Best Ecommerce Platforms 2018

Today we compare three of the most popular e-commerce platforms: Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce, benefits, and downsides of each.

Shopify is the platform with easy setup, upgrading of products and customizing the look of the website.

Benefits:

• Adding of product details, description, their titles and more is very simple.
• Shopify even allows you to move on to some other platform with the link to import your products from the previous store.
• The platform offers a 14-day free trial, after that – monthly subscription.
• 24/7 support.

Downsides:

• Currently, Shopify offers you 9 free website templates, and prices for paid themes start at $ 140.

If you need a payment gateway Tap2Pay easily integrate with your online store. You just need to create a merchant account and write you shop url in setting fields.

Magento is the platform that fits for large-scale retailers & high-end websites. It provides a high level of security and different features like multi-language, multi-currency support and multi-storefront options, mobile friendliness, instinctive navigation, SEO optimized website etc.   

Benefits:

• It’s free, and there’s a paid version if you want to upgrade. In addition, you will need to pay a monthly fee to your hosting provider.
• The feature list is overwhelming.
• You can send out product alerts to customers for automated marketing.
• The platform lets you make separate multi-lingual sites that load up depending on the user’s location.
• Magento has a wide range of templates. Currently, 121 topics are available on Magento Connect.

Downsides:

• You need to know development skills. Larger companies are known to go with Magento because they have the access and money to get a developer who knows the code.

If you need a payment gateway, Tap2Pay provides a special plugin for easy integration.

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. It automatically turns any WordPress website into an online store, with inventory management, coupons, and product pages.

Benefits:

• The plugin is free to download and install.
• You can offer coupons and discounts, add other features with the help of the extension library.

Downsides:

• There are plenty of extra expenses such as a WooCommerce theme, extra extensions, hosting, and domain name.
• Beginners can get intimidated by this, especially with tasks like SEO, security, hosting, and caching.

It connects to the Tap2Pay payment gateway with the plugin.