As the world is advancing, people’s strategies to do business are also advancing. Today, we are living in an era of the internet and our world is a digital world. Unsurprisingly, eCommerce has become a multi-billion dollar business model and it is still growing unprecedentedly. 

Nowadays, every entrepreneur wants to know more about eCommerce because it brings huge advantages to the table. However, the fact remains that eCommerce isn’t as simple and straightforward as it seems despite its huge popularity and potential. One thing has been common among all entrepreneurs – almost all of them were intimidated and overwhelmed by eCommerce. 

But the good news is we are loving in an advancing, not a static world. Innovation, improvisation, and state-of-the-art solutions are the trademarks of our advancing world. So, as eCommerce is growing, technology is also growing. Latest technologies, tools, shopping carts, etc. are doing us a great favor by making online business easier for us. Now, eCommerce isn’t something available only to large businesses and enterprises. It is available now to all and sundry, even to a sole-proprietor doing online business from the house floor. Thanks to eCommerce platforms, entrepreneurs can now deal with their eCommerce businesses and market in an optimized fashion with ease even if they don’t have any programming knowledge at all. In today’s post, we are going to share with you various aspects of eCommerce platforms, their advantages/disadvantages, and popular eCommerce platforms. 

Table of Content

  1. What is an eCommerce platform?
  2. Types of eCommerce platforms
  3. Advantages of eCommerce SaaS platforms
  4. Disadvantages of eCommerce SaaS platforms
  5. Why does a SaaS platform suit your business? 
  6. Why you should use an eCommerce platform for your business?
  7. Best eCommerce SaaS platforms
  8. How to start your own eCommerce business?

What is an eCommerce platform?

An eCommerce platform is a web-based software that facilitates entrepreneurs and business owners in managing their online stores/websites and their items/products/services they are selling on their online stores, dealing with customers or other entrepreneurs, or conducting other business-related activities. The plus point of eCommerce platforms is that you don’t need prior programming knowledge or even the knowledge of the software you are using. 

eCommerce platforms have made the life of entrepreneurs and owners of online stores exceptionally easy and effortless. There are various advantages of them and that is why they have transformed the ways of people’s doing online business. Furthermore, it is also significantly cost-effective and economical that saves lots of money over time. Overall, doing business online is better than having a physical store because you have reached a maximum audience, it is seamlessly easy and economical, and you can manage your business from mobile locations even from the cozy comfort of your home. 

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Types of eCommerce platforms

There are two main types of eCommerce platforms – open-source and SaaS-based.

1. Open-source eCommerce platforms

Open-source eCommerce means a user can download a product from a vendor, set it up on his/her website, and have it running. The user has the source code of the downloaded program. Moreover, the user can also adapt and customize the software using source code to meet particular business requirements. Open-source software is highly proficient and customizable but is complex solutions. Only certified developers can make changes to them and customize them for you. People in need of the extreme level of customization only choose open source eCommerce platforms. The reason is – if an open-source platform doesn’t have a particular feature, it can be added by altering the source code. In short, open-source eCommerce platforms are just like having a property. You can alter it according to your own desires, needs, and preferences. 

2. SaaS-based eCommerce platforms

Software As a Service (SaaS) is a business model that deals with providing services online or over the internet. In other words, it is about providing facilitated software or applications. The entire software or application isn’t downloadable and runs on your vendor’s server. SaaS platforms relieve you of worries regarding the management of complex applications and security concerns.

The biggest advantage of availing services of a SaaS-based eCommerce platform is that your desired application isn’t run by you on your premise. Rather, the application runs on the vendor’s facilitated server and the supplier is responsible for the upkeep, execution, and security of the application on its server.

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Advantages of eCommerce SaaS platforms

SaaS business model is booming in recent years. There is a huge variety of SaaS platforms that provide highly specialized and distinctive services to different businesses. eCommerce SaaS platforms are one key element of SaaS services that has made the professional lives of online store orders easy. Now, they don’t need to bother about matters like hosting and technical support. They just have to pay monthly fees and the vendor will handle the rest. eCommerce SaaS platforms are extremely advantageous because of offering various commendable advantages. 

1. Modern, creative, and innovative solutions

SaaS eCommerce platforms are modern, creative, and innovative solutions. They exquisitely provide an out-of-the-box application that comes with remarkable tools and features. Prebuilt & adaptable features such as customizable themes, data management, basic service/product/item data management, marketing, and other similar facilities allow merchants and business owners to maintain their focus only on their business. eCommerce SaaS platforms relieve them of various concerns. Moreover, new entrepreneurs and merchants also capitalize on prebuilt modules and can set up and run their online businesses immediately. They don’t need to wait for a team of developers to develop an application from scratch. Thus, SaaS eCommerce platforms are the best modern and innovative solutions for experienced as well as novice online merchants.

2. Maintenance and management

As we have mentioned earlier that the main advantage of using an eCommerce SaaS platform is that the vendor is responsible for the upkeep, maintenance, and backend management. You don’t need to think about fixing bugs, updates, performance, and even hosting-related concerns such as uptime. All the responsibility lies with the provider to constantly observe and monitor your store’s performance. Moreover, eCommerce SaaS platforms promise and ensure exceptional customer support services to set the highest standards of customer care and keep their customers happy. So, if you aren’t tech-savvy and don’t have a tech team either, then this is another distinction of SaaS eCommerce platforms. 

3. Scalability

Scalability is an important factor for all businesses, especially for rapidly growing businesses. As more customers begin to flow in and you have to manage more orders, you need to add more functionality to your online store. You cannot incur huge costs to build again or rebuild an existing platform to cope with the growing needs. Therefore, you need to start with a platform that facilitates scalability when needed. Again, eCommerce SaaS platforms are at your service. You can easily scale functionality by integrating more apps into your existing platform. For example, you can easily handle increased traffic, add more sales channels, and so on.

4. Ensure simple and easy integration

There is no doubt in the fact that an eCommerce platform provides the foundations for your online business, it isn’t necessarily the only system to run your business. You need several other tools such as financial management software. So, you need an eCommerce SaaS platform that ensures simple and easy integration with tools such as 3PL, POS, ERP, etc. Moreover, business owners should use the best platforms for each aspect of their business. Using a single platform for the whole business activity is a bad practice that often proves costly. Therefore, merchants should use the best eCommerce platforms that ensure great integration with other platforms necessary for an online business. Having said that, SaaS eCommerce platforms are the best in this regard. They come with powerful APIs that facilitate the ultimate integration. Thus, eCommerce SaaS platforms enable you to integrate and synchronize different platforms to do all business activities in the best way possible. They allow you to efficiently and effectively synchronize different business activities such as inventory, orders, items, shipping, tracking of orders, and customer support.

5. Promise security and PCI compliance

PCI compliance means you have to contribute towards security solutions regarding global payment card data security. It requires you to aid in preventing security breaches and credit/debit card data theft. So, when you sell online, you have to ensure PCI compliance as you are supposed to protect your customer’s card data. Again, nothing is better than eCommerce SaaS platforms in this regard as well. SaaS platforms ensure PCI compliance. They constantly watch and remain vigilant to fix any issues or bugs, influencing your security, as soon as possible. In short, eCommerce SaaS platforms help you to satisfy your customers about the protection of their card data.

6. Cost

As you don’t have to build a customized platform for your business, you don’t have to incur hefty costs. Secondly, eCommerce SaaS platforms are responsible for the maintenance and backend management of your platform, you don’t need to spend on these issues. You only need to spend upfront when purchasing a subscription. That means SaaS eCommerce platforms are more affordable, economical, and saves you a lot of costs besides relieving you of lots of other worries.

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Disadvantages of eCommerce SaaS platforms

It is very aptly said that nothing is perfect. Everything that has advantages also has disadvantages. eCommerce SaaS platforms also have some disadvantages and are not always the best options for all sorts of businesses. 

1. Dealing with complex business requirements

Businesses need customization when required to deal with versatile and complex types of business. If your business is expanding rapidly and you have to sell across markets, eCommerce, commercial centers, and abroad, then a single platform cannot fit your needs. You need customization to tackle requirements arising from expanding your business. Therefore, you will have to improvise and use solutions or a combination of solutions to handle all frameworks and procedures in the best way.

2. Lack of customization options

Lack of customization options is another major drawback of eCommerce SaaS platforms. You don’t have access to source code, so you cannot customize them according to your needs. What you only get are the prebuilt functionalities and inherent usefulness. On the other hand, open-source eCommerce platforms grant you access to the source code. You can add new functionalities and features to your software by making changes to the source code. Thus, the lack of sufficient customization options often proves a huge hindrance in the process of optimizing your online store and grow your business. 

3. Fail to support B2B businesses

B2B business requirements are totally different from B2C business requirements. There are several aspects that are just related to B2B businesses. For example, customer-specific pricing plans, wholesale pricing plans, different payment options, bulk discounts, and so on. Not all eCommerce platforms, irrespective of SaaS or not, fail to cater to B2B business requirements.

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Which SaaS platform suits your business?

SaaS business model has become a phenomenon in the corporate sector. SaaS eCommerce platforms enjoy a major share in the online store industry as almost 40% of online stores are powered by SaaS eCommerce platforms. So, why does a SaaS platform suit your business? A SaaS platform suits your business because of several reasons. 

  • You don’t need to spend so much time and money on building a solution from scratch. 
  • You don’t need to learn coding as eCommerce SaaS platforms don’t require any coding experience to manage your online business. 
  • You can get a perfect online store with a platform having all the functionalities required to operate online stores. 
  • A good eCommerce SaaS platform is easy to adapt by integrating different applications, plugins, and extensions to meet the requirements of online stores. 
  • SaaS eCommerce platforms are cloud-based solutions, therefore, can easily connect with a database containing all the data and relevant information. 
  • SaaS eCommerce platforms allow you access from any device of your choice and from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. So, you don’t need to install any additional software to gain access to your online store.

In short, SaaS eCommerce platforms have multiple reasons for their popularity. They have multiple reasons supporting why you should look up to a SaaS platform. SaaS suits almost all types and sizes of businesses. Especially all those businesses that want to focus their resources on the growth of their business rather than wasting energies and resources on maintenance, infrastructure, and security. 

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Why you should use an eCommerce platform for your business

Whether you are running an enterprise-level online store or just beginning your eCommerce business journey, you don’t have enough time to have your store built from scratch. You also have to break the bank to design and build a unique store for your business. Only huge enterprises have that option. Secondly, even if you somehow manage to build it from scratch, you will have to face difficulties when integrating a plugin. 

eCommerce platforms eliminate all these hurdles and present you an extremely beautiful, user-friendly, highly customizable, and feature-packed stores within no time. So, you can save a lot of time and money while eliminating hurdles associated with building your online store from scratch. However, not all of the eCommerce platforms are equally good. When you have to choose an eCommerce platform for yourself, look for the following features. 

  • Security – PCI compliance and ensures the utmost level of safety and security
  • Themes – Beautiful and creative designs with multiple layouts
  • Customization – Easy customization options like free drag and drop page builders like Elementor
  • Site optimization – Responsive, mobile-ready, retina-ready 
  • SEO – Search engine optimization tools to ensure full SEO optimization together with fully customized URLs to assist you to rank yourself up on search engines
  • Integration – Allows integration of other important plugins such as WooCommerce, eCommerce analytics, or other relevant plugins
  • Scalability – Offers scalability whenever your growing business requires 
  • User-friendly – Is easy to use and handle for everyone not just for tech-savvy persons

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Best eCommerce SaaS platforms

So, are you thinking about the proficiency and benefits of the eCommerce SaaS platform? Are you considering choosing a SaaS platform for your business and want to learn about some of the most popular eCommerce SaaS platforms out there in the market? Then there is no need to be overwhelmed because we are going to share with you a list of some popular eCommerce SaaS platforms.

1. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is an exquisite eCommerce SaaS platform that is designed and developed to enable you to build a business according to your own ideas. It promises the flexibility of open SaaS to increase the pace of your business’s growth while keeping complexity away. BigCommerce offers remarkable features to build, innovate, and grow your business. 

  • Build your business with BigCommerce – provides concrete foundations to start your business and then build using the following key features.
    • You can create a beautiful online store using your own creativity and aesthetic sense with design tools that know no limits. 
    • You can keep yourself away from worries related to operational complexities with such a user-friendly and secure eCommerce SaaS platform. 
    • You can avail a feature-packed platform that has all the potential to outperform your competitors and entice your customers so that they keep coming back.
  • Innovate with BigCommerce – ensures to turn impossible into possible by providing flexible solutions and lets you innovate without any boundaries. You can stay agile all the way and seize all the opportunities the market presents in your way. BigCommerce ensures enough flexibility to make your online store content-rich and integrate all types of applications, add-ons, or plugins with ease.
  • Grow with BigCommerce – promises growth by ensuring scalability that your business requires. You can convert more audience into your customers and take your business beyond borders by selling internationally. Furthermore, BigCommerce provides powerful analytics to empower you to gain insight from valuable customer data.

2. Magnento

Magnento is another highly proficient eCommerce platform that offers a variety of themes and plugins, to begin with. It guarantees the highest-quality features, the ultimate customization, and seamless integration. Magnento brings various mesmerizing features with the right potentials to make your business grow faster than ever before. 

  • Magnento knows no limits and no boundaries – you can get an extremely powerful and impactful all-in-one solution that is feature-rich for businesses of all types and sizes across all industries to look for global growth and expansion. Moreover, it promises scalability and the ultimate customization 
  • Magnento facilitates B2B eCommerce – B2B business requirements are significantly different from B2C business. In today’s B2B market, you have to provide an easy and intuitive online buying experience to your B2B customers and Magnento is the best at it.
  • Magnento promises omnichannel success – you can achieve omnichannel success beyond your imagination with the help of Magnento’s right products, services, and partners.
  • Magnento takes you beyond borders – you can take your business to wherever you want without considering any boundaries. It helps you seek global expansion by providing you all that you need to operate your online store on an international level. 

3. Shopify

Shopify is another top eCommerce SaaS platform that is trusted by more than 1.7 million businesses across the globe. It is one of the most economical and affordable eCommerce platforms and suits small businesses and startups. Shopify always upholds the highest standards in the industry and offers various top-notch features that have already built a huge Shopify customer base. 

  • Shopify offers beautiful and ready-to-go themes – allows you to choose one from 100+ themes. You can control the design, look, and feel of your online store using the do-it-yourself tool.
  • Shopify is feature-packed – you can get access to a never-ending chain of features to make your business management a breeze. Its versatile features cover almost all aspects of an online business from marketing to inventory, from payments to sales reporting, and from orders to customer support services. 
  • Shopify has apps for everything – you can avail yourself of applications of your choices from a long list of more than 3,000 free and paid applications. Such a huge collection of apps empowers you to customize your store with ease as per your creative skills, attract and engage more audience, save a lot of time, and much more.

4. Volusion

Volusion is another top-class eCommerce SaaS platform option that works with the motive to provide eCommerce for everyone. Near two million entrepreneurs trusted Volusion and are now enjoying a huge success. It provides you unique themes and designs for your store. Those remarkable themes have more than enough to meet your creative and aesthetic requirements. Besides, Volusion also provides the best features so that you can provide a customer experience to your customers they will never forget. 

  • Volusion provides some supreme quality themes for your online store that captivate your visitors. Creating a responsive store with some unique qualities within a few minutes is really surprising. 
  • Volusion is a feature-rich eCommerce SaaS platform that gives you a complete package to make you sell with ease. It provides a streamlined system that manages all your business activities right from uploading product images to inventory management and from payment collection to order management, and so on. 
  • Easy integration with other applications is one of the most coveted features. Volusion allows you to add functionality to your store with ease. It easily integrates with dozens of powerful apps and plugins to make your life easy.
  • Volusion’s built-in SEO optimization system, CRM system, and newsletters empower you to market your store with precision and perfection. 
  • Exceptional customer support services of a service provider are always loved because whenever and wherever a problem appears before you, 24/7 customer support service is available to help you out.

5. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is another one of the industry’s leading eCommerce SaaS platforms. It is an all-in-one cloud-based eCommerce solution that has transformed the shopping experience. Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers lots of features such as artificial intelligence, merchandising, content, marketing, promotion, and much more. 

  • It is a highly scalable eCommerce SaaS platform that promises scalability according to the needs of your growing business. 
  • Salesforce Commerce Cloud helps you begin personalized campaigns to make the commerce experience beautiful. 
  • Converts more and more visitors into your customers by ensuring a personalized shopping experience. Moreover, a connection between sales, commerce, marketing, IT, and services empowers you to get customer insights and devise your policies accordingly. 
  • With a staggering uptime of 99.9%, it ensures your online presence every second of the day. So, the chances of your growth double.
  • Artificial intelligence, the best applications, powerful tools, a huge collection of your customers’ data, and much more make Salesforce Commerce Cloud really a great option for entrepreneurs. 

6. 3dcart

3dcart eCommerce platform is another one of the most popular and commonly employed eCommerce SaaS platforms that ensures a user-friendly interface and a remarkable dashboard. It is also one of the most effective and impactful tools that helps you drive traffic, enhance sales, and grow your business accordingly to your own plans. Thousands of stores across the globe are currently using the 3dcart eCommerce platform because of its various inspiring features. 

  • Assists you in driving more traffic to your website and increase conversion rate by offering responsive themes, SEO optimization, and eCommerce tools for marketing. 
  • Allows you to add high-quality product images and product information with ease. It facilitates your customers by showing recommended products and edit and save their selections through a shopping cart.
  • Offers the utmost level of security to protect the card data of your customers. Anti-fraud tools, two-factor authentication, HTTPS, and PCI compliance make 3dcart one of the safest and secure eCommerce platforms on the planet. 
  • Scalability is another one of the most crucial elements for your eCommerce businesses and 3dcart offers the optimum scalability as it grows its features with your business. It is a perfect platform for unlimited traffic and sales. Its built-in or integrated CRM system helps you manage a huge customer base.
  • 3dcart is also a superfast platform that promises an astonishing uptime of 99.94%. That means you can give your customers a flawless and unique shopping experience. They can easily visit and buy products from your stores whenever they want, even during the busiest seasons. 
  • Flexibility is another great feature of 3dcart that integrates well with other online tools. It allows you to integrate tools like eCommerce analytics, retail management, inventory management, marketing tools, etc. 

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How to start your own eCommerce business?

Starting your own eCommerce business is similar to starting any other business. You need to have a unique idea and a value proposition. The following is the outline explaining how to start your own eCommerce business. 

1. Think about a profitable idea and value proposition

You cannot expect to be successful without putting some serious thought into the foundations of your business. You shouldn’t start a business on the basis of your liking or disliking. If you want to start in a particular industry, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will achieve success because you like that industry. Instead, begin with a lot of market reasons and come up with a unique idea. Find an industry where you can excel. After choosing a profitable industry, choose a niche for your business. A particular niche helps you excel through specialization. Furthermore, a unique value proposition helps you find a very special aspect of your business that will define why and how your business stands out from your competitors.

2. Conduct extensive research

Once you are done with your industry and niche, start conducting extensive research in that area and collect data. You can look into your possible competitors, their business model, pricing strategies, possible challenges, and so on. You can use this data to alter your initial plan as new information can play a key role in making your initial plan better.

3. Decide how you are going to get products

There are different options available to get products you are going to sell online. Decide whether you will manufacture your products, buy from suppliers, or drop ship them? If you have to choose between suppliers, contact various suppliers and discuss factors like quality, delivery time, pricing, and so on.

4. Name your business

Your business’s name is going to be a brand name. It should be worthy of being called a brand. As a general rule, your business’s name should reflect your business’s unique value proposition, core values, and products. Besides, you should also name your business by keeping in the mind domain name. It should also be a good domain name. You can also design a logo and color scheme for your business. 

5. Get your eCommerce website ready

Now is the time to get your eCommerce website ready. Do your homework first before choosing between open source eCommerce platforms and SaaS-based eCommerce platforms. Analyze and decide the best option for your business. Once the type is decided, you can compare different eCommerce platforms and see factors like pricing plans, features, ease of use, and so. You can also go for a free trial to test the chosen platform. Once you have decided, you can start building your website. 

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The wrap-up

An eCommerce platform is a web-based software that facilitates entrepreneurs and business owners in managing their online stores/websites. There are two types of eCommerce platforms – open-source and SaaS-based eCommerce platforms. And for entrepreneurs and merchants, choosing between these two is a tough decision and they need to think big before making the final decision. 

If you want to sell products via an online store then you need to choose a platform that is right for your business. A good all-in-one eCommerce platform ensures scalability so that you don’t need to migrate to another platform in the future when your business grows. Therefore, it is imperative to consider the needs of your business, your resources, and your budget when comparing open source and SaaS-based eCommerce platforms. Although most of the top-notch eCommerce SaaS platforms offer the ultimate scalability and customization now. Still, it is a fact that they aren’t suitable for all business types.

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