecwid’s storefront is translated into over 45 languages
  
• Offer promotional pricing, discount coupons, volume discounts, and more to help generate more sales
  

3. Wix

Wix allows you to design your eCommerce store quickly with over 500 designer-made templates to choose from that cover a wide range of retail categories.

You can customize your storefront, checkout, product pages, cart and store members area.

Wix Features that Stand Out

• Answer a few questions about your website, location and keywords and get a personalized SEO plan to get found online
  
• Start your own blog, add an online store and accept bookings online. You can always add more features as you grow
  
• Start from scratch or choose from over 500 designer-made templates you can fully customize using the drag and drop website builder. Add video backgrounds, scroll effects and animation
• Let clients book appointments or services and pay online
  
• Create a blog with built-in features to grow your reach and build a community
  
• Get a professional domain name that matches your business and brand
  
• Improve your visibility on search engines with a full range of SEO features
  

4. Squarespace

Best for Professional-Looking Design Templates

Squarespace is easy to use, has great features and is quite affordable. You can upload photos of your products, add product descriptions and set up payment and shipping information in a matter of minutes.

With Squarespace, you can also track your sales and inventory in real time, so you always know what's selling and what's not.

Squarespace Features that Stand Out

• Get all the features you need to power your online store, from merchandising to checkout and showcase your products or services
• Allow clients to quickly view your availability and book appointments through your website
  
• Sync with third-party extensions to help you manage, optimize, and enhance your website
  
• Set up email campaigns that pull in your site’s styles, products and blog posts so your communications feel on-brand
  
• Create professional-looking social content with the Unfold app. Choose from hundreds of templates and unique filters, fonts, and stickers
  

5. XCart

Best for Speed of Implementation

Xcart is another popular easy-to-use eCommerce platform. With Xcart, you can customize, configure and go live with your online store from scratch in a matter of hours.

It's also packed with features that'll make running your business easier and more efficient. Work with the tools you already use or take advantage of new ones, including over 120 payment gateways, over 25 analytics tools and multiple customization features.

XCart Features that Stand Out

• Choose a design template or have a unique design created for you
  
• Ready-made themes along with an intuitive drag and drop interface allow you to create stylish, responsive sites that are well‑suited to all enterprise eCommerce types
  
• Due to the responsive, mobile-optimized website design, X-Cart online shopping cart passes Google’s Mobile Friendliness check, translating into better SEO and conversion rates
  
• Accept payments from all over the world in multiple currencies and languages through a number of international gateways, such as PayPal, Opayo, and Authorize.net
  
• Accept phone orders and delayed orders, set up recurring charges for your products and services and offer your customers to save their credit card information for future purchases
  

6. Shift4Shop

Best Free Plan

Shift4Shop provides all the tools you need to get your business online, including a free website builder, free hosting and free shopping cart.

Its turnkey eCommerce solution includes a feature-rich website builder, product and order management and customer marketing tools.

Shift4Shop Features that Stand Out

• Choose from dozens of mobile-friendly professionally designed, industry-specific templates, that are highly customizable and SEO optimized
  
• Securely accept credit cards and more with Shift4Shop's integrated payment processing solution
  
• Let your customers create an account on your store so they can keep track of their order history, wish lists, reward points, subscriptions, and any other eCommerce features you choose to implement
  
• Display important product features and details in a bulleted list for at-a-glance information, with room for a keyword-rich product description below
  
• A built-in blogging platform ensures consistent branding between your pages and carries over your blog's earned SEO authority to the rest of your online store
  

7. GoDaddy

Best for SEO

GoDaddy's eCommerce solution offers powerful selling tools, flexible shipping and payment options and top security to protect your customers' data and your business reputation.

Add up to 5,000 products, with up to 10 images per product. Accept all major credit cards, PayPal and Apple Pay.

GoDaddy Features that Stand Out

• GoDaddy's Website Builder auto-optimizes your site to make sure it shows up in Google searches. Integrated email and social media marketing tools help you make more connections and sales
  
• Offer flat rate shipping as well as weight-based shipping
  
• The website Builder helps improve your rank on Google, Yahoo and Bing by automatically reviewing your site and adding relevant, high-value keywords and phrases
  
• Promote and sell products on your Facebook business page. Whenever you make changes to your website, you’ll get a reminder to update your social media channels
  
• Create emails campaigns and track the results to see how many people opened your emails
  
• Give your clients access to your calendar with Online Appointments and accept payments for services
  

8. BigCommerce

Best for Customization

BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform for businesses of all sizes. It offers the flexibility and scalability to grow with your business from launch to high-growth.

It offers fully-customizable themes with built-in HTML, CSS and Javascript that work for hundreds of eCommerce industries.

BigCommerce Features that Stand Out

• Customize the checkout experience with a server-to-server checkout API and SDK
  
• Use the Stencil CLI tool to develop, test and push changes in a local environment without downtime
  
• Build your site on WordPress with full back-end platform support through BigCommerce's WordPress plugin
  
• Create over 70 native discount and promotions with no scripting required
  
• Get more traffic with customizable, SEO friendly URLs plus Metadata and robots.txt editing
  
• Make it easier for your customers to pay with dozens of digital wallets like Apple Pay, Amazon Pay and PayPal One Touch
  

9. Weebly

Best for Home Businesses

With Weebly, you can choose from a variety of unique online store designs that are fully customizable to showcase your products. It also provides a suite of marketing tools to help you grow your business.

In addition, Weebly offers advanced inventory management tools to track inventory and supplies as well as a customer review engine to help people learn more about a product and increase interest.

Weebly Features that Stand Out

• Weebly's easy-to-use drag and drop builder helps you launch your online store quickly
  
• Use customizable email templates, like an abandoned cart or welcome email, to connect with your customers
  
• Get real-time shipping rates dynamically by carrier, address, weight and quantity
  
• Track inventory and supply with advanced inventory management tools such as bulk import and export features to help you manage your online store
  
• Create coupons with the coupon builder and make custom gift cards to increase sales
  
• Make products stand out with badges for sale items or when items are low in stock
  
• Accept payments using Square, Stripe or PayPal. Use the fully-integrated shopping cart and automatic tax calculator
  

10. Volusion

Best With Built-In CRM

Volution is an eCommerce platform that offers responsive themes, unlimited product options, inventory management and payment collection in one online store builder.

Its selling platform allows you to reach more customers and grow your sales with built-in SEO management, newsletters and a CRM system.

Volusion Features that Stand Out

• All store pages are mobile-responsive and can adapt to any device
  
• Add subcategories, upload images, manage SEO, edit product display characteristics, and more with a range of product category tools
  
• Highlight discounts and products directly on your homepage with a slideshow feature
  
• Store dashboard displays product status, tracks stock reorder quantity levels and provides quantity verification
  
• Recurring Pricing tool allows you to offer subscription-based products
  

11. OpenCart

Best Open-Source eCommerce Platform

OpenCart is a free, customizable and open-source eCommerce platform that helps you create, scale and run your business. The OpenCart marketplace features over 13,000 modules and themes.

You can find themes for just about any sector, social media, marketing, accounting, reporting and sales support as well as language packs, plus all popular payment gateways and shipping methods integrated for you.

OpenCart Features that Stand Out

• Manage multiple stores from one interface. Set products to appear on different stores. Choose a different theme for each store. Localize store settings. Set per store product price
  
• Get access to all popular payment gateways and shipping methods
  
• Offer discounts, coupons and specials to cover the most popular ways to get attention and increase sales
  
• Set advanced user privileges and separate access for user groups and users.
  
• Get a full overview with total orders, sales, customers, people online, sales analytics and many more widgets
• OpenCart forums have over more 110,000 registered members with over 550,000 posts that cover every aspect of product support
  

12. Square

Best for Payment Processing

Square offers a free, easy-to-use eCommerce website builder where you can process payments using Square's point-of-sale infrastructure to start selling products and services online.

It even allows you to expand your reach and sell through integrations with Facebook, Instagram and many other channels.

Square Features that Stand Out

• Built-in SEO tools make it easy for shoppers to find your business on search engines
  
• Subscribe to Square Marketing and send email promotions to your customers using the contact information in Square Customer Directory
  
• Create coupons, gift cards or use Square Loyalty to offer a rewards program for online and in-person purchases
  
• Accept all major cards, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay with no fees for refunds or chargebacks, free fraud protection and dispute management services, plus access your money as soon as the next business day
  

13. nopCommerce

Best ASP.NET Implementation

nopCommerce is a free and open-source eCommerce platform based on Microsoft technologies.

It has been downloaded more than 3 million times, and it's used by more than 60,000 merchants. nopCommerce offers a rich feature set and a wide range of customization options.

Quickly launch and scale your online store with rich built-in functionality, integration with payment and shipment services, warehouse managing, marketing and SEO tools and mobile-friendly stores.

nopCommerce Features that Stand Out

• Mobile version of your website works on any connected device, without requiring extra development or add-ons. It's free and available out of the box
  
• Create unique online stores for multiple brands, products, B2B, B2C, affiliates, co-branded stores and more. You can also quickly launch micro-stores for promotional campaigns
• Multi-vendor and drop shipping support enables you to sell online without having to stock inventory or ship orders
  
• Create as many attributes for your products as you need, such as size and color, each with its own SKU, price, weight, image and stock level
  
• Manage backorder and pre-order status for each product
• Supports multiple warehouses, partial deliveries and stock management by product attributes
  
• Offer point rewards earned on the money spent at your store. A customer can then redeem the points for additional products at your store
  

14. Zyro

Best for Unlimited Products

Zyro is an eCommerce platform with no limit to the amount of products you can list or sales you can make. It offers a store builder with a library of templates that are easy to edit and customize.

Every Zyro template is packed with SEO features that make it easy to find your website on search engines.

Zyro Features that Stand Out

• Pick from over 100 customizable website templates or build your store from scratch
• Sell products on your online store as well as on Facebook, Instagram and Amazon
  
• Add and manage all of your products from an intuitive dashboard
• Categorize and track your inventory
• Zyro eCommerce supports over 70 of the most popular payment methods, including PayPal, Visa, Stripe and MasterCard
  
• Check your order history, track payment and shipping status and automatically update your buyer via email
  

15. Magento

Best for No-Code eCommerce Implementation

Magento is a platform that allows you to build a multi-channel commerce store for both B2B and B2C customers, where you can manage your inventory, pricing, and customer data across all sales channels.

With Magento, you can create content and shopping experiences quickly without the need for developer support.

Magento Features that Stand Out

• Connect shopping experiences across channels, add new brands and sites, expand into new geographies and sell to both businesses and consumers from a single platform
  
• Offer a B2B buying experience with custom catalogs and self-service customer portals for easy account management and ordering
  
• Take advantage of AI-powered recommendations based on shopper behavior, popular trends, product similarity and more
  
• AI-powered search tool delivers smarter, faster and relevant results for B2C shoppers
  
• Sell and fulfill from anywhere with flexible options that let your customers pick the channel that works best for them
  
• Securely manage payment and order data from every storefront in one place
  

What are the benefits of eCommerce for consumers and small businesses alike?

eCommerce has transformed the way small businesses operate and how consumers shop. It has created a new level of efficiency and convenience for both buyers and sellers.

For small businesses, eCommerce provides a cost-effective way to reach more customers with minimal overhead costs.

Businesses can sell to anyone in the world, which opens up a whole new customer base that was simply not available in the brick-and-mortar days.

Even customer service can be automated with the use of AI chatbots, which can support your clients while you sleep.

eCommerce stores also operate 24/7/365 without having to worry about store hours or staffing levels. Additionally, eCommerce platforms provide businesses with valuable data analytics that can help them fine-tune their marketing and product offerings.

For consumers, eCommerce offers a convenient way to shop from home.

They can browse and purchase items at their leisure and have them delivered right to their doorstep at the click of a button.

How do you choose the best eCommerce platform for small business?

There is no one "right" eCommerce platform for every small business. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind when choosing your platform:

First, consider what kinds of products you want to sell. For example, if you plan on just selling digital goods, then all you'll need is a platform that can handle file downloads without having to pay for inventory management features.

If you plan on selling physical goods, then you'll need a platform with features like shipping and inventory management.

Second, think about what kind of user experience you want to provide for your customers.

Do you want them to browse through your products and make purchases on mobile devices? Do you want to offer customer reviews or product photos?

Make sure the platform you choose has the features you need to provide a great user experience but that's also fully customizable to match your brand and your voice without the need to hire developers.

Third, consider your budget. eCommerce platforms can range in price from a few dollars to several hundred dollars per month. So, make sure you don't end up paying for features you'll never use.

What to Do Next

Finding the best eCommerce platform for their needs, no more, no less, is essential for any business looking to sell products online.

Now, there are a variety of different platforms available, each with its own set of features and price points, but they don't all work for everybody.

When choosing a platform, it's important to consider what kind of products you need to sell, what type of user experience you want to provide and your budget.

Once you've narrowed down your options, I recommend that you test out a few different platforms before making your final decision. Most of the above tools offer either free trials or a money back guarantee.