Which one eCommerce platform?

Choose a hosted cart starting out, it will mean you don't have to focus on technology and can therefore focus on shipping orders, returns, content etc. I'd recommend either Shopify or BigCommerce.

Once you build the business, switch to your own platform.

P.S - is your ecommerce site going to be etoot.com or is that a separate venture? I'm working on something similar so I'm interested.

Well just visit https://www.magentocommerce.com/product/features this and you will know how Magento is the best platform as compared with others.

Any of those you mentioned would be fine, just try them out.

Question, why such a specific launch date before you even have a platform?

most of the shopping cart's are similar but it's depend on your need , but you can go with opencart or manually development like joomla , word press etc .

Here's my take on Americommerce based on my personal experience, and just the facts. They have some newer responsive templates which use twitter bootstrap development. While they do have a low monthly fee and facebook and mobile marketing is integrated into their templates, overall I have found their technical support to be both unprofessional and lacking in expertise in many instances. There are support tickets where I had to repeat my question over and over. In addition they have a old knowledge base which they are in the process of updating and will link to which is totally unrelated (in some instances) to the support problem. The overall back admin section is not intuitive. You will have to learn the backend. It's not a quick startup and go. The knowledge base as it is now does not help when starting out. My experience was on the response times for html/css issues can take 10 days or more, depending on the problem. Some of their templates have "hot fixes" or updates that need to be done. Hope that helps.

A link with other reviews: http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews139735.html

Based on how you have described your project you should take a close look at both Magento and OpenCart. The others on your list probably would not be as a good fit.

I would suggest you trial at least three of the solutions to see which is the best fit for you. Shopify, Bigcommerce and Magento are all very well supported but the others may be better depending on your needs. Recommendations on here are fine, but not a replacement for trialling some of the solutions.

Hi There,

I think the big difference you are looking at is dedicated hosting vs hosting it yourself.

Bigcommerce, Shopify, Corecommerce or however you go. They are all good hosting platforms. The main thing you get with them is the support. They are responsible for any internal website functionality. If you ever have an issue, then call up support and they will guide you free. Yes if there are errors in the code that you have done or your developer has done, they will not be able to help you. They will tell you to reach out to the the premium partners.

Now OpenCart, WooCommerce, and other self hosted platform, you will get very limited support. If something breaks you will have to pay a developer to troubleshoot and figure out the issues.

I would test out the dedicated hosted ecommerce solutions. They all offer free trials. You can see if the platform works for you.

We built responsive themes that are currently being sold on the Bigcommerce theme store. If you are looking to go that route, we can help you get a nice responsive website up.

Reach out to me directly if you need anymore consultation. We have built many websites on this platform.

Thanks,
PSDCenter Team

You can use open-cart CMS for your e-commerce website.
Wordpress is best CMS for SEO. And you can use woocommerce plugin to your site. Which will give you all e-commerce feature on your wordpress site. Good Luck.

Shopify and Magento are also very popular.

When you go with these mentioned platform,it definitely lacks the dynamic features and option.whereas you il get all your desired features by means of opting with ready made e-commerce scripts in the market.

You missed a really good one called Prestashop. I would select opencart from your list.

For security concerns I would stay away from Wordpress. I have made many ecommerce website and tried many platforms. So far Prestashop is the best. Good luck

i ussually use prestashop for eCommerce site.

Hi

Go for Opencart

simple but can scale up , lots of free or low cost extensions,

Prashant

If you need solid framework, and scalability then go for Magento, its free, open source, easy to use and customize . Plenty of Plugins for Magento to chose which can help your website run smarter.

For starting ecommerce I recommended using hosted platform like shopify or bigcommerce. All the technical problem like payment, shipping, tax will be take care by them. All you need is just focus driving targeted traffic using facebook ads to your site and make sales. After you get stable income then use more advance ecommerce platform you desire.
Just my 2 cent

Magento is scalable and I think you may check this closely.

Choosing a E-commerce platform completely depends on your requirements and its scale, these days Woo-commerce is going really good, but it's not recommended for huge scale like if you have more than 25,000 products, there are ways to optimize the database, if you'll have products like 10,000 to 15,000 Woo-commerce is best option in my opinion, but i won't recommend you go with woo-commerce if your scale is gonna be bigger than 25,000 products.

In this case, Magento is a very good option, but maintenance, getting modifications, and custom features building would be much costly on magento compared to other platforms, if you have good budget for this project, than go ahead with magento.

I would like to suggest shopify.Its the best platform for e commerce.

If you have the chops or the money Magento is what I'd recommend... I'd never look back at woocommerce again, especially with a large shop...

Wow, lots of varied suggestions here. Listen Etoot, the platform you choose really depends on what your needs are.

First off you need to decide between self-hosting a platform (on your own servers) or going with a hosted platform. Since you're starting out, and if you don't have time or the technical expertise, I suggest you pick a hosted platform.

Now as you can see there are many, many options. Each with its own pros and cons. Shopify and Bigcommerce are full-featured. Then there are some that cater only to creative products, others cater only to small businesses, and others only to large stores.

It's up to you to decide what features you need and pick a platform based on that. No one here can tell you exactly what to go with. If option A has Feature X but option B doesn't, then go with A. Pricing tiers matter too. Some will have Feature X for $79/month, while others will have it in all plans. Then there are others that will have Feature X only as an add-on or separate integration rather than built-in.

For a full break down of all available hosted platforms, check out this roundup I created. Hopefully it will help you make a better decision.

If you're looking for functionality definitely go with Bigcommerce. I used Shopify in the past it was really easy to use so it's ideal if you don't have technical skills and you want a clean and pretty interface.

After trying several e-commerce platforms I usually just stick with OpenCart.

I think Magento is the way to go. Not only is it very good, there are many professionals out there that work with Magneto so it is not too hard to find qualified people to work on the site at an affordable price.

I would not recommend using any hosted cart.

I've been using wix for 3 months and that's the biggest mistake i did so far. My client has a busy site and when wix have their issues a while back we have been deeply affected, our sale for February really drops 30%.... ;(

In short avoid any hosted platform as your business will be dependent to the company. If they are out of business then you are sorry.

I recommend between Woocommerce and Opencart. Both of these cart has plenty developers who can help you out. But better watch these closely first and do your own homework.

In my opinion Magento is the best open source solution around, in terms of flexibility and scalability. However, the learning curve might be steep, so if you have little or no experience with basic PHP, HTML, etc and are starting out with a small scale shop, you might be better off looking at something like a WordPress based solution like WooCommerce. If you need to hire someone to help you setting the shop up, my experience is that WordPress developers are much cheaper than Magento experts.

Jeremy from websitebuilderexpert has a ton of experience when it comes to those hosted solution platforms
you might want to check them at:

Best eCommerce Platform: Leverage Apps Grow Your Business

or

E-Commerce Online Store Builders Comparison Chart

7) Prestashop!

hahaha Prestashop or Magento

If you don't have problem with limited budget, just use magento platform for selling digital products. But if you have limited budget, just use easydigitaldownloads.

According to me, Magento is the best ecommerce platfrom in these days, its has lots of features and Magento has more e-commerce stores (over 100,000) than any other platform. So market demands Magento..

Hi. As collegues mentioned Magento is one of the best. If you like simple owned solution you can take a look at Prestashop - is quick but not so powered with plugins/themes flexible as Magento.

If you like full flexibility choose Magento (only free community version of course), if you like to be limited choose something hosted. But sooner or later everybody like to go for self owned solution (no-saas etc).

There are thousands Magento Extensions and themes. For example on shopMAGES Magento Marketplace you can select from >300 plugins to anything you need for store. Plugins for Magento usually have one year free updates and support. But we have also lifetime free support and updates in many of them.

Paul
CEO of shopMAGES.com
Magento Marketplace

I will suggest you to go through with Magento...More than 150,000 businesses around the word choose Magento as their ecommerce platform. Magento is powerful, flexible and cost effective ecommerce solution. Companies such as Nike, Lindt, Samsung, Olympus, OfficeMax, The North Face, Stussy and Nespresso all make their ecommerce website by using Magento to boost their online business. Magento can be compared to WordPress in that they both revolutionized and dominated the space they targeted Magento in e-commerce, WordPress in blogging and content management.

Why we choose Magento as an ecommerce platform?

Magento built in stable and reliable structure.
Open source platform
Magento allow us to adjust existing features and add new ones.
Magento contains all excellence features to enhanced your online business such as the shopping cart, catalog management, search, checkout and administration functions.

I think anything between opencart or wp woocommerce should be good. Both have easy to manage. Also you will find support and additional extension easily. Try themeforest and you will find alot of solution in a low cost.

eCommerce - Garbini - Stylish Opencart Responsive Theme | ThemeForest

Just an example of a opencart template. Easy and stylish.

I think Magento is best eCommerce Platform. It contain all excellence feature to your online business.

No doubt, Magento is the best platform for developing an eCommerce website. It beat all those platform in race. Features provided by magento are best compared to others.

I am only familiar with 2 eCommerce platforms, the first one is Mycommerce (RegNow), because I am using it to sell my software online. The second one is Magento, because I am using it to sell Lolita dresses and accessories. I have been using these 2 eCommerce platforms for a long time, it works well so far.

Shopify and Magneto is Popular E-Commerce Platforms.

Magento is the best eCommerce site because easily customization structure, user friendly more advanced plugin, free and paid extension available in online store. Several web design and development company using this Magento.

This really depends on a lot of factors:

1. How many products are you going to have and is your main focus building an authority site with products on the side? If so, Woocommerce would be best. But imo it starts looking messy if you try to add 100s of products to it as it's not as database driven as the other options.

2. Do you know even basic coding? If you have no experience in coding, html, or css, I recommend going with a hosted solution like Shopify or BigCommerce. Far less chance you can mess up the code and break your store if you don't really know what you are doing and Shopify has a more active help community and more plugins last I checked so of these 2, I'd go with Shopify.

3. What is your level of experience setting up ecommerce sites and what is your time frame for launch? Magento has a lot of features, but is not one I recommend for beginners as they have a steep learning curve. They do have a training program, but it means you will need to invest time to learn (or hire someone to do it for you). It will take you longer to set up than other options, so if you want to open your store in say 6 months, it might be a viable option. Plug ins also tend to be more expensive for it than Opencart in what I've seen, so that might be an option as well.

4. If you are comfortable with html, php, ftp, and css, then Opencart or OS Commerce would work for you though last I know, OSCommerce is very slow on updates, especially if security is your concern. My own stores run on opencart and I have some knowledge of php - I can modify things, but cannot create them from scratch. I had my store open and running within hours with it too just using it out of the box, so it is my first recommendation for a full featured store with lots of expansion options and that can handle lots of products.

If you go with any of the self hosted solutions (Opencart, Magento, OsCommerce, etc), be sure you have a strong hosting plan (for opencart, I recommend evolvewebhosts.com as they know oc well) that not only will handle your shop when you launch it, but as it grows. You also need to take into account SSL certificates.

Whatever cart you select, you will also need to set up a merchant account service, so be sure which ever you select will handle the one you choose (Paypal, Authorize.net, etc).