If you own an online e-commerce store, choosing your business's best integration is one of the most important decisions you will make. According to POSQuote, Your eCommerce integration is what determines the success of your business.
When deciding on which e-commerce integration to use, there are several factors to consider. Ultimately, you have to choose the ones that best suit your business. This article covers the five best-paid eCommerce platforms and the five best free eCommerce Integrations.
What are the five best-paid eCommerce Integrations available in the market?
- Wix The Best eCommerce Platform
Wix's main objective is to give customers a clear-cut approach to building a website or online store. Wix currently powers more than 500,000 businesses worldwide. It also provides hosting for online stores, and their plans are very affordable, starting from $23/month with an annual subscription.
This integration has more than 500 free mobile-optimized eCommerce themes and builds your store in over ninety languages to take your business global. The cheapest plan offers you unlimited physical products and accounts. But if you want the subscription selling, you must subscribe to a higher plan which costs $27 per month.
The main features of Wix are:
- Recovery of unused carts
- Custom-built checkout page,
- Instant purchase buttons,
- Purchase directly from the gallery
- wishlists,
- loyalty programs,
- discount codes,
- User
In addition to this, you are given $300 online ad credit and other useful online marketing integrations. This app provides multi-channel sales via several social media platforms.
Keep in mind that you can only access some of these features when you subscribe to higher-level plans. Ensure that you double-check the important store elements you need to come with your chosen plan.
Pros of the Wix E-commerce platform
- No transaction fees
- 500+ free eCommerce templates
- Unlimited products and accounts
- USPS shipping discounts
- In-house payment platform
- 24/7 support (phone/ticket)
- Free domain for 1st year
- 14-day money-back guarantee
Cons
- Doesn't come with a live chat
- The cheapest plan has very unlimited features
- Shopify the Most Popular Platform
Shopify is a popular eCommerce platform provider and has more than one million stores, 2.1 million active users, and $155B+ worth of sold goods on its platform. Shopify's plans start from $29 per month. They also have an in-house payment processing platform with good discounts on shipping rates.
Shopify has 73 mobile-optimized themes you can choose from, but only 9 of them are free. The rest must be paid for, and they start at $140. This e-commerce platform gives you access to an unlimited number of products you can add to your store. But you will require integration for processing subscription services, and you can get one from the Shopify App Store.
Shopify's plans start from $29/month with the main features, but the major is the transaction fees. You can opt for more detailed reports with the higher-tier plans.
For online credit card rates, the transaction fee starts from 2.9% + 30¢. You will also pay a fee of 2% when you use any other payment provider.
The cons of getting the cheapest plans are that you will have to pay a higher transaction cost. But these costs are appropriate for the size of your online store.
Shopify also gives you a 14-day free trial with no credit card information required. This allows you the opportunity to test their platform with ease.
Some other exciting features of the Shopify app are:
- Gift cards
- abandoned cart recovery,
- custom discount codes,
- Integrated marketing tools such as email marketing and social media distribution (availability based on the country). But with the cheapest plan, you can only add two contributor accounts.
Shopify Pros
- Same features across plans
- Additional shipping discounts
- Unlimited products
- In-house payment platform
- 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support
- 14-day free trial
Shopify Cons
- The cheapest plan has only two accounts
- A transaction fee of 2% for non-Shopify Payments
- It has only nine free themes
- Squarespace Best Online Store Builder
Squarespace is an excellent all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs who want to build a successful online store for selling their products. This app manages your server and gives you simple tools for building and running your store.
The app is also very affordable and starts from $18/month with annual payments and basic features. It comes with monthly and annual payments depending on your preferences. But the annual payments are cheaper with every plan. They also come with a free domain for one year
You will only b required to pay a transaction fee of 3% for the Business plan. However, credit card processing fees apply to all plans.
If you're thinking of getting the cheapest plan, keep in mind that it comes with transaction fees of 3%, no customer accounts, checkout is processed from your website and no unused shopping cart recovery. You can start using Squarespace at no cost without giving out credit card details.
Squarespace gives you a wide range of mobile-optimized and customizable templates. You can tweak them according to your preferences with CSS and Javascript. You can also upload as many physical products as you require; however, you have to subscribe to the Advanced Commerce plan if you want the subscription selling option.
Some other main features of the Squarespace app are:
- Customizable promotional notifications and banners
- Unused cart recovery,
- Automatic shipping rate calculations (ZIP code level in the US),
- Personalized discounts
- custom integration with APIs
- limited availability labels for promotional use.
You can only enjoy some of these features with the higher-tier plans.
Squarespace Pros
- Cheap starting plan ($18/mo)
- Free themes
- Unlimited accounts
- Unlimited products
- Free domain for 1st year
- 14-day free trial
Squarespace Cons
- The cheapest plan comes with a 3% transaction fee.
- Weak support experience
What are two other excellent paid e-commerce platforms for your online store:
- Zyro - the Cheapest Base Plan
Zyro was launched last year, and they came into the market with fresh and innovative ideas. Their major aim is to create a simplistic e-commerce platform that has all the features you need.
Zyro's plans are affordable, and they start from $8.99/month (it comes with a 3-year commitment). It also has state-of-the-art AI integrations to help you set up your online store.
Zyro Pros
- Has the cheapest starting plan ($8.99/mo)
- No transaction fees
- More than 70 payment gateways
- Has 11 free themes
- Free domain for 1st year
- Free Unsplash image library
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Zyro Cons
- The cheapest plan has a limit of 100 products
- Weak support experience
- No free trial
- Volusion
Volusion is an eCommerce store and shopping cart software, but it doesn't provide website hosting. Nonetheless, it delivers decent services. It's a good app for managing and packaging your goods.
The prices start from $26/month with annual payments. But if you just started with your online store, you might want to look at some other options.
Volusion comes with 45 templates; 11 are free, while the remaining 34 themes cost $180. All the templates are mobile responsive, and you can customize them with CSS.
The app also allows you to set up your store for subscription selling by default. Sadly, the cheaper plans have a limited number of added products.
Some other features of Volusion are:
- Built-in SEO tools and social media integrations,
- Related products feature,
- Customer accounts and reviews,
- Discount codes,
- Gift cards.
- Abandoned cart reports. This feature is only available in the Professional plan, which costs 71/mo billed quarterly.
Volusion Pros
- Has no transaction fees
- Comes with subscription selling
- Has 11 free themes
- Comes with an In-house payment platform
- 24/7 support
- 14-day free trial
Cons
- Costly start-up plan ($26/month)
- Doesn't have website hosting
- The most affordable plan has only one account
- Added products are limited with the most affordable plans
What are the Best Free eCommerce Platforms
These free, open-source eCommerce can only work when you have web hosting and a domain name. Afterward, you can use these platforms with your web hosting panel or use them manually.
- WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress based websites. Although it is free, you must have website hosting and WordPress in place. Your online store can be enhanced with paid extensions, integrations, and themes for your storefront.
All your activities, such as inventory management, tax calculation, and shipping rates management, will be done in the WordPress interface. You can also sync your WooCommerce store with Google Analytics to keep track of data.
WooCommerce also has an extensive support forum that provides you with first-hand information. Since the platform is free, you will have to take care of things on your own or hire a programmer. WooCommerce offers you a 30-day money-back guarantee with every purchase from the store.
- Magento Open Source
Magento's open-source platform is specially made for small businesses and developers. It's a very effective online store builder if you want a platform that gives you absolute freedom. But if you have no experience with Magento, you must hire a programmer who does.
Although Magento is fully mobile-optimized, with the open-source platform, you have to build the store yourself. However, this will give you access to rich content for products as well as other features.
You also get extra eCommerce extensions through Magento Marketplace. Magento has a paid version, but the cost goes up to thousands of dollars.
- PrestaShop (Free)
PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce platform that has a strong community. It is regularly updated and has bug fixes. It also comes with upgraded versions once in a while. Prestashop is currently available in 75 languages, which is quite impressive.
PrestaShop has mobile-optimized software, with several templates to choose from. In their main store, the storefront templates start at $69.99. However, you can find community-developed free themes from the forums quickly, but they're not available in the official market place.
The app allows you to add payment options through different add-ons. There are free add-on options such as PayPal, Skrill, or Blockonomics Bitcoin Payments addon. The app also has a pre-installed in-house fraud detection software that is free. For technical support, you have access to Prestashop's community.
Apart from these platforms, here are two other free e-commerce integrations you can use for your business:
- Big Cartel
Big Cartel is a hosted eCommerce platform specially made for artists and creatives. If you want to sell handmade products or other similar goods, this is an excellent option.
- OpenCart
OpenCart comes with lots of free downloads and updates. It also has the largest selection of e-commerce modules and themes if you're looking to expand your stores' functionality.
Conclusion
Building an online store has never been easier with so many integrations available in the market. Though it can be tricky to choose, you can select a few that you need from this extensive list above.
The benefits of the paid integrations make them a good investment. However, if you're starting or are on a tight budget, you can maximize the free platforms.