How to Choose an Ecommerce Platform: The Complete Guide For Every Ecomm Brand

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So, you’re either here because you hate your current ecommerce platform, or because you’re ready to start your ecommerce journey with the right platform. Either way, you got the right place.

In this big ol’ guide, we’ll lay out exactly how to choose an ecommerce platform for whatever type of business you are running.

By 2027, ecommerce sales are projected to account for nearly 23% of all retail sales, according to Statista. That’s right, nearly a quarter of all sales globally will be online.

Accelerated by the pandemic, this trend is only going upward.

So how do you choose the right ecommerce platform to host your fabulous online store? We’ll go through all the criteria for this decision, the types of platforms you can choose from, and our top picks for various types of ecommerce brands.

Why Does Your Choice of Ecommerce Platform Matter?

All platforms do the same thing, right? It’s just a matter of picking a name out of a hat, yeah?

No, not really.

Your ecommerce platform is your store’s central command center, where the all the most important stuff happens all the time.

The best D2C ecommerce platform for you depends on you—the size of your ecommerce business, how you like to sell, how your customers buy, your budget, your design needs, and on and on.

It’s not just about finding a tool for order management, product listings, payment processing, inventory management, and more—it’s about laying down the best possible foundation for your store.

Since you’ll be in there every day, you want to make sure you actually like it, right?

What does an ecommerce platform do?

The short answer is: A LOT. It’s a store in a box, ready for assembly.

The long answer is that an ecommerce platforms is a(n):

• Website builder. Themes, templates, and drag-and-drop page designers are built-in to help you create and customize your store quickly.
• Ecommerce content management system (CMS). Your site pages, landing pages, blog posts, and product assets have to live somewhere.
• Product information management (PIM) system. Manage your product catalog and all the little details that make it on your product pages, like product descriptions, pricing, images, inventory levels, categories, attributes, etc.
• Shopping cart solution. The digital approximation of your customers’ shopping baskets, where products lay in wait for your excellent checkout experience.
• Order management system (OMS). It handles all the ins and outs of customer orders, including fulfillment and returns.
• Inventory management system (IMS). In conjunction with your PIM functionality, this keeps track of stock levels and changes them in real time as items are purchased.
• Customer relationship management (CRM) system. Just as you catalog product details, so do you need to keep your current customers and subscribers cataloged for marketing.
• Marketing automation tool. Many platforms also provide built-in marketing tools for SEO, email marketing, SMS, live chat, pop-ups, promotions, discounts, and more.
• Payment gateway. The essential element to a great checkout is the payment gateway, which some ecommerce platforms include out of the box (like Shopify).

This isn't to say that you need to use your ecommerce platform for all of these functionalities. Integrating external ecommerce tools is often necessary as you scale your brand, but for SMBs, their ecommerce platform can do it all from the jump.

Things To Look For When Choosing an Ecommerce Platform

The right ecommerce platform won't appear out of thin air. You need to do some simultaneous introspection and outward searching. Here's what to look for:

1. Fit with your tech stack

Your ecommerce platform has to plug cleanly into ERP, CRM, PIM, OMS/WMS, BI, and payment gateways—without duct tape. You know, your whole tech stack.

Prioritize platforms with mature APIs, reliable webhooks, sane rate limits, and versioning so your ecommerce site can evolve without rewrites.

• Check the connectors. Verify native integrations for your core systems, then confirm how they handle auth, data mapping, and error handling.
• Inspect the APIs. Look for REST or GraphQL with pagination, idempotency, retries, and clear rate limits you can live with.
• Validate events. Ensure critical real-time events exist—order created, fulfillment updated, refund issued—and test delivery and retries.
• Ask for a sandbox. You need an isolated environment with test cards, realistic data, and the same limits as production.
• Map failure paths. Require logs, alerts, and replay options so ops can diagnose and recover quickly.

2. Flexible plans and pricing

Price is more than a monthly fee. Model year-one total cost of ownership—licenses, themes, apps/plugins, implementation, payment processing, overages, and internal time—so you’re not surprised after launch.

• Get the full pricing sheet. Ask for tiers, limits, overage rules, add-ons, and renewal terms in writing.
• Pressure-test growth. Recalculate costs at 2× traffic, 3× SKUs, and a new region to see where pricing breaks.
• Model payment economics. Include transaction fees, alternative payment options, chargeback handling, and payout timing.
• Account for services. Add implementation, data migration, and integration work, plus a 10–15% contingency.
• Tie to outcomes. Compare TCO to expected conversion, AOV, and labor savings so “best ecommerce platform” means best ROI for your business needs.

3. Data access and reporting

If you can’t get clean data out, you can’t run the business. Treat data like a product—documented, accessible, and reliable in real time.

• Own the raw data. Full exports and scheduled reports for orders, customers, catalog, and inventory—without weird retention windows.
• APIs you won’t fight. REST or GraphQL with predictable rate limits, pagination, idempotency, and webhooks that retry and log failures.
• BI-ready pipes. Native connectors to your BI tool, stable schemas, and a data dictionary that covers fields, relationships, and change history.
• Event fidelity. Order created, payment captured, shipment updated, refund issued—delivered consistently and replayable when needed.

Operator test. Rebuild your weekly leadership snapshot—conversion rate, AOV, refund rate, low-stock SKUs, fulfillment SLAs—before you buy.

4. Onboarding and training quality

Onboarding is where timelines go to die. You want a real plan, not vibes.

• 30–60–90 that means something. Environments ready and data migrated; then day-one workflows tested; then soft launch with monitoring and rollback.
• Role-based training that sticks. Tracks for merchandising, operations, service, finance, and marketing, with hands-on tasks and certification before access.
• Sandbox that mirrors prod. Test cards, realistic SKUs, and the same limits as live so checkout, tax, and inventory sync don’t surprise you.

Good documentation is part of the product. Expect a current knowledge base and API docs with examples, versioning, and deprecation timelines.

Red flags:

• Ownerless tasks. No named owners for data migration, payments, or tax setup.
• Single environment. No safe place to rehearse risky flows.
• Training theater. Decks instead of hands-on tasks and sign-off.

Launch gate. A new hire can complete a refund, an exchange, and a price change in sandbox without help—then you’re close.

5. Responsive, real support

When checkout breaks at 10PM, you don’t want a bot—you want a human who can see logs and take action.

Look for 24/7 coverage across chat, email, and phone, published SLAs, a real escalation path, and a public status page with incident history. Ecommerce traffic is spiky; support needs to be, too.

Pre-purchase, file a ticket during your trial and time the first human response.

Rate the answer for depth, not vibes—did they reference request IDs, webhooks, or error codes, or just link docs? After any outage, expect readable postmortems and clear remediation. That’s how you protect revenue when things wobble.

Operator test. Open a ticket on a simulated payment failure and a tax miscalculation. If you can’t get a substantive response within your trading hours, keep moving.

6. Roles, approvals, permissions

Access control is where “user-friendly” meets risk management.

Require SSO/MFA, least-privilege roles, and audit logs that capture who changed what, when, and where. For multi-location retailers, you’ll also need per-store controls for catalog, pricing, taxes, inventory, and promotions so a store manager can’t accidentally touch another region.

Approval chains should exist for sensitive actions—publishing changes, discounting above a threshold, issuing refunds, editing tax rules, or exporting customer data.

You want the ability to stage changes, schedule them, and roll them back without calling engineering.

Day-one readiness means finance can cap refunds, merchandising can stage a price change for Friday, and ops can see a traceable history of edits tied to named users.

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7. Security and compliance

Security is table stakes for an ecommerce platform—payments, PII, and order data have to be protected end to end. Aim for documented controls, audited standards, and incident practices you’d be proud to show your finance and legal teams.

Confirm PCI DSS scope and responsibility, SOC 2 or ISO certification, encryption in transit/at rest, SSO/MFA, and a clear data processing addendum. Ask where data lives, how long it’s retained, and how breach notifications and uptime SLAs are handled.

• Prove the baseline. Request current attestations (PCI DSS, SOC 2/ISO), pen-test summaries, and remediation timelines.
• Know the boundaries. Get data residency options, retention windows, and export/erase paths that support compliance without vendor tickets.
• Plan for bad days. Expect a public status page, postmortems with root cause, and credits tied to SLA breaches.

Red flags.

• Vague attestations. Expired certificates or “in progress” with no dates.
• Opaque incident process. No postmortems, no timelines, or silence during outages.
• Weak access controls. No SSO/MFA, minimal audit logs, or shared admin accounts.

8. Customization and extensibility

Customization should accelerate your roadmap—not turn every change into a mini replatform. You want clear theme/config controls for non-technical work, and a safe developer surface for deeper changes without breaking upgrades.

Start with frontend flexibility.

Can you adjust templates, layouts, and UX elements without custom code, and can you stage and schedule those changes?

For bigger bets, look for SDKs and documented REST/GraphQL APIs, plus a sandbox that mirrors production so you can test performance, SEO settings, and checkout changes before they go live.

Extension ecosystems vary wildly. Evaluate plugin quality, maintenance cadence, and support. Versioning and rollback matter—if an extension update tanks conversion or page speed, you need a fast, reversible path.

Guardrails matter, too: dependency checks, conflict detection, and a way to isolate custom code so core updates remain safe.

Operator test. Ship a staged homepage change, add a custom field to products via API, and update one extension—then roll back—all within an afternoon without calling engineering.

9. Mobile and multi-location support

Most shoppers hit your ecommerce site on a phone, and many retailers run multiple stores or regions.

Your platform has to nail both—fast mobile UX and location-aware logic for inventory, pricing, tax, and fulfillment. Don’t accept “responsive”; test full flows over shaky Wi-Fi and 4G on a mid-range device.

What to verify.

• Mobile checkout, end to end. Tap targets, autofill, wallets, and error states should be clean on small screens.
• Location-aware rules. Inventory, price lists, tax profiles, and promotions must respect store/region, with clear overrides.
• Store team usability. Admin tasks on tablets—price changes, order lookups, BOPIS status—should be fast and role-limited.

Day-one proof: browse→add to cart→BOPIS checkout→partial refund on mobile, then repeat for a second location with its own tax and inventory rules.

10. Workflow automation options

Automations are where your ecommerce platform saves real hours—no-code rules that react to events, chain actions, retry on failure, and log what happened. You want flexible triggers, safe rollbacks, and controls that ops can tune without a developer.

• Events and triggers.
  • Order created. Route orders by region or tag.
  • Low stock. Alert, throttle ads, or pause listings.
  • Payment failed. Kick off dunning and CX follow-up.
• Chaining with guardrails.
  • If/then paths. Run steps conditionally, with timeouts and retries.
  • Rollbacks. Revert price or publish state if a downstream step fails.
• Observability.
  • Run logs. See who/what fired, inputs/outputs, and latency.
  • Replay. Re-run a failed job after fixing a config.
  • Ownership. Name an on-call for automations.

Pick three time-savers—back-order alerts, RMA routing, abandoned checkout nudges—and validate them in a sandbox using your products, customers, and real order data.

How to Choose an Ecommerce Platform: A Step-By-Step Framework

OK, let's get into the weeds on this. We'll take you through each step to choose correctly.

Step 1: Identify your needs

Start with how your ecommerce business actually runs today. Capture real workflows, where they break, and what must work on day one—this becomes the baseline for scoring vendors, modeling pricing, and avoiding surprises at checkout or during refunds.

Gather stakeholder input

Talk to operations, finance, marketing, CX, and IT.

Pull sample orders, returns, discounts, promotions, and approval flows, and define success metrics each team cares about (conversion, AOV, refund rate, SLA hit rate).

Assemble a small demo data pack—10–20 SKUs with variants, a few realistic customers, domestic and international tax profiles—so vendors can show your world, not theirs.

Document current state

Map systems and handoffs—ERP, CRM, PIM, OMS/WMS, BI, payment gateways, tax, and shipping. Note data directions and frequency (real-time vs. batch), failure handling (retries, alerts), and current access controls. Consider multi-vendor ecommerce platforms if you need to manage multiple sellers or suppliers within your ecosystem.

Produce a one-page diagram and a short RACI so everyone knows owners for catalog, pricing, taxes, and payouts.

Prioritize pain points

Rank issues by revenue, cost, and time impact.

Define what “expensive” means for you (lost orders, manual hours, chargebacks), then shortlist the few problems that will move the needle in the next 90 days.

Tie each priority to an owner and a measurable target so you can prove progress post-migration.

Align with policies

List security, privacy, retention, SSO/MFA, audit, procurement thresholds, and data residency requirements.

Call out constraints like approved payment processors, required SLAs, or regions where customer data must stay. These become non-negotiables in vendor scoring.

Must-have versus nice-to-have

Write day-one must-haves with clear acceptance tests, and park cosmetics in a dated phase-two backlog.

Create a weighted 0–3 rubric that leans heavier on revenue-impacting areas (checkout reliability, inventory sync) than aesthetics. Set the cut rule now—any 0 on a must-have is out.

Ask these questions

• Day-one workflows. Which customer, order, refund, and inventory flows must work from hour one, and how you’ll measure success.
• System integrations. Which systems need real-time vs. batch sync, the directions of data flow, and how failures should retry and alert.
• Access control. Which roles, approvals, and audit logs finance, merchandising, operations, and store teams require.
• Reporting needs. Which weekly leadership metrics—conversion rate, AOV, refund rate, fulfillment SLAs—and in what format.
• Cost guardrails. What budget, internal hours, and timeline you can realistically support for implementation and training.

Step 2: Research vendors and the market

Do a fast, focused scan—separate pattern signals from hype.

You’re looking for ecommerce platform proof: real customers like you, documented integrations, live sandboxes, and a roadmap that won’t box you in next year.

High-level vendor scan

Skim docs, changelogs, incident history, and pricing pages. Favor platforms that publish API references, event catalogs, and implementation guides you can actually follow.

Match by fit

Filter by your size, use case, deployment model (SaaS vs. open-source), and integration depth. If your ecommerce business relies on ERP syncs, B2B pricing, or omnichannel workflows, those aren't "advanced"—they're day one. For merchants currently using Magento who need these features, reviewing Magento alternative platforms can help identify better solutions.

Spot differentiators

Note where platforms truly diverge—admin UX speed, checkout reliability under load, inventory accuracy, automation controls, data access, and multi-location logic. Rank what matters most to revenue and operating cost.

Document findings

Capture one-pagers with must-have scores (0–3), pricing notes, integration coverage, sandbox availability, and risks.

Keep receipts—links, doc versions, and anything you verified in a trial.

Ask these questions

• Who you serve best. Which retailer profiles, order volumes, and catalog complexity you win with most often, and where you’re not a fit.
• How integrations work. Which connectors are native, what the API limits are, how webhooks retry, and where monitoring lives.
• What’s native vs. custom. Which workflows are out-of-the-box, what needs plugins, and what requires engineering time.
• What it costs all-in. Licenses, apps/plugins, implementation, payment economics, overages, renewals, and required support tiers.
• What the roadmap changes. Upcoming deprecations, breaking changes, and features that materially affect your storefront or back-end.

Overwhelmed by options? We can help.

Software categories, features, pricing… talk it through with a software expert who gets it.

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Top Ecommerce Platforms to Consider

In the spirit of finding the best platform out there, here’s my list of top ecommerce platforms for you:

1. 1. Wix — Best for non-technical users
2. 2. Subbly — Best for subscription-based ecommerce models
3. 3. BigCommerce — Best for omnichannel marketing
4. 4. Ecwid — Best for social media selling
5. 5. Adobe Commerce — Best for data-driven companies
6. 6. Shopify — Best for a range of integrations
7. 7. Squarespace — Best for managing online stores
8. 8. PrestaShop — Best for customizable online stores
9. 9. Sana Commerce Cloud — Best ecommerce platform for B2B sales
10. 10. Weebly — Best for customizable design options

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Step 3: Make a shortlist and reach out

Narrow to two–four vendors that clear every must-have, plus one “reach” if there’s a compelling upside. Apply your 0–3 rubric, cut on any zero, and carry forward only options you can actually demo with your data in the next two weeks.

Build your shortlist

Score against Step 1 must-haves, integration depth, and data access. Favor platforms with a live sandbox, clear API docs, and an incident history you can read.

Keep internal alignment tight—one page per vendor with owner, risks, and open questions.

Use RFI/RFP wisely

If your needs are standard, a short RFI gets you pricing tiers, limits, roles/permissions, SLAs, security attestations, and data model docs.

For complex workflows or B2B requirements, send a focused RFP with acceptance tests and the demo data pack attached. Consider working with specialized ecommerce development companies for implementation support.

Ask for a sandbox token and a named technical contact before the demo.

Book focused demos

Script day-one flows with your sample orders, taxes, and refunds, and include one forced failure to observe retries, logs, and alerts using SMART requirements.

Cap sessions at 60–90 minutes, record with permission, and require hands-on trial access afterward so your team can repeat the flows without a sales engineer present.

Standardize evaluation criteria

Use a weighted rubric across usability, integrations, data/reporting, security/compliance, roles/approvals, mobile and multi-location, and automation.

Add a TCO tab (licenses, apps, services, internal hours, payment economics), a risk register with mitigations, and a support test score based on a real ticket filed during the trial.

Ask these questions

• Proof of your use case. Walk our end-to-end flow using our data, and show the failure and recovery path.
• Implementation reality. Timeline, required roles on both sides, and who owns data migration, taxes, and payment gateway setup.
• Integration depth. Which connectors are native, where APIs are needed, and how you monitor, retry, and alert on failures.
• Pricing mechanics. What changes at 2× traffic, 3× SKUs, or a new region—include overages and required support tiers.
• Support and SLAs. Channels, hours, response/restore targets, escalation path, and public incident history with postmortems.

Step 4: Build the business case

Translate your shortlist into dollars, outcomes, and risk so a decision-maker can say yes. Keep it tight—what it fixes, what it costs in year one, when ROI shows up, and where it could go sideways.

Summarize value proposition

Name the top pains (checkout issues, inventory sync errors, slow merchandising), then state the expected wins—higher conversion, cleaner operations, fewer manual hours.

Tie each win to an owner and a metric.

Present cost estimates

Model year-one TCO—licenses, themes/plugins, implementation, integrations, payment processing, overages, and internal hours—plus a small contingency. These cost considerations are essential when you choose a B2B ecommerce platform.

Show a phased timeline with who does what, when.

Articulate ROI

Quantify where the return comes from: conversion lift, AOV changes, reduced refunds, labor saved, fewer errors, faster launches.

Add a risk register with mitigations and a simple rollback path for go-live.

Ask these questions

• All-in cost. What’s the year-one TCO, the biggest cost drivers, and the renewal exposure at current volumes.
• Time to value. When do we expect conversion, labor, or error-rate improvements to show up, and how we’ll measure them.
• Operational risk. What could break during migration or launch, who owns fixes, and what rollback looks like in practice.
• Payment economics. How do fees, alternative payment options, chargebacks, and payout timing affect cash flow.
• Scaling impact. What changes at 2× traffic or 3× SKUs—costs, limits, SLAs, and required support tiers.

Step 5: Implement and onboard

Execute in phases, rehearse risky flows in a sandbox, and keep owners visible.

The goal is a calm go-live—clean checkout, accurate inventory, working refunds, and monitoring that catches issues before customers do.

Communicate the plan

Share a one-page rollout with milestones, owners, environments, and a cutover window.

Include a go-live checklist—payments tested, tax verified, SKUs loaded, emails/SMS firing, dashboards watching real-time signals.

Assign clear owners

Name DRI-level owners for project management, integrations, data migration, payments/tax, training, and vendor coordination.

Publish an escalation path with trading-hours coverage.

Drive training and adoption

Run role-based tracks for merchandising, operations, CX, finance, and store teams. Require hands-on tasks in sandbox and lightweight certification before production access.

Build feedback loops

Stand up issue intake, a daily launch room, and post-launch SLAs for fixes and retries.

Track a small set of week-one metrics—conversion, payment failures, refund latency, low-stock accuracy—and review them twice daily.

Ask these questions

• Cutover readiness. What exact steps gate go-live, who signs them off, and what’s the rollback trigger if a step fails.
• Data migration. How products, customers, and orders will be validated, and how you’ll reconcile totals post-cutover.
• Payments and tax. Which test cases passed in sandbox, how gateways are monitored, and who owns disputes and tax updates on day one.
• Access and controls. Which roles are live at launch, which actions require approvals, and how audit logs will be reviewed.
• Support model. How issues are triaged with the provider, what the escalation timeline is, and how incident comms reach stakeholders.

What is the Best Ecommerce Solution For You?

As you may understand from everything we’ve discussed thus far, the answer to this question is a massive ‘it depends.’ You'll find many types in our big roundup (top 10 list above), but you might want something more niche.

Different types of sellers will need different types of platforms that check all their boxes. Since we've reviewed various types of platforms, we can help you find the best ecommerce platform for clothing and other types.

For businesses in the food retail sector, specialized grocery ecommerce platforms offer unique features tailored to perishable inventory management and delivery logistics.

Let’s look at a few use cases and our top ten picks for each:

For small businesses

You can find all our picks for small business ecommerce platforms in our in-depth guide, but here's our shortlist.

1. 1. Square — Best for flexibility in payment processing
2. 2. Wix — Best for customizable online stores​
3. 3. Subbly — Best for subscription-based ecommerce models
4. 4. BigCommerce — Best all-in-one ecommerce platform
5. 5. WP Engine — Best for non-technical users
6. 6. Shopify — Best customer service
7. 7. Squarespace — Best online store template library
8. 8. PrestaShop — Best open source ecommerce platform
9. 9. Lightspeed — Best cloud-based retail POS system
10. 10. Swell — Best for headless ecommerce

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For enterprise brands

Bigger brands have different needs, so we've got our picks for best enterprise ecommerce platforms, too.

1. 1. Rierino — Best headless ecommerce platform
2. 2. Adobe Commerce — Best for data-driven companies
3. 3. Shopify — Best for a range of integrations
4. 4. BigCommerce — Best for built-in marketing & SEO tools
5. 5. VTEX — Best for B2B ecommerce
6. 6. NetSuite SuiteCommerce — Best all-in-one enterprise ecommerce platform
7. 7. Spryker — Best headless ecommerce platform
8. 8. Paragon Commerce — Best platform for affiliate-driven commerce
9. 9. Ultra Commerce — Best for Agile ecommerce
10. 10. WCFM Marketplace — Best ecommerce marketplace builder

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For B2B selling

Businesses selling to other businesses need more functionality, so see which are the best B2B ecommerce platforms here:

1. 1. Wix — Best for gated catalogs and member pricing
2. 2. Rierino — Best headless platform for complex B2B orchestration
3. 3. Shopify — Best all-purpose ecommerce with strong app ecosystem
4. 4. BigCommerce — Best for built-in B2B and headless flexibility
5. 5. LifeRay — Best for B2B self-service portals on a DXP
6. 6. Episerver — Best ecommerce platform for personalization features
7. 7. Drupal Commerce — Best for advanced product modeling
8. 8. Sana Commerce — Best for ERP integration
9. 9. B2B Wave — Best for fast wholesale portal rollout
10. 10. Spryker — Best for modular architecture

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For subscriptions

If you just need to sell subscription products, there are specialized ecommerce platforms for subscription selling.

1. 1. Subbly — Best for handling your operations without plugins
2. 2. Chargebee — Best comprehensive subscription platform
3. 3. Podia — Best for selling online courses and webinars
4. 4. FastSpring — Best for software-as-a-service
5. 5. Paddle — Best for software and digital downloads
6. 6. Pabbly Subscriptions — Best for incorporating affiliates in sales
7. 7. Sellfy — Best for creating and launching subscriptions fast
8. 8. TaxCloud — Best for calculating, collecting, and filing your sales tax with ease
9. 9. WooCommerce — Best for WordPress users
10. 10. Younium — Best for B2B subscriptions

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SaaS platforms

We talked about cloud-based platforms, for which you can find our picks for best SaaS ecommerce platforms.

1. 1. Subbly — Best for subscription-first businesses with AI features
2. 2. Adobe Commerce — Best end-to-end SaaS ecommerce platform
3. 3. Shopify — Best app marketplace
4. 4. PrestaShop — Best for customization
5. 5. Sana Commerce Cloud — Best for ERP features
6. 6. Volusion — Best for small-to-medium businesses
7. 7. WooCommerce — Best for WordPress users
8. 8. Oracle Commerce — Best for customer experiences
9. 9. Elastic Path Commerce Cloud — Best for flexibility
10. 10. NetSuite Commerce — Best for omnichannel ecommerce stores

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For multichannel selling

Selling on many sales channels is essential, so find our favorite multichannel ecommerce platforms here:

1. 1. Web.com — Best for small businesses
2. 2. BigCommerce — Best multi-channel platform for marketing & SEO
3. 3. Ecwid — Best for ease of use
4. 4. Adobe Commerce — Best ecommerce digital experience platform (DXP)
5. 5. Shopify — Best customer service
6. 6. Wix — Best for design customizability
7. 7. Channable — Best for data-driven companies
8. 8. Cadence WMS — Best for real-time inventory accuracy
9. 9. eSwap — Best for a range of integrations
10. 10. Fulfil.io — Best for wholesalers & manufacturers

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For omnichannel commerce

In a similar vein, there's omnichannel selling. See our top picks for omnichannel ecommerce platforms.

1. 1. Linnworks — Best for centralized ecommerce management
2. 2. Rierino — Best for dynamic product customization
3. 3. Bloomreach — Best for consistent customer experiences
4. 4. SellerCloud — Best for inventory synchronization
5. 5. Sana Commerce — Best for B2B businesses
6. 6. NetSuite Commerce — Best for real-time business intelligence
7. 7. Orckestra — Best API-based platform
8. 8. Carat by Fiserv — Best for robust payment solutions
9. 9. Elastic Path — Best for quickly creating commerce solutions
10. 10. SAP Commerce Cloud — Best for intelligent selling solutions

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For headless commerce

To get more customization to break up monolithic ecomm services, there are headless commerce platforms:

1. 1. Wix — Best for centralized ecommerce management​
2. 2. Subbly — Best for subscription-first businesses with AI features
3. 3. Rierino — Best for omnichannel journeys
4. 4. BigCommerce — Best open source headless ecommerce platform
5. 5. Shopify — Best headless ecommerce platform for usability
6. 6. commercetools — Best headless ecommerce platform for scalability
7. 7. OroCommerce — Best headless ecommerce platform for wholesalers
8. 8. Kontent — Best headless ecommerce platform for content modeling
9. 9. Magento Commerce — Best headless ecommerce platform for robust analytics
10. 10. Contentful — Best headless ecommerce platform for agile workflows

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For marketplace selling

Finally, if you want to sell on marketplaces, there are great marketplace ecommerce platforms for you.

1. 1. BigCommerce — Best open source ecommerce marketplace platform solution
2. 2. VTEX — Best for an apps & add-ons ecosystem
3. 3. Spryker — Best for a headless, cloud marketplace platform
4. 4. Shipturtle Marketplace Creator — Best for Shopify marketplace automation
5. 5. Pepperi — Best for consolidating omnichannel sales on a single platform
6. 6. Nautical Commerce — Best for an on-demand multi-vendor marketplace platform
7. 7. Aleran Connected Commerce — Best for a plug-and-play ecommerce system
8. 8. Mirakl — Best for enterprise-level ecommerce marketplaces
9. 9. WCFM Marketplace — multi-vendor marketplace plugin for WordPress with commission types
10. 10. Paragon Commerce — Best for people-driven commerce

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Scale Your Store By Leveraging the Best Ecommerce Platform

Alright, if you’ve read this far, congrats! By now, you’ll have plenty of ammo going into a final purchase decision.

No matter what type of ecommerce brand you are running, there's a platform for you. Whether you're launching a print on demand business or traditional retail, it's up to you to pull the trigger on the one that's best for your online business needs.

As you compare the different platforms, see how they check boxes on your unique business checklist.

Moving through your list, these vital filters should narrow your decision down further and further until the platform becomes self-evident. Perfect!

If you’ve got a few options left at the end of this platform tournament, get demos and free trials to try them out for yourself. Often you can play for free until it’s time to launch.

Taking this time to choose will serve you later, as you won’t be forced into replatforming your site and can focus on scaling instead.

If you're in the process of researching how to choose an ecommerce platform, connect with a SoftwareSelect advisor for free recommendations.

You fill out a form and have a quick chat where they get into the specifics of your needs. Then you'll get a shortlist of software to review. They'll even support you through the entire buying process, including price negotiations.

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