For creators, launching an ecommerce business is about more than just selling products. It's about building a community, sharing your passions, and turning your creativity into a rewarding, profitable, and sustainable revenue source.
With so many ecommerce platforms available, each with its own features and pricing structures, how do you find the best ecommerce platform? Whether you choose Fourthwall, BigCommerce, Shopify, Wix, or another option, it's important to make the right choice. This guide aims to simplify the process, so you can check out our top 8 ecommerce platform picks to find the best ecommerce platform for you, and get on that road to success.
An ecommerce platform is a digital marketplace where creators and businesses set up shop to sell their products or services online. Think of it as the engine that drives your online store - it provides essential tools and functionalities to manage inventory (and also often offers you the option to design your products right on-site), process payments, engage with customers, and find ways to recover abandoned carts. An ecommerce platform is basically your online store’s toolkit, helping you turn clicks into sales, and fans into loyal customers and supporters. Finding the best ecommerce platform can be challenging, but with careful consideration of which features you need, you can find the perfect ecommerce platform for you and your ecommerce store.
The hosting environment for your ecommerce store is the first choice you'll need to make. Your two basic choices are cloud-hosted or self-hosted; some offer free plans, some are paid plans only. Fully cloud-hosted ecommerce platforms like Fourthwall offer a scalable and secure hosting solution; their ecommerce platform maintains your online store's files and data in the cloud (so you don't need your own server), and you don't need any special technical/coding knowledge to set up and run your ecommerce store.
Self-hosted solutions require more technical expertise, so you will need to know how to set up your own server; your store's data would then be kept and maintained at that location. Launching a self-hosted site also means you'll be responsible for your own data backups and regular server maintenance.
The best ecommerce platforms offer good customization and design options to allow creators and businesses to stand out with unique branding, both in the look of their ecommerce store, and in the customization of any print on demand products you choose to create.
Ecommerce store customization is easiest on a site like Fourthwall, which features its own no-code custom ecommerce website builder, so you can choose a starting theme and then really make it your own by customizing the layout, images, colors, fonts, and more. Fourthwall also makes it easy to design your own print on demand products with a custom product maker (zero code knowledge required) and professional mockups. Similar website builders can also be found on sites like Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace.
One of the most critical features of the best ecommerce platforms is a safe and secure checkout system. Customers need to feel confident that their personal information is being protected through payment gateways and during the checkout process.
Fully hosted ecommerce platforms will generally take care of credit card security and PCI (payment card industry) compliance so you don't have to worry about it; things get a little more complicated if you choose a self-hosted ecommerce solution.
Integrations and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow ecommerce platforms to communicate with other software applications. This allows creators and businesses to offer richer experiences to their online store customers, with ecommerce platform features like product catalogs, pricing information, order management, checkout services/payment gateway usage, and customer data. These also facilitate helpful automated processes and streamlined shopping operations.
All-in-one ecommerce platforms like Fourthwall are the easiest way to make sure you have these features available on your ecommerce store; they do all of the behind the scenes work for you, so you can focus on your products, customer service, and promo.
Scalability is an important part of your ecommerce solution, because creators and businesses need to be able to grow and adapt to change as they do so. The best ecommerce platforms should check all the important boxes - effectively and efficiently scaling products, customers, and traffic as the site grows.
Some examples of this include the ability to handle a high volume of visitors during peak times; reliable performance for functions like browsing products and adding them to a shopping cart; and speedy loading of images and info on the pages of your online store.
Finally, good customer service is essential. Any problems or issues need to be solved reasonably quickly, and it's important to have easy access to support when needed. And by customer service, we mean on both ends of your ecommerce platform - you should have quick access to assistance as a site creator/business owner, and your customers should also be able to get a fast response from customer service agents should they have a question or problem with their order.
Sites like Fourthwall are among the best ecommerce platforms, as they put priority into executing top level customer service, with partner management teams, helpful blogs and guides, and a "customer-centric" support approach for your fans.
Designed for content creators, Fourthwall is an ecommerce platform that hits all of the bullet points listed above. It's a cloud-based host (so takes on most of the tough stuff for you in regards to APIs, integrations, and payment gateways); and it lets you customize virtually everything (with user-friendly tools to help you do so, including their own website builder). It also offers targeted marketing tools, community-building features, robust analytics for data-driven decision making, excellent customer service, and fan-driven product development, all for free. Fourthwall powers a wide range of sites and online stores for everything from Twitch gaming streamers to musicians, photographers to artists, comedians, actors, influencers, and YouTubers, and it’s easy to get started.
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BigCommerce is a comprehensive ecommerce platform that provides management tools for established businesses and unlimited staff accounts, the latter being a good perk to have as your online store grows. It lets you get started with a free plan for 15 days (paid plans start at $29 per month), and then uses revenue tiers to determine what kind of paid plan you'll need as your BigCommerce shop grows. With BigCommerce as your ecommerce solution, you can integrate your store's products with major marketplaces from Amazon to Google Shopping; they also offer a range of customization options in their "Page Builder" website builder tool (although some of the custom themes are pricey), SEO tools, and a good selection of secure payment gateways.
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Adobe Commerce, aka Magento, is a highly customizable ecommerce platform with its own website builder that offers custom design opportunities via open source programming. It's technically free and does have all of the tools needed for selling products in your own online store, including inventory management plus barcodes, a customer loyalty program, payment gateway integrations, and a fast checkout system - but you're going to need your own web host and a good amount of technical proficiency in order to get a Magento online store up and running. Once you do, you can take advantage of some solid design opportunities including layered navigation, sitemaps, and meta tags and descriptions.
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Another of the best ecommerce platforms is Shopify, offering a wide range of integrations and many free site designs in its website builder. You can start with the free option for the site itself (for 3 days), although you'll probably rapidly need more features as your Shopify ecommerce site grows, and those costs can add up, with the most basic Shopify plans starting at $29 and $79 per month. Shopify is one of the most well-known ecommerce solutions, and its benefits include an easy to use basic interface and themes you can use to make your own Shopify online store. You can also add extra features and functionality to your Shopify ecommerce store by using apps; and if you have trouble, there's a marketplace of "Shopify Experts" you can hire to really get your store all set up.
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WooCommerce is a little different from the other ecommerce solutions mentioned here in that it's primarily an advanced WordPress site. (WordPress is an open source content management system that lets you build websites.) WooCommerce does boast a lot of customization options for your ecommerce store, but as it's limited to WordPress-created sites, you're going to need to do some homework (and bring your own web host) unless you already know how to design WYSIWYG sites and how to install plug-ins. That said, WooCommerce does integrate with a large selection of those plug-ins, making the ecommerce platform versatile and scalable as long as you're willing to put the work in; it’s also one of the best ecommerce platforms for letting you sell a wide range of products and downloads in your online store.
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Wix is a user-friendly ecommerce platform that offers a website builder and ecommerce capabilities, although in some instances, it sacrifices ecommerce functionality for aesthetics. Online stores made with Wix are easy to create via its templates and drag and drop interface, and have a lot of visual appeal; you can design and launch a Wix ecommerce platform site fairly quickly, especially if you use Wix's ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) tool to help you choose your Wix online store's style and layout. At the Wix Pro plan level, there's even a tool to help you create a business logo if you don't already have one. Hosting is included with Wix (there's a free Wix plan, or you can opt for a paid Wix plan starting at $16 per month), and integrated payments are included with all Wix business and ecommerce plans.
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Next on our list of the best ecommerce platforms is Squarespace, is a website-building platform that does offer some ecommerce capabilities. However, it's actually better known as a site for blogging, portfolio sites, resumes, or personal websites. Squarespace offers a selection of good looking premade website templates, plus Squarespace AI to help you write starter product descriptions and store copy; they're also equipped for you to handle payments (including PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe), and shipping options. If you use Squarespace as your ecommerce solution, you can sell products, digital content, videos, services, and subscriptions; paid plans start at $16 per month.
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Our last ecommerce solution for your consideration is Shift4Shop, an ecommerce platform for US-based businesses and creators. It offers 24/7 customer support, various checkout options for your online store, and the ability to sell digital downloads; Shift4Shop's free plan is more extensive than some of the other free plans in this list, and there's no product limit regarding how many items you can have for sale in your Shift4Shop ecommerce store. It also has some interesting tools for your shoppers, including social wish lists, an abandoned cart saver, a Shift4Shop gift registry and gift certificates. However, Shift4Shop sites are difficult to customize and reportedly can have technical issues with components like site navigation, which can be glitchy at times.
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Choosing the best ecommerce platform ultimately depends on each creator's unique needs. Fourthwall ranks up high on the best ecommerce platforms list because it's laser-focused on success - it's a platform designed with content creators and other creatives in mind, offering lots of tools for fan communities, endless options for designing both your ecommerce store and your merch, and robust analytics. All of these features can help creators build flourishing ecommerce ventures.
With Fourthwall, you can launch a website, design and sell products, and/or offer memberships to your supporters, making it a popular choice for creators who want to both monetize their content and connect in new and exciting ways with their fan base. You can easily get started with Fourthwall's own suite of tools, which include customization and branding tools, drag and drop designing, multiple payment gateways, abandoned cart emails, SEO tools, and so much more, with no monthly fees or upfront costs. Try Fourthwall today!