Want to cut right to the case? The best B2B Ecommerce platform right now is Nexcess.
The rapid growth of e-commerce and buyers’ increasing confidence in online shopping has made e-commerce a gold mine for business owners. Studies forecast that an estimated 95% of sales will be made online by 2040.
The b2b, also known as business-to-business e-commerce, involves online sales of products between two businesses. B2c, on the other hand, is an online sales transaction between business and consumer. However, b2b is larger than b2c in terms of profit.
In 2019, Statista reported that b2b e-commerce market globally worth $12.2 trillion. This makes the b2b e-commerce market six times more valuable than the b2c e-commerce market. The amazing figures make many small business owners and investors seek to enter the b2b e-commerce market and benefit from the fantastic sales opportunity.
To enjoy these sales benefits of b2b e-commerce, you need to develop your online b2b store on an e-commerce platform best for b2b and compatible with your business type. A great e-commerce platform perfect for your b2b store presents you with many features, market tools, and analytics that enable you to have a high customer conversion rate and increase your sales.
Now, what’s the best b2b e-commerce platform to set up your online store? That’s the major concern of this article. We will highlight the factors that small businesses have to consider before selecting a b2b platform and also outline the best b2b platforms. And why they are the best for small businesses.
Factors That Determine Good B2B Ecommerce Platforms
As a small business owner, what do you look out for in an e-commerce platform? For you not to make a wrong choice, there are some important factors to consider when selecting the best b2b e-commerce platform for your business.
Relationship with customers
For one, the best b2b e-commerce platform for your business must be one that enables and promotes a good relationship with your customers. This implies choosing an e-commerce platform with tools and features like email marketing, landing page, and social media integration.
Transaction methods
Also, choose an e-commerce platform that has an efficient transaction processing method. Meaning you need an e-commerce platform that has a secure checkout, accurate inventory management, appropriate online store shipping rate, and more.
Digital downloads
You also need an e-commerce platform that allows you to get a plugin for download and create a membership for your customers if you sell digital products.
Contact system
To effectively perform your b2b service, you need to develop your store on an e-commerce platform that allows you to add an easy-to-use contact system and book form to your site. It will allow you to provide consultation and quotes to your clients.
Speed and security
The speed and security of the e-commerce platform are also quite essential to look out for before selecting an e-commerce platform for your b2b online store. You may check out different users’ reviews of the platform to more about its speed and security.
Now that you know things to look out for in an e-commerce platform for a b2b e-commerce store, we will outline a list of the best b2b e-commerce platform for small businesses from which you can select the right e-commerce platform for your business.
7 Top B2B Ecommerce Platforms For Small Businesses
| Brand | Starting price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Nexcess | $19/month | All business types |
| 2. Shopify plus | $2000/month | High-volume businesses |
| 3. OpenCart | Request quote | b2b marketplace |
| 4. Magento | $22,000/year | b2c and b2b |
| 5. OroCommerce | Request quote | Api integration |
| 6. 3dcart | $19 – $299/month | Great features |
| 7. NopCommerce | Free | SEO |
1. Nexcess Storebuilder – Best for all business types
Nexcess Storebuilder is a high-grade, AI-powered, and highly customizable eCommerce platform that lets businesses quickly design custom-made websites for their online stores. The best part is that any type of business can use it, whether B2B or B2C or small or large, to sell all kinds of products, including digital and physical goods.
Storebuilder offers excellent tools and features that enable you to create and launch your fully customized B2B eCommerce site and enjoy numerous automations and personalization.
Key Benefits of Nexcess Storebuilder:
- Setting up and using Storebuilder is quite easy, and no coding experience is required. Its dashboard is user-friendly, and the interface is very intuitive.
- Nexcess Storebuilder provides numerous themes, templates, and tools you can customize and tweak to suit your unique business needs.
- With Storebuilder, you can easily manage your store’s inventory and data and gain insights and analytics of your sales and activities.
- Storebuilder by Nexcess comes with preconfigured Woo + premium plugins that help you get the best out of your B2B business. You get over 50,000 plugins with automatic plugin updates.
- Nexcess Storebuilder is relatively affordable as it starts from as little as $19/month; moreover, it charges zero transaction fees and has no hidden costs.
Drawbacks of Nexcess Storebuilder
The major drawback of Storebuilder is that it has limited payment gateways and doesn’t offer demo-testing before signing up.
2. Shopify Plus – best for high-volume businesses
Shopify plus is a well-equipped e-commerce platform custom-built for b2b businesses and high-volume enterprises. This platform comes with a wide range of features and unique tools. And it is a fully hosted, next-generation, SaaS e-commerce platform. This makes Shopify plus fast and secure.
Shopify is the best e-commerce platform for b2b businesses because it has features that enhance wholesales sales and provides an excellent customer experience. Shopify Plus is relied upon by top b2b brands to provide them optimal b2b e-commerce solutions.
Key Benefits of Shopify Plus
- Shopify plus provides many features that give you more control over your b2b e-commerce store for better automation and customization of your store
- Speed and security are keys to the b2b ecommerce business. Shopify plus has secured and powerful hosting network with fast performance. Thereby improving your online store SEO viability and make your site get more traffic.
- Shopify plus unlimited bandwidth help small businesses b2b online store grows rapidly.
- Shopify plus comes with massive integration options for sales and marketing. It can be integrated into over 1500 apps for various purposes.
- Shopify plus is a highly scalable ecommerce platform. It can always be modified to perform various functions or meet various business needs, such as flash sales or black Friday. A store on it can process up to 8000 orders per minute.
Shopify Plus Drawbacks
The only issue that small business b2b e-commerce owners could have with Shopify plus is its cost. Shopify Plus costs $2000 per month. So some entrepreneurs just starting might find it a bit expensive.
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2. OpenCart – best for b2b marketplace
OpenCart is a b2b e-commerce platform that comes as an alternative for small business owners who can’t afford Shopify and other e-commerce platforms. This platform is open-source and free to use.
Although, OpenCart still comes with many add-ons and nice features. You can also buy an external add-on to support the built-in add-ons from its extension OpenCart multiple vendor marketplace. This makes it a perfect e-commerce option for small businesses b2b e-commerce stores. It’s the best b2b marketplace.
Benefits of OpenCart
- It is a free b2b ecommerce platform perfect for small businesses.
- OpenCart despite free, offer many themes, add-ons, built-in SEO tools and extension for creating b2b stores of your choice
- OpenCart allows buyers and sellers to make a custom order or offer on products. So, buyers or sellers can make requests and price quotes.
- The ecommerce platform allows you to manage your online store data and inventory easily. OpenCart accepts CSV, XML, and XLS files that ensure easy and alternative data entry options
Drawbacks of OpenCart
- The need for a developer to build and manage an online store on OpenCart may be a constraint to some small business owners. Especially those just starting out.
- OpenCart being a self-hosting platform, may appear a little difficult for small business owners to maintain because users have to take charge of the development and maintenance of the ecommerce platform.
3. Magento – best for b2c and b2b
Magento is a drag and drops e-commerce platform built for both b2c and b2b e-commerce stores. This platform comes with many features and extensions, making it easy to use and ideal for b2b businesses.
The features allow you to build an attractive site that ensures an excellent customer experience for your b2b stores. Their impactful b2b solutions to businesses earned them the best b2b platform awards by the Forrester Wave. In addition, Magento has great SEO features that aid your business growth.
Benefits of Magento
- Magento has a high scalability level. It supports your small business growth. The ecommerce platform supports and adapts to your small b2b online stores.
- It comes with impressive features that allow you to develop a custom-made online store that is in tune with your business need.
- Magento is a popular ecommerce platform with a large community of users that can help you quickly and easily get over issues if need be.
- It may be linked to many payment gateways, which makes payment fast and easy.
Drawbacks of Magento
- Magento has a learning curve; it needs you to have certain coding skills to create a website properly. You need the service of a tech-savvy developer for its hosting, security, backups, and integration of some features into it
- Magento may also appear pricey to some business owners. It cost $22,000 per year for its full enterprise site and $2,000 per year for cloud support per hosting.
4. OroCommerce – best for Api integration
OroCommerce is an e-commerce platform that provides awesome b2b solutions for businesses. The platform offers many features that support small businesses b2b store growth.
It comes with customer research management (CRM) that helps business owners effectively plan their business marketing and sales goals for their business success. Again, you can run OroCommerce locally on your server or from the cloud.
Key Benefits of OroCommerce
- OroCommerce comes with many unique features and extension that aid the building and proper management of your store back-end.
- OroCommerce allows you to develop standard b2b online stores that have core b2b features. Such as unique pricing catalog per customer, corporate account management, custom workflow, and others.
- OroCommerce has a wide range of open Application programming interface (API) that makes it easy to integrate your site to other apps and platforms.
- It’s a platform that also accommodates b2b business growth.
Drawback of OroCommerce
The prices of OroCommerce plans are not well stated on their website. If you want to set up your online store on the platform, you need a developer’s service. And it has limited support for free plan users.
5. 3DCart/Shift4Shop – best for great features
3DCart is a great b2b e-commerce platform that supports small businesses. It provides users with tons of themes and features that help build captivating b2b online stores convert your site visitors to a buyer with ease.
3DCart is mobile-friendly and has controlled visibility. It also comes with customer segmentation features that help you group your customers into the product they buy and how much they buy. This allows you to sell at various prices to customers.
Benefits of 3DCart
- 3DCart is very easy to use. It requires no coding or tech skill, unlike some other ecommerce platform on the list.
- 3DCart is great for price customization and subscription and membership purchase. These are made possible by 3dcart one-click reorder.
- It has features that allow for accounting integration, tax management, a product quantity discount, and bulk ordering. All these are essential for the success of b2b online stores
- 3Dcart is best for small businesses b2b store provides awesome b2b solutions at affordable rates. It charges no transaction fee and $19 per month for a start-up store; $29 per month for the basic store; $79 for a plus store. $129 per month for a power store; and $299 per month for a pro store.
Drawbacks of 3dcart
3dcart’s major drawback is that it doesn’t have a mobile app; this made it hard for you to run your website when on the go.
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6. nopCommerce – best for SEO
nopCommerce is the best b2b e-commerce platform with strong Microsoft reliability. It is an open-source e-commerce platform. Again, it is free and popular globally, with over 250,000 users.
nopCommerce is highly recommendable for small businesses. It has different warehouse management and marketing tools. It allows you to link your website with various payment and shipment services. nopCommerce is free with no transaction or heading charges.
Benefits of nopCommerce
- It is free; if you have a small or medium b2b store and looking for an ecommerce platform to launch it at no cost, nopCommerce is perfect for you.
- Despite being free, its SEO quality is still not traded. Your website will still be well optimized.
- nopCommerce has many marketing tools that you can use at no cost. It has a discount coupon, email and newsletter, reward points system, gift cards, and many more. It also comes with shipping features, tax features, and stock management tools.
- It’s compatible with many payment gateways allowing it to accept many payment options.
- It also has a marketplace for apps and themes. So, you can buy the themes and apps for free or at a very low price.
Drawbacks of nopCommerce
Being an open-source e-commerce platform requires a developer for the proper building of your b2b online store. Also, nopCommerce needs to provide users more themes and templates.
Bottom Line
With a clear knowledge of the best e-commerce platform for small b2b businesses, the next thing for you to do now is to consider your budget, as well as your business-specific needs, to decide the appropriate e-commerce platform to develop your online store on.