The Best eCommerce Platforms in 2024

Best eCommerce Platforms in 2024

Best eCommerce Platforms in 2024

Whether it’s buying a physical product or booking a salon appointment, customers are increasingly purchasing products, services, and memberships online.

As of Q1 2024, eCommerce sales make up 18.2% of retail sales in the United States. Yet, 25% of small businesses in the U.S. still don’t have websites, making it hard for their customers to shop with them and causing them to lose out to competitors that are using dedicated eCommerce platforms to create a seamless shopping experience.

We reviewed over a dozen popular eCommerce platforms based on price, range of features, ease of use, scalability, and more. Here are the top picks according to Tech Radar.

Wix: Good Choice for Total Beginners and Seasoned Business People Alike

While Wix is best known for providing an all-purpose site builder, it’s more than just good-looking templates and logos—it can serve as a fully functional eCommerce platform if you purchase one of Wix’s two top-tier packages.

While most eCommerce platforms opt for complexity, Wix offers a simpler solution for small businesses that don't need all the bells and whistles of an online superstore.

With a complete set of site-building tools available, setting up an eCommerce store with Wix is strikingly simple, requiring no coding skills. The result is an eCommerce platform that anyone should be able to use with ease.

With over 800 design templates to choose from, you’ll easily find the look and feel you want for your eCommerce site. However, there’s one drawback—once you choose a theme, you’re stuck with it, and the only way to switch is to start everything from scratch.

Thanks to Wix Payments, you can choose from a global network of payment providers, including all major credit card companies (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, etc.), as well as other payment systems like PayPal and Stripe.

Bluehost (WooCommerce): Best eCommerce Solution for WordPress Enthusiasts

WooCommerce is a free plugin that can turn your WordPress site into a fully functional eCommerce store. The basic WooCommerce plugin can be easily installed through WordPress and, even better, it’s completely free to download and use.

However, to get the most out of WooCommerce, you will need to install several third-party plugins that add features such as payment processing, inventory management, and stock control.

Like most open-source solutions, WooCommerce isn’t the most novice-friendly option around. Fortunately, Bluehost simplifies the process by providing a ready-made WooCommerce platform with everything you need already installed, including a shopping theme and essential plugins.

Bluehost currently offers two WooCommerce-specific plans, “Standard” and “Premium.” Even the cheaper plan provides almost every feature you could need.

Shopify: Best for Ease of Use, Apps, and Cross-Channel Selling

Shopify remains one of the most well-known eCommerce platforms as of 2024. True to its word, to use Shopify to create a beautiful online store, you don’t require any technical or design skills.

With Shopify, you can get your online store up and running in a matter of hours. Users can choose from a wide range of templates or design the look and feel of their store themselves. Shopify also supports a comprehensive range of credit cards, offers certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliance and an SSL certificate, and offers round-the-clock customer support via telephone, live chat, and email.

The Shopify platform provides a full-fledged CMS with which users can manage the functionality and layout of their online store. They can also manage it on the go by utilizing Shopify's mobile apps, and the platform is fully optimized for visitors, whether they’re accessing it from desktops or smartphones.

BigCommerce: Best for Big and Booming Businesses

Launched in 2009, BigCommerce is now one of the leading eCommerce platforms, providing a high level of scalability for online stores, meaning it can grow with your business.

Like Shopify, BigCommerce provides a variety of templates and themes to help stores look their best and get up and running quickly. Users can also design their own store or hire BigCommerce designers to do so. The platform incorporates a full-featured CMS that allows users to run an entire site, rather than just an online store.

Users benefit from detailed and flexible product management, optimized search engine rankings, along with a variety of integrated marketing tools and analytics.

Payments can be accepted via over 65 pre-integrated gateways, and shipping details can be customized to the business’s requirements.

CoreCommerce: Best for SMBs

Founded in 2001, CoreCommerce focuses on providing eCommerce services to small and medium-sized businesses. The company emphasizes simplicity and transparency, offering an easy-to-use platform without any hidden costs.

CoreCommerce’s most unique aspect is that all features are offered to all customers, regardless of the plan they’re on. Pricing is determined by the number of products you can add to your store, the number of email accounts, bandwidth, and storage space.

CoreCommerce offers functionality for store design, product management, order processing, and marketing. Among its core features are unlimited product customization options, a built-in blogging engine, and secure hosting provided by Rackspace with a 99.99% uptime guarantee.

Conclusion

Ready to create your own online store? By now, you should have a good idea of which platform lets you create the best online store.

In this post, we covered the best eCommerce platforms in 2024. At Latin America Sourcing, we help businesses of all shapes and sizes, no matter the eCommerce platform, source whole products from Latin American manufacturers. Get in touch with us today!