The Best Ecommerce Platform in 2022

i want to talk about the top e-commerce platforms for small business in 2021. so pull yourself up and share and let's talk about it everything i see out there about this subject is such slanted garbage it's either completely uninformed opinions or just designed to get you to click on an affiliate link yeah well you know that's just like uh your opinion man this is a difficult subject to cover because it's hard to know everything about this many platforms so everyone has one or two they're experienced with and that makes their opinion biased i'm no exception to that however i'm gonna try to give it to you as straight as i can despite my own biases the first thing we need to do is narrow this down to a manageable number of platforms we're going to do that by popularity because i think popularity is one of the most important things to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform for a small business and let me explain e-commerce is getting complicated there's so much more you have to provide these days to create a modern e-commerce experience that creating even a small portion of your needed functionality from scratch could be cost prohibitive the more you can get from the platform you choose the better however e-commerce platforms are designed to be middle of the road when it comes to functionality their goal is to provide features that appear to a wide swath of the market in hopes of attracting new customers and they can't be everything to everyone and they definitely don't properly address all the auxiliary things that you'll need to build and market your business as a result it's important to have strong marketplace support for the platform you choose that way if the platform doesn't have something out of the box your odds of finding an affordable solution for that piece of functionality is greatly increased the more popular an e-commerce platform is the bigger the market is for third parties to provide themes apps or third-party services to that platform's users and that third-party support could really save you a lot of money or even put functionality that would have been way out of your budget within your reach long story short popularity matters and i think small businesses should stick to popular platforms the next hurdle in giving you this list is determining what's actually popular and there's a lot of conflicting data out there about e-commerce platform market share some of it's just outdated information or skewed by platforms popular in certain regions for this list i went to trust radius which is an online review service and found their list of e-commerce platforms i sorted those by the most rated and reviewed and took the top 10. an important note is that i didn't do it by the highest rated just the ones with the most ratings and reviews there's definitely some outliers here but for the most part this list tracks pretty well with the other popularity lists out there if you're looking at the names on the list and not necessarily the order the top 10 most popular e-commerce platforms were big commerce shopify wix squarespace woocommerce kentico weebly godaddy magento and salesforce commerce cloud so the big question which one's the best well there's a problem we need to discuss houston we have a problem you're asking the wrong question there is no best there's only what's best for you and your business and this answer is going to be different for each of you so i'm not going to crown a winner because that would just be putting out more slanted crap like what's already out there if you just want a useless opinion where someone tells you what's best without any context to your business then you shouldn't have any trouble finding that content what i want to do is provide some helpful info around each of these platforms and hopefully that helps you understand the strengths of each of these and narrow down your choices this is going to be fairly high level or this video will end up being 12 days long and if this doesn't clear it up for you just head on over to jamerson.com forward slash go and we can set up some time to discuss it in more detail within the context of your business all right so let's set up this conversation here's a couple of definitions to start these platforms are either going to be sas software as a service or open source sas is good in that it typically includes hosting and takes care of all the technically complex stuff you used to need to be able to deal with in an e-commerce platform however you aren't going to get access to the source code so if you want to do something really crazy you're just going to have to rethink how you'd handle that doesn't mean you can't do it it just means you can't do it the way you would have in an open source platform open source platforms on the other hand are great because you get all the code to modify however you see fit the world is your oyster make that thing do whatever you want it to do the bad is that you get all the code to modify as you see fit and that comes with technical complexity and costs that can often bog down small businesses sas is usually good for small businesses unless you're doing something unusual or complex just keep that in mind when i mentioned whether a platform is open source or sas there are really three different types of platforms on this list one is a sas platform aimed at e-commerce first honestly these are typically where you should start looking first if you're a small business that wants to limit your technical complexity but are serious about e-commerce and this includes platforms like shopify and big commerce next are going to be sas platforms that were initially aimed at the simple to use content management market and then they've added ecommerce functionality this being your wix squarespace weebly options these typically are better for you if you primarily need simple to use content management and you're adding some light ecommerce on top of that and the third is going to be your open source platforms like woocommerce and magento these give you a ton of power and flexibility if you're doing something unique but can be technically and financially a lot to handle for a small business let's talk briefly about each of these individually now i'm just going to start at the top of the list and work my way down if you have problems with that i didn't set the order trust radius did so blame them this is not my fault first on the list is bigcommerce which is a sas platform but they focus on being a more open and less restrictive sas platform and that just really means it's a little easier to get crazy with it if you want to do something outside of the ordinary bigcommerce has great support and a solid community with a great marketplace support for third-party functionality and that's important because it can save you a lot of money when you're looking to do something the platform won't do the downside is the consequences that come from being focused on being more open and that's complexity now don't get me wrong bigcommerce is pretty easy to use especially compared to more complex enterprise ecommerce platforms but we're talking about small business here and that includes folks just getting started in that context bigcommerce is not designed to be that super straightforward limited platform like some of these others you know the kind that your grandmother who just got on the internet could use to build a site to sell her quilts let's move on to shopify which is also a sas platform shopify is very much designed for that entry-level user maybe not your grandmother's level but first-time entrepreneurs that are a little internet savvy with them providing the payment processing right out of the box i don't know if it could be any easier to get online and selling shopify has one of the biggest and most robust marketplaces of third-party functionality it might literally be the biggest but i'm not gonna do the research to confirm that and i don't like saying stupid things that haven't been researched so y'all make the bold claims in the comments they also have a very active cult i mean community of folks singing the praises of and supporting the platform and that makes it really easy to find help if you need it their insistence upon handling your payments is a double-edged sword when you're just getting started it's great because it's one less thing for you to worry about but if you're a little bigger and you want to explore other payment options it's not so good shopify also really locks down their api usage and that could be a real problem if you're trying to do something outside of the norm alright now wix another sas platform wix is a content management system first and they've added ecommerce capabilities to that so if you have a real need for an easy to use content management system but light ecommerce needs to support that then this could be a great fit for you it's focused on the diy market with a lot of simple drag and drop editing capabilities so your grandmother might actually be able to figure this one out without calling you about it every 15 minutes i love you mom all but i've got work to do the pricing is extremely affordable which saves you more money for your own bourbon budget the marketplace of third-party functionality is well supplied but it's a little all over the place seems like it may need a little more maturity there and the biggest downside is going to be its focus on content first and the entry level market that typically means limitations and potentially issues as you scale so you might find yourself outgrowing the platform if your growth leads to the desire for a more complex e-commerce experience our fourth platform is squarespace squarespace is really designed forward so it's all about how the site looks but to achieve that the functionality in third party ecosystem is very locked down they really hand curate what options you have available and that can be good for quality but it really limits your options squarespace is also sas so it's easy to set up and they have some great template designs so if it's all about how it looks and your ecommerce needs are fairly basic then this could be a good option for you but once you start adding complexity their limited integrations and payment gateways could be problematic and fifth on the list is woocommerce woocommerce is built on top of wordpress so if you're using wordpress for content management then it makes sense to consider the platform so you just kind of have everything in one place woocommerce is open source so you can do all sorts of crazy customizations you probably shouldn't but there are no technical limitations to prevent you from doing so because of wordpress's popularity woocommerce is actually the biggest e-commerce platform on the planet the last time i checked at least as far as the number of sites using it and that means there are plenty of integrations and an active community of developers and experts if you need help but with woocommerce being open source you're responsible for hosting updates and all the technical complexities that come with that it does require you to be proficient in wordpress and woocommerce tends to get frustrating for non-technical merchants that want to focus on growing their business but don't need the flexibility of open source we also often talk to folks that grow frustrated with it when their business begins scaling and they start adding a lot of skus next on the list is contico i've never even heard of this one i don't know if it's an anomaly on trust radius's list if i've just missed this platform's rise and there's a new platform that pops up every freaking tuesday i can't be expected to keep up with all of them but research was done and it appears that kentico kentico kentico is another sas platform that is really cms first it's focused on the microsoft ecosystem and is not really aimed at that entry-level market with their pricing if you're uncertain enough of your needs to be searching and watching videos like this one this probably isn't your best choice let's continue to weebly weebly wobbles but it never falls down that always comes to mind when i think of this platform weebly is definitely another sas platform aimed at that beginner non-technical market and that makes it pretty simple and easy to get started it doesn't have quite the level of polish of drag and drop that you see in wix but it's in that same genre of platforms that are cms first restrictive to make it simple for you with some e-commerce added in so kind of the same as wix and squarespace in that regards the weaknesses are basically the same as those you'll be fine if your needs are simple you start getting outside of the norm or achieving some real scale and you may start bumping into those guard rails they add to keep things easy to use which brings us to our next one and that is go daddy i mean really go daddy does godaddy have an ecommerce platform of course they do everybody's got an e-commerce platform these days and apparently upon doing some research godaddy is yet another sas platform but they're using adi or artificial design intelligence to try to build the site for you without anybody actually having to do any work and that might be cool if you need the help but it's just more limitations if you want more granular control over your user experience it's definitely aimed at that beginner or less technical user i'm not a huge fan of the concept but that might just be the bad taste left in my mouth from some of the shenanigans godaddy has pulled over the years in regards to domain name registrations and now the big boy good old magento magento's open source and one of the most flexible platforms on the planet i mean you can run multiple stores on one installation and craft whatever user experience your heart desires you have all the power in the world with this one remember with great power comes great responsibility if you watch this channel and i assume most of you that have made it this far into the video do you know i'm a fan of the platform but this is a small business discussion all of that power and flexibility comes at a cost regular updates and patching and maintaining a mountain of customizations can be quite costly from a focus and a monetary perspective but if you need it it's a solid choice and next on the list is salesforce commerce cloud i don't really look at salesforce commerce cloud as a platform for small business so i don't think it belongs in this debate but that same thing could be said about magento it's on the list and there's some pretty big small businesses out there so we'll discuss it salesforce commerce cloud is another sas platform with a lot of powerful features the salesforce ecosystem is really the strength behind the platform their crm is extremely popular and is their foot in the door to a lot of organizations obviously being another salesforce product it's easy for them to build in native integrations to their other offerings so if you're tied to the salesforce ecosystem then considering salesforce just makes sense and those are the top 10 platforms for small business according to trust ratings this may be the longest video i've ever done that wasn't a live stream so let me know down below if there's any context around these that folks should know when considering them it's always a pleasure talking to you but it's way past time for me to get back to my bourbon my name is tj campbell and i'm the ceo and founder of jameson where we help businesses like yours take those next steps in their ecommerce journey if you're ready to improve your business and looking for help go to jamerson.comgo and i look forward to speaking with you i appreciate you watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Ecommerce Aholic

Views: 22,698

Keywords: best ecommerce platform 2021, best ecommerce platforms 2021, best ecommerce platform, best ecommerce platforms, ecommerce platform, ecommerce platforms, top ecommerce platforms, best ecommerce platforms for beginners, best ecommerce platform for small business, best ecommerce platforms for small business, best ecommerce platform for startups, top ecommerce platform, the best ecommerce platform in 2021, best ecommerce website, woocommerce, shopify, bigcommerce, ecommerce aholic

Id: IrZ57k9pZ0I

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021