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Top 8 e-commerce marketing platforms to consider
An e-commerce marketing strategy is no longer optional. Organizations need a marketing platform that meets their e-commerce teams' needs, can customize websites and is affordable.
Even after the COVID-19 pandemic's e-commerce boom, online shopping still has room for growth. To capture that market share, organizations need e-commerce strategies, including technology implementation.
However, organizations may struggle to choose the right e-commerce marketing platform. In addition to core capabilities that let organizations build online storefronts, these platforms often include features like email marketing, marketing automation and integrations with third-party products, such as inventory management tools. Some e-commerce platforms work better for small businesses that sell directly to consumers, while others suit large enterprises with brick-and-mortar locations that want to put inventory online.
Explore eight e-commerce marketing platforms, which were chosen based on several professional and user reviews.
1. Shopify
Geared toward small to mid-size businesses, Shopify's e-commerce marketing platform lets users build out their storefronts and create product pages. It offers email marketing, search engine optimization tools and CRM features for audience segmentation and personalization. It also has an app store for users to add integrations, such as social media promotion and analytics.
Users can easily set up Shopify's platform and sell through various channels, like point of sale products. It offers customizable templates so users can create stores that reflect their company's branding. However, the multi-currency features are difficult to use, and the platform offers limited configuration options for the checkout screen. Additionally, users require a third-party extension to let customers leave product reviews.
Pricing starts at $29 per month for the Basic Shopify plan.
2. HubSpot
As a B2B marketing automation platform, HubSpot is primarily used for CRM. The HubSpot platform consists of a hub for marketing automation, sales hub for CRM, service hub for customer service, a hub for content management that enables personalized webpages and an operations hub. Organizations can build websites, sell subscriptions and services, and update product information as needed.
HubSpot offers a lot of information about customer interactions in the CRM tool, and its modules connect to offer a complete view of customers and the sales pipeline. Nontechnical users can easily learn how to use its interface. However, the cost can be prohibitive for companies with a lot of users, and the reporting is basic.
HubSpot offers a free version of its tools, and pricing starts at $45 per user, per month for the CRM Suite bundle. Users can also create their own customized bundles of the different hubs.
3. Omnisend
Omnisend is an email marketing platform that also includes the ability to send text messages to customers. It offers integration with other platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce, and lets its customers use segmentation to send marketing messages based on location, shopping behavior, activity on campaigns or other parameters.
Omnisend's platform is easy to set up and offers various templates and analytics. The vendor also has a responsive customer service team. Yet, the company doesn't communicate well before changing or releasing features. Additionally, many users struggle to create workflows and to gather data on emails and customers.
Omnisend offers a free plan with limited sending capabilities, and pricing starts at $16 per month for paid plans.
4. WooCommerce
As an open source e-commerce platform, WooCommerce lets users build stores on WordPress. The platform can integrate with different payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal, as well as with email marketing platforms like MailChimp. It offers both paid and free themes to help build out stores.
WooCommerce is fast and easy to set up. Many major hosting companies also support this platform. However, its third-party extensions can get expensive, and it requires some technical knowledge to set up properly.
Many features of WooCommerce are free to use, and pricing for third-party extensions varies by developer.
5. Wix
Small businesses may find that Wix's store-building features make it an ideal e-commerce marketing platform. It includes email marketing and integration with social media platforms, as well as templates to build storefronts and product pages.
Wix's drag-and-drop builder simplifies website building, and the vendor's customer support is helpful and responsive. However, it offers limited add-ons, and organizations that want to extensively customize their stores may not be able to do so with this platform.
Pricing starts at $27 per month for the Business Basic plan.
6. Shift4Shop
Shift4Shop has a lot of features ideal for small businesses and entrepreneurs, including email marketing and the ability to run affiliate marketing programs. Users can also build storefronts and product pages, send newsletters and gather product reviews within this e-commerce marketing platform.
Users can easily add products to their stores with this platform. Shift4Shop offers templates that are easy to use, although users may struggle to customize them. The vendor also requires customers to use its own payment processor and lacks efficient customer service.
Shift4Shop is free for customers in the U.S. that use Shift4Shop's payment card processor. Pricing for plans start at $29 per month for other users.
7. BigCommerce
BigCommerce offers a visual page builder, WordPress integration and B2B marketing segmentation. Users can create customer groups, sell in multiple online marketplaces like Amazon and use headless commerce with their preferred front end.
The vendor's customer service team is very responsive, and users can integrate the platform with many different third-party tools. The platform also offers useful CRM features. However, extensive customization can be costly, and its inventory management is lacking.
Pricing is available upon request.
8. PinnacleCart
PinnacleCart offers store building and designing tools, along with various product management capabilities. Its other marketing features include capturing email addresses for newsletters, email campaigns to recover sales from abandoned shopping carts and integration with analytics tools such as Google Analytics.
PinnacleCart is easy to manage, and the vendor has a responsive customer service team. However, users may struggle to integrate this platform into their technology stacks.
Pricing starts at $79.95 per month for a Standard plan.
