E-commerce is growing like never before and is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. When building your own online shop, it is worth considering ready-made CMS for e-commerce. In this article, we will outline the best platforms that are commonly used in 2020. Building a solid foundation from the very beginning will help you to increase your sales and achieve business success quickly.
Table of contents
What is a CMS?
CMS stands for content management system. The main task of a CMS is to manage, generate and adapt digital content.
Main features of the CMS
Content management systems offer several key functions:
- Installation and update wizards
- SEO optimisation
- Customising templates to change the appearance
- Integration with audit log
- Collaborative platform
- Modularity and expandability
- Less need to develop code from scratch
- Version management
- User and group functionality
Key benefits of the CMS
Using a CMS to enhance your site has several advantages:
- For businesses of all sizes: CMS is considered the perfect solution for any business need. The system provides flexibility, simplicity and scalability for businesses of all sizes (small, medium and large enterprises). It allows shop owners to easily organise and track content on their websites.
- User-friendly: A content management system is an easy-to-use programme that allows administrators to upload any files and data in the blink of an eye. The CMS does not require a complicated process to optimise content.
- Smooth and rapid integration: CMS provides a simple and quick process for integrating content through your website. CMS-based sites are integrated with dynamic web content that allows you to update or publish information as required.
- Accessibility from anywhere: As the interface is usually browser-based, the CMS can be accessed from anywhere by anyone. All the administrator needs is a device connected to the internet. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the unique features of CMSs enable shop owners to do their work remotely, achieving their goals from anywhere in the world.
Top 6 CMS for online shops
Shopify
Shopify is a flexible e-commerce platform with a whole host of useful features. According to the Shopify report, more than 800,000 businesses worldwide use the Shopify platform. This spectacular number generated more than 41.1 billion in total gross revenue for Shopify in 2018.
Shopify is considered an all-in-one e-commerce platform. Small entrepreneurs can create shops, manage products and handle all orders in one panel. Shop owners gain customers and increase sales with incredible ease.
Features
- Easily customise the look of your shop using intuitive template settings
- Full access to the HTML and CSS of your website
- Mobile basket
- Possibility of using your own domain name
- Access to a fully functional content management system.
- Shopify app to manage your shop on the go
- Fulfilment of multiple orders with a single click
- Gift cards, discounts, social media integration
- Possibility of selling on Facebook
- Import/Export of products via CSV files
Advantages
- Shopify is considered one of the easiest platforms for e-commerce businesses to use
- Offers some beautiful, professional and mobile-friendly templates
- It equips users with a range of applications covering many aspects, including marketing, accounting, warehouse management, shipping, transport and much more.
- Shopify offers 24/7 support
Disadvantages
- Compared to other platforms, Shopify is not flexible enough to offer additional functionality for your shop
- Many templates for Shopify are paid.
- You may need expert help to adapt the template to your needs
- Telephone support is only available for the USA, UK, New Zealand and Australia
- The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) function is only available in the paid version of the app.
Prices
- Basic Shopify (for new businesses): $29/month
- Shopify (for growing businesses): $79/month
- Advanced Shopify (advanced features to scale your business): $299/month
Who should use Shopify?
Shopify is a great option for those who want to start a dropshipping business, or a small business. Even if you're new to website development or just starting out with a business idea, Shopify is where you can easily build a well-functioning website.
Magento
Magento is known as a leading open-source e-commerce platform. The system is developed in PHP, allowing shop owners to easily build an online business. The platform supports all sizes of companies and meets the business needs of B2B, Omnichannel, Mobile Commerce, etc. In addition, Magento allows integration with a wide range of third-party extensions, thus allowing the creation of a variety of online shops.
More than $100 billion is transacted globally each year through Magento. Magento has built a thriving community with more than 300,000 developers worldwide. What's more, it offers the Magento Marketplace, from which many extensions can be downloaded. If you have an online shop that is profitable, Magento is worth considering.
Features
- Simple WYSIWYG solutions for e-commerce website builders
- Personalisation of content and promotions
- Easy to sell with relevant product recommendations
- Creating a personalised shopping experience for customers
- Easy creation, preview and planning of content
- Shop management via an intuitive and easy-to-use interface
- Built-in responsive and SEO-optimised templates for all devices
- Integration with B2B functionality
- Update and manage data from multiple sources in one place
- Supporting multi-channel marketing
- Intelligent stock and order management
Advantages
- Magento is a powerful and feature-rich platform
- Magento is SEO friendly and ensures fast page loading
- Users can customise almost every functionality of the shop according to their own needs.
- Shopkeepers can obtain all information including orders, customers and products with many advanced reporting features
- Magento offers solutions to scale with your business
- Magento has a large community in the form of 360,000 forum members. You can access tips, FAQs, documents and everything you need to understand this platform.
Disadvantages
- Magento is complex, so it is quite difficult for non-technical people to use it
- Magento plans are expensive compared to other platforms
- Magento-based websites need hosting, and very advanced hosting at that.
Prices
Magento is Opensource software that you have to install yourself on your server.
Who should use Magento?
Undoubtedly, Magento is suitable for running a large-scale online business. If you run multiple online shops and want to manage them all from one panel, Magento is the best choice for you.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is now one of the main e-commerce platforms. According to statistics Barn2.co.uk, WooCommerce's market share in 2020 is 22% out of the top 1 million sites using e-commerce technology. This result shows the huge growth in popularity of WooCommerce in recent years.
WooCommerce allows you to turn your WordPress website into an online shop. The platform has attracted a large number of users because it offers many extensions and templates for free. A notable advantage of these extensions is that they can extend WooCommerce with additional functionality with a single click. In addition, you have the opportunity to get support from the huge community of WordPress users.
Features
- Simple shop installation
- Flexible and secure payments
- Compatibility with major credit cards, payment gateways and ancillary deposits
- Easy order management via a modern and neat interface
- Mobile application for IOS and Android
- Huge collection of free and paid extensions, from shop extensions, marketing integrations, multi-channel to point of sale
- Unlimited customisation
- Easy to manage categories
Advantages
- Offers many free features to enhance WooCommerce operations
- WooCommerce is a free WordPress plug-in
- Simple and easy to use compared to other complex CMS solutions
- Easy to customise templates
- WooCommerce based websites work fast and deliver the right functions, needed at the right time
- Unlimited number of products
- Provides a large number of extensions
- SEO-friendly
- Full control of the content
- It is quite familiar to WordPress users
Disadvantages
- Requires the administrator to have a good knowledge of WordPress and WooCommerce
- Installation of some extensions is not free of charge
- The administrator has to pay for hosting and the domain himself
- The WooCommerce plugin sometimes has problems adapting to frequent WordPress updates
- The platform only works with WordPress templates
Price
The download and installation of the plug-in is free of charge.
Who should use WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a great platform for new e-commerce entrepreneurs, thanks to its ease of use and extensive features and flexibility. Especially if you are already familiar with WordPress, this platform will help you use all your existing WordPress knowledge to create a good shop. So if you can afford your own hosting, choose WooCommerce.
OpenCart
OpenCart is well known for its open and easy-to-use eCommerce platform. There is no need to spend a huge amount of money to develop your new shop. In addition, OpenCart offers the e-business community useful and customisable plug-ins at no monthly cost. All you need is to install, choose a template and add products.
OpenCart offers more than 14,000 extensions and themes for e-commerce of any size. What's more, it integrates with more than 20 payment gateways and over 8 shipping methods. In short, even with a small budget, you are able to develop your shop on the OpenCart platform.
Features
- Full overview of all orders, sales, customers, sales analysis via admin panel
- Separate access for users and user groups
- Management of multiple shops via a single administrator interface
- Possibility of adding various product properties
- Built-in partner system
- Discounts, coupons, promotions
- Create your own backups
Advantages
- OpenCart 3.0.3.3 is free of charge
- Ideal for customers who want specific shopping basket functionalities
- Flexibility to work with different payment processors and payment gateways
- Easy and quick setup of a simple shopping site
- Friendly for non-technical administrators
Disadvantages
- OpenCart documentation is not the easiest compared to other platforms
- Wholesale functionality is not good enough
- The platform contains bugs and is not entirely secure
- Not an ideal choice for larger online shops, outdated templates
- Some IT skills may be needed
Prices
- Free
- Paid support from OpenCart partners
Who should use OpenCart?
OpenCart is quite difficult to customise a site for beginners or non-technical people. Therefore, if you want to build a simple website and can afford to hire a developer, you can opt for OpenCart.
Prestashop
PrestaShop is a free, open-source e-commerce solution for online merchants. According to PrestaShop statistics, more than 300,000 businesses use the technology. The platform is widely used because it is easy to install and customise functionality. We can choose between a self-hosted or fully-hosted version. This allows you to determine your level of technical control.
In addition to PrestaShop's built-in functionality, business owners can extend the platform with plugins and templates. However, PrestaShop itself consists of everything you need, so it is not necessary to enrich it with additional extensions. Aiming to develop world-class eCommerce software through open-source innovation, PrestaShop is the ideal platform for business success.
Features
- Quick creation of products and product packages via a neat panel
- Allowing customers to send files to sell personalised products
- Adding products with variants using attribute lists
- Limitation of the number of products available for purchase and out-of-stock messages
- Easy creation of product categories and subcategories
- Easy customisation of the shop: configure payments, shipping methods, product display
- Configuring the checkout page
Advantages
- Easy installation and configuration
- The basic functionality of PrestaShop is free of charge
- PrestaShop's appearance is non-technical friendly
- Features easy to customise
- Support for secure payment gateways such as Paypal or Google Checkout
Disadvantages
- PrestaShop is suitable for small and medium-sized shops due to its limited scalability
- PrestaShop has no official support team for its partners
- PrestaShop is not ideal for large shops
- The extras are quite expensive
Prices
Prestashop itself is free
Who should use PrestaShop?
PrestaShop is an ideal option for new online retailers, even without technical experience, thanks to its simplicity, user-friendly interface and functionality. However, the fact that PrestaShop's features for online shops are limited makes it by default the best solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
BigCommerce
Among the many eCommerce software providers, BigCommerce is an interesting option for starting an online business. With its many built-in features and customisation options, BigCommerce has attracted more than 55,000 entrepreneurs of all sizes. In particular, famous brands such as Toyota, Natori AND Martha Stewart have trusted and used this platform for years. BigCommerce is a powerful platform for large and fast-growing businesses to rise to the upper leagues.
In addition to extreme scalability for online shops, BigCommerce offers advanced SEO support and multi-channel integration. Shop owners quickly raise brand recognition on social networks. They also have the chance to reach millions of potential customers worldwide.
Features
- Easy creation and editing of pages using WYSIWYG tools
- Easy customisation of ordering options
- Optimised pages for mobile devices
- Integration with WordPress
- Support for more than 70 local discounts and promotions
- Speed up site loading with Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, Google AMP and Akami Image Manager.
- Product recommendations
- Multi-channel sales
- Integration with B2B functionality
- Support for cross-border fullfilment services
- Sales in multiple currencies
Advantages
- Easy to use
- Rapid loading
- Wide range of template options
- Works well for SEO and organic search results
- Helpful customer service
- Integration with many external extensions or applications
- Embedded blog
- Easily customisable fields
- Unlimited number of employee accounts
Disadvantages
- Prices on BigCommerce are slightly higher than on other platforms
- Annual online sales are limited. In the event of a need to increase the limit, a change to a more expensive plan is required.
- The built-in blog does not facilitate the use of RSS feeds
Prices
- Standard: $29/month
- Plus: $79.95/month
- Pro: $299.95/miesięcznie
- Enterprise: The price is adjusted
Who should benefit from BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is good for both small and large businesses. If your online business is growing, BigCommerce offers scalability and grows with you. For small businesses, BigCommerce has the right fit to optimise and scale the shop without hurting the owners' limited budget too much.
Summary
To take full advantage of the dynamic growth of eCommerce, online shops need careful preparation to operate in extreme market conditions. This article is here to help you find the most suitable platform. It is difficult to say which platform is best, as it is up to your business to decide which functionality is most beneficial. All you need to do is decide on a CMS that will create a solid foundation for your online shop and help you achieve your business body.
