8 of the Best Ecommerce Platforms for 2024

For creators, launching an ecommerce business is about more than just selling products. It's about building a community, sharing your passions, and turning your creativity into a rewarding, profitable, and sustainable revenue source.

With so many ecommerce platforms available, each with its own features and pricing structures, how do you find the best ecommerce platform? Whether you choose Fourthwall, BigCommerce, Shopify, Wix, or another option, it's important to make the right choice. This guide aims to simplify the process, so you can check out our top 8 ecommerce platform picks to find the best ecommerce platform for you, and get on that road to success.

What Is an Ecommerce Platform?

An ecommerce platform is a digital marketplace where creators and businesses set up shop to sell their products or services online. Think of it as the engine that drives your online store - it provides essential tools and functionalities to manage inventory (and also often offers you the option to design your products right on-site), process payments, engage with customers, and find ways to recover abandoned carts. An ecommerce platform is basically your online store’s toolkit, helping you turn clicks into sales, and fans into loyal customers and supporters. Finding the best ecommerce platform can be challenging, but with careful consideration of which features you need, you can find the perfect ecommerce platform for you and your ecommerce store.

Important Ecommerce Platform Features to Consider

Hosting Environment  

The hosting environment for your ecommerce store is the first choice you'll need to make. Your two basic choices are cloud-hosted or self-hosted; some offer free plans, some are paid plans only. Fully cloud-hosted ecommerce platforms like Fourthwall offer a scalable and secure hosting solution; their ecommerce platform maintains your online store's files and data in the cloud (so you don't need your own server), and you don't need any special technical/coding knowledge to set up and run your ecommerce store. 

Self-hosted solutions require more technical expertise, so you will need to know how to set up your own server; your store's data would then be kept and maintained at that location. Launching a self-hosted site also means you'll be responsible for your own data backups and regular server maintenance.

Design and Customization

The best ecommerce platforms offer good customization and design options to allow creators and businesses to stand out with unique branding, both in the look of their ecommerce store, and in the customization of any print on demand products you choose to create. 

Ecommerce store customization is easiest on a site like Fourthwall, which features its own no-code custom ecommerce website builder, so you can choose a starting theme and then really make it your own by customizing the layout, images, colors, fonts, and more. Fourthwall also makes it easy to design your own print on demand products with a custom product maker (zero code knowledge required) and professional mockups. Similar website builders can also be found on sites like Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace.

Checkout System

One of the most critical features of the best ecommerce platforms is a safe and secure checkout system. Customers need to feel confident that their personal information is being protected through payment gateways and during the checkout process. 

Fully hosted ecommerce platforms will generally take care of credit card security and PCI (payment card industry) compliance so you don't have to worry about it; things get a little more complicated if you choose a self-hosted ecommerce solution.

Integrations and APIs

Integrations and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow ecommerce platforms to communicate with other software applications. This allows creators and businesses to offer richer experiences to their online store customers, with ecommerce platform features like product catalogs, pricing information, order management, checkout services/payment gateway usage, and customer data. These also facilitate helpful automated processes and streamlined shopping operations. 

All-in-one ecommerce platforms like Fourthwall are the easiest way to make sure you have these features available on your ecommerce store; they do all of the behind the scenes work for you, so you can focus on your products, customer service, and promo.

Scalability and Growth 

Scalability is an important part of your ecommerce solution, because creators and businesses need to be able to grow and adapt to change as they do so. The best ecommerce platforms should check all the important boxes - effectively and efficiently scaling products, customers, and traffic as the site grows. 

Some examples of this include the ability to handle a high volume of visitors during peak times; reliable performance for functions like browsing products and adding them to a shopping cart; and speedy loading of images and info on the pages of your online store.

Customer Service

Finally, good customer service is essential. Any problems or issues need to be solved reasonably quickly, and it's important to have easy access to support when needed. And by customer service, we mean on both ends of your ecommerce platform - you should have quick access to assistance as a site creator/business owner, and your customers should also be able to get a fast response from customer service agents should they have a question or problem with their order. 

Sites like Fourthwall are among the best ecommerce platforms, as they put priority into executing top level customer service, with partner management teams, helpful blogs and guides, and a "customer-centric" support approach for your fans.

8 of the Best Ecommerce Platforms for 2024

1. Fourthwall

Designed for content creators, Fourthwall is an ecommerce platform that hits all of the bullet points listed above. It's a cloud-based host (so takes on most of the tough stuff for you in regards to APIs, integrations, and payment gateways); and it lets you customize virtually everything (with user-friendly tools to help you do so, including their own website builder). It also offers targeted marketing tools, community-building features, robust analytics for data-driven decision making, excellent customer service, and fan-driven product development, all for free. Fourthwall powers a wide range of sites and online stores for everything from Twitch gaming streamers to musicians, photographers to artists, comedians, actors, influencers, and YouTubers, and it’s easy to get started.

Pros:

• Community building features like custom links pages, promo codes and giveaways, video thank you notes, stream alerts, live gifting, and integration with other ecommerce opportunities like TikTok Shop and the YouTube Merch Shelf
• Fan-driven product development
• Flexible product offerings and monetization options beyond merchandise, including Fourthwall site memberships and videos 
• Excellent behind-the-scenes support and scalability.
• Robust analytics for data-driven decision-making.

Cons:

• Fourthwall is best if you're bringing in your own audience/customer base, as there isn't really a store discoverability system yet.

2. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a comprehensive ecommerce platform that provides management tools for established businesses and unlimited staff accounts, the latter being a good perk to have as your online store grows. It lets you get started with a free plan for 15 days (paid plans start at $29 per month), and then uses revenue tiers to determine what kind of paid plan you'll need as your BigCommerce shop grows. With BigCommerce as your ecommerce solution, you can integrate your store's products with major marketplaces from Amazon to Google Shopping; they also offer a range of customization options in their "Page Builder" website builder tool (although some of the custom themes are pricey), SEO tools, and a good selection of secure payment gateways.

Pros:

• BigCommerce integrates with major ecommerce marketplaces.
• Management tools for established businesses including SEO tools.
• BigCommerce allows for unlimited staff accounts.

Cons:

• Both the BigCommerce site itself and its custom themes can be expensive.
• Complex ecommerce platform to use; the initial online store setup is often said to be especially confusing, and you have to locate and install plug-ins for some shipping features. Aimed more at larger businesses.

3. Magento

Adobe Commerce, aka Magento, is a highly customizable ecommerce platform with its own website builder that offers custom design opportunities via open source programming. It's technically free and does have all of the tools needed for selling products in your own online store, including inventory management plus barcodes, a customer loyalty program, payment gateway integrations, and a fast checkout system - but you're going to need your own web host and a good amount of technical proficiency in order to get a Magento online store up and running. Once you do, you can take advantage of some solid design opportunities including layered navigation, sitemaps, and meta tags and descriptions.

Pros:

• Custom design opportunities including themes and extensions that you can make your own with programming knowledge and Magento's CMS (content management system).
• Works with third-party integrations like PayPal, eBay, and Google Analytics.

Cons:

• Hosting is not included.
• Engineered more for huge product catalogs and a large amount of transactions; may not be as user-friendly for content creators or those new to ecommerce.
• This ecommerce solution requires programming knowledge or an IT tech due to its steeper learning curve.

4. Shopify

Another of the best ecommerce platforms is Shopify, offering a wide range of integrations and many free site designs in its website builder. You can start with the free option for the site itself (for 3 days), although you'll probably rapidly need more features as your Shopify ecommerce site grows, and those costs can add up, with the most basic Shopify plans starting at $29 and $79 per month. Shopify is one of the most well-known ecommerce solutions, and its benefits include an easy to use basic interface and themes you can use to make your own Shopify online store. You can also add extra features and functionality to your Shopify ecommerce store by using apps; and if you have trouble, there's a marketplace of "Shopify Experts" you can hire to really get your store all set up.

Pros:

• Well-known ecommerce platform name with a good reputation.
• Wide range of integrations and places to sell, including web, mobile, and social media.
• Many of Shopify's site designs have support for interesting effects like hover and dynamic scrolling.

Cons:

• Integrations and more complex Shopify site themes can become expensive (some site features are locked behind plan paywalls) and you may need to hire help.
• You can accept a wide range of payment methods and currencies, but some carry transaction fees.

5. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a little different from the other ecommerce solutions mentioned here in that it's primarily an advanced WordPress site. (WordPress is an open source content management system that lets you build websites.) WooCommerce does boast a lot of customization options for your ecommerce store, but as it's limited to WordPress-created sites, you're going to need to do some homework (and bring your own web host) unless you already know how to design WYSIWYG sites and how to install plug-ins. That said, WooCommerce does integrate with a large selection of those plug-ins, making the ecommerce platform versatile and scalable as long as you're willing to put the work in; it’s also one of the best ecommerce platforms for letting you sell a wide range of products and downloads in your online store.

Pros:

• Easily integrates with WordPress, so if you've used WordPress before it should be easy to design your site/store.
• Highly customizable with many plug-ins and integrations to choose from, as long as you know what you're doing.
• Lets you sell a wide range of products.

Cons:

• WooCommerce sites/stores are limited to sites created with WordPress, so in the reverse of the above, if you're not familiar with WordPress there's a big learning curve.
• Web hosting is not included. 
• Limited customer payment options; you'll have to install extensions to get more.

6. Wix

Wix is a user-friendly ecommerce platform that offers a website builder and ecommerce capabilities, although in some instances, it sacrifices ecommerce functionality for aesthetics. Online stores made with Wix are easy to create via its templates and drag and drop interface, and have a lot of visual appeal; you can design and launch a Wix ecommerce platform site fairly quickly, especially if you use Wix's ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) tool to help you choose your Wix online store's style and layout. At the Wix Pro plan level, there's even a tool to help you create a business logo if you don't already have one. Hosting is included with Wix (there's a free Wix plan, or you can opt for a paid Wix plan starting at $16 per month), and integrated payments are included with all Wix business and ecommerce plans.

Pros:

• Hosting and a lot of site design tools are included to help launch your Wix online store.
• Offers a free Wix plan.
• Wix is a user-friendly ecommerce platform that's easy for beginners to use.

Cons:

• Focus is more on Wix website design/building than on ecommerce.
• Only limited analytics are included in Wix's free plan.

7. Squarespace

Next on our list of the best ecommerce platforms is Squarespace, is a website-building platform that does offer some ecommerce capabilities. However, it's actually better known as a site for blogging, portfolio sites, resumes, or personal websites. Squarespace offers a selection of good looking premade website templates, plus Squarespace AI to help you write starter product descriptions and store copy; they're also equipped for you to handle payments (including PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe), and shipping options. If you use Squarespace as your ecommerce solution, you can sell products, digital content, videos, services, and subscriptions; paid plans start at $16 per month.

Pros:

• Well-designed themes and templates, over 100 to choose from in Squarespace's website builder.
• Good looking and responsive websites.

Cons:

• Not solely focused on ecommerce, although it's improving.
• Limited customization with CSS and HTML.
• Once you choose a site template, it's extremely difficult to change it to a different one.

8. Shift4Shop

Our last ecommerce solution for your consideration is Shift4Shop, an ecommerce platform for US-based businesses and creators. It offers 24/7 customer support, various checkout options for your online store, and the ability to sell digital downloads; Shift4Shop's free plan is more extensive than some of the other free plans in this list, and there's no product limit regarding how many items you can have for sale in your Shift4Shop ecommerce store. It also has some interesting tools for your shoppers, including social wish lists, an abandoned cart saver, a Shift4Shop gift registry and gift certificates. However, Shift4Shop sites are difficult to customize and reportedly can have technical issues with components like site navigation, which can be glitchy at times.

Pros:

• 24/7 customer support.
• Has some unique extra tools for your shoppers.
• Lets you sell digital downloads alongside physical products.

Cons:

• Shift4Shop sites can be difficult to customize with limited customization options.
• Site can sometimes come across as a little unprofessional when things like navigation buttons don't work correctly.
• Limited to US-based businesses and creators, plus you must process at least $500 in Shift4Shop sales to keep using the free plan.

Power Your Ecommerce Journey With Fourthwall!

Choosing the best ecommerce platform ultimately depends on each creator's unique needs. Fourthwall ranks up high on the best ecommerce platforms list because it's laser-focused on success - it's a platform designed with content creators and other creatives in mind, offering lots of tools for fan communities, endless options for designing both your ecommerce store and your merch, and robust analytics. All of these features can help creators build flourishing ecommerce ventures.

With Fourthwall, you can launch a website, design and sell products, and/or offer memberships to your supporters, making it a popular choice for creators who want to both monetize their content and connect in new and exciting ways with their fan base. You can easily get started with Fourthwall's own suite of tools, which include customization and branding tools, drag and drop designing, multiple payment gateways, abandoned cart emails, SEO tools, and so much more, with no monthly fees or upfront costs. Try Fourthwall today!