This Is All About The Best Ecommerce Sites
There is no better time to start an online business with the best eCommerce sites or extend your business to the internet, than now. Although some may argue that the e-commerce websites list industry is already crowded, the truth is that the industry is right at its sweet spot. It is young enough to still have a relatively low barrier of entry, while mature enough to have a wide consumer base and pose less of business risk for small enterprises.
As a business owner, you also have a number of options available to set up your e-commerce websites list operations. Building a best e-commerce sites website is not as daunting as it used to be with so many tools and services available. If you want to build one, you can choose between two major types of content management systems or CMS. The first is an open-source, self-hosted CMS and the second is a managed or hosted e-commerce sites free platform. Your choice depends on your needs and technical involvement. Here is a closer look at each option:
Hosted Best Ecommerce Sites Platforms
Hosted platforms do not require users to have coding e-commerce sites free websites list experience at all. You can start up your best eCommerce sites site without a development team entirely. Hosting is also shared, lowering server costs. This is a huge plus for those who want a small-scale e-commerce website list to explore the market. Most of the good platforms offer a strong technical support team to help users with issues, and the backend involved is also user-friendly, designed for those with little to no technical knowledge
Best Ecommerce Sites CMS
An open-source best e-commerce site CMS is a bit more technical, but it has several benefits. For one, there are a number of themes, add-ons, and plugins made by the community itself, adding more functionalities that would not be possible with self-hosted platforms.
These systems also offer more freedom in modifying and adding features, which is a huge plus point for those who want to create a customized brand, theme, and design to their website. The website can be constantly enhanced and improved, which is very important to stay relevant to the growing competition.
Hosted best eCommerce sites platforms are also good for larger-scale and more complex websites. There is no limit to the number of categories or products that you can offer. Here, we are going to explore some of the best open-source best ecommerce sites platforms that are free or available at reasonable prices, with a good blend of community support, scalability, and customizability that you cannot find in hosted enterprise best eCommerce sites solutions.
There are several such platforms to choose from, and each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Here is a more detailed look at the top ten:
1. Magento- Community Edition
When most people think of the best eCommerce sites platforms, Magento is one of the first names that pop into mind; the platform has become that ubiquitous in the best eCommerce sites market. Magento’s Enterprise Edition platform is used by the biggies, including Samsung and Nike. It also comes with a big price tag, minds you. But you want a piece of that Magento for free, there is the Community Edition.
The Magento Community Edition also comes with a number of features that are not available on other competing for open-source platforms. You can manage multiple stores, for instance, and choose, manage and offer different currencies and languages.
Magento is a hugely popular platform too, with lots of users that are constantly designing new extensions and plugins. This makes their platform highly scalable and flexible. However, one of the best features of this platform is also its biggest downside. The community is so large, it can be really tricky to navigate. You would spend quite some time just learning the platform’s ins and outs, and you need to have a decent technical knowledge base or hire one who has it, to use Magento. Moreover, a lot of extensions and plugins come with a cost. So even though the Community Edition is free, you may end up spending a good amount on the software.
2. PrestaShop
PrestaShop is another popular choice for the best e-commerce sites platform, with its biggest USP being its ease of use. Installing and customizing the software is pretty easy and quick, and the well-built interface is quite intuitive. You can either get a self-hosted version to get more technical control, or download a fully-hosted one. Both are free to download and use, with over 250,000 stores using the platform so far.
The customizability, however, is rather limited. You cannot experiment much with the graphic elements, and you will need to purchase more best e-commerce sites templates and themes to jump into the code if you really want to get into customization.
3. OpenCart
This particular platform is rather popular among small businesses that lack a lot of programming expertise. OpenCart is also rather simple to use, and it does not have a lot of functions that could confuse you. Of course, a lack of functions is also a problem if you want to scale up your e-commerce websites list at a later stage. Still, there is a lot you can do on this platform if you have enough programming knowledge or have a programmer. There is also a wide range of plugins to choose from for adding more capabilities to your site.
It is really important to note that OpenCart is one of the least-demanding platforms for your server. Because it is so simple, the platform is less likely to drag on your server. Although it obviously gets more demanding with more plugins, OpenCart remains one of the faster platforms in this list. And this reliance on plugins is also one of its biggest flaws. You may have plugin compatibility issues, and you end up relying too much on plugin developers than on OpenCart for keeping your site up to date.
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4. osCommerce
osCommerce has been around for over 15 years and has over 7,000 add-ons made by its community, which tells you all you need to know about this platform. You have a lot of options for customizing the design and functionality of your website. The platform also has over 260,000 developers, service providers, and store owners.
Overall, it is clear osCommerce has a huge support network and community to help you out in customizing and troubleshooting your website. If you have website or plugin problems, there will definitely be at least a few people to help solve them. The downside to osCommerce is that it is 15 years old, the keyword here being ‘old’. This means that the platform does not have as many capabilities or capacities as newer options. It is also not as scalable, and lack features that you can find in newer platforms.
5. Zen Cart
If you have a decent number of products to offer on your top e-commerce sites, then Zen Cart is probably one of your best options for a top e-commerce sites platform. One of its biggest advantages is its product management system. You can manage and control inventory, make specials and sales and so much more with ease. But the system also tends to be slow if you add several new products, so it is not that good an option if you have a huge volume of products. Zen Cart is also not the best-looking platform out of the box. You can work on it to make it more presentable, with lots of templates on offer. If you are good at coding, there is a lot more you can do. But if you want something that looks good right off the bat, you may be disappointed when you open Zen Cart for the first time.
6. Spree Commerce
This is one of the newer options available, and one of its key benefits is that it is based on Ruby on Rails. The platform is modular and is easy to upgrade and configure to your likening. A lot of today’s latest companies, including Nutrisystem and 3D Robotics, use Spree Commerce.
In fact, Spree also supports several of the extensions available, which is a huge plus when you want timely upgrades to your website. The platform is highly scalable and flexible, so you can customize your website to your heart’s content. Overall, Spree is a good choice for edgy and modern businesses.
7. WooCommerce for WordPress
WooCommerce is considered by many to be the best open-source platform for WordPress. It has a huge, fast-growing community and integrates almost seamlessly with WordPress, making it easy to set up and manage. A lot of WordPress-based sites choose this platform for their top e-commerce sites ventures. Another big plus for WooCommerce is the fact that it is mobile-friendly right off the bat. If you plan on creating the best e-commerce sites for desktops, tablets, and mobile phones (which you should), this is a good platform to build it on. You can even make a mobile app for your storefront with a simple add-on.
However, WooCommerce only works with WordPress, which makes it less appealing for those of you who chose a different CMS or have a self-hosted website. If your website is WordPress-based, though, you will find WooCommerce to be highly scalable. Once again, pain extensions make this platform less appealing but at this point, you would’ve guessed that you need to pay extra for extra functionality.
8. Jigoshop for WordPress
This platform is also for WordPress and a newer alternative to WooCommerce. Jigoshop has been gaining a steady stream of users because of its lightweight. To add more functionality, you can find lots of plugins, themes, and extensions available to buy. Jigoshop, like WooCommerce, is quite easy to use. However, it comes with a tiny hiccup; you cannot link variations to the software. For instance, if you want to add a T-shirt in black and white and in large and small sizes, you would need to create all four options: black small, black large, white small, white large. Jigoshop is also rather basic, although you can purchase upgrades.
9. VirtueMart for Joomla
So we’ve discussed two platforms specifically for WordPress, but where’s the love for another huge platform CMS: Joomla? Well, here it is. VirtueMart is a great choice for Joomla users since you can get your storefront running very easily. It has Multilanguage support too, making it an appealing choice if you plan to offer your products or services to non-English language regions. Not to mention VirtualMart I highly SEO friendly, which helps you drive more organic traffic to your storefront. It is lightweight, simple, and offers inventory and invoicing management capabilities too. It lacks a few features present in competitors, but its Joomla integration makes a great choice for users.
10. Drupal Commerce for Drupal
Let’s conclude the list with another top e-commerce site free sites platform designed to integrate with another popular CMS: Drupal.
Drupal Commerce is SEO friendly and highly flexible, and it has an easy administration system. It can also handle some rather complex payment models, like subscription-based payments. Like the above two options, Drupal Commerce is exclusive to Drupal. It is also very basic, o begin with, but you do have a Commerce Kickstart package to add some more add-ons and essential functionalities right out of the box.
You can also add more third-party add-ons, making it a viable solution so long as Drupal is your content management platform. It is very simple and customizable and should be the first choice for Drupal users.
Conclusion
The above list is far from exhaustive or authoritative, and the options are not listed in any particular order either, simply because it is impossible to decide on just one ‘best’ platform. The right platform depends on your business needs, strategy, products, and services. If you want just a basic eCommerce site, you can choose one that is not as customizable or scalable, so go for a simpler eCommerce platform. But if you need more versatility and you have the developer skills, then you can opt for a more scalable, hands-on eCommerce platform. The final choice is yours, but remember that your decision will reflect on your final eCommerce website design. Take your time and decide well, because migrating to another one would be a pain.
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