25 Best E-commerce CMS Platform for Your Online Website in 2018

E-commerce has always been a booming industry at every single pace of changing technology. It is because you will see that every moment the internet population is been creating a huge demand on online shopping channels. There are lots of online shopping sites which are currently debuting every day.

When you are planning to sell online, through picking a right e-commerce platform is one of the most vital part and a journey for an e-commerce entrepreneur. It is hard to make decisions sometimes over choosing a particular platform. Most of them provide you services on the bases of standard functionality. Like the ability to showcase products in an online catalog, take payments online, manage order and customers and provide support after-sales.

Where some of them provide you more sophisticated functionality, such as online marketing feature, advance security, inventory management, business intelligent, the ability to manage or integrate with any other APIs makes difference as compared to standard functionality.

Here are the lists of e-commerce CMS (hosted and self-hosted) platform where you can go through entire details of it, which are currently trending and on demand for an online store.

The Top 25 E-Commerce CMS Platforms 2018 are:-

Magento – (Hosted and self – Hosted)

One of the most popular and largest open sourced platform which is good to start and there are many features that you have ever expected. It is one of the best e-commerce platforms that deliver high performance and scalable service for all small, medium and large size online e-commerce online stores. It also provides unlimited customization options to run the store to cloud to your own server and control over everything to it.

Base on your venture requirements, that you can choose a platform from (cloud, community, enterprise)

It has an extensive library for demos which will help you to build an online store with amazing features that you might need it.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Magento:

Magento development process is different as compared to other platforms but what makes it different are their features.

Magento store development offers a lot to the Magento store owner and developers with powerful marketing too with SEO and catalog management tools. Even when you are planning to change the platform it is easy to Migrate through Magento Migration.

It is an eCommerce platform that is highly filled with rich features and empowers the store to make efficient use of built-in features flexibility.

• Mobile Responsiveness
• SEO Compatibility
• Omni channel Order Management
• Business Intelligence tool
• B2B Integration
• Multiple languages & currency support
• Limitless product attributes
• Single page checkout
• Order status customization

Who is using it?
Coca Cola | Christian Louboutin | Nike | Nestle | Burger King | Huawei | Pepe Jeans | Liverpool F.C

Visit Website: https://magento.com

Shopify – (Self-hosted)

Shopify is one of the hosted eCommerce solutions which helps one to build an online store for business. It is Software as a service (Saas) base solution for e-commerce online web development. There is no need to install any software on your computer. Shopify Themes & Templates by Professional Developer is the most popular out there for all small businesses.

Shopify has is one of the platforms which helps you with Shopify support on every single aspect to assist you with best. It is relatively having low monthly fees to make setup and is one of the splendid choices for your startup business. It also offers you a mobile app, which let you manage your store from anywhere. When you are into some trouble Shopify support team is always there to assist you.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Shopify:

Shopify has their own POS (Point of Sale) system that allows one to sell their products on the go or brick and mortar store without any additional tools or any machinery like cash registers, etc.

• Visually Appealing online store
• App Integrations
• Mobile Responsiveness
• Outstanding customer support
• Excellent loading speed

Disadvantages:
Even after looking into all the advantages of Shopify which are mentioned above there some downside too. One of the most prominent parts of it is an additional transaction fee which you’ll be charged for not using Shopify payments.

Shopify is not as great as another platform who has good CMS results. It is not one for the best platform when you are planning to migrate and does provide the service to export your products in CSV and not with best.

Who is using it?
Great George Watches | Uppercase Magazine | Hiut Denim Co | Jane Carr

Visit Website: https://www.shopify.com

Big Commerce – (Hosted)

This platform is completely reliable and though it has well back-end support that makes it as a clear choice as their shopping cart for new online businesses. Some of the things make BigCommerce cart as a better choice because of its simplicity and loads of features. In case if you are looking forward to developing an e-commerce platform which is easy to use and optimize your money making potential, this is the one what you are looking for and BigCommerce is the answer.

This is one of the most affordable eCommerce platforms which is out there with easy access and serving with the best solution for your eCommerce website development. It helps you with actionable data on the best ways that grow your business.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of BigCommerce-
Bigcommerce comes with the effective checkout options which help you controlling over your entire inventory and allowing to access to real-time information. Even you can ship the items right through the control panel.

• Features with rich hosted shopping carts.
• 24/7 Official support
• Quick & Secure transactions
• One hub for all your sales channels
• Flexible & customizable SaaS

Disadvantages:
It doesn’t have many options on themes an even you will have to keep upgrading with expensive plans. Despite having great features and good layout, Bigcommerce doesn’t have an entry level cheap plan. Even it doesn’t have much of add-ons available for Bigcommerce.

Who is using it?
Veppo | Suzy Stamps | Tylerstx | Heena Caravan

Website: https://www.bigcommerce.com

OsCommerce – (Hosted)

It is an open source eCommerce platform which you feel a bit to be an outdated version of Amazon. You can say osCommerce is been in business for more than 16 years and should have been performing stronger in the markets.

Unfortunately, there are only 13,300 stores currently on this platform. In some of the major factors, osCommerce has been a loyal open source developer with an ability to compete for the modern eCommerce field without changes.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of osCommerce –
OSCommerce is considered to be one of the oldest platforms and it gives you a few good reasons for building online shops.

• Quick Setup.
• Easy for a developer to customize.
• Strong Product management.
• Reasonable Price

Disadvantages:

• One of the problems is lack of technical support.
• If any individual who is looking forward to being entrepreneurs using osCommerce shopping cart this may find going tough.

Who is using it?
Ambi | Lotus Chat | Rebel Collection | Buy bies

Website: https://www.oscommerce.com

Open Cart – (Hosted)

When you are looking forward to starting an online business, OpenCart is one of the unique platforms which are easy to use and most powerful eCommerce platform. It allows you to achieve your online markets, no matter how big or small they are.

One of the very active community and though is actively developed. It is free which includes MVC design pattern with easily developed extensions.

It is popular within the small businesses that don’t have much staff with a lot of programming experience. Open cart you can say as a double-edged sword, which is complexible and easier to use but might not get as much out of it at the end. One of the best factors of opencart is simplicity that it never drags on your server.

Everything can be slowed down by adding numerous amount of plugins, but for some people, this is one of the faster options.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of OpenCart-
It is an open source online store that is always ready to take orders soon after installation. Open cart comes with the full accessibility of mobile-friendly admin area, complete with detailed products, order and customer management, sales report, marketing tools etc.

• Ready to use the template
• Multi-lingual options
• Multi-store mode
• Thousands of extensions and module

Disadvantages:
It doesn’t promise a very high performance unless users opt for the services with additional plug-ins such as SEO. Opencart doesn’t provide caching too but though can be adding by using an extension for improving performance.

Who is using it?
Wooden Poster | Choco Concept | Svapostore | Brandshop.ru

Website: https://www.opencart.com

WooCommerce – (Hosted)

It is one of the themes which is just another free WordPress plug-in. This is an open-source platform that provides users with a feature with extensive, user-friendly experience, that making it perfect for e-commerce startups. Even it helps you to the feel for an online business which is easy to understand without creating any hesitation over it.

WooCommerce is free to download and despise of being free, it offers an enormous amount of extensive features, even also it’s extremely flexible both by nature.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of WooCommerce –
Woocommerce never forces the user to go beyond their comfort zone; it helps you with more open doors. So that it can help you build an amazing online store.

• Vast customization options
• Professional and simple
• Apps Galore
• WooThemes
• Huge Flexibility

Disadvantages:
When it comes to complete solution for eCommerce there are some priorities to be fulfilled and to complete that plugins are used mostly but woocommerce uses only the WordPress plugins.

WooCommerce is free, but though the other plugins aren’t and this plays a very vital part in the development of an online store.

WooCommerce platform doesn’t offer a hosted solution, that means everything from security to other issue is up to you or find a partner.

Who is using it?
Laurel K Hamilton | Sock Box | The Darkroom | Air Stream

Website: https://woocommerce.com

Prestashop –(Hosted)

Prestashop is one of the popular eCommerce platforms which is easily available at free of cost because of being an open source eCommerce CMS. It is built for creating, managing and launching successful online stores without any license fees. This platform was built up by using PHP code and with MySQL data management for web 2.0.

It supports various payment gateways such as Google Checkout and Paypal. Prestashop web development requires fewer servers and resources as compared to other eCommerce platforms.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Prestashop-
It is completely free and though this helps you to save immensely on the cost, especially if you are looking forward to getting that developed at an affordable cost, unlike other it has a premium version too.

• Demographic assistance
• Economic choice
• Limited Scalability ( Prestashop is especially for small to medium-sized stores )
• Backend interface is much appealing
• Debugging is much easier

Disadvantages:

• Payment gateway modules generate some errors with the response time for the gateways, so that have to be controlled.
• There are some incidents get generated during the operations on time frame because the system is not perfect and though keeping the stock is complex
• Incidents can’t be recognized in the databases for more than 10,000 products that can slow down the functioning of E-Commerce.
• Some modules are to be purchased as they don’t come with the pack.

Who is using it?
Maptiteculotte | Champagne De Lozey | Tracia | Bein Manger

Website: https://www.prestashop.com

Volusion – (Hosted)

One of the eCommerce solutions which is having all the tools to set up and run a successful online store. It is scalable and due to a variety of their unique features and functionalities that support a lot in the selling effort for the creative team. Volusion’s secret is the usability of being involved in various aspects of the eCommerce market.

It doesn’t charge transaction fees on any of their plans but yes the payment gateways which you choose to accept for payment processing may charge them.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Volusion-
It is streamlined and enhances the buyer’s experience with their smart selling tools that help to cross-sell and end to end marketing campaigning.

• Intuitive Dashboard
• Customer Support & Onboarding
• E-Commerce operational features
• Merchandising
• Efficient store management

Disadvantages –

• It is competitive in the market by competing for the top and bottom tiers. In short, you can say it a middle tier platform that focuses on product and plan as their vital features.
• The platform provides a 14 days free trial, the pricing strategy is one of the drawbacks of it.
• It has bandwidth limitation with its basic pricing. It doesn’t have a dedicated app store and no support for adding third-party plugins.

Who is using it?
Antonelli’s Cheese | Wooden Camera | The tiny house coffee

Website: https://www.volusion.com

3D Cart – (Hosted)

3DCart is one of the foremost eCommerce software platforms that offer you everything you need to build your successful online retail store. It has a hosted solution to build a lavished feature store from beginning to end.

The most vital part of 3dCart is its versatility. This versatile platform is one of the best suited for those who are just starting their business. The basic starter plan also offers marketing tools that will help you to promote your business.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of 3dCart –

• Increases your average page speed
• Provide information that encourages a purchase
• Category breadcrumbs
• Loyalty Program
• Email Marketing & Autoresponders

Disadvantages:
It has a lack of advanced customization for templates/themes and even the dashboard is not much appealing.
The templates are a bit disappointing too but though 3d cart is all about learning which is time-consuming.
Customer support is not much responsive and has upgrading issues too.

Who is using it?
Mad Style | France Luxe | Baby Lulu | French Furniture Orlando

Website: https://www.3dcart.com

SAP Hybris – (Self-hosted)

SAP Hybris is one of the complete customer engagements with multichannel eCommerce solution with fully integrated tools and capacities. It serves in B2B and B2C brands belonging from industries like financial service, telecommunication, insurance, media, manufacturing, retailing and wholesaling.

The products of SAP Hybris are entirely based on a cloud with an integrated framework of CRM, it fetches the customer data through algorithms and helps the front line sales team which can be used to generated leads and prospects.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of SAP Hybris-
SAP Hybris solutions are engineered with customer-centric and capabilities to enhance the flow of information.

• Product content Management
• Agile Charging
• Omni-channel to B2B and B2C
• Sales Performance Management
• Sales Force Automation

Disadvantage:

• It becomes slow and inefficient when the content becomes a major factor on the website while running an online business.
• User and developer face problems with the CMS.
• The first thing about the SAP Hybris is that the platform project starts from US$50,000.

Website: https://cx.sap.com

Demandware – (Hosted)

Demandware is the online business accelerator to grow your industry as a leader and helps you with performing solutions. It offers a large amount of array to benefit your business to become an industry and keep up changing with the online environment.

It enables retailers to launch the sites and brands faster with easy integration of new technologies. One of its unique enterprise solutions that deliver the speed, agility, and innovation to succeed in the competitive online trend.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Demandware:-
It manages real-time quantities of products across multiple locations with the ability to use common infrastructure for creating multiple brands on sites.

• Personalized journey
• Distributed order management
• Commerce and CRM
• Retail practice and customer success
• Operation monitoring and Tech support

Disadvantages:

• It doesn’t work well with other applications. It makes a bit difficult to combine different applications on Demandware.
• Demandware has an issue with the UX which are inconsistencies in their layout, UI features, and intuitiveness.
• When it comes to API integration with other technologies it slowdowns the loading speed.

Who is using it?
Vineyard Vines | True Religion | OVS

Website: https://www.demandware.com

Drupal Commerce – (Hosted)

It is one of the platforms which is used too but not specially designed for eCommerce business. For several years there is a lot of growth in merchandising which has grown a lot. Drupal Commerce is the system which was built on top of an enterprise content management system. It offers a great deal of digital marketing support.

Drupal offers a great deal over a digital marketing support that helps the catalog to be displayed through its eCommerce system.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Drupal Commerce:-
Drupal is also an open source and there is no licensing cost or usage limit over it. You can customize however you wish.

• The safe and Secure eCommerce system
• License-free
• Marketing enabled system
• PCI Compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)

Disadvantages:

• For the promotion of a Drupal e-commerce might be too difficult for any newbie developer.
• If you are into developing the website quickly, Drupal is not DIY friendly, even it not the right platform for CMS too.
• Drupal has very high system requirements and before switching prepare to pay an extra hosting fee and forget the market rates.

Who is using it?
Cartier | Projekt-Youth | Chais d’oeuvre | Royal Mail

Website: https://drupalcommerce.org

Wix – (Hosted)

Wix is a very popular cloud-based web development platform that serves millions of user across the globe with its quality services. What makes Wix different from other is the personalization which has open templates for branding modifications and customization to build a store exactly as you think off.

It is without a doubt made for sole site owners and SMBs interested in building amazing web hubs without spending a fortune.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Wix:-

• One-pagers
• Financial tools
• Marketing tools
• Drag n’Drop website editor
• Social Feed

Disadvantages:

• Once you choose the template, you will never be able to change it again later on.
• Wix doesn’t have native blogging apps; you will have to look into the third party applications for pulling the traffic.
• You can say that with Wix the website ends up with loud ads on both the header and the footer.
• Wix can make a great looking website but the ability to customize is not possible.

Who is using it?
Louise White House | Elebea | Valerie Monis | Clichy

Website: https://www.wix.com

VirtueMart – (Hosted)

VirtueMart is an online expansion for Joomla. It is simple to use for beginners and experts too, it offers an enormous amount of built-in elements which makes the store professionally in a few minutes. It offers a large group of elements to amplify the usefulness of Joomla and VirtueMart by utilizing the modules, components, formats, and plugin that will match up your needs.

Virtue Mart is not just a normal platform but improves your web-based business site. It is one of the best ways to get your web to develop.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of VirtueMart:-
VirtueMart is a Joomla based CMS shopping cart. It means that you can gain more benefit from the fully-functional shopping cart and additional advantages from one of the best system worldwide.

• Shop statistics option
• Extensions directory

Disadvantages:

• Virtuemart does not include the ability to sell downloadable products and though have to set up the sales plugins which are paid versions too.
• The payment process is complicated and the list of payment gateway is not too long.

Who is using it?
Straight Razor Designs | Airborne Kite Surfing | Stand up paddle sports

Website: http://www.virtuemart.net

Squarespace – (Hosted)

It is one of the website building tools that helps you create your own functional website from scratch. Squarespace also gives you the access to the complete package needed to be launched with the fully operational website.

Squarespace is the service with help you to design the website to build with the stylish and well-designed website.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Squarespace:-
Squarespace has a centralized development process which helps to build the website as user-friendly. It is easy to sign up for a plan and get started with it.

• Functionality
• Technicality
• Price
• Functionality

Disadvantages:

• There is no customer support for the issue when you need a the troubleshoot.
• It has a lack of issues with advanced marketing tools
• Sometimes it is difficult for editing and adding content, which is a very time-consuming process.

Who is using it?
Arch Motorcycle | Sadie Williams | Daniel Arsham | John Malkovich

XCart – (Hosted)

X-Cart is the platform which opens sourced and helps you to go to your online store across global markets by providing you full control over everything. It supports OOP to PHP7 and though the database is user-friendly too which is made up by MySQL, Maria DB and so on.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of X-Cart:-

• Track and analyze sales properly
• 24×7 Customer support
• Highly secured

Disadvantages:

• It is not perfect but though if you are choosing for x-cart than it still needs a lot of improvements.
• X-Cart has expensivehas high upgradation fee and requires manual coding setup.

Who is using it?
Roto Pax | Collectibles of the game | Corvette Store online | BFC Creation

Website: https://www.x-cart.com

Pinnacle Cart – (Hosted and Self-hosted)

Pinnacle is widely accepted and customizable PHP software cart and it helps you to design from marketing prospectus. So that it can deploy its packaged in a way that it will be easy to use.

It is a complete e-commerce platform that works utterly regardless, even if you are into selling a couple of them or more of it.

Advantages, Disadvantages and Features of Pinnacle Cart:-

• Stunning storefronts
• Marketing focused
• Powerful Integrations
• All in one platform

Disadvantage:

• Pinnacle cart doesn’t have POS (Point of sale) system line other competitors.
• It has limited storage and bandwidth, which might create problems for large stores.

Who is using it?
Deschutes Angler | Defender Outdoors | Delvage | EyeQBeauty

Website: https://www.pinnaclecart.com/

Ecwid – (Hosted)

It was never been easy to open an online store here the reason why Ecwid made it easy by providing free services. Ecwid is currently the leading choice for small businesses who can set up the online store easily. No need to change or abandoning your current site.

You will have full access to operate multiple online stores which include your website through social media channels and mobile devices.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Ecwid:-

• 45 different languages
• Free plan
• The mobile app is automatically created for your store
• Integrates easily all thanks to dedicated plugins

Disadvantages:

• It doesn’t have strong SEO features as compared to other platforms.
• There is a small list of payment gateways available in Ecwid.
• Ecwid is good for who don’t have a website and need fully looking forward to making a standalone store contain static pages and features.

Who is using it?
Hermanitos | Kant | Sharkpalermo

Website: https://www.ecwid.com

LemonStand – (Hosted)

Lemonstand is very light weighted and highly customizable platform which helps you to develop the site in very less time. It is beneficial to the developers who are working with MVC format and have solid PHP background.

LemonStand offers a comprehensive plan with all premium white glove support for every high volume retailers. You can even develop your themes locally with their tool called Lemonsync and LemonstandAPI.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of LemonStand:-

• No transaction fees
• Over 95 different payment processors
• Unlimited category nesting
• API & webhooks
• 100% Customizable design

Disadvantages:

• Lemonstand has a plan which goes over the order limit for three months than it automatically upgrades to the next plan.
• It has an expensive pricing and not suitable for tiny shops.

Who is using it?
Seven think | Whiskyloot

Website: https://lemonstand.com

Core Commerce – (Hosted)

It is specially made for small and medium-sized businesses to build their online presence in the world of internet. Core commerce store comes with a new look and easy navigation that automatically links with the shopping cart. It has this amazing e-commerce store builder which helps with entire tool directory from marketing management to analytics.

From adding your own logo and controlling over the entire styles of your navigation, it helps you to provide the entire tools which are needed to make your website as a unique online store.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of CoreCommerce:-

• Templates with effective product management
• Mobile commerce features
• Allows you to integrate hundreds of app and other options
• Reporting tool to analyze customer engagements

Disadvantages:

• It has an unreliable uptime.
• Even it has a moderate learning curve.

Who is using it?

Website: https://www.corecommerce.com

Spree Commerce – (Hosted)

It is a highly advanced open-sourced platform that mainly mounting the way for eCommerce with the base of Ruby on Rails. It is one of the top end open source eCommerce platform that is suitable for the developers to gain the flexibility and extensibility upon accessing it.

Spree Commerce platform is one of the first mobile E-Commerce platforms that has been widely used from any numbers of applications.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Spree Commerce:-

• Rapid Development
• A subset of Ruby on Rails
• Mobile ready
• Rich documentation and community support

Disadvantages:

• It requires coding and technical assistance.
• Limited numbers of themes are available.

Who is using it?
Farmdrop | Pack help | GetYuve | Nubikk

Website: https://spreecommerce.org

CS-Cart – (Hosted)

It is used for the businesses that are looking to operate e-commerce store with jam-packed features, providing better services. Cs-Cart helps you with starting out, a simple hosted checkout that might be best to get you sales up and running.

The most of your eCommerce software is on the bases of needs and preference. CS-Cart offers numerous features that will help you with more sales and optimize the web presence.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of CS-Cart:-

• Inbuild content manager
• Multi-editor and ultimate edition
• Powerful promotion system
• Affiliate system

Disadvantages:

• It is not much responsive and adaptive.
• CS-Cart has expensive tech support if you once run out of credits.

Who is using it?
Burford | Boreal | Glam confidential | Family leisure

Website: https://www.cs-cart.com

Magnolia CMS – (Hosted)

Magnolia is built for flexible and powerful CMS which help you grew better in the market to customers and for customers. It is entirely built in with CMS platform which opens sourced with a base from Java programming.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Magnolia:-

• Front-end developing
• Digital asset management
• Feeds

Disadvantages:

• It lacks an administrative dashboard which is showing all the workflow.
• The set-up of Magnolia CMS is a bit fiddly.

Website: https://www.magnolia-cms.com

Able Commerce – (Hosted)

AbleCommerce helps you with solutions which will lead you to the complete access to the eCommerce platform to make you complete the current trends. It is fully eCommerce solution that can be easily installed and works in minutes.

It is one of the first commercially available shopping cart systems that sold on the internet. Able commerce is an eCommerce industry which is built around product excellence, stability, well-written code, superior support, and other services.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of AbleCommerce:

• Fully responsive store
• International Support
• Powerful order management

Who is using it?
The GPS store | Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory | Designer Stencils

Website: https://www.ablecommerce.com

Air Square – (Hosted)

This is one of the all in one E-commerce platform that helps you to develop and to move from current platform to their platform. It makes your life easier with one inventory set up, shared between your online and physical store. Air square reviews the store performance at a glance.

Who is using it?
Cyclewerks | North Art | In Haus | Northwest Museum

Website: https://www.airsquare.com

Zen Cart – (Hosted)

It is one of an art of e-commerce which is user-friendly, open source d shopping cart software that helps you develop and design program. This platform takes merchants and shoppers requirements as prior.

Zen cart is a popular solution which has been around since 2003 when it just branched from osCommerce. It has a large community too and with a variety of add-ons and community that contributes module. It is one of the customizable templates that are like ready to run always.

Launch Year: 2003
Source: Open source
Services: Paid
No Of Online Stores:

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Features of Zen Cart:

• It focuses on the user’s need.
• Easy to set up for programming.
• Users have the freedom to customize their store the way as they want.

Disadvantages:

• It doesn’t have a good layout.
• Stressful upgraded which are hard to do.
• Requires expertise level of PHP knowledge to customize.

Who is using it?
Comics-gestiox | Bread and Butter(Co.Nz)

Website: https://www.zen-cart.com

In short, you can say there are plenty of open sources, cloud, hosted and self-hosted platform available that can help you boost up your online business. Most of the platforms which are useful to develop an e-commerce platform are enlisted here for references.

If you have any questions or query, please feel free to contact us.