Was this helpful?

(0) (0)

Announcing the Top Rated Ecommerce Platforms for 2018

May 8th, 2018 6 min read

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Ecommerce Platforms. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores.

Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right ecommerce platform based on your needs and current industry trends.

Overall Top Rated

Top Rated by Enterprises

Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies

Top Rated by Small Businesses

What are ecommerce platforms?

Ecommerce platforms provide a software solution for vendors who want to sell products and services online. The core components of ecommerce software include an online storefront, shopping cart capabilities, and a system for processing payments. The online storefront (or ecommerce website) is a site where customers can go to browse through products and compare details and pricing. Shopping cart capabilities allow customers to place items they want to buy in a virtual cart, so that they can pay for all their items together. Payment processing enables vendors to accept payment from customers through an online transaction.

Some ecommerce platforms offer their own in-house payment processing services, while others integrate with third-party payment gateway solutions (which usually involve a per-transaction processing fee to the vendor) to securely process payment in adherence with laws and regulations. Advanced ecommerce solutions support integrations with other business software solutions inherent to your sales processes, such as marketing automation or ERP.

Hosted vs. self-hosted ecommerce platforms

Ecommerce platforms are typically available in two different deployment methods: hosted and self-hosted, or open source. Hosted eCommerce software solutions are available for a monthly fee (which depends on factors like the size of your store, what features you need, etc.) and are managed by a third-party provider who takes care of all the intricacies of maintaining the system. These systems require fewer internal resources to keep them secure and stable, and offer flexibility for you to scale your online business by adding on features/storage as needed; however, they tend to be less customizable.

Self-hosted/open source eCommerce platforms can be tailored to your exact business needs and involve less of a financial commitment to a third-party, but you must have the knowledge, staff, and budget to create and maintain this type of eCommerce solution in-house.

The rise of B2B ecommerce

While ecommerce platforms have typically been used to facilitates sales to consumers, ecommerce systems are now beginning to offer tools that support B2B use cases as well. This shift is being driven largely by a growing millennial presence in the business world. As more millennials become buyers on behalf of the companies they work for, there’s a growing demand for B2B products and services to be available to purchase online.

The growth of B2B ecommerce is evident in online marketplaces like Amazon, which began facilitating B2B business transactions early on. For example, since its launch in 2015, Amazon Business has already accumulated over 1 million users. Still, most ecommerce platforms were developed with consumer sales in mind, and primarily serve a B2C use case. As this shift continues, it will be interesting to see how ecommerce platforms morph to accommodate the B2B market.

Choosing the right ecommerce platform

Using reviews can help you find the best ecommerce options for your business by showing you feedback from organizations like yours, who share similar needs for online sales transactions–in terms of the type of products they sell, size of their product catalog, scale of transactions, and whether they are a B2B or B2C vendor. Reviews can provide useful feedback regarding the in-house resources needed to support the platform, and level of integrations with other technologies.

Top Rated Criteria

Products included in the 2018 Top Rated Ecommerce Platforms list must have been in the top tier of their category TrustMap on April 27, 2018, to earn a Top Rated badge. To qualify for the Ecommerce Platforms TrustMap, products must have 10 reviews and ratings on TrustRadius. Every reviewer is verified and every review is vetted before publication. Products are plotted on the map based on end-user data, including users’ likelihood to recommend scores as well as buyer research patterns. To learn more about TrustMaps and Top Rated methodology, check out this page.

Was this helpful?

(0) (0)

TrustRadius Weekly