With so many ecommerce platforms to choose from, it can be a daunting challenge for any business or even corporate team to choose the right fit for your needs. For those who “thought” they were choosing the best fit ecommerce platform, only to discover it was not exactly what you needed, we understand. Affordable Marketing has been helping small, medium and even larger companies choose the best ecommerce platform for their needs for over 20 years. We have even helped companies move from a bad fit, to a more appropriate fit with far less pain and costs than expected.
Conventional wisdom when researching ecommerce platforms generally leads to Shopify, we have seen this trend emerge over the years and have also seen a lot of buyers remorse when the reality of the limitations of a standard Shopify site set-in. While there are no perfect solutions to this question, there are obviously wrong choices if the requirements are not adhered to, and lowering costs becomes the focal point of the decision making process.
The question of lowering costs when researching the best fit ecommerce platform for your company is not how much, but where and when. This is where options become so important, without options you have limited choices, but with options you can customize your solution to the exact needs of your brand, products, and demographics.
Now, all of this may seem like unnecessary gobbledygook, and it may be for those intent on the fastest and easiest ecommerce solution whether it is a good fit or not. However, for those merchants who make informed decisions and need to check all the boxes, this should be music to your ears.
Here is the hard truth, while Shopify is the most advertised and well-known ecommerce platform in history it is also the most limiting ecommerce platform on the market. Next up is BigCommerce, not just limiting but way too complicated for the typical merchant. On the opposite end of the spectrum are open source ecommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Magento, both offer infinite levels of customization to code and databases.
WooCommerce, which works directly with WordPress, is by far the lowest cost, fastest to market open-source ecommerce platform. Other perks include ownership of the code and database, ability to add any shipping options on the market, add any payment gateway you want. No one can ever complain about what you’re selling, who you’re selling to or what methods you use to generate sales.
We recommend doing your research and calling our team at Affordable Marketing to get the truth and your available options. While we work on all platforms, we only recommend a very select few depending on the application.