IBM Digital Commerce vs. Shopify

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
IBM Digital Commerce is an e-commerce platform that is designed to deliver omni-channel shopping experiences, including mobile, social, and in-store. In June 2019, IBM Digital Commerce was acquired by HCL Technologies.N/A
Shopify
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Shopify is a commerce platform designed for both online stores and retail locations. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales.
$29
per month
Pricing
IBM Digital CommerceShopify
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Shopify Lite
$9
per month
Basic Shopify
$29
per month
Shopify
$79
per month
Advanced Shopify
$299
per month
Shopify Plus
2,000
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Digital CommerceShopify
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Digital CommerceShopify
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Digital CommerceShopify
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
IBM Digital Commerce
7.6
3 Ratings
1% below category average
Shopify
7.5
131 Ratings
2% below category average
Product catalog & listings8.03 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Product management8.03 Ratings7.3129 Ratings
Bulk product upload8.03 Ratings7.6110 Ratings
Branding8.03 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
Mobile storefront8.03 Ratings7.5126 Ratings
Product variations8.03 Ratings6.4123 Ratings
Website integration8.03 Ratings9.2124 Ratings
Visual customization8.03 Ratings7.5129 Ratings
CMS4.02 Ratings4.6105 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
IBM Digital Commerce
6.0
3 Ratings
23% below category average
Shopify
8.1
125 Ratings
7% above category average
Abandoned cart recovery6.02 Ratings7.6116 Ratings
Checkout user experience6.03 Ratings8.5123 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
IBM Digital Commerce
6.0
3 Ratings
32% below category average
Shopify
9.0
127 Ratings
8% above category average
eCommerce security6.03 Ratings9.0127 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
IBM Digital Commerce
7.0
3 Ratings
7% below category average
Shopify
8.0
129 Ratings
7% above category average
Promotions & discounts7.03 Ratings7.3124 Ratings
Personalized recommendations7.03 Ratings8.432 Ratings
SEO7.03 Ratings8.4120 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
IBM Digital Commerce
6.2
3 Ratings
23% below category average
Shopify
8.0
130 Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-site management8.03 Ratings6.719 Ratings
Order processing5.03 Ratings9.1128 Ratings
Inventory management6.03 Ratings8.8127 Ratings
Shipping6.03 Ratings8.2120 Ratings
Custom functionality6.03 Ratings7.2120 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Digital CommerceShopify
Small Businesses
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 8.9 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.2 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Digital CommerceShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(144 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.2
(15 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Digital CommerceShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
I think WebSphere Commerce is well suited for customers looking to sell products online that need robustness and scalability as a priority. It provides a complete order cycle out of the box, or you can integrate with your existing order fulfillment. Online shopping models like digital subscriptions or a marketplace are not well suited as it requires a lot of customization
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Shopify
Shopify is a great platform for small to medium-sized businesses looking to set up an online store. It's easy to use, offers a wide range of features and integrations, and is perfect for businesses in the retail and food industry. However, large enterprise businesses with complex and custom needs may find Shopify less suitable.
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Pros
IBM
  • Websphere commerce provides efficient contract based pricing. Contract based pricing greatly helps in handling prices for different business
  • Catalog filtering is one other strength of websphere commerce, as it helps to filter the show only those products that the customer is entitled to
  • Extended site model is one other strength of WCS as it greatly helps in having multiple e-commerce sites for different demographics, for branding etc
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Shopify
  • It is definitely easy to set up and get going. This does not take a lot of work or effort on the user end, especially if using templates.
  • Low code platform. You can. make customizations without code.
  • The integrations are diverse and increase functionality.
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Cons
IBM
  • The e-Marketing spots contain content associated with marketing activities to target customer segment - needs some improvement. The algorithm to set up the priority of each of the Web Activity with in eMarketing spot is little bit confusing.
  • The catalog load can be simplified.
  • WebSphere Commerce is a huge application - someone needs to spend at least 5-6 years to learn about the whole application.
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Shopify
  • The main drawback that I am facing in Shopify for a long time is that their sales analytics system is not up to mark. As I am using Shopify to run different stores for my organization it does not get updated after-sales and does not provide the right analytics about the product strength and number of sales.
  • Secondly, Shopify has different apps which are best to run the store on max strength but they are very much costly like inventory management, generating multiple discount codes, and more robust customizable editing.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
The scalability and various configurations of the product allows for a wide range of e-commerce site features. It provides a storefront to begin with so it helps with speeding up development.
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Shopify
Nothing we have used in the past or have seen thus far even comes close to offering what we get with Shopify Plus, especially for the price. You cannot even come close to getting what we are getting at the price we pay. We are beyond thrilled and Shopify Plus meets and exceeds all of our needs and expectations. We love it!
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Usability
IBM
No answers on this topic
Shopify
I think most people are able to suer Shopify that have used a computer. There are some features that take a bit longer to learn. If you are not a creative person it may be a bit more difficult to learn the website customization, but with a help guide or tutorial it will only take a few tries to understand how to work the interface
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Support Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
Shopify
In terms of support I give Shopify a 9 out of 10 because they're always very friendly and thorough, and they personally can't solve my problem for me they always point me in the proper direction with the proper information I need to move forward
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Implementation Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
Shopify
Just start now and make the switch, the sooner the better. You will love it and it is really a simple process
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
IBM Digital Commerce was a lot more customizable and had a good engine for us to make enhancements. We were not locked down to certain integrations and we were able to utilize a lot of the features outside of the box vs using a prescribed set of features and functionality that other tools would force us to use
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Shopify
The old platform that I used could not help us to meet our requirements. It was not helping us properly, then I got to know about Shopify and started using it. After 1 month [of] usage of Shopify we could understand that this is the best platform [for E-commerce] to make better sales and goodwill. Shopify helped us to get a proper idea of the analytics of the website. Shopify [supports] most of the [applications] and helps us to make better results.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • For our clients in the apparel industry, the flexibility that WCS provides to scale up really helped their online business to grow tremendously.
  • Our client in the restaurant industry can't quite leverage what WCS has to offer though as it doesn't really fit their shopping model.
  • Another positive impact is that it allows our clients to streamline their commerce system in interacting with their backend.
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Shopify
  • It got the store up quickly so the client could start selling. She was previously selling products on Etsy and Facebook and wanted to consolidate everything onto one website, so the main thing Shopify solved was to reduce the store owner's time in managing all her products on multiple sites. Also, we had previously built a website on Wix with all the custom functionality and branding she needed - a truly great, high-end website - but it performed so slowly that it was unusable. So the speed at which Shopify can be set up and then works on the page is appreciable.
  • The website was manageable by the client - she could figure the system out herself after a while so she saved money on costs for hiring developers. She did have to hire developers to customize some of the plug-ins but costs are all relative; it wasn't a high investment compared to building a full e-commerce website. With the complexity and size of her product base and the functionality and branding she wanted to have in a website, and the potential of her business, she would have needed to invest well over $10,000 to get to where she really needs to be. In the end she kept the budget under $5000.00.
  • Costs kept climbing with plug-ins having to be added with everything. My client became more involved in building the website and began to try multiple plugins, and she did not have the skill base to evaluate the plugins functionalities so she chose plugins that did not do everything she needed, and then ended up paying the plugin developers to customize the plugins. So on one hand, it's pretty amazing to be able to bring up an e-commerce website as quickly as a week or so, but on the other hand if you need anything customized or deeper functionality in regards to product searching and filtering on the web page, and management on the backend, it quickly goes beyond the skills of the average person to manage, and above their expected budget as well. In the end my client really did not get anything close to the functionality for the website we had originally envisioned.
  • Shopify was the easiest way we could find to bring the client's products to a global market. We evaluated several other platforms and the functionality simple did not seem to be adequate, so Shopify seemed like the only solution that could do enough of what we needed and still stay within this client's budget. Really the problem in this project was not platform per se but that the budget wasn't large enough. Shopify managed to provide a solution for an ecommerce store with thousands of products on a tiny budget, so in the sense of pure functionality it provided the best value of all the platforms we evaluated. The solution still isn't big enough for this client's business though so, without having insights into this client's post-build sales results, my guess is that because her new website did not make her products easier to sort through, and she likely didn't have much more budget left to invest in SEO and other marketing of the website, her sales probably didn't increase substantially as a result of having built the website. So I think this project all in all did not likely have a high ROI.
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