Overview

Deciding on your next platform is a massive decision. Poorly placed emphasis can lead to a significant waste of money or years of frustration. Reports like the Forrester Wave generalize the opinions of of how they think thousands of merchants would view a platform.

Many are turning to Shopify because of its many features. But in reality, it's considered the safest option because it has so much traction. No platform is perfect; all have weaknesses.

There is no substitute for getting into the weeds and identifying which platform works best for your needs.

Do you need help?

We specialize in helping you determine your next platform. This thorough undertaking reviews all eCommerce-related aspects of your business and identifies the platform that best matches your needs now and your goals in the future. Many agencies recommend their preferred option. While we do specialize, we take an unbiased approach that relies on our experience to help guide you in the right direction—whether or not we would be the best fit to build the project.

Methodology

This page is assembled by Joseph Maxwell and Jon Guess at SwiftOtter based on their experience with these platforms.

Platform Overview

We investigate the overall capabilities and viewpoints of these platforms. What will you think of it in five years?

Catalog Features

We investigate the features relating to configuring and serving products to customers.

Customer Features

This section covers how customers will interact with this platform. You will see that personalization is not well adopted (yet). Adobe Commerce leads the way in this category. Note that this is well-available with 3rd-party tooling.

Checkout Features

What is the overall consensus on these eCommerce platforms? What will you think of this platform five years from now?

B2B Features

What is the overall consensus on these eCommerce platforms? What will you think of this platform five years from now?

Additional Features

What is the overall consensus on these eCommerce platforms? What will you think of this platform five years from now?

Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento 2) is part of the wider Adobe Experience Platform's eCommerce offering. Ten years ago, no Shopify or BigCommerce (Software-as-a-Service) offerings existed. If you wanted an enterprise-ready eCommerce platform, you would use Magento.

The key selling features of Adobe Commerce are the following:

• If you need significant levels of customization to core business processes. Open source, in general, provides this capability. Anything can be changed.
• If you are already using the Adobe Experience Platform suite, like Adobe Experience Manager, you might at as well keep your eCommerce experience in the same suite.

Adobe Commerce is the Burger King of eCommerce—your wallet is your limit. You are probably guessing that there is a significant cost for customization. But you might not realize that this cost is ongoing and directly related to the number of customizations and how well they were implemented.

Unfortunately, Adobe has had a significant challenge with partners who have a less-than-ideal understanding of how to customize Adobe Commerce. While the platform is rock-solid and performant, these customizations can make an abysmal experience. If you choose this route, select a densely certified partner, like SwiftOtter, that presents a strong case for ensuring quality code is deployed to production.

Shopify is based in Canada. They are the best-known eCommerce platform on the market. It has an unparalleled feature set. If Shopify doesn’t have a feature, it will have an app. Shopify has revenue that dwarfs any other rival. They regularly invest over $1 billion US dollars a year in building new features. Based on this introduction, you might be led to believe that Shopify is the best platform. What else is there to consider?

In our experience, Shopify is a “like it or leave” platform. It is a good fit if your needs align with their offering. You will likely reach for apps as your needs expand outside their core features. Here’s where we see satisfaction beginning to decrease: apps don’t tend to be well-vetted and poorly connected. In situations like expanding the number of options (color/size) on the product page, apps represent significant workarounds and can be a headache to manage.

Shopify Plus is being used by larger and larger enterprises. It is robust and has many features. Yet, there are some aspects to the system that are unrefined and cause customer and merchant frustrations.

BigCommerce is an up-and-coming platform in this pool of platforms. It wasn’t well-known until recent years when they have seen rapid growth. Part of their success is being a highly viable alternative to Adobe Commerce—BigCommerce solves many of these inherited issues nicely.

They have continued to invest in its platform, adding relevant features such as multi-storefront (which Shopify still does not have) and internationalization. Multi-storefront allows you to operate websites that all point to the same backend. This significantly improves efficiency for administrators and customer service representatives.

BigCommerce is Software-as-a-Service, akin to Shopify. However, the differences are significant because BigCommerce provides more touchpoints to interact with and customize how the platform behaves. BigCommerce’s approach facilitates the platform growing with the merchant instead of the merchant constantly hitting ceilings after a year or two.

WooCommerce has gained traction as a free eCommerce platform because it is open source. This does not mean that it is indeed free.

WooCommerce is based on WordPress, the world's most widely used content management system. It is customizable and flexible. A developer can change almost any aspect of a WordPress website.

Fledgling businesses often start with WooCommerce because of the “free” price point.

Unfortunately, nothing in life is free, and Woo has its challenges: security, ongoing maintenance, and performance. WordPress websites are notorious for getting hacked. While the core is solid and secure, extensions are not vetted. This means you are at the mercy of these 3rd-party developers and their willingness to respond to security notifications. WooCommerce is not a “plug-and-play” system.

One of the easiest ways to observe a brand growing out of WooCommerce is performance. We have seen multiple instances where a marketing email is sent, and the site goes down. This is costly for both revenue and reputation.

We do not recommend WooCommerce.