10 Best Open Source Ecommerce Platforms List
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
Your ecommerce brand is unique, and you want to build your store your way. Total control and customization over your ecommerce platform is essential, so you need a solution that delivers.
For those launching a cutting-edge online store, the open source route opens up endless possibilities for tailored solutions.
Back in the early days of ecommerce, merchants often had to fit their needs within the rigid confines of proprietary platforms. It was like trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole—it worked, but it wasn't ideal.
Today, the game has changed. Open source ecommerce platforms empower brands with complete access to the source code, enabling them to build a truly unique online store that reflects their brand's essence.
These platforms offer a treasure trove of features, from custom integrations and advanced analytics to robust security measures and community-driven innovations.
The options can be overwhelming, but we've cut through the noise to bring you the top open source ecommerce platforms available. With our expertise and rigorous evaluation process, we're confident you'll find the perfect match to build and scale your online empire.
What is an Open Source Ecommerce Platform?
Open source ecommerce platforms are software solutions that let businesses build and manage online stores with total freedom to customize and tweak the platform to their specific needs.
These platforms are built on source code that’s freely available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. This open nature means you can tailor the platform to fit your exact requirements, whether it’s for design, functionality, or integration with other systems.
Open source ecommerce solutions are a top choice for businesses seeking a cost-effective, flexible platform that can grow and evolve with them.
Plus, they’re backed by a community of developers who constantly contribute to the platform’s development and improvement.
The Best Open Source Ecommerce Platforms Summary
Tools | Price | |
---|---|---|
Kartopia | Pricing upon request | Website |
Acro Media | No details | Website |
Broadleaf Commerce | Pricing upon request | Website |
Magento Open Source | Pricing upon request | Website |
Solidus | Pricing upon request | Website |
Drupal Commerce | Free to use | Website |
OpenFreeway | Pricing upon request | Website |
Spree Commerce | Pricing upon request | Website |
Reaction Commerce | Pricing upon request | Website |
Quintagroup | No details | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareHow to Choose an Open Source Ecommerce Platform
Selecting the right open source ecommerce platform can be a game-changer for your business, offering flexibility and control. Here’s what to consider when choosing an open source solution:
- What you want to use it to do. Identify the specific needs of your online store. Are you looking for extensive customization options, control over hosting, or integration with unique business tools? Clarifying your objectives will help you determine the features and functionality the platform must provide.
- Who will need to use it. Consider who on your team will be managing the ecommerce platform. Do you have technical staff who can handle development and maintenance, or will you need external support? Assess the skill level required to ensure your team can effectively use and manage the platform.
- What other tools it needs to work with. Identify the existing tools and systems your ecommerce platform needs to integrate with, such as CRM, inventory management, and marketing automation. Seamless integration is crucial for efficient workflows and overall business performance.
- What outcomes are important. Determine the key results you need the ecommerce platform to deliver. Are you aiming to increase sales, enhance customer experience, or streamline operations? Define success metrics such as conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
- How it would work within your organization. Evaluate how the ecommerce platform fits into your current workflows and business processes. Consider what’s working well and what needs improvement. Keep in mind that every business is unique, so choose a platform that aligns with your specific needs and operational style.
By considering these factors, you can select an open source ecommerce platform that provides the flexibility, control, and integration capabilities your business requires.
The 10 Best Open Source Ecommerce Platforms, Reviewed
We briefly reviewed each of these top 10 open source ecommerce platforms, detailing what they do well, features included, pros and cons for each, and screenshots of the interface.
Kartopia offers an ecommerce platform solution for B2B and B2C retail. Its modular build can be leveraged to offer higher levels of customizations via an imaginative level of customer experience with targeted personalizations. The product easily integrates with your existing IT infrastructure.
It offers a single view of customers, inventory, and orders, along with flexible order fulfillment to suit custom delivery models. Serving different geographies, Kartopia comes with multi-country, multi-currency, and multilingual features. It also has order management features with complete order fulfillment functionality. This can be very useful for your ecommerce store.
Kartopia smoothly integrates with third-party ERP, payments, logistics, marketing, and analytics systems.
Acro Media is an ecommerce solution development agency that specializes in Drupal technology. You can consider using them to fine-tune and customize your Drupal projects as per your needs.
The agency comes with 10+ years of open source ecommerce experience and uses agile methodology to build collaborative partnerships. The developer team is skilled in building headless ecommerce platforms that optimize workflows.
The 50 member developer hit squad also helps in integrating with 3rd party vendors and improves customer experience with attractive frontends.
Customer support is available via phone, email, and chat. The pricing is based on your custom needs and scale.
Running on headless ecommerce technology, Broadleaf’s multi-site solution uses a microservice-based framework to provide clients the ability to manage their data and experience. This means that aspects like performance, privacy concerns, and infrastructure costs are catered by individual microservices.
These microservices are separated from other solution components. You can combine an ‘n’ number of Broadleaf microservices into a single container and database. Alternatively, you can decompose services into their bounded text. These modular features provide a lot of deployment flexibility and are great for scalability.
Its ecommerce functionality helps support B2C, B2B, multi-tenant, multi-site, and marketplace focused-needs. In terms of customization, it comes with the same high-level of total customization that comes with platforms running on a headless commerce engine. Broadleaf integrates with WordPress, Magento, Django CMS, Zendesk, Zapier, and other mainstream eCommerce apps.
Trusted by pop culture brands like Major League Baseball, you can be sure of hitting a home run or two with the product. Feature requests and bug reports can be submitted via the contact form.
There is a slight learning curve and difficulty level. Having said that, once you get a hang of the product, this can become a very cost-effective ecommerce solution for your business.
Magento is an open-source ecommerce platform offering from Adobe. The open-source version comes with features like site search, catalog management, integrated checkout, payment, shipping, and other basic features. These features help you get your ecommerce business off the ground.
The template customizations need an expert-level of developer knowledge to do it smoothly. Also, the various customizations do take a toll on the site speed, making it slower compared to other open-source platforms. Support is available via documentation.
For technical support, you need to upgrade to Magento Commerce. Overall, Magento open source comes as a good starting point if you want to go with a free eCommerce solution from a famous brand.
But if you want to go for feature-rich solutions, then Magento Commerce is the way to go.
This open-source platform is built on Ruby on Rails. This gives you the advantage of managing changes easily and leveraging flexibility. In terms of security, it has automated security fixes, a clear disclosure policy, and strict code reviews. The product comes with a stable API and easy extensibility.
Solidus integrates smoothly with PayPal, Stripe, Chargebee, and TransferWise (Cha-Ching!). It also integrates with TaxCloud, AngularSpree, Sentry, and other related business apps.
Support is available via documentation and an active community on Stack Overflow. There is also a Slack community that you can join.
Drupal is one of the most common and trusted technologies used for building formidable ecommerce platforms. The product comes with in-built caching, leading to super fast speed and search-engine-optimized performance. This SEO-friendly feature makes your ecommerce site rank higher on Google for your target keywords.
The active community behind the project ensures a high-level of development standards. It has its own security system that’s constantly updated due to an active developer community behind the technology. In terms of inventory management, there are modules for order management, product customization, along with shipping and fulfillment for your online shop.
Extensions include software like Avalara, Mailjet, PayPal, and other top complementary business apps. In terms of support, the platform has extensive blogs, social pages, and a community forum.
There are extensive user guides and a video library that further help you in understanding the various steps in building a robust ecommerce platform.
Having said that, one needs to have a good level of developer knowledge to maneuver through the learning curve.
Open Freeway is perfect for those who want to sell subscriptions and events along with products. Use it for time-based bookings, selling subscription packages, and appointments.
The product has built-in marketing and SEO tools that can help you reach your customer faster. In terms of customization, its modular architecture enables making changes super easy to implement without any interference with the mainstream source code.
Support is available via documentation and a contact form page where you can report bugs.
Usually featured among the top open-source projects, Spree Commerce is a safe bet when it comes to building a formidable ecommerce platform. Built on Ruby on Rails, Spree Commerce comes with flexibility and customization features like managing remarkable changes to the data model relatively fast.
Also, site security is pretty high for such platforms. Spree Commerce comes with strong password encryption and token-based REST API. The available payment gateways enable PCI-DSS compliance.
Having a mobile-first approach and fully customizable UX, the product fulfills all the checkmarks for running a modern ecommerce business. The UX is smooth on any device – iPhone, iPad, Android, or Desktop.
Spree Commerce loads fast and with the ability to scale based on needs. Like most open source eCommerce platforms, Spree Commerce has its own learning curve.
Support is available via documentation, guides, and an active Slack community of developers.
Best open source eCommerce platform in terms of flexibility at scale
Reaction Commerce allows you to add new features and capabilities without migrating to a new platform. Its event-based architecture helps you get more out of product event data and unlock insights across the catalog. The platform is extremely flexible with commerce capabilities and microservices.
These features can be used alongside or instead of your existing tech stack. The product is built for scaling with 1 million SKUs, capability for millions of inventory changes, and the ability to handle 1000s of orders per day. The platform has a lightning-fast speed of 225 ms average response time.
Reaction Commerce works out of the box with ERPs, OMS, payment providers, and other services.
Support is available via basic documentation and a contact form.
Quintagroup offers a rich tool for online product catalog management. Apart from that, it enables you with simple online payment functionality with Plone development services.
The Plone service comes with ecommerce integrations like PayPal, PayFlowPro, Google Checkout, and Salesforce. You can implement functionalities like registration of conferences, room booking, prepaid access to certain sections, and more.
The platform offers basic customization but nothing too special to write about. Support is available via a contact form.
Other Open Source Ecommerce Platform Options
Here are a few more open-source ecommerce platforms that didn’t make the top list.
Selection Criteria For Top Open Source Ecommerce Platforms
Selecting the right open source ecommerce platform is a critical decision for businesses aiming to succeed in the online marketplace.
This type of software offers unparalleled flexibility and control, allowing businesses to create, manage, and scale an online store tailored to their unique needs.
Through personal trials and in-depth research, we've developed a set of criteria to evaluate these platforms, ensuring they meet the diverse requirements of businesses looking to sell goods and services online.
We also considered how each open source ecommerce platform fits with our ecommerce platform guide, as that covers almost everything we expect when making our choices.
Core ecommerce functionality - 25% of total weighting score
To be considered for inclusion on our list of the best open source ecommerce platforms, the solution had to support the ability to fulfill common use cases:
- Streamlined product listing and management: Efficiently manage products across diverse categories with ease.
- Order handling: Seamlessly process online orders from payment to shipping.
- Payment gateway integration: Support multiple payment options through various gateways.
- SEO tools: Optimize online store visibility and drive traffic with robust SEO features.
- Comprehensive analytics: Track performance and make informed business decisions with detailed analytics.
Additional standout features - 25% of total weighting score
Identifying platforms that offer unique features involves looking for:
- Advanced customization: Deep customization capabilities to tailor the platform to specific business needs.
- Extensive plugin ecosystem: A wide range of plugins and extensions to enhance functionality.
- Scalability: Ability to handle growth and increased traffic seamlessly.
- Community support: A vibrant community offering shared insights, solutions, and innovations.
- Security features: Strong security measures and regular updates to protect against vulnerabilities.
Usability - 10% of total weighting score
When evaluating usability, we consider:
- Intuitive interface: Simplifies navigation and task completion for users of all technical levels.
- Responsive design: Ensures the platform performs well on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Clear workflows: Supports efficient store management without extensive training.
Onboarding - 10% of total weighting score
For onboarding, essential aspects include:
- Resource libraries: Comprehensive guides, tutorials, and FAQs to assist new users.
- Interactive tools: Setup wizards and product tours to simplify the initial setup.
- Training sessions: Access to webinars, training sessions, and responsive customer support during the initial phase.
Customer support - 10% of total weighting score
Effective customer support is evaluated by:
- Availability: 24/7 support through multiple channels, including live chat, phone, and email.
- Proactive options: Dedicated account managers for enterprise-level solutions.
- Community forums: Active forums where users can share insights, solutions, and best practices.
Value for money - 10% of total weighting score
Assessing value for money involves looking at:
- Transparent pricing: Clear pricing models that align with the features and scalability offered.
- Flexible plans: Options that cater to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.
- Included features: Essential features available in base plans without requiring costly add-ons.
Customer reviews - 10% of total weighting score
In evaluating customer reviews, focus is placed on:
- High satisfaction rates: Positive feedback on usability, feature set, and scalability.
- Impact on sales growth: Stories of how the platform has boosted sales and customer engagement.
- Successful integrations: Examples of effective use of platform features to solve unique business challenges.
This criteria framework ensures that the selected open source ecommerce platform covers the foundational needs for online selling.
It also stands out with innovative features that significantly enhance the online shopping experience, provide a superior user interface, and offer great value for the investment.
Key Features of Open Source Ecommerce Platforms
When evaluating open source ecommerce platforms, it's crucial to look for features that enhance both your customers’ experience and your operational efficiency.
Here are some vital features we considered:
Increased flexibility
Open source platforms offer a higher level of customization and flexibility compared to the generic SaaS model.
With open source ecommerce platforms, you can perform an unprecedented level of customization, tailoring the site’s functionality and design to meet your specific business needs.
This freedom allows for modifications in the code, adding custom features, and creating a unique shopping experience.
Advanced security
Security is paramount for any online store. Open source ecommerce platforms benefit from a community of focused developers who analyze and implement code, ensuring it goes through rigorous checks.
This collaborative approach provides strong security measures, including regular updates, SSL support, data encryption, and compliance with industry standards to protect your store and customer information.
Site speed
Site speed is a critical metric for any ecommerce business.
Slow loading times can lead to drop-offs, lower conversions, and a decline in Google rankings. We tested platforms for their site speed to ensure they offer fast, reliable performance.
A platform that loads quickly enhances the user experience and keeps customers engaged.
Community support
An active and vibrant community is invaluable for open source platforms. These communities provide access to shared insights, solutions, and innovations.
Since open source platforms typically do not offer direct 1-on-1 support, community support becomes essential. Look for platforms with helpful guides, tutorials, documentation, and an active forum where users and developers share knowledge.
This support network helps the product evolve faster and adapt to new trends and technologies.
Plugin ecosystem
A robust plugin ecosystem is essential for extending the functionality of your ecommerce platform.
Look for a wide range of plugins and extensions that can enhance everything from SEO and analytics to payment processing and inventory management. This allows you to add features as your business grows and needs change.
Scalability
As your business grows, the ecommerce platform should scale with you.
This means it should handle increased traffic, a larger product catalog, and more transactions without compromising performance.
Scalability ensures that your platform can support your business now and in the future.
SEO tools
Built-in SEO features help improve your site’s visibility on search engines. Look for platforms that offer customizable meta tags, SEO-friendly URLs, and tools for managing sitemaps and keywords.
Effective SEO tools are crucial for driving organic traffic to your store.
Payment gateway integration
Offering multiple payment options is crucial for customer convenience. Ensure the platform supports integration with various payment gateways, including popular options like PayPal, Stripe, and major credit cards.
This flexibility enhances the shopping experience by accommodating different payment preferences.
Inventory management
Effective inventory management tools help you track stock levels, manage product variations, and prevent overselling.
Look for features that provide real-time updates and notifications to keep your inventory accurate. This ensures you can meet customer demand without overcommitting resources.
Analytics and reporting
Comprehensive analytics and reporting tools are essential for tracking your store’s performance.
Detailed reports on sales, customer behavior, and traffic sources help you make informed business decisions. These insights are crucial for optimizing your operations and growing your business.
Mobile responsiveness
With a significant portion of traffic coming from mobile devices, your ecommerce platform must offer mobile-responsive designs.
This ensures a seamless shopping experience across all devices, from desktops to smartphones. Mobile responsiveness is essential for maintaining engagement and driving conversions.
By focusing on these key features, you can select an open source ecommerce platform that provides the flexibility, functionality, and security needed to run a successful online store.
Other Ecommerce Platform Reviews
If you haven't quite found what you're looking for, you may want to check out my other reviews of various ecommerce platform types.
- Headless Ecommerce Platforms
- Multi-Channel Ecommerce Software
- Social Commerce Platforms
- Cheap Ecommerce Platforms
- Hosted Ecommerce Platforms
- SaaS Ecommerce Platforms
- International Ecommerce Platforms
- Ecommerce Platforms In Canada
Be Open to Better Ecommerce Platforms
Control and total customization is definitely on the table for you, but you just need to find the right platform to enable it.
Within this list of top open source ecommerce platforms, your future store awaits. The specific best one for you will depend on you. But, be assured, it's in this post.
Know any ecommerce business owner who can benefit from these open source ecommerce platforms? Share the article with them on social media and be their new favorite person.
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