The Easiest Ecommerce Platforms List
Here’s a shortlist of the easiest ecommerce platforms:
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
This is the ultimate list of the 10 easiest ecommerce platforms for 2023, along with 5 bonus ecommerce software recommendations. I also cover some top FAQs related to the easiest ecommerce solutions.
If you're running an online business in 2023, you need an online store to sell your products. But an online store is a collection of multiple moving parts that have to be deployed perfectly to ensure you make sales and provide a glitch-free customer experience.
Coding such a store from scratch can take a huge amount of time and financial investment. As an ecommerce manager, you might not have Elon Musk money to throw around. So unless you have a lucrative side hustle on the go, you need a budget-friendly and easy ecommerce platform.
That’s where our easiest ecommerce platforms list comes into the picture. These are ready-to-use software applications that cover all the aspects you need to sell products online and manage inventory.
To help you select your ecommerce platform of choice, I created a list of the easiest ecommerce platform tools. I outlined their different qualities, along with various features to consider.
Overview of the 10 Easiest Ecommerce Platforms
Here’s a brief description of each of the easiest ecommerce software on my list, sharing what it does best, plus screenshots to showcase some of the features.
ShipStation
Best for simplifying the shipping process across multiple ecommerce platforms
ShipStation is a web-based shipping solution that streamlines the order fulfillment process for online retailers. With ShipStation, you can manage and ship your orders from all your sales channels in one place.
Why did I pick ShipStation? It's user-friendly and it's got all the features you need to get your orders out the door quickly and efficiently. Plus, it's got a great range of integrations with all the major ecommerce platforms and shipping carriers. And you can set up automation rules to speed up the shipping process. For example, you can automatically apply the correct shipping service based on the weight and dimensions of the package, or automatically print packing slips for certain types of orders. It's a real time-saver.
Another standout feature is the batch processing. You can process and print shipping labels for multiple orders at once. This is a game-changer, especially during the busy holiday season when you've got plenty of orders to ship out.
Standout features include the inventory management capabilities that come with this software. You can track your stock levels in real-time and forecast your inventory needs in the same place you manage your orders. I found this to be a convenient time-saver to keep my ecommerce operations in the same place.
Integrations include WooCommerce, BigCommerce, BigCartel, Shopify, Squarespace, Etsy, Wix, Magento, NetSuite, SAP, DHL, USPS, Canada Post, Purolator, Lumis, and dozens more.
Wix eCommerce
Best ecommerce platform for easy, no-code online store templates
Wix eCommerce is an all-in-one web platform that will help you create and manage your online store without any coding knowledge. It offers drag-and-drop features to help you customize your website’s design, add products, manage orders and inventory, accept payments, and promote your business.
Online merchants can choose from built-in store templates optimized for SEO and customizable with different themes, layouts, and color schemes without installing extra software or plugins. Wix eCommerce also includes multiple payment options—such as Stripe, Apple Pay, or Amazon Pay—so you can accept payments from customers worldwide quickly and securely.
Their inventory management capabilities make it easy to track your orders in real time and manage product availability on all your websites. You can also take advantage of integrated shipping solutions, which allow you to offer fast shipping options worldwide at discounted rates.
The platform includes powerful analytics tools to give you insights into how your store is performing regarding sales and traffic. This can help you identify opportunities for improvement and monitor trends over time so you can make informed decisions about where best to invest your resources. Furthermore, Wix eCommerce provides detailed reporting capabilities so you can measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns in real time.
The software includes powerful tools like marketing automation, analytics, customer support tools, email campaigns, loyalty programs, and integration with third-party services like PayPal or Shopify. With these tools, entrepreneurs can easily create a unique online store to attract customers and increase sales. Other features include various marketing tools to help you promote your products more effectively, such as automated email campaigns, social media promotion tools, digital coupons and discounts, and SEO features.
Integrations include 123FormBuilder, AdScale, AfterShip, Cart2Cart, Dropbox, EasyShip, Eventbrite, Google Drive, Importify, JivoChat, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Meta for Business, Privy, and SoundCloud.
Pricing for Wix eCommerce starts at $20/month. A 14-day free trial is also available.
Lightspeed eCom
Best for a free, easy to use ecommerce platform
Lightspeed eCom is an ecommerce platform that allows users to create and manage their online stores with ease. It's best suited for small and medium-sized businesses looking for an easy-to-use platform to set up and manage their ecommerce site. I picked Lightspeed eCom as one of the best easy ecommerce platforms because of its user-friendly interface, extensive features, and excellent customer support.
One of the standout features of Lightspeed eCom is its robust inventory management system. With this feature, users can easily track their inventory levels, set up automatic restocking alerts, and manage their products across multiple sales channels. The platform also offers a powerful order management system, allowing users to manage orders, shipments, and returns with ease.
Lightspeed eCom also offers a variety of payment options, including credit card processing, PayPal, and Apple Pay, making it easy for customers to complete their purchases. Additionally, the platform offers customizable templates and themes, allowing users to create a unique and professional-looking online store.
Integrations include DAVO Sales Tax, 2ACCEPT, 7Shifts, Accumula, AdVision, Agendrix, Amadeus, Amaka, AppCard, Ascent 360, Astro Loyalty, Avero, BigCommerce, Booxi, Bounce, Craftable, Homebase, Mailchimp, and dozens more.
Lightspeed costs from $14.08/month and has a freemium plan available.
BigCommerce
Best ecommerce platform for ease of use
Unlike other ecommerce platforms, BigCommerce does not limit plans based on staff amounts or product amounts. In fact, the bandwidth of BigCommerce plans are based on how much you can sell from their platforms. So, each plan allows you to upload unlimited products.
This ability to add an unlimited number of products gives a lot of legroom for an ecommerce business to truly flourish. Apart from that, there are multiple, easy-to-apply features like customer segmentation, abandoned cart recovery, payment processing (with 65 payment gateways), and more. For site design, BigCommerce has an intuitive visual editor that lets you change your site’s look and feel without any coding involved.
Being a leading player in the ecommerce market, BigCommerce integrates with 100s of powerful enterprise integrations like ActiveCampaign, Webgility, Avalara Tax, Stripe, and more. Also, with BigCommerce, you can sell directly on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Inventory management features include order tracking, stock level reports, pricing adjustments, and insights on purchasing trends.
The analytics feature helps you track insights like your biggest customers, average order value, net sales, refunds, and other data that will help you scale your product fast.
BigCommerce has a WordPress Plugin that can be a great fit for WordPress users looking to sell products on their platform. The support team is available via email and phone. In addition, there is a knowledge base and a community of ecommerce entrepreneurs supporting each other.
The BigCommerce standard plan starts at $29.95 per month with the option for a 1-month free trial.
WP Engine
Best ecommerce platform for lightning-fast web speed
WP Engine is primarily a web hosting platform for your blogging needs, but its Genesis pro subscription plan packs a powerful statement when it comes to ecommerce functionality. The Genesis framework comes with built-in SEO-optimized features curated by experts.
The Gutenberg-ready site builder can be used to implement reusable modules for design and content. You can also freely change headers, logos, or any other aspect of your site to match your ecommerce store aesthetics. Also, there’s an open-source community of developers backing the product with auditing and security updates.
The community also provides useful integrations, plugins, add-ons, and extensions. It integrates with WooCommerce and other major ecommerce apps.
The pricing for WP Engine’s startup plan starts at $25 per month.
Shopify
Best ecommerce platform for stability and always-on availability
If ecommerce platforms were the mob, Shopify would be the boss of all bosses. The tool is easily the most popular ecommerce platform out there. Shopify comes with a professional storefront, a payment processor, and a Shopify POS application. The product management features let you organize items/products into collections or use smart collections to create interesting groupings, such as items less than $50, item bundles, and other parameter-focused groupings.
These features can be very handy marketing tools for your product. Shopify lets you execute important inventory management activities like exporting or importing inventory through CSV files, tracking and adjusting inventory, and hiding out of stock products. Shopify’s analytics give you insights like transaction data, site speed, store visits, and more.
In terms of extensions and compatibility, Shopify integrates with 3219+ apps covering everything from sales to merchandising to finances. It works out of the box with Amazon, Oberlo, Stocky, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, and more.
Shopify is used by more than 90k retailers in over 100 countries. The tool offers support via chat and email. It has an extensive knowledge base and an active community on Shopify forums dedicated to the product.
Shopify costs from $29/month when paying monthly, with 2.9% + $0.30/transaction. Shopify offers a 3-day free trial from their website. If you shop around, you can find affiliates who offer 14-day free trials.
PrestaShop
Best ecommerce platform for first-time entrepreneurs to test their ecommerce MVPs
PrestaShop is an open-source ecommerce platform that’s free to use and allows you to edit software code to suit your custom needs. The tool covers all the basics like customizing your store, managing products, processing payments, and more.
PrestaShop is free to use and perfect for MVP testing. The product’s advanced stock management system allows it to use multiple sources of inventory and manage them in a single place. The analytics and statistics add-ons cover all the main data points of your ecommerce store.
PrestaShop has over 2000+ design theme add-ons. Use it to design an ecommerce site that matches your brand tone and design language.
Though PrestaShop is free to use, add-ons are priced usually between $30 to $50. A major drawback is that the support feature is not free, but that is expected from a freemium service.
The basic support plan is priced at around $345.
Wix
Best ecommerce platform for design aesthetics
Wix comes with 500 beautiful templates that you can customize with a drag-and-drop editor to create an awesome-looking ecommerce platform. The coolest part of Wix is the intuitive Artificial Design Intelligence or ADI, which designs a unique website for you based on a few simple questions about your use-case.
For people with no technical experience, this is a great tool. For product listings, Wix lets you group your products into collections. This helps customers to find your products and see related products that might interest them.
The dashboard is well organized. Wix integrates with apps like QuickBooks, MailChimp, and more.
Wix’s ecommerce and business plans start at $23 per month.
Volusion
Best feature-rich ecommerce platform for SMBs
Volusion is the ecommerce equivalent of a James Bond Aston Martin car — it is loaded with useful and life-saving features for online store owners. Now let me be Q (one more James Bond reference) and explain what it does.
Volusion’s all-in-one ecommerce solution helps SMBs create their first professional ecommerce site. It comes with built-in features covering every aspect of launching, operating, and growing an ecommerce business. Volusion’s inventory grid feature allows it to manage the price and status of child products. What are child products? If you sell a pair of jeans, they might be available in different colors and sizes. Here jeans are the parent product, and the variations are child products.
Volusion also has the feature to bulk upload products. The analytics features include options to check gross revenue, revenue by day, total orders received, traffic performance, cart conversions, and more.
Volusion also includes site creation features like mobile responsiveness, product pages, and search functionality/search engine, as well as functional features like secure checkout and a dropshipping integration. Their SEO tools and analytics come in handy for optimization.
Volusion integrates with all the major payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe, etc.) and accepts all major credit cards. The product allows full customization to create a consistent experience throughout the store and checkout experience.
Volusion pricing starts at $29 per month with an option for a free trial. Support is available 24/7 by phone, email, and chat. There is also a comprehensive knowledge base available.
ERP Gold
Best inventory management SaaS platform for wholesale manufacturing organizations
ERP Gold helps small businesses and wholesale manufacturing organizations with a dead-simple way to list, manage, and ship inventory when selling through online marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, eBay, or any other platform. ERP Gold allows product listing to all these multiple marketplaces simultaneously, all from one single platform.
This makes managing inventory a breeze. Also, it lets you track inventory through a unique serial number. ERP Gold works great with apps like Salesforce, Shopify, PayPal, Facebook, and more. Support is available 24/7 by email, phone, and chat.
ERP Gold starts at $49 per month with a 14-day free trial.
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 Easiest Ecommerce Platforms Summary
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | ShipStation Best for simplifying the shipping process across multiple ecommerce platforms | 30-day free trial | From $9.99/month | Visit Website |
2 | Wix eCommerce Best ecommerce platform for easy, no-code online store templates | 14-day free trial | From $20/month | Visit Website |
3 | Lightspeed eCom Best for a free, easy to use ecommerce platform | Freemium plan available | From $14.08/month | Visit Website |
4 | BigCommerce Best ecommerce platform for ease of use | 15-day free trial | From $29/month and 2.59% + $0.49/transaction | Visit Website |
5 | WP Engine Best ecommerce platform for lightning-fast web speed | Not available | From $25/month | Visit Website |
6 | Shopify Best ecommerce platform for stability and always-on availability | 3-day free trial + $1/month for the first three months | $29/month, 2.9% + $0.30/transaction | Visit Website |
7 | PrestaShop Best ecommerce platform for first-time entrepreneurs to test their ecommerce MVPs | Free to download | Visit Website | |
8 | Wix Best ecommerce platform for design aesthetics | 14-day free trial available. | From $16/month | Visit Website |
9 | Volusion Best feature-rich ecommerce platform for SMBs | 14-day free trial | From $35/month | Visit Website |
10 | ERP Gold Best inventory management SaaS platform for wholesale manufacturing organizations | 14-day free trial | From $49 per month | Visit Website |
Other Easy Ecommerce Platform Options
Here are a few more tools that did not make the top list.
- WooCommerce
Best ecommerce platform for customizations
- GoDaddy
Best easy-to-use ecommerce platform for small businesses
- Weebly
Best ecommerce platform for filtered product search
- Stock Konnect
Best for managing multi-channel listings and orders
- Salesoar
Best for advertising strategy automation
- Nomad
Best for unique customization for small to mid-scale distributors
- AGC Ecommerce
Best for solo entrepreneurs selling their first product online
- Clever Ecommerce
Best for Google Ads campaign automation
Easiest Ecommerce Platforms: Comparison Criteria
What did I look for when I selected the easiest ecommerce platforms? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): Is the ecommerce platform interface clutter-free, clean, and user-friendly? Are the product listings easy to arrange, view, and inspect?
- Usability: Is the ecommerce platform easy to learn and master? Does the company offer good tech support, user support, tutorials, and training? Is it easy to launch a fully functional ecommerce store and sell products without complicated customizations?
- Integrations: Is it easy to connect with other tools? Any pre-built integrations or APIs? Is it easy to connect with social platforms and other marketplaces? There are a variety of ecommerce apps out there designed to plug into your website, so I'm looking for compatibility with most or many of them.
- Value for $: How appropriate is the price for the features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent, and flexible?
Easiest Ecommerce Platforms: Key Features
What ecommerce features make the easiest ecommerce software? I specifically scouted the web for these important features:
- Inventory management: Does the platform make inventory management tasks easier? Does it track stock levels? Does it give you stock level data in real-time? Does it let you add multiple variants of the same product?
- Analytics: Does the tool give actionable insights that you can use to grow your ecommerce business? Are the analytics easily accessible and understandable?
- Customization: What level of customization can you achieve with the product? Can you customize the platform according to your brand colors and design language?
- Support: How good is the support feature of the product? What are the various modes of support deployment? Is it available 24/7? Apart from direct help, is there also a knowledge base available?
Easiest Ecommerce Platform Software FAQs
Before we conclude, I want to discuss some of the most frequently asked questions related to the easiest ecommerce platforms.
What Is An Ecommerce Platform?
Should You Use An Ecommerce Platform To Sell Goods?
What Is The Easiest Ecommerce Platform?
Which Is The Best Ecommerce Platform To Use?
Other Ecommerce Platform Reviews
Here are some similar ecommerce platform reviews I've put together in case you still haven't found what you're looking for. You can start with the overall best Best Ecommerce Platforms, which contain a little bit of everything ranked in an ultimate list.
Ecommerce Platforms by Business Type
Ecommerce Platforms by Need
- Headless Ecommerce Platforms
- Easiest Ecommerce Platforms
- Omnichannel Commerce Platforms
- Free Ecommerce Platforms
- Open Source Ecommerce Platforms
- Social Commerce Platforms
- Cheap Ecommerce Platforms
- Hosted Ecommerce Platforms
What Do You Think Is The Easiest Ecommerce Platform?
These are my top picks to help you create, manage, and grow an ecommerce business with relative ease.
Now I want to hear from you. What do you think about this list? Which ecommerce plan fits your needs? What ecommerce platforms are missing from the list? Let me know what your top ecommerce platform tool is in the comments.
Do you know anybody in your network or community that needs to grow an ecommerce business and can use this information? Share this piece and be their hero.
To get the latest updates on other smart ecommerce tools and tips from top ecommerce experts, subscribe to The Ecomm manager newsletter.
Considering other ecommerce platforms but don't know where to start looking? We've compiled these lists for you: