E-commerce is the platform of today, it is the business strategy of today and this trend is going to stick for a really long time. One of the most important reasons that this method of business has gained momentum is that it has reduced time by a massive extent. Users can get almost everything from an online store. Apparels, groceries, utilities, electronic items, real estate deals, pre-used items, digital goods and data, services, jobs, etc by just clicking a few buttons and providing a few details.

On the business front, building such a platform is a one-time investment, yet a constant source of income as long as it is thriving. You do not need to open any multiple stores across cities and countries and still getting access to a good number of users. Not saying that brick and mortar stores have become obsolete, it is still the most tried and tested a way to expand your business. But the popularity of online platforms cannot be denied.

Before making an e-commerce business website, you will first have to zero in on a platform which will be the foundation of your website. Now, witnessing the boom in this sector, the number of e-commerce platform available is rapidly on the rise. Down this page, I will take you through the resume of 5 best E-commerce platform that is most recommended by users and developers alike. So spend a few minutes here and trust me, by the end of the article, you will be one smart cookie. Shopify

Shopify is the most flexible, feature-rich and most complete platform out of the whole bunch of ecommerce themes out there. The theme is very affordably priced at $29 and charged on a monthly basis. In it you get unlimited bandwidth, products & file storage plus an online website, blog module and point of sale option. Once you sign up, you get a free trial option. Post a successful sign up, you’ll be taken to the admin page. You can connect with social media platforms and Amazon.

The websites built on the Shopify groundwork are designed to be fast. Shopify allows you to build a fully responsive website and apps for the Android and iOS platform. The platform also offers a guest checkout option along with one page and one-click checkout. Shopify also offers you with free SSL certificate and round the clock telephonic & chat support.

One of the not so good things about Shopify is that you will have to pay a fee for every sale and if your online portal is a multi-vendor marketplace, then Shopify might not be the one. There are higher packages which offer a lot more staff accounts, professional reports, advanced report builder, 3rd party shipping rates & reduced per sale transaction fees.

BigCommerce is among the most popular online shopping platform. It is a big hit among small to medium-sized web stores. It offers a gigantic array of features to grow your sales than almost any other shopping cart software on the market.

Founded in 2009, BigCommerce is currently the backbone of a host of online shopping websites. Unlike few other platforms, BigCommerce does not charge transaction fee, you can list unlimited products, responsive design & SEO friendly, multiple payment gateways & integration option to Facebook, Instagram, eBay, and Amazon.

The price of the base package is $29.95 which offers you a lot of features including, round the clock assistance via phone, mail & chat, unlimited staff accounts, products, file storage & bandwidth. There is a gold package at $79.95 which offers a lot more features in the unlimited format and is the ideal BigCommerce package. You get an option to retrieve abandoned carts, save card details for future transaction, professional reporting tools, coupons, discounts & gift cards, single page checkout and a lot more.

Volusion is among the most preferable e-commerce platform in the market right now. It offers you highly responsive theme across multiple screen sizes, a rich content editor with exclusive editing options even for those without any coding knowledge. You get to make a custom domain for your e-commerce portal that allows shoppers and search engines unhindered access to your site.

You also get navigation tools, product & category pages, advanced search option to directly access a particular product, homepage slideshow, CSS Editor, order processing, payment & gateway pages, secure checkout & shipping options, vendor codes, barcode generator, CRM tools, product & service review options, drop shipping, customer account & profile management system, tax rate calculator, admin permissions, firewall settings and many more.

The Volusion is priced very leniently and segregated into annual and monthly plans. If you take the annual plans, there is a slight reduction in your monthly charges. The Personal and Professional packages have a limit as to the number of staff accounts and the number of products that you can list for sale. However, there is a custom package which is available at a custom pricing, which gives all the features with unlimited staff counts & product listings, Check out the Volusion page for more specific details pertaining to your business and it might be the best theme for you.

Magento is among the most popular open source platform that you can get and rest assured, you will not be disappointed by using it. When it comes to ecommerce website market share, Magento has 20% of that pie. One of the main reason behind that is Magento’s flexibility, its expansion possibilities and that fact that it has more features than you might ever need.

Magento boasts of the most elaborate & exclusive feature list that includes SEO, Marketing, promotions, & conversions, Site management, Catalog management, Catalog browsing, Product browsing, Checkout, payment, & shipping, Order management, Customer service, Mobile commerce, Persistent shopping, Private sales, Gift registries and Store credits.

Magento is not for beginners, so if you have selected the tool, you will also need a professional or a team of professional to make you a website based on Magento and a higher budget.When it comes to pricing, Magento has an open source version which is free for everyone. Magento Commerce is a powerful system suited for large and rapidly growing businesses. Thus the pricing of Magento varies for each customer based on their requirements and sometimes it can be quite expensive. So if you are not involved in the making of an enterprise that grows at the speed of a bullet train, the I suggest you steer away from Magento.

WooCommerce is undoubtedly the undisputed when it comes to ecommerce plugins. Compared to other plugins that are available in the market, Woocommerce packs a whole lot more features and is absolutely free.

Some of the amazing and unique features that Woocommerce possesses are store contact information, payment details, shipping information, extras like automated taxes, bulk product uploads. Apart from these, the content management structure of WooCommerce is very smooth and easy to use because Woocommerce runs on WordPress. This makes WooCommerce SEO ready from the very beginning, comes with endless customization options, over 400 additional extensions, unlimited, products, images, galleries, colors, backgrounds and almost everything else, sorting & filtering options, support for affiliate products, customizable checkout areas, email options, payment gateways, tax options, free shipping, etc.

Now as mentioned above, WooCommerce is free plugin. However, you will have to shell out cash for web hosting, domain, Woocommerce specific themes, premium plugins and developer who is going to do all the behind the scenes work for you. This whole thing can be achieved in a one time expense of close to $600 which is not much for a website that you will generate revenue for you for a lifetime.

Conclusion

There you go, a detailed description of the top 5 E-Commerce solution that you can give a serious amount of research and consideration before finalising on your first or next ecommerce platform. All the themes mentioned above have one thing in common. It is the fact that they all are good at what they bring to the table and has garnered a name for themselves in the market. This factor alone makes the choice so difficult to make.

So before you take a crack on it, the best thing to do is analyze what are going to offer in your ecommerce platform, kind of user you will target, features and benefits that are relevant to the product, amount of users generated, an approximate amount of sales that you are expecting.With all these on papers, it will be aa lot easier for you to zero in on the appropriate platform that will take your business to the heights that you dreamt of.