Which ecommerce platform is best?
ZELLIS has our own ecommerce platform called ZELLIS Connect, so you might be expecting us to say ours is best, right?
No.
The fact something works well for one business doesn’t mean it’s ideal for yours. The fact something is popular doesn’t mean it will be right for you.
Fun fact: The most commonly sold women’s shoe size is 7. So does that mean you should buy size 7 shoes? Of course not. You will buy the size shoe that fits your feet.
Well, it’s the same with ecommerce platforms.
What’s critical is what’s ‘BEST FOR YOU’ and it will depend on a range of factors. Choosing a platform based on cost alone is likely to result in a poor fit. Consider the following as you assess the available platform choices…
- Your budget (or budget expectation)
- Essential functions
- Nice-to-have functions
- Cost to setup
- Monthly platform fees
- Cost to maintain
- Whether you are a web developer or not
- Whether you’re solo or have staff who can deal with platform issues
- Existing systems it needs to integrate with
- Scalability
- Extensibility
- Security and recovery
- What level of risk you’re happy to live with
- How many providers you’re comfortable dealing with
eCommerce platforms are definitely not all created equal. Being objective and thorough in your appraisal of your must-have, would-like, and will-not-tolerate requirements will help you to pick the best platform for your business and needs.
We favour Saas (Software-as-a-service) or cloud-based platforms because they eliminate all the stress, cost and effort required for self-hosting including monitoring, upgrading, updating, maintaining plugins, implementing and maintaining security. The leading Saas ecommerce platforms include:
- ZELLIS Connect
- Shopify & Shopify Plus
- Neto by Maropost
- Bigcommerce & Bigcommerce Enterprise
- Shopline
By contrast, the platforms below are all self-hosted solutions…
- Opencart
- Woocommerce
- Adobe Commerce Cloud.
Support is also crucial to growing your business.
The level of support you may assume you’ll get from lower cost platforms and plans may vary dramatically from the support you actually experience. If you’re busy running your business and don’t have staff who can chase support when it’s needed, you might find yourself waiting days to resolve issues that are impacting sales. In this way, support can be viewed as a cost because of missed sales due to support response and resolution times.
That’s why we launched ZELLIS Connect. We know it’s not for everyone, but for businesses with a large inventory range, complex integrations and automations, or for selling automotive parts & accessories online, we reckon it’s the best value solution available for most on the basis of all of the factors listed above. Fast-response, bot-free support, deep expertise in the automotive ecommerce category, our own parts interpreter staff, shipping, integration and ecommerce specialists, plus our Flex team for all the data tasks you don’t have time or patience for.
What’s the best ecommerce platform for YOU?