Are you one of the many bloggers or small business owners today looking for another way to make an income online? With this in mind, you can add an online store to your website or blog, or create an online store from scratch using shopping eCommerce marketplace website builders software.
eCommerce marketplace builders can make these online stores easy to operate and offer a wide range of services to make it happen for you to make more money.
Today’s businesses need to be adaptive and tech-savvy to stay ahead of the competition and survive in the business world. From the pandemic, many businesses have reverted to technology, especially the Internet.
The initial step towards becoming a tech-savvy business is to create a business website. Building a good business website in the past seemed like an expensive and time-consuming job that required a specific set of skills.
However, today website designing has become an easy job with the help of website builders for small businesses.
Many of these eCommerce marketplace builders offer more than just an online shopping cart now. Therefore, many companies are now offering marketing solutions with social media integrations and much more.
Table of Contents
What Are eCommerce Marketplace Builders?
eCommerce marketplace builders are a useful platform allowing business owners to create an online marketplace from scratch.
Furthermore, you can manage your marketplace with maximum efficiency.
And, these platforms support a wide range of online businesses. From start-ups and small online stores making money with PayPal to large shopping malls and even work for multi-store markets.
Some of these builders are for single-use vendors and others include capabilities for multi-vendors. Keep this in mind if you want to sell items from more than one vendor or source.
Of course, they can be used for multi-seller marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon to mention a few!
Here Are 9 Reviews Of Different Ones For You To Choose
1. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
The CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is one of the largest e-commerce stores in the world, ShopClues.com, with 53,000,000 SKUs to manage on their website.
If they use CS-Cart Multi-Vendor to accomplish their e-commerce marketplace needs, imagine what this service can do for you.
Why choose CS-Cart Multi-Vendor?
Ready to Go!
First, CS-Cart Multi-Vendor ships with 500 e-commerce features and a pre-built mobile-friendly storefront theme. Of course, you can easily customize it.
When you get CS-Cart Multi-Vendor, you can start selling literally on the same day: no need to expand eCommerce functionality with add-ons or modifications.
Supported and Frequently Updated
Second, the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor eCommerce marketplace builder is updated often, with an average of 6 times per year. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about your website marketplace being outdated!
Built-in Marketing System
To boost your marketing with ease, you can set up rewards points and promotions to give bonuses for purchases, to name a couple of options. Some of you may know how expensive it is to hire a marketing team.
However, this system lets you do it automatically.
Training
Video Lessons and detailed documentation are there to help you every step of the way if you need them.
Optimized for SEO
Usually, SEO takes a lot of time before your website gets seen on the major search engines. But with CS-Cart Multi-Vendor your eCommerce marketplace builder is up and running with SEO already plugged in!
Open Source Code
Furthermore, the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is fully adaptable to any of your eCommerce needs. And it sports features like shipping and payment services. and more.
Easy Admin Panel
Some admin panels of these types of software are difficult to navigate. Not CS-Cart Multi-Vendor. They make it easy to maneuver throughout the panel. It is very intuitive.
Tech Support And Community to Help
Their tech support is not free, but it is a first-rate tech team ready to help. If you like FREE, you can, of course, go to their community forum for help.
Secure
Though the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is protected against hackers if anything happens they will fix it within 3 days. That’s their guarantee.
Fast 92 Page Speed Score
If you like the green zone you will love the way the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has a high page speed score.
It Costs Less Than Most
If you compare the prices of the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor vs. other multi-vendor marketplaces you will see why this one may cost you less.
2. Magento Marketplace
>With the Magento Marketplace, you can create a really unique, and engaging shopping experience. They offer out-of-the-box features, simple to use.
You can customize your eCommerce marketplace builder with third-party integrations too.
Customer Personalization
Magento lets you create personalized shopping experiences that boost conversion rates by displaying content, promotions, and pricing to specific customers based on demographics.
You can also target unknown site visitors based on the products they have viewed or items in their cart. Isn’t that quite cool?
Rule-Based Products to Promote
Set automated rules to determine which products to present as up-sells, cross-sells, and related products to each customer segment.
Purchase Now
Boost conversion rates for returning shoppers with a new Instant Purchase checkout option. Customers can use previously-stored payment credentials and shipping information to skip checkout steps.
It makes the process faster and easier, especially for those mobile shoppers. Just as you often see on Amazon.
Content Staging and Preview
Increase productivity by enabling your business teams to easily create, preview, and schedule a wide range of content updates without involving your IT team.
Ease of Product Pages
Optimize product category pages to drive higher sales by arranging products with a simple drag-and-drop interface or sorting rules that order products by best seller, color, highest margin, or newest addition.
Business Intelligence
Access and analyze your Magento Commerce data from day 1. Uncover insights across all your data sources.
Elasticsearch
Handle large catalogs and easily scale search capacity as queries grow with integrated Elasticsearch technology.
Responsive Design Themes
Quickly create a website optimized for any device by leveraging built-in responsive design reference themes.
Integrated B2B Functions
Transform your business buyer experience to increase loyalty, reduce costs, and drive new growth.
Empower these customers with the ability to create company accounts. They can also set up multiple buyers and define their specific roles with easy self-service tools.
Powerful Admin Features
A dashboard lets you monitor your business with quick access to sales, orders, search terms, and best-selling product data. This dashboard is quite easy to use.
3. Dokan
Dokan claims to be the simplest system to use to create your online marketplace. If you are using WOO themes this one could be your choice as they are fully compatible with them.
Multilingual Ready
Dokan offers over 25 different languages to make your store a worldwide enterprise! The sites are fully translatable as well.
Payment Options
Furthermore, this software offers PayPal and Stripe. Not all of the eCommerce platforms offer this. Of course, they also offer every major credit card too.
Money-Back Guarantee
If you are not happy with Dokan they offer a 14-day full refund.
4. Mirakl
When you first go to Mirakl, you see they promote drop-shipping. Not only do they provide a quick solution to get started with your online business but, they also provide you with business plans.
Drop-shipping options
If you need drop-shipping options this one is one to check out. Not only do they offer you a marketplace suite but they also can offer other services such as:
- Positioning – They help to find the most appropriate positioning for your marketplace activity.
- Business Plan – Using market studies helps to guide you in a business plan.
- Best Practices – They help you to embrace the fundamentals of their marketplace model.
5. Marketify
When you arrive at their website, you see it’s all about the creativity and beauty of websites.
They offer endless designs with different colors and fonts to choose from. With Marketify, you’re the artist creating your unique marketplace.
Therefore, if the design is the most important feature for you – you may want to check out this one!
Why Marketify?
- Front-end submission – Users can submit their own products through the dashboard.
- Fast and easy Setup -A five-minute install and you are ready to go!
- Responsiveness – Like the others, it is mobile-friendly too. You know how important this is today.
- 24/7 Support – The customer support team is an award-winning service team to help you along when you get stuck managing your digital marketplace.
5. Shopify – The Most Popular eCommerce Website Builders
Shopify is one of the top website builders for businesses.
Since 2006 many businesses go online and especially start an eCommerce store with this online store builder.
This website builder lets you start with a free 14-day trial plan starting from $29/month (Basic), ranging to $299/month (Advanced).
Shopify also offers a wide range of print-on-demand apps that allow businesses to create and sell custom-branded merchandise directly on their Shopify store, making it a popular choice for businesses looking to expand their product offerings.
Opportunities:
- The drag-and-drop interface is so easy that less tech-savvy people can use this platform.
- A wide variety of front page themes, categorized by the industry of business, make an attractive website that will retain customers.
- The Shopify engine minimizes the transactional processing time and website loading time.
- Inbuilt integrations to payment services such as PayPal, Amazon, Apple Pay, etc.
- The abandoned cart recovery option informs the customers of the forgotten items left in the cart.
- Shopify app store has tons of plugins and apps that can are easy to use with the website to help you manage the inventory and market your products.
- Shopify has a dedicated support team that provides technical support 24/7.
Obstacles:
- Customizing a theme is challenging as it requires expertise and special coding skills.
- Customers can not gain multiple discounts on shopping.
- Most of the apps in the app store and features cost more money and are expensive for small businesses.
- Email hosting or email marketing costs extra too in the Shopify plans.
6. WordPress As eCommerce Website Builders
WordPress is one of the leading names in the industry when it comes to blogging and small business website building. An estimated 40% of the websites on the internet are designed and run on WordPress.
Furthermore, you can create a website free of cost, but you get a lot of premium features for a price.
Advantages
- WordPress is an open-source platform that can be downloaded from any hosting website or the WordPress website itself.
- Lots of free themes and templates are categorized according to the industry.
- Highly customizable and a drag-and-drop interface
- WordPress websites are SEO friendly with an option to install plugins that let you control and manage your website.
- Almost every possible platform and marketplace can be integrated with your website.
Disadvantages
- After the website has been made, maintenance of the website needs to be done manually.
- Sometimes, the plugins might conflict with each other, resulting in your website’s halting or the page speed slowing down.
- You will need to go through a learning curve before completely understanding WordPress.
- The website remains vulnerable until a premium plugin is installed for anything, including SEO to backup.
7. Wix eCommerce Website Builders
Wix is a considerably new and emerging platform with an in-built ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) that helps you create a good business website within a couple of minutes. Just like WordPress, it is a beginner-level website builder.
However, the pricing plans are distributed into two categories: The website plan (ranging from $4.5/month to $24.5/month) and the eCommerce/Business plan (ranging from $17/month to $35/month).
The Pros
- It often is considered the best website builder for small businesses as it is straightforward to use and customize.
- ADI website design wizard asks you a couple of questions and helps you build your website.
- This builder is instilled with many features such as SEO, email marketing, social media integrations, and much more.
- Wix creates automatic backup so that you won’t lose your website even if you haven’t saved it.
- Most comprehensive apps and templates library so that you can create a website according to your business.
The Cons
- Once the website is live, you have to stick with one template that you have chosen previously.
- The Wix site is for Wix only and cannot be transferred to any other platform.
- Free Wix sites have annoyingly long URLs and contain irremovable ads.
- E-commerce/Business pricing plans are relatively costly.
- Wix doesn’t have a responsive design which means the elements don’t adjust according to different screen sizes.
8. Squarespace
Squarespace is another option for business owners looking to create a business website. Hence, this website builder is known for its stylish and modern website design templates.
It is a good platform for businesses that want to develop portfolios around Marketing, Design, Photography, Fashion, etc.
The price starts from $14/month (Personal plan) and can go to $49/month (Advanced Commerce plan).
Plus
- Squarespace helps create visually appealing websites for the fashion, Design, and marketing industries.
- It has many tools that help in SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and
- Drag-and-drop interfaces with a variety of customizable options.
- Has many unique features for e-commerce businesses, such as scheduling appointments, store/inventory management, and members’ area.
- It has a reliable option for restaurants and the hospitality industry, where you can manage reservations, takeouts, and events.
Minus
- Its e-Commerce solutions cannot compete with the likes of WordPress and Shopify.
- The prices are higher in comparison to other platforms.
- There is a lack in the support department as you get no support if you are stuck.
- The tools provided are not as advanced and lack some features required for an e-Commerce business, such as A/B testing.
- Adding new content and editing is always a tiresome job.
9. Weebly
If you are scouring for an excellent web hosting service for a small business website, Weebly is amongst the best online gateways for local or casual retailers.
It offers affordable pricing, an excellent app store, free stock images, and an option to create for e-commerce.
The premium plans for online stores are very competitively priced. Plans are Pro ($12/month), Small Business ($25/month), and Business Plus packages ($38/month).
Opportunities
- Weebly is considered a freemium type of website builder for small businesses.
- The interface is user-friendly and designed for a beginner.
- The themes and pages are highly customizable that can be edited any time after the website goes live.
- Weebly themes are highly responsive and adjust to any given screen size.
- The individuality of Weebly is its acceptable range of e-commerce features, such as an unlimited number of products, a tax calculator, and multi-level pricing of the products.
Obstacles
- The main downside of Weebly is its limited design flexibility for those who want uniqueness in their website image.
- With Weebly, you get average customer service as it costs a lot of money to get support depending on what plan you have opted for.
- You will not get good blogging options on Weebly.
- You have to use Square for payment solutions in Weebly, which doesn’t work offline and otherwise is usually non-responsive.
- You have to pay for more e-commerce options, and it is notably pricey.
In Conclusion Of The Best eCommerce Website Builders
As you can see there are many options out there for you to choose the best website builders for eCommerce today. Are you using any of these eCommerce marketplace builders?
Finally, I’d love to know more in the comments if you are selling online or plan to in the near future.
9 eCommerce Website Builders To Build Your Online Store Share on X
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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Thanks, Lisa
for letting us know about some other awesome marketplace services other than Shopify and Magento
CS-Cart and Dokan seems to be amazing service to give them a try, these new and cool platforms needs to be marketed online so young entrepreneurs can know about them and can take advantages of these advanced marketing platforms.
You are most welcome Jonty. Welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Have you been using any of these for your websites? I really do love these advantage marketing platforms. They make it easy and so much better for the consumers too when they are shopping online. Thanks for coming by and have a great weekend!
Hello Lisa,
This is an amazing for people who are into the ecommerce industry.
I have heard a lot of people who said they recorded a lot of success using Magento and WooCommerce.
Nice to see other amazing ecommerce site builders here. I’m sure those who are confused of the particular to use will find this piece valuable.
Thanks for your indepth research in this post.
Emenike
Hi Emenike, thank you. Do you sell online yourself? It amazes me how far these have come over the years. Thanks for coming by and have a great weekend.
Hi Lisa, great topic and absolutely great builders listed for eCommerce sites.
When it comes to creating an eCommerce store, most people simply go for WordPress (just because it’s one of the most used blogging platforms) but in fact, there are way better alternatives available especially for eCommerce stores.
I particularly like Magento for the kind of features it offers. It offers a wide range of mobile friendly designs along with the access to the best community where you can get all the support you need around eCommerce.
One of the reasons most people pick Magento over other platforms for eCommerce stores is that it supports multiple locations, multiple languages, multiple pricing and multiple currencies so you can easily create a profitable eCommerce store from scratch.
Thanks for the list and I’ll check out the other alternatives you mentioned as well. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Anil. There are so many ways today Anil. I loved the CS-Cart Multi Vendor as I used to have a drop-shipping website years ago and having the ability to work with multi vendors in one platform is awesome! Having multiple languages and currencies is key today as well. Thanks for checking this one out Anil and have a great day ahead.
Love to know if you do check out the alternatives here.
One thing I have learned Lisa; when you make it incredibly easy for people to buy stuff, they buy stuff. Simple, powerful and clearly the way to prosper. These builders look like they can facilitate the buying process. Rocking share my friend.
Ryan
Hi Ryan, nice to see you back here. Oh yes, keep it simple for sure! People don’t want to spend time searching for things or getting hung up when they are shopping online. They want it quick and easy! Thanks for coming by Ryan and I hope all is well your way. Have a great day and weekend ahead.
Hi Lisa,
Thanks again as always for yet another insightful post. Truth be told, E-commerce is taking over the digital marketing landscape, and with so many choices, web developers face a hard time choosing the right pardon for their e-marketing campaign. But with your insights on each of these platform, I believe you’ve made life a lot easier for e-commerce marketers.
Hi Moss, you are most welcome. E-commerce most certainly is taking over these days. There are so many options out there now too, it’s important to choose the right one. It can make the difference between making money or not. I also look for things too that can save you time. Thanks for coming by on this one Moss and have a nice day and a great weekend ahead.
Lisa, great advice for anyone getting started in eCommerce. Even though I’ve been working in this space for several years, I’d never heard of some of the technologies you brought up. Dokan looks incredibly useful in certain situations–thank you for your post!
Hi Rhodes, welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Thank you. What would you be using your eCommerce marketplace vendor for? (Type of business). Thanks for coming by and have a wonderful day ahead.
Hi Lisa,
Before creating an eCommerce store, it is necessary that a webmaster or developer should understand various eCommerce marketplace builders. I must say I was not aware about many of them.
thanks for sharing a knowledgeable article.
Hi Gaurav, oh yes, webmasters must understand these to build the websites correctly and most effectively. There are many options and picking the right one can make or break a sale. You are most welcome. Thanks for coming by and have a great day!
Hello Lisa,
eCommerce industry is booming in these days. People love shopping online and this helps many vendors and online Merchants to provide products online as it helps them to maximize their profits. You have shared some great tools to build e-commerce marketplace. Thanks for sharing these helpful tips. Shared it on my Social Networks.
Have a Great day.
Vishwajeet
Hi Vishwajeet, that is for sure – people love saving time by shopping online. Do you sell online now Vishwajeet? Thank you for coming by and have a fabulous day!