Learn about the best site to create an online store

Are you thinking about entering the world of e-commerce and starting to create your own online store, and you have a unique idea for it, but you do not know how to determine the best location to create this store through which you can start your e-commerce business and achieve success and continuity?

The process of creating your online store may not be difficult, but the long-term success of your store requires a combined group of efforts and following a number of steps to reach your goal. Perhaps the first step that you should take care of after determining the store idea is choosing the best platform to create your online store.

If you start with the wrong platform to create your online store and this platform does not suit your requirements and goals and does not provide you with the ability to expand your e-commerce business, this will lead to damage to your store and its failure in the future!

So, in this article, we will review for you a group of the best sites for creating an online store, and you have the freedom to choose the site that best suits your capabilities, budget, and the requirements of the store that you intend to launch.

What are online store building sites?

The Online Store Builder website is a software platform that enables you to build your own integrated online store, helps you display your products, manage your sales, and helps you accomplish all the basic tasks related to the store efficiently and effectively.

Platforms for creating online stores, or what are known as eCommerce platforms, vary in ease of use, flexibility, prices, and the features and services they provide.

There are many online store building platforms and websites available. Some of these platforms provide you with comprehensive services related to this store such as web hosting service, SEO optimization service for your store’s products, product shipping service, etc., and some of them leave you to manage these matters yourself.

Also, some of these platforms are considered more suitable than others for certain types of businesses and certain budgets, and every merchant has his preferences regarding choosing the best site to establish his store.. Therefore, we will help you in making the most appropriate decision and review for you in the following paragraphs the most important advantages and disadvantages of each of the following e-commerce platforms :

WooCommerce
Drupal Commerce
Magento
Shopify
BigCommerce
OpenCart
Wix

But before we start talking in detail about each platform, we will review the most important tips and criteria that will help you choose the most appropriate platform for your online store.

How do I choose the best site to create my online store?

There are several criteria and features that you should pay attention to when choosing a site or platform to build your online store, and the most important of these criteria are:

1-Security and confidentiality

When you decide to create an online store, you must primarily care about the safety and security of your and your customers’ sensitive data. Therefore, you must choose an e-commerce platform that ensures the security of your store, preserves the confidentiality of your customers’ data, and provides SSL certificates that comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard.

Many online store creation sites also offer additional security packages that you can subscribe to to protect your store from fraud, depending on your requirements, your budget, the importance of the data you deal with, and your store’s future needs.

2- Scalability and development

One of the most common mistakes that online store owners make, especially in the beginning, is ignoring the store’s scalability. But e-commerce business can grow quickly, so it is necessary to look for an e-commerce platform that provides you with the ability to expand your store, introduce multiple business models, multiple sales channels for your business, supports the use of different currency types, provides multi-language feature, etc.

3-Ease of creating content

You should look for store building sites or e-commerce platforms that have a reliable and easy-to-use content management system (CMS), which allows you to create and publish content and create contact forms with ease. Strong content will enhance the store’s visibility in search engine results and double the number of visitors to your online store .

4- A unified store management system

You must choose a platform that integrates all the functions of e-commerce and the basic businesses associated with it into one platform, and provides you with all the tasks and functions necessary for the online store business, such as points of sale, inventory, order management, marketing, customer service, payment gateways, product promotion, and other tasks in one place.

5-Manage requests effectively

The website or platform you choose to create your online store should provide a convenient way for customers to browse, order, purchase and return products. Providing centralization in order management contributes to increasing your store’s profits.

6-Good technical support

It is preferable that the online store creation site you choose provides you with the necessary assistance and support for you as a store owner or for your customers when needed. Support is usually provided through email, live chat, or phone calls. Find the option that’s best for you so you can contact the main site support team if you have any issues with your store.

7-Cost

The cost of establishing an online store may be one of the basic factors that you may consider at the beginning of establishing your store. Some platforms deduct a commission from the profits you earn from customers, and some do not deduct any amount. Some store creation sites also provide you with reasonable prices and offer attractive offers and discounts to encourage you to create your store through them.
Browse each platform’s plans and see the cost of its monthly or annual subscriptions and check whether it charges additional fees for certain services to decide whether this platform is compatible with your budget or not.

How much does it cost to create an online store? How do you start with less than $1,000?

8-Open source

It is preferable to rely on an open source platform that allows you full access to the site’s source code and see any changes in it. These platforms may be more difficult to use and require you as an online store owner to install the system on your server, configure hosting, updates, general operation of the site, etc.

But on the other hand, the possibility of customizing and expanding these platforms is much greater, and you will be able to expand and customize your store better when using an open source platform, but it is necessary to choose a good platform that provides a supportive community and includes a large number of developers so that you can get help if you encounter any problem.

The best site to create an online store

Based on the previous criteria, we suggest to you in the following paragraphs a group of platforms for creating popular online stores, with an evaluation of each platform, and you have the freedom to choose the platform that suits your business model.

1- WooCommerce WooCommerce

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems and is free and open source. It offers the leading free WooCommerce plugin for creating comprehensive online stores.

Using WooCommerce, you will be able to create unique stores that suit all business sizes, and you will be able to customize them through dozens of features and tools provided to you by the WooCommerce add-on and its supporting add-ons, which will help you build a distinctive online shopping experience for your customers.

WooCommerce Features

This platform is free, open source, and easy to use. It is suitable for selling subscriptions and memberships , selling downloadable digital products, in addition to all other types of products as well, and it has an integrated and easy-to-use store interface.
WooCommerce is highly scalable and offers a large number of free and paid templates that allow you to create professional-looking and functioning stores and perform all the tasks necessary to manage an online store in the best possible way.

Disadvantages of WooCommerce

Due to the popularity of WooCommerce and WordPress, it is widely targeted by hackers who try to exploit security vulnerabilities in the platform. However, there are several measures you can take to secure your online store, scan it periodically, and protect it from malware.

Another downside is that WooCommerce can only be used with sites that primarily use WordPress and the first store setup can be a bit difficult for beginners.

Finally, although WordPress and WooCommerce are available for free download, there are costs you have to pay to secure the domain, hosting, and some paid add-ons and templates that you may need in your store upon request.

2- Drupal Commerce

Drupal is a free, open source content management system that powers millions of websites worldwide. Drupal provides many E-commerce modules and enhanced modules to accomplish e-commerce work, and among these modules is the famous Drupal Commerce module that was created by the Commerce Guy team .

Drupal Commerce can greatly facilitate the way to create online stores in the Drupal system and help you prepare products, track invoices, receipts, orders and payments, create payment gateways, prepare shipping matters, and all other functions that any online store needs. It also helps you expand the scope of your business. Through the availability of many additional auxiliary units.
If you want professional support from Drupal for your e-commerce, you can purchase one of Commerce Guy’s paid plans. If you have technical experience, it is possible to use the free version and develop your store yourself.

Drupal Commerce Features

The most important thing that distinguishes Drupal Commerce is its security and stability because it follows a strict code writing standard and has a dedicated security team.
The Drupal community, which includes about fifty thousand supportive developers, encourages companies to rely on Drupal as a powerful system to start their e-commerce.

Drupal Commerce is also highly scalable, so it can accommodate changes you may need to make in your store in the future and expand and improve its features.

Cons of Drupal Commerce

The Drupal Commerce module is a bit complicated, has a huge and confusing interface that makes it difficult for beginners to use, and it works exclusively within a site that uses the Drupal system.

Another disadvantage of Drupal is that there are costs that you have to pay to secure the domain and hosting, and the platform does not offer many high-quality designs in the free version, and you may need to buy a paid core or design a special template for your store if the available designs do not suit you.

3- Magento

Magento is an open source, self-hosted e-commerce platform written in PHP. It is primarily designed to help programmers create powerful and integrated e-commerce websites. The platform offers tremendous growth potential to meet all e-commerce requirements and all store sizes.

The Magento platform was released in 2008 by Varien and then acquired by Adobe for $1.68 billion and included it in its commercial portfolio. It is available in two versions, the first is free, Magento Open Source, and the second is paid with professional features, Magento Commerce. Its cost can reach up to $20,000 per year. You can learn more about prices here .

The platform also provides a variety of templates and add-ons that provide many features and functions for online stores, which will enhance customers’ shopping experience from these stores.

Magento features

The Mjanto platform helps you create a secure, professional, multilingual online store that can accommodate hundreds of thousands of products and efficiently handle tens of thousands of orders per hour. It also allows you to set up many stores from one page.

The platform also integrates with several payment methods, allows payment via direct bank transfers, and provides the ability to change the fees imposed on the product according to the shipping address or weight of the product.

The store that you create on the Magento platform is also responsive to mobile devices and supports search engine optimization (SEO), as the platform enhances SEO for the stores designed through it, which gives these stores a greater opportunity to obtain a larger number of customers.

The platform is open source and therefore allows store owners to easily customize their stores and create the features they want, and it has a large community of developers who work on developing custom add-ons and sharing them among many users of the platform as well as providing support and assistance in solving problems..

The platform is also integrated with modules or applications provided by third parties such as MailChimp, Google Shopping and other applications that enable you to increase the efficiency of your store.

Cons of Magento

Although Magento is available in a free version, the paid version is very expensive compared to other e-commerce solutions. Some versions cost up to approximately fifty thousand dollars per year. This is in addition to the fees that will be paid if using third-party applications, so the high cost is considered the biggest drawback of this platform.

The other negative aspect is that it is difficult to use, as it contains more than twenty thousand files and two hundred database tables, and despite its strength and flexibility, it is considered one of the most difficult e-commerce platforms in existence, and dealing with it and understanding all its details requires an expert and skilled person. Unfortunately, the Arabic explanations for it are still somewhat limited compared to other open source platforms such as WooCommerce and Drupal.

4-Shopify

Shopify is considered one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world. It is an independent web application dedicated to creating electronic stores in an easy and quick way and provides a number of free templates to create a store through. All you have to do is choose the template you want and customize it to suit your own store.

The Shopify platform is considered a hosted platform, meaning that your store will operate on its own servers, and you do not have to buy web hosting or install software anywhere to use it.

Shopify offers a free 14-day trial. Then you have to move to one of the paid plans that start from $29 per month, and you can view the price plans and other features from here.

Shopify Features

The most prominent feature of Shopify is its ease of use by adopting the principle of (All-in-one setup). You do not need to download any programs or add-ons in order to launch your own store. You also do not need any technical expertise to easily create a beautiful online store, and Shopify also provides you with a complete content management system to manage all the functions of your store.

Shopify accepts multiple currencies and supports a comprehensive range of credit cards to receive payments on your store. It is a secure platform, has PCI Level 1 compliance and uses 256-bit SSL encryption for security to provide high protection for your customer and store data.

It has a mobile application that enables you to track, manage, and modify your store through your mobile phone, so it is considered a suitable platform for business owners who work on the go.

Disadvantages of Shopify

One of the disadvantages of Shopify is that it is not a free platform to use. After the trial period ends, you have to pay a monthly subscription cost. You will also have to pay more for paid themes and plugins available on the Shopify App store or those provided by third parties if you want to improve the functionality and visibility of your e-commerce store, and these costs may affect your profits, especially if you are a startup.

Shopify is a closed-source platform, so customizing and expanding the store as your business grows and develops includes some limitations. Some settings and features in the system cannot be customized according to your requirements.
Therefore, the Shopify platform is not suitable for relatively simple stores and is not the best choice for large stores or ones that can expand over time.

5-Big Commerce

BigCommerce is an easy-to-use cloud e-commerce platform designed to help merchants increase sales at all stages of business growth. It is considered one of the best sites for creating electronic stores that provide suitable features for developing companies that need to expand, and is also suitable for B2B and B2C e-commerce sites.

The platform allows adding unlimited product options with ease and flexibility. It also offers store acceleration through a content delivery network ( CDN ) and search engine optimization (SEO) for the store, which helps increase organic traffic to your store and achieve more sales.

The platform is paid, and several plans and packages are available for monthly or annual subscription. You can view them and request quotes here

BigCommerce Pros

The store built using BigCommerce is highly customizable, as the platform provides a set of responsive templates designed in a way that helps you develop your online store quickly, easily, and customize it according to your personal preferences and what suits your brand.

The BigCommerce platform is flexible and scalable, as it provides you with all the tools you need to expand your online store and run your online business smoothly. It also features the BigCommerce add-on for WordPress, which enables users to activate an integrated BigCommerce store on their WordPress site and benefit from the features of the two platforms together.

The platform also supports multi-channel selling that links online marketplaces, physical stores, social media and online advertising. You can also list your products on sites such as Amazon and eBay to reach the largest possible number of customers.

Cons of BigCommerce

The Big Commerce platform is not free, and its price plans start from $30. Each plan also comes with an annual sales limit, meaning that if you exceed the annual sales limit for your store plan, you will be upgraded to the next higher plan automatically. You can request prices here

It also does not have a built-in multilingual feature, so if you need a multilingual store, you will need a specialized developer to accomplish this through code, which will cost you additional money.

6-Open Cart

OpenCart is a free and open source e-commerce platform that allows buying and selling products online. In order to create an online store using OpenCart, you need to download the OpenCart program and then upload the files to your server.

Pros of OpenCart

OpenCart contains many features that provide the processes necessary to create and manage an online store and provides a set of necessary analyzes such as access to orders, customers, sales analyses, etc. It also provides the ability to create discounts and special offers on products and supports most popular payment gateways.

The OpenCart platform is considered moderate in cost, as it provides you with the ability to download the platform for free and you only need to pay for hosting and paid add-ons. The platform also does not impose additional fees if you exceed a certain quantity of products.

Cons of OpenCart

The downsides to OpenCart are that you may need to outsource its source code and customize it to your business needs, which may increase your website costs.

It is also considered an e-commerce platform with limited capabilities and is unable to support high-level functions in an easy way, which makes it very difficult to create larger and more complex e-stores, and this restricts your store’s ability to expand if your business grows.

7- Wix

Wix is an online store creation website that is easy to use. It does not require any programming experience to get started and provides you with a set of free templates to design your store. Wix is a suitable choice for simple online stores with a limited budget.

Most novice online store owners resort to this platform to build an online store due to its ease, but they discover after a short period of business expansion that this platform does not meet the needs of fast-growing or large-scale online businesses, and they resort to migrating the store to another, more efficient platform, so we do not advise you By relying on it to avoid this matter.

8-Squarespace

Squarespace is a popular website for creating online stores that provides you with a set of templates designed specifically for e-commerce and you can create attractive designs to display products and boost sales . It also provides a set of features for selling products and managing orders online. It also provides you with the ability to connect payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, or both) and support financial transactions through credit cards.

Squarespace also provides you with analytics to get a clear picture of visitor behavior and revenue in your store. It also provides advanced commerce analytics such as sales by product and purchase funnel analytics.
One of the downsides of Square Space is that it is a paid platform and you get a fee for every sale you make. These fees vary depending on the subscription plan (see subscription plans and prices here ), but it provides a free 14-day trial so you can build your store and try most of its features before actually subscribing.

It is also not considered an open source platform for building online stores, so only internal developers are responsible for the modification and development process.

Conclusion

If you have not started creating an online store for your business, this is the right time to think about it. There are a large variety of e-commerce platforms and websites that you can choose from.

In this article, we have reviewed for you the best sites that help you create an online store, and we have highlighted the most prominent pros and cons of these sites. All you have to do is weigh these pros and cons and decide what suits you.

In conclusion, we advise you to rely on open source platforms because they provide more flexibility in modifying design templates and managing large stores at lower prices and with greater ease that closed source platforms cannot provide you.