Best Online Store Platforms – 6 Best ECommerce Platforms 2024

Looking to build an online store and start selling products in 2024? In this extensive guide “Best Online Store Platforms – 6 Best ECommerce Platforms 2024”, I’ll cover the 6 best ecommerce platforms to empower your business success. Read on to discover the leading website builders and ecommerce solutions worth considering for The 6 Best E-Commerce Platforms of 2024 for Building an Online Store.

In this extensive guide, we’ll cover the 6 best ecommerce website builders and solutions to use as a small business in 2024. These leading e-commerce platforms make it easy to create a user-friendly online shop to sell your products or services.

I’ll explain the key features of each platform and pros and cons. You’ll discover the best e-commerce platforms for different business sizes and budgets. From industry leaders Shopify and BigCommerce to cheaper solutions like Square and Ecwid, you’ll find the best one for you!

Table of Contents

Don’t let this opportunity slip away – pocket $120-$350 daily with my recommended approach. Watch the free video to jumpstart your financial success >>

Best Online Store Platforms - 6 Best ECommerce Platforms 2024

Why You Want to Sell Products Online in 2024

Ecommerce continues to expand rapidly year after year. The global pandemic led to huge ecommerce growth, as more people shopped online. Ecommerce sales grew over 30% in 2020 alone!

And this trend is continuing. Worldwide ecommerce sales are projected to reach $7.4 trillion by 2025.

So 2024 is a great year to tap into this growth and build your own online ecommerce store. Whether you want to sell your own products, dropship products, or open an online marketplace store, ecommerce can help small business owners reach more customers.

With an ecommerce platform, you can build a professional online shop without needing advanced coding and design skills. Most platforms make it easy to customize the design and features to create a user-friendly shopping experience.

The good news is most platforms offer free plans to let you build an online store without any upfront investment or risk. So keep reading to discover the best ecommerce platforms to consider in 2024!

Key Things to Look For in the Best Ecommerce Platform

With new ecommerce platforms emerging all the time, how do you choose? Here are the key things I looked for in picking the best ecommerce platforms for 2024:

1. Easy-to-Use Website Builder and Design Tools

You want an intuitive website builder that makes it easy to build an online store. Look for drag and drop design features with professional templates to choose from.

2. Built-In Ecommerce Functionality

An end-to-end platform with shopping cart, payment processing, and shipping management saves you integrating 3rd party software.

3. Scalability for Growing Businesses

As your business grows, you want an ecommerce platform that scales. Look for features to manage a growing catalog and sales channels.

4. Mobile Shopping Experience

Most shopping activity has shifted to mobile devices. Your platform must make it easy to offer excellent mobile shopping.

5. Affordable Pricing

A free plan lets you start an online store without investment. Paid plans offer more advanced ecommerce features and customization as you scale up.

1. Shopify – Best Ecommerce Platform Overall

Shopify is the world’s most popular self-hosted SaaS ecommerce platform, powering over 1 million businesses. I picked Shopify as the #1 best ecommerce software for 2024.

Shopify homepage screenshot

Key features

  • All-in-one ecommerce platform
  • Free online store with basic Shopify plan
  • Easy-to-use store builder and templates
  • Mobile shopping and POS options
  • 500+ app integrations extend functionality
  • 24/7 support

Shopify strikes the best overall balance across my 5 criteria. It makes it easy for even beginners to create a professional online store with strong built-in ecommerce features.

The Shopify app store also offers 500+ apps to extend platform capabilities like email marketing, accounting, sourcing products to dropship, and more.

Shopify powers stores across all niches and sizes, from small startups to large enterprises like Allbirds, Gymshark, Staples, and many more top brands. it has become a popular ecommerce platform for startup merchants and small businesses.

It scales to support high traffic stores with advanced functionality like automated shipping rates, fraud analysis, and international sales features.

While Shopify isn’t the cheapest option, they offer a free 14-day trial to test it out risk-free. And the basic Shopify plan starts at just $29/month with no transaction fees.

For the best balance of easy of use, features, scalability, support, and affordability – Shopify is my top recommendation for the best ecommerce business platform for most online stores in 2024.

2. BigCommerce – Best for Growing Businesses

BigCommerce powers over 60,000 online stores globally with leading SaaS ecommerce software, an intuitive store builder, integrated payments, shipping, promotions, and more.

BigCommerce homepage screenshot

Key strengths

  • All-in-one ecommerce platform
  • 15-day free trial
  • Scales to grow large stores
  • Built-in promotionsengine
  • Integrations extend functionality
  • 24/7 support

Similar to Shopify, BigCommerce offers an end-to-end hosted platform covering all aspects of ecommerce. The store builder, templates, payments, shipping, and support allow you to quickly setup an online store.

I like BigCommerce especially for higher volume stores generating over $1M in sales. BigCommerce Enterprise plan offers enterprise-grade security, dedicated support reps, advanced promotions tools, and custom enterprise integrations.

BigCommerce also has an excellent SEO suite, giving all online store owners access to change basic SEO features like metadata, tags, and product filtering as well as advanced SEO capabilities such as 301 redirects, microdata, and CDNs.

Pricing starts at $29.95/month for BigCommerce Standard plan, scaling up by revenue tiers.

Overall, BigCommerce matches Shopify in user experience and features, with advantages for mid-market and enterprise stores. The 15-day free trial lets you experience it firsthand.

Don’t let this opportunity slip away – pocket $120-$350 daily with my recommended approach. Watch the free video to jumpstart your financial success >>

3. Squarespace – Best Ecommerce Website Builder for Creatives

Squarespace powers over 2 million websites with an all-in-one platform combining website builder, ecommerce, and marketing tools.

Squarespace homepage screenshot

Key advantages

  • Great for creative businesses
  • Award-winning modern templates
  • Built-in SEO and marketing tools
  • Simple pricing by plan levels
  • 24/7 email support

If you want to sell creative products like crafts, jewelry, fashion, design, food, and more – I recommend Squarespace. Their beautiful designer templates matched with visual product galleries showcase creative products at their best.

While Squarespace doesn’t offer as many advanced ecommerce features as Shopify and BigCommerce, they excel at the web building foundation. The integrated blogging and SEO features help you drive organic traffic alongside sales.

And simple annual pricing by plan levels makes cost planning straightforward as your business grows.

For creative entrepreneurs focused on web presence and visual storytelling alongside ecommerce, Squarespace is worth a look. Their free trial lets you test drive the platform and explore templates.

4. Wix – Best Free Ecommerce Platform

Wix empowers over 200 million users to build stunning websites using their drag and drop website builder, templates, and forms builder.

They offer an an affordable cart and payment processing to start an online store for free. While the free ecommerce features are basic, it’s a great way for beginners to sell online without paying platform fees right away.

Top features

  • Free web hosting and shopping cart
  • 500+ designer templates
  • Drag and drop builder
  • Blog, forms, and email marketing capabilities
  • Wix Editor X mobile app for on-the-go editing
  • 24/7 chat support

For microbusiness owners and entrepreneurs testing an online business, Wix is appealing. You can launch a professional website with integrated shopping cart, payment processing, and web hosting totally free. Their ADI artificial design intelligence even creates website designs for you automatically with just a business name.

The free cart is limited to 50 products and lacks some advanced functionality like promotions. But it’s a simple way to start selling online without financial risk. 

As your business grows, Wix offers affordable ecommerce plans starting at $23/month for a more full-featured online store to support unlimited products, promotions, and faster site speeds. But compared to Shopify and BigCommerce, the ecommerce feature set is more basic.

For beginners, Wix is a great starting point to sell online for free. Wix is a leading, drag-and-drop website building platform for online business. Down the road, you may outgrow Wix’s ecommerce capabilities versus other platforms. But with their free trial, it doesn’t hurt to start there.

5. Square Online – Best Free Website Builder and Shopping Cart for Retail Stores

Square powers payments and commerce tools for over 3 million businesses, from restaurants to retailers. Their Square Online Store helps traditional brick and mortar retailers quickly build a free website and online store integrated with in-person sales.

Square Online Store homepage screenshot

Top selling points

  • Free website builder
  • Synced online + offline inventory
  • Integrated payments, POS, and more
  • Pick up in store capabilities
  • Unlimited web hosting and bandwidth
  • 24/7 support by phone

If you already use Square’s payments system, their Square Online Store offers a free ecommerce website builder tightly integrated with your physical store.

The website builder is easy-to-use with nice templates to showcase your products, location, hours, and store information. Customers can place orders online for delivery or in-store pickup.

One of the biggest advantages is Square Online Store syncs with your Square POS, inventory, customer, and other data. So as you sell items in your store, inventory stays up-to-date online automatically. No need to manually sync!

And as online orders come in, they seamlessly flow into your Square Dashboard alongside in-store transactions.

The online store includes many features including unlimited hosting and bandwidth, abandoned cart recovery emails, coupon codes, the ability to link out to sell products on social channels, and more.

For any brick and mortar small business using Square that wants to expand online, Square Online Store offers the path of least resistance. The website builder feels like an extension of your existing tools rather than a separate platform.

And launching a competitive online store integrated with your physical location starts at zero cost which is hard to beat. It’s a no brainer starting point for stores that already use Square payments system.

6. Ecwid – Best Free Shopping Cart to Sell on Facebook and Instagram

Ecwid powers over 1 million merchants with tools to easily sell across multiple online channels beyond their own website.

You can add their free shopping cart to your website, Facebook, and Instagram. Ecwid integrates with leading ecommerce marketplaces like Google, Amazon, and eBay too.

Ecwid homepage screenshot

Top advantages

  • Free starter plan
  • Sell on social media
  • Easy embedding into sites
  • Marketplace integrations
  • Abandoned cart emails
  • 24/7 customer support

For small business owners active on social media, Ecwid offers a quick way to sell products directly on Facebook and Instagram. No need to build your own website right away.

Their free plan allows up to 10 products on social selling channels. Paid plans start at $12.50/month for core ecommerce site and social selling capabilities.

Ecwid isn’t a full website builder. But their shopping cart easily embeds into sites like WordPress, Wix, and Webflow. So you can focus on content alongside product catalog.

While Ecwid isn’t the most full-featured platform, their freemium model provides a lot of value at zero cost. For social sellers or anyone wanting to test ecommerce, it’s a great starting point!

How to Decide – 7 Key Questions to Ask Yourself

All 6 of these leading ecommerce platforms empower entrepreneurs and small businesses to sell online in 2024 successfully.

But with so many options, how do you decide?

Here are 7 key questions to ask yourself to choose the best one for your needs:

1. What’s your budget?

If budget is super tight, start with a free platform like Wix or Ecwid. Or if you already use Square in-store, tap their free synced online store.

2. Are you selling on social channels or your own site?

Those embracing social selling may prefer Ecwid to start. Squarespace offers better support for an integrated website experience.

3. How quickly do you need to launch your store?

For fastest time-to-launch, choose an intuitive builder like Shopify or Squarespace with tons of professional templates.

4. What business size do you expect in 12-24 months?

If planning high growth, make sure your platform scales. Shopify and BigCommerce support stores generating even $50M+ in annual sales.

5. How much support do you want?

Leading platforms highlighted all offer 24/7 customer support. But Shopify and BigCommerce also offer extended 1-on-1 guidance and onboarding.

6. Will you sell locally or expand globally?

Choose a platform meeting your geographic needs. Shopify and BigCommerce have the most international capabilities like translated checkout and payments by market.

7. Do you need advanced promotional capabilities?

If promotions will drive sales, BigCommerce offers the most advanced tools for creating targeted campaigns with triggers and scheduling.

By weighing your needs across budget, sales channels, growth, support, markets, campaigns, and ease-of-use – I’m confident you’ll discover the best ecommerce platform here for your online store in 2024 and beyond!

Don’t let this opportunity slip away – pocket $120-$350 daily with my recommended approach. Watch the free video to jumpstart your financial success >>

Start Selling Online Today with a Free Ecommerce Platform Trial

Congratulations on taking the first step towards launching your own online business!

Selling online presents a huge growth opportunity in 2024 and coming years. And ecommerce platforms empower entrepreneurs to start an online store without coding skills or big upfront investment.

I encourage you to explore 2-3 leading options like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Squarespace with their free trials. Build a test store, explore features, and evaluate ease of use.

The quicker you start, the faster you can drive sales by getting your business online. Avoid overthinking the platform decision upfront. You want to actually start selling, not just tool comparing!

Within a couple weeks, you’ll have hands-on experience to pick the best platform to meet your needs today and scale up over time.

Most important is deciding and taking action to sell your products, service and passion online. The 6 leading ecommerce website builders here all empower small business owners to build, launch and grow successful online stores.

So sign up for a free trial today and start selling online! Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments.

Thanks for reading my article on “Best Online Store Platforms – 6 Best ECommerce Platforms 2024“, hope it will help!

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