1.
Who’s The Best
Ecommerce Platform?

2.
Why we choose Shopify
over other Ecommerce sites?
Shopify is the only one of the major ecommerce sites reviewed with
packages that include online, mobile, and in-store solutions. The other
solutions lack either mobile or in-store functionality. For a basic plan of
around $78/month, or a professional plan at $128/month.

3.
Shopify has been around
for a long time.
And it has been consistently
rated as one of the better
ecommerce solutions. In
addition, they have some of the
best value in the industry for
their service cost.

4.
Click To Try Shopify Free For 30 Days!
Or continue with the presentation for a full comparison…

5.
Costs and Credit Card
Processing
Fees

6.
The most basic plans start
at $15 and go all the way
up to premium packages at
around $200.
We recommend Shopify’s
Professional Plan, with plenty of
features for the median price-point
of $79, as the best option
for small business owners.

7.
Shopify’s Professional plan at $79/mo
offers 5 GB of file storage, unlimited
products, professional reports, and
abandoned cart recovery. Shopify, via
Stripe, charge a 2.5% of total payment +
$.30 fixed fee per transaction for credit
card processing services.
!
Full pricing details here.

8.
Bigcommerce’s Gold plan costs
$79.95/mo and offers unlimited
bandwidth, unlimited products, and
unlimited storage. Bigcommerce uses
third-party payment gateways for their
credit card processing and charges no
transaction fees.
!
Full pricing details here.

9.
Volusion’s Pro plan costs $75/mo, which
includes unlimited storage, 10 GB of
bandwidth, 10,000 products, priority
support, and direct Amazon/Ebay
integration. Volusion has no transaction
fees other than their flat credit card
processing fee of 2.15% of total payment
+ $.30 fixed per transaction.
!
Full pricing details here.

10.
3dcart offers their Professional plan for
$65.99. This plan includes features such as
unlimited storage, 10,000 products, and
$200 in free ad credits. They have no
transaction fees and outsource all of their
credit card processing to third-party
payment gateways.
!
Full pricing details here.

11.
Customer
Service
Through browsing various forums,
reading reviews, and interacting
with each ecommerce store myself,
Shopify’s customer service is the
winner. Bigcommerce comes in at a
close second with Volusion and
3dcart bringing up the rear.

12.
Shopify has phone and email
options, as well as a live online
chat feature.

13.
Customer Service
Bigcommerce is basically the same,
providing phone, email, and live chat
options with every package.

14.
Customer Service
Volusion has phone support and “online”
support, which from what I can tell is just
live chat. If you purchase Volusion’s Pro
plan, they claim to offer “priority” status to
your customer service needs, although it is
unclear exactly what that actually means.

15.
Customer Service
3dcart advertises “tech support”, which is
really just phone and email support like the
other ecommerce platforms, and a live chat
option as well.

16.
Ease of Use
None of these sites are as easy
or intuitive to use as other basic
website builders like Weebly.
It is possible to get a basic site up and
running within 20-30 minutes. However, it
will probably take quite a bit more time to
actually get a unique and professional
looking site.

17.
I initially liked Shopify’s interface
the least, although most reviews
seem to find it one of the
simplest and easiest to use.
However, once I got comfortable
with it, it was actually pretty
handy.

18.
Bigcommerce has a very
streamlined and professional looking
interface, my favorite of the 4. With
your design options on your left and
a big preview of your in-progress
site on the right, customization is a
breeze.

19.
Volusion’s interface lands somewhere
in-between Bigcommerce and Shopify.
It is relatively simple to navigate, but is
not as streamlined as Bigcommerce.
You have to navigate away from your
edit page to preview your site, which is
a hassle.

20.
3dcart had a similar feel to me as
Volusion, in that the interface was
easy enough to use but navigating
away from the edits page to
preview your store was a hassle.

21.
PRODUCT
LIMITS
One important thing for you to
determine is hoy many products
you anticipate listing on your site.
In reality, the average small
business owner is probably not
going to be listing more than
10,000 products.

22.
Offer unlimited
product listings
for all of their
plans.

23.
Offer unlimited
product listings
for all of their
plans.

24.
Volusion’s mini starts
out at 100 products,
moves up to 1,000 for
plus, 10,000 for pro,
and unlimited for
premium.

25.
3dcart goes to 200
for their mini, 1,000
for starter, 10,000
for professional,
and unlimited for
their power plan.

26.
PAYMENT
OPTIONS
Most ecommerce sites offer
both in-house and third-party
payment options.
Some, like 3dcart, do all of their
payment processing through third-parties.
All of the ecommerce sites
reviewed accept the major payment
gateways such as Paypal, Stripe, and
Authorize.net, just to name a few.

27.
PAYMENT
OPTIONS
Shopify -
Bigcommerce -
70+ Payment Gateways
60+ Payment Gateways
Around 40 Payment Gateways. It is
important to note that some of Volusion’s
gateways are “fully-featured” and some
are only compatible with specific services.
100+ Payment Gateways
3dcart -

28.
TEMPLATE
OPTIONS
Each ecommerce platform has
their own templates/themes, which
are basically pre-programmed
designs with certain customizable
features that the business owner
can pick for their storefront.

29.
Shopify’s poor selection of free templates is perhaps its biggest
negative. There are 11 free themes with 2-3 style variations per
theme, which put the overall options at a little over 30.

30.
Bigcommerce has over 100 free template options as well as many
premium designs. With all of the options, you should easily be able
to find one to fit your needs.

31.
With around 80 free options, you should be able to find a theme
that fits your brand. Of course, premium options are also available
starting at $50 and up.

32.
3dcart offers a little more than 50 free template options. In
general, their free options are not quite as visually compelling to
me as the other 3, but they do have enough variety.

33.
SEO SERVICES
Search engine optimization, or
SEO,
is basically the process of formatting
certain aspects of your site so that
they will show up higher and more
often in Google and similar search
engines.

34.
Shopify includes everything in
their website design that is
needed for SEO success,
including title and header tags,
meta descriptions, and SEO-friendly
themes, to name a few.

35.
Bigcommerce offers similar SEO features to Shopify,
including title and header tags, meta descriptions/keyword
tools, and SEO-friendly themes.

36.
Volusion has SEO features like
automated sitemap creation
schema.org integration, which
allows customer reviews to
show up higher on Google
Search.

37.
3dcart advertises SEO friendly
HTML’s and URLs, as well as
automatic or manual meta tag
creation options, category
breadcrumb navigation, and an
RSS content reader.

38.
Integration with
Social Media /
Other Online
Storefronts

39.
If you are planning to sell
on social media or other
online storefronts in
conjunction with your
ecommerce site,
It is important to determine the
level of integration ability that
each of the ecommerce
platforms provide.

40.
Shopify is fully integrated
with popular social media
sites such as Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, etc.,
which basically means you
can market your Shopify
store/products on any of
these sites.

41.
Bigcommerce has similar
features to Shopify, fully
integrating with Facebook,
Twitter, etc. and providing a
Facebook Store.

42.
Volusion integrates with Facebook,
Twitter, etc., and has Facebook,
Ebay, and Amazon storefront
options.

43.
3dcart is compatible with
Facebook, Twitter etc. Facebook
and Ebay stores can be opened
through the downloading of an
app, although there does not
seem to be any integration with
Amazon.

44.
ACCOUNTING
SOFTWARE
INTEGRATION
If you already have accounting
software of some kind,
determining whether or not your
ecommerce site is compatible with that
service is important. If so, it makes
keeping track of the numbers side of
your business a much easier task.

45.
Shopify has the ability to import/
export various files and
spreadsheets which are
compatible with most business
software. Their app for
integration with Quickbooks can
be found here.

46.
Bigcommerce also has
importable/exportable files
and spreadsheets. You can
also purchase an app from
Webgilty that can be found
here which provides seamless
two-way integration between
Bigcommerce and
Quickbooks.

47.
Volusion users can export/
transfer files between Volusion
and Quickbooks in one of two
ways, through llf file transfer or
through Quickbooks’ Volusion API
app, both of which are explained
in-depth here.

48.
3dcart imports/exports files to
accounting software and also has
an app that can be found here for
direct integration with
Quickbooks. The catch, is that the
app only works with pc based
Quickbooks software.

49.
CONCLUSION
When comparing cost/value ratio
through the lens of factors reviewed,
our recommended ecommerce
platform
for the small business owner who is looking to
do significant selling online, is Shopify, with
Bigcommerce as a close second.

50.
CONCLUSION
It is always helpful to do a little
research of your own to see which
features are important to you,
but the guide should provide you with the
majority information you need make the
best decision for your business.

51.
Click To Try Shopify Free For 30 Days!

52.
Click To Try Shopify Free For 30 Days!