Best Ecommerce Software Shortlist
Here’s the list of the best ecommerce tools that I’ll cover in this article.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
There's more to starting an ecommerce business than picking a domain name and getting web hosting. To stay one step ahead, ecommerce sellers need cutting-edge technology to maximize profit. Good news: The best ecommerce software can provide you with just that.
In this article, I’ll be discussing the best ecommerce software for online sellers. I’ll show you what each tool does and why it should have a place in your armory.
What Is Ecommerce Software?
At its most basic level, ecommerce software allows you to create an online storefront for your business and begin selling products online. It helps you display your product features, guide customers to purchase, and accept payment via methods like credit card, Apple Pay, or PayPal.
The best ecommerce software solutions offer these basic features and go a step further to provide you with functions like email marketing, inventory management, and SEO optimization for Google ranking.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Ecommerce Software Solutions
Here’s a brief description of each of the ecommerce apps to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
SkuVault
Best ecommerce software for warehouse management
SkuVault is an and warehouse management software that helps online businesses manage their stock and inventory, supply chain, and cataloging process. It can be used to manage your inventory across multiple warehouse locations, and to streamline your order fulfillment with smart automation features.
Why I picked SkuVault: Processes like inventory picking, inventory transfers, and stock reporting can all be facilitated with the software. You can use the barcode scanning feature to speed up your process and automatically update your inventory levels in the system. Your inventory levels across multiple warehouses will be managed in one place, making it easier to keep track of everything and be efficient in your supply chain management.
The software also provides customizable cataloging features, so you can kit, bundle, and list assembled products. All plans come with onboarding and an online training library, to help get your team up and running more quickly. There are also an array of add-on training plans you can choose to purchase for additional support.
SkuVault Standout Features and Integrations
Features include inventory forecasting, barcode scanning, real-time data syncs, cycle counting, inventory pick lists, unlimited sales channels, unlimited SKUs, advanced analytics, and inventory management reports.
Integrations include Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Amazon, Easyship, eBay, Etsy, Lightspeed, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Salesforce, ShipWorks, Square, and many others.
Pros
- Onboarding and training included with all plans
- Customizable cataloging capabilities
- Friendly user interface
Cons
- Lacking in overall customizability
- Fees for additional training
Lightspeed eCom
Best ecommerce software for small to mid-sized businesses
Lightspeed is an ecommerce platform that’s perfect for small to mid-sized businesses with no coding experience. You can easily build a beautifully designed store and start selling with little fuss, even if you’ve never built a website before.
Why I Picked Lightspeed: Lightspeed is a great all-in-one tool that can help you build, launch, and market your website from a single interface. Their drag-and-drop website builder is easy for non-technical users to design and customize an online store that looks professional and maximizes all potential upsell functions. For example, when building out the checkout process, you can add custom discounts and cross-sell opportunities to alert customers to other products they may enjoy.
Lightspeed offers advanced inventory management features like product variants and bundling, allowing you to customize how your products are purchased. The tool’s multi-channel capabilities allow small businesses to sell their products across multiple channels, including social media and marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, making it easier to reach a wider audience, quickly.
Lightspeed Standout Features & Integrations
Features include a multi-channel sales, a no-code website builder, subscriptions + digital goods, online marketing, inventory management, and a mobile app.
Integrations include Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Printful, ShippingEasy, Zoho CRM, Salesforce, bindCommerce, Quickbooks, Kliken Stats, UniSender, HubSpot, and ZenDesk. Many additional integrations are available by connecting a paid Zapier account.
Pros
- No setup or transaction fees
- Simple, robust multi-channel selling
- Free plan available
Cons
- Some customization limitations
- Phone support locked to highest plans
BigCommerce
Best enterprise-level ecommerce software
Bigcommerce is a cloud-based ecommerce platform that enables merchants to create, manage and promote their online stores. Users can quickly set up an online store with a wide range of features such as product catalogs, shopping cart functionality, and payment processing–all without needing any coding knowledge or technical expertise.
Why I Picked Bigcommerce: Bigcommerce provides powerful marketing tools like email marketing campaigns, analytics reporting, and integrations with other third-party services like Google Analytics and Facebook Ads. This makes it easy for businesses to track their performance across multiple channels and optimize their marketing efforts accordingly.
BigCommerce offers an intuitive product management system that makes it easy for users to add, edit, or delete products from their catalog. They can apply attributes such as size, color, and price to each product for easier sorting. Additionally, sellers can create complex hierarchical product categories and assign products to multiple categories to better organize them into their store’s structure. BigCommerce has plenty of marketing tools that help merchants promote their stores and increase sales. These include coupon codes, discounts, and loyalty programs that they can use to incentivize customers, as well as email automation tools that let users easily send out promotional emails or newsletters. Users can also create product bundles and set up upsells/cross-sells to increase average order values.
Bigcommerce Standout Features & Integrations
Features include customizable templates, built-in SEO, marketing tools, shipping & fulfillment, inventory management, reporting features, mobile-friendly design, responsive checkout, multiple payment gateway options, extensive third-party integrations, and 24/7 customer support.
Integrations include PayPal Express Checkout, Stripe, Apple Pay, LiveChat, ShipStation, Georgias, Mailchimp, Quickbooks Online, Yotpo Product Reviews, Justuno, Brightpearl, Acumatica, ActiveCampaign, Hubspot, Klavyio, Shopgate, Printify, and dozens of other apps.
Pros
- No transaction fees
- Flexible product pricing rules
- Robust inventory management system
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Muddy API documentation
Freshsales
Best ecommerce software for customer engagement
Freshsales is a sales automation solution that helps entrepreneurs manage leads, interact with clients, gain marketing insights, and improve customer relationships. Features include custom workflows with event-based triggers to automate everyday tasks. Additional features include customizable email templates, predictive contact scoring, sales goals management, and audit logs. For both physical and digital products, managers can view and track team performance, KPIs, sales numbers, and client communication. All these functions can be monitored easily from a single analytics dashboard.
Why I Picked Freshsales: Using Freshsales, you can create custom sales pipelines based on teams, processes, location, or other criteria. You can track buyers using mobile apps or desktop devices.
Freshsales Standout Features & Integrations
Features include sales automation, pipeline management, third-party plugins/add-ons, task scheduling/tracking, lead scoring, notifications, lead management, multi-currency, data visualizations, calendar management, dashboards, forecasting, contact management, customer management, and file sharing.
Integrations include Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshmarketer, Freshcaller, Freshconnect, MailChimp, Google Calendar, Hubspot Marketing, Office 365 Calendar, QuickBooks, Google, Apps for Work, Google Contacts, Piesync, Xero, and Segment. You can access more options using a paid plan through Zapier.
Pros
- Robust feature set for paid plans
- Strong reporting & analytics capabilities
- AI-powered lead scoring
Cons
- Free version has limited features
- Limited customization options for UI
FastSpring
Best ecommerce software for international payments
FastSpring is an ecommerce solution for managing online payments. The software helps you manage payment processing, payment gateways, credit cards, PayPal payments, subscriptions, recurring billing, multiple currencies, and data security. Admins can update products, prices, and online stores in real-time and use the fraud monitoring and detection algorithm to block fraudulent transactions. Subscriptions and pricing plans can be configured in multiple ways to offer annual/monthly billing options, free trials, or discounts.
Why I Picked FastSpring: With FastSpring, you can customize the selling platform language and payment options according to the customer’s location. Using the store builder library, they can also create customizable checkout procedures and send automated reminders to clients.
FastSpring Standout Features & Integrations
Features include A/B testing, conversion tracking, dashboards, forecasting, notifications, payment processing, external integrations, customer management, billing/invoicing, multi-currency, tax management, order management, product catalog, and third-party plugins/add-ons.
Integrations include MailChimp and more using a paid plan through Zapier.
Pros
- Discount management.
- Excellent customer support.
- Great option for software subscription sales (SaaS)
Cons
- Limited customization options.
- Could use better fraud detection
Veeqo
Best ecommerce software for inventory & fulfillment
Popular with both startups and established enterprises, Veeqo is an integrated inventory and fulfillment suite. The software unifies your inventory and orders, speeds up dispatch, and provides a unified overview of multichannel sales. Features include purchasing management, demand forecasting, and returns handling.
Why I Picked Veeqo: With Veeqo, inventory is synced in real-time across stores and warehouses. You can also manage cycle stock takes, facilitate warehouse transfers and get low stock alerts. Veeqo will sync returned stock, audit stock history, and give you control through user permissions handling.
Veeqo Standout Features & Integrations
Features include customer management, product catalog, dashboards, forecasting, supplier management, shipping management, warehouse management, order management, inventory tracking, budgeting, external integrations, notifications, and data export.
Integrations include Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, and Etsy.
Pros
- Excellent customer service.
- Helpful knowledge base
- Manages sales channels from one place
Cons
- Needs more courier integrations
- Steep learning curve
Marketo
Best ecommerce software for automated marketing
Part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, Marketo Engage is an email marketing and engagement platform. Ecommerce sellers can use this service to automate marketing, manage social media campaigns, recover abandoned carts, and improve the customer experience. Additional backend ecommerce features include budget management, sales insights, analytics, and ecommerce website personalization.
Why I Picked Marketo: Ecommerce site owners can score engagement throughout each stage of the buying journey. Content personalization presents the right content to the right people at the right time, while marketing impact analytics give visibility into how sales occur. Using AI-segmented audiences, it’s also possible to maximize engagement and conversions.
Marketo Standout Features & Integrations
Features include marketing automations, lead management, lead scoring, audience targetting, calendar management, conversion tracking, dashboards, data visualization, and external integrations.
Integrations include Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and SugarCRM.
Pros
- Multi-touch attribution management
- Highly customizable & scalable
- Enterprise-grade functionality & security
Cons
- Comparatively outdated, clunky UI
- Pricing may be prohibitive for small biz
Adzooma
Best ecommerce software for beginners
Adzooma is an integrated digital marketing platform that aims to make marketing easy. Using this SaaS software, you can manage your Google, Facebook, and Microsoft campaigns from one central location. The platform uses machine learning and data science to pinpoint what drives business success. You then get personalized checklists and SEO tools for further campaign optimization.
Why I Picked Adzooma: Suitable for beginners and experts, Adzooma has a short learning curve. It offers clear insights into marketing performance, giving you a business score for benchmarking your campaigns. It also includes marketing playbooks and tutorials designed to accelerate your marketing progress.
Adzooma Standout Features & Integrations
Features include ad management, review management, web metrics reports, performance reports, workflow automation, campaign builder, and SEO reports.
Integrations include WordPress, Wix, Volusion, Weebly, Squarespace, Shopify Plus, Magento, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Ads.
Pros
- Broken campaign alerts
- CRT & CPC optimization
- Rich feature set (SEO, social, Ads)
Cons
- May not be cost effective for small biz
- Shaky connection to Google Analytics
ShipHero
Best for outsourced ecommerce fulfillment
ShipHero is a shipping software suite and service for ecommerce businesses. As well as providing outsourced fulfillment, the company offers end-to-end shipping software to help ecommerce businesses manage their own warehouse. The ecommerce functionality enforces an efficient and accurate process from receiving to shipping.
Why I Picked ShipHero: With ShipHero, e-store owners get full inventory management capabilities for unlimited products to track picks, shipped orders, and shipping rates. They can also check employee efficiency and find errors in the system.
ShipHero Standout Features & Integrations
Features include customer management, product catalog, dashboards, forecasting, supplier management, shipping management, warehouse management, order management, inventory tracking, budgeting, external integrations, notifications, and data export.
Integrations include Amazon, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, eBay, and Walmart.
Pros
- Impressive scalability
- Adapts to warehouse needs
- End-to-end shipping capabilities
Cons
- Occasional syncing errors
- Customer service delays
Percolate
Best ecommerce software for multichannel content marketing
Now part of Seismic, Percolate is a cloud-based marketing suite for larger ecommerce businesses. Features include content management, brand/channel administration, and social media management. Business owners can manage promotional activities from a central dashboard, create content and distribute it to both organic and paid social media channels.
Why I Picked Percolate: Editorial calendars can be created for any number of products using different sales channels, teams, and markets.
Percolate Standout Features & Integrations
Integrations include Google Docs, Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft Office 365.
Features include sales content management, learning & coaching, buyer engagement, content automation, strategy & planning tools, and enablement intelligence.
Pros
- Makes campaign planning easier.
- Some processes aren’t automated.
- Notifies users regarding collateral’s impact.
Cons
- Complex learning curve.
- Some processes aren’t automated.
Need expert help selecting the right eCommerce Solutions Software?
We’ve joined up with Crozdesk.com to give all our readers (yes, you!) access to Crozdesk’s software advisors. Just use the form below to share your needs, and they will contact you at no cost or commitment. You will then be matched and connected to a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company, and you can access exclusive software discounts!
The 10 Best Ecommerce Software Solutions Summary
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | SkuVault Best ecommerce software for warehouse management | Free demo available | From $359/month | Visit Website |
2 | Lightspeed eCom Best ecommerce software for small to mid-sized businesses | Freemium plan available | From $14.08/month | Visit Website |
3 | BigCommerce Best enterprise-level ecommerce software | 15-day free trial | From $29/month and 2.59% + $0.49/transaction | Visit Website |
4 | Freshsales Best ecommerce software for customer engagement | 21-day free trial | From $15/user/month | Visit Website |
5 | FastSpring Best ecommerce software for international payments | Free demo | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
6 | Veeqo Best ecommerce software for inventory & fulfillment | 14-day free trial | Plans start at $195/2 users/month | Visit Website |
7 | Marketo Best ecommerce software for automated marketing | Free demo | From $895/month | Visit Website |
8 | Adzooma Best ecommerce software for beginners | Free plan available | $99/month | Visit Website |
9 | ShipHero Best for outsourced ecommerce fulfillment | 30-day free trial | From $499/month | Visit Website |
10 | Percolate Best ecommerce software for multichannel content marketing | Not available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
Other Ecommerce Software Options
Here are a few more ecommerce solutions that didn’t make the top list.
- MarketPlan
Best modular ecommerce software
- Hoopla
Best ecommerce software for sales enablement
- ActiveCampaign
An advanced suite of email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools
- 3dcart
Shopping cart software and online store/website builder
- EngageBay
Sales, marketing, and customer support for online sellers
- Funnel
A better way to collect, prepare and analyze all your marketing data
- StoryChief
Content marketing for dropshipping and eCommerce professionals
- Zoho Desk
Omnichannel customer service software that increases agent productivity
- Aircall
Best for cloud-based call center software
- Insightly
Tools for building better customer relationships
- Bazaarvoice
Best for collecting, displaying, and distributing user-generated content at scale
- Shift4Shop
Turnkey ecommerce solution for building websites and selling online
- Supermetrics
Connects your marketing data to your go-to reporting, analytics, or storage platform
- Blueshift
Intelligent customer engagement across multiple channels
- Feedonomics
Multi-channel selling tool with automated product listings
How I Selected The Best Ecommerce Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best ecommerce software for this list? To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of ecommerce software with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of ecommerce experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
Selection Criteria
What do I look for when I select the best ecommerce systems? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
User Interface (UI):
There are a number of factors that contribute to a great user interface, including clear navigation, well-designed menus and buttons, and helpful error messages. Many ecommerce software providers offer free trials or demo versions of their products, so it’s always worth taking some time to test out a few different options before making your final decision. Sometimes UI comes down to personal preference!
Usability:
Ease of use is important in any software. Ecommerce software is designed to streamline and simplify the process of buying and selling online. Usability is a measure of how easy it is to use a particular piece of software. A high level of usability is essential for ecommerce software because it ensures that customers can easily find what they are looking for and complete transactions with minimal fuss. Good usability also reduces the risk of errors and makes it more likely that customers will return to your site in the future.
Integrations:
Integrations are important for ecommerce sites because you will often need to connect to third-party apps to access things like a help desk/live chat, third-party sellers, and advertising tools for your business to thrive. Additionally, integrations can help to automate some of the more tedious tasks associated with running an online store. There are a variety of ecommerce apps and website builders out there designed to plug into your website, so I'm looking for compatibility with most or many of them.
Pricing:
Your budget will probably reflect how many sales you expect, how many products you sell, and how many admin users you need on your account. Therefore, there is no one right price for everyone. In my opinion, the best ecommerce software pricing will be transparent, scalable or modular, and will come with a free trial, free demo, or money-back guarantee so that you can test the software before you commit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few questions that I get a lot so let me share my know-how with you!
Is There Any Free Ecommerce Software?
What Key Features Should I Look for in Ecommerce Software?
What Do You Think About this list?
Ecommerce is a $10 trillion industry and continues to grow at a frenetic pace. This is creating fantastic opportunities to grow a successful online business, but the market is very competitive. Hence why using the best ecommerce software can make such a big impact.
You may also like to check out our article on the 20 best ecommerce platforms for ecomm pros or our guide for choosing an ecommerce platform. And remember to check back regularly to read more helpful articles designed to fuel your success in the eCommerce world.
Also Worth Checking Out:
Are these really the best options for eCommerce software today…or do you have different ideas? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to get the latest insights from top eCommerce experts.