E-commerce Platforms for Businesses (Wix, BigCommerce, SquareSpace)
There is no doubt of the huge influence of E-commerce on the success of businesses in recent years. E-commerce could handle everything for you, from reaching more customers to providing the best customer service through the internet.
Building an E-commerce website is also getting easier throughout the years due to the existence of platforms that offer a wide range of services to enhance the performance of E-commerce websites.
In this article, you will read the basic comparison between these E-commerce platforms. We have also written about arguably two of the most used E-commerce solutions, Shopify and WordPress WooCommerce.
1. Wix
Wix is a website builder that also provides E-commerce solutions such as web-hosting, SEO tools, and store templates. By 2021, more or less 160 million websites are powered by Wix, making it one of the popular choices to build a website. Not only popular, but Wix is also known for its ease of use which is suitable for smaller entrepreneurs. Wix is strong in comparison to its competitors in the ease of website building, user support, and price.
While Drag and Drop Tool to build a website has also been used by many E-commerce platforms, it is even easier to design your website since Wix is specialized in website building and it uses Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) tool. In case you have no idea about coding and do not have the budget to hire a website designer, Wix could be suitable for you. Its side menu and help feature are also incredible to guide you to design your website.
Moreover, specializing in website building means that Wix also has many stunning templates to make your website looks even more impressive. Combined with its ease of use, it is possible to create a professional website even without any coding knowledge at all.
Wix offers different plans starting from the E-commerce plan ($17/month), VIP ($25/month), and many more. The most expensive one costs $500/month and it has the complete package needed for all E-commerce activities.
The advantage of using Wix is that all paid plans come with a free domain name for one year and thus, you do not need to spend on a domain name to start your E-commerce website. In addition to this, Wix also offers basic, but useful features to enhance the performance of your websites such as payment system integration, blog integration, help center, and many more.
That is being said, Wix has limited space (50GB) except you purchase their enterprise plan, and once your set your template, you cannot change it. Furthermore, probably the biggest disadvantage of using Wix is that because of its ease of use, others will use a similar website system as yours which is not great for the branding of your website.
2. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is often said to be the complete package of E-commerce solutions as it provides a wide range of services no matter if they are medium or large-sized businesses. It is usually also compared with Shopify due to its similar features, but both have their own pros and cons. BigCommerce is great because it has many built-in tools to significantly enhance the looks, efficiency, and performance of E-commerce websites. From page-building tools, strong SEO tools, strong user support, to outstanding multi-channel selling and payment support, BigCommerce provides all of it.
BigCommerce allows users to put a complex and large catalog on their websites. Thus, an established business could suit BigCommerce better than Wix. Nevertheless, BigCommerce is not relatively easy to set up, at least compared to Wix. BigCommerce has a Drag and Drop Tool, but it is not as simple and convenient as Wix. However, it allows you to do more advanced management of your website and therefore, making your website more unique using third-party applications and coding.
BigCommerce has different plans and the cheapest one costs $29.95/month, while its most expensive one costs $249/month. Even its cheapest plan (standard) gives you access to many tools you will need to build a good E-commerce website.
In comparison to its strongest competitor Shopify, BigCommerce is arguably more excel at selling in multiple currencies, building a better product catalog, and a better SEO tool. Nonetheless, Shopify is better at the availability of third-party applications, templates, and application integration.
3. SquareSpace
SquareSpace is another E-commerce platform that you can use to build your E-commerce websites. Although it is not as popular Shopify, Wix, or BigCommerce, SquareSpace is often said to be the best platform for small businesses and solopreneurs. Its Content Management System (CMS) allows you to build a website without coding skills. Moreover, SquareSpace provides unique and customizable tools which could be suitable for users who want to emphasize a single product or even their professions.
In comparison to its competitors, SquareSpace has limited built-in tools, but it is often more than enough for small business/solopreneurs. For example, they are not very flexible in terms of payment system integration as it only allows Paypal and Stripe. Other than this, you will not be able to integrate SquareSpace with Amazon which limits the usage of it.
SquareSpace is relatively easy to use and it provides outstanding and modern website templates that can work very well on a large or small screen. Customization is arguably the strongest point of SquareSpace as every template is extremely unique and it personalizes your needs which is why SquareSpace could be the most suitable for small business and solopreneurs that has specific needs & customization for their websites. Moreover, SquareSpace has incredible tools for blogging that could customize your blog and attract viewers.
Related to pricing, Squarespace has a personal plan which costs $12/month. However, it does not provide enough tools for E-commerce websites. Its business plan costs $18/month and E-commerce plan costs $26/month. While it is not very cheap to start an E-commerce website using SquareSpace, it allows you to have a more customized website in comparison to its competitors.
Closing
Wix, BigCommerce, and SquareSpace have their own strengths and weaknesses. Wix is easy to build and has outstanding templates. SquareSpace is not as easy to build compared to Wix, but also has great templates which are responsive and customizable. Both are suitable for smaller businesses (SquareSpace for solopreneurs). On the other hand, BigCommerce offers a wide range of services which is perfect for an established business.
We hope you have a better basic understanding of the above E-commerce platforms after reading the article.