You’d be living under a rock if you are not aware of e-commerce and how it has revolutionized the entire shopping experience for consumers around the globe. A quick search on Google for any product/service you are looking for will return millions of results in a matter of seconds. If you are planning to open your online store too, it is important to know the most important e-commerce platforms to help you build a store. Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace, and Etsy are some of the most popular platforms. Each of them comes with its pros and cons. To help you out, in this article, we have done a comparison of Shopify vs Etsy, Volusion vs Shopify, and Shopify vs Squarespace to help you figure out the best platform. Let’s take a look:

Shopify vs Etsy

The major difference between Shopify and Etsy is that while Shopify is an e-commerce platform, Etsy is essentially an online marketplace. With you Shopify, you can build your e-store whereas Etsy enables sellers to list down their products on their website. To understand it better, you can think of Etsy as a huge shopping mall where anyone can open a store and sell products to customers. In contrast, Shopify is an online store builder where you can design and launch your custom store.

Pros and cons of Shopify vs Etsy

• Shopify gives you innumerable options to customize your store while Etsy offers only a limited number of options.
• Etsy is one of the most popular online marketplaces in the world, which enables sellers to get huge traffic on their page if they are selling the right products. On the other hand, with Shopify – you build a store of your own that would need marketing and word-of-mouth for making some noise in the digital world and getting traction.
• Etsy is a great option for people who are neither tech-savvy nor want to spend a considerable amount of time is building a store. Shopify is for people who want to personalize their online store and have the required skills or resources to do so.

Volusion vs Shopify

Both Volusion and Shopify are e-commerce platforms. They help individuals in building their stores and selling products to their intended audiences. Volusion and Shopify are hosted solutions, which means they do not require any type of software to be installed, rather they run in your device’s browser. Another similarity between the e-commerce platforms is that both of them are SaaS-based.

Pros & cons of Volusion vs Shopify

• Shopify does not limit its sellers while enlisting products on their store but with Volusion, it is different. On their ‘Personal’ plan, you can upload 100 products while on the ‘Professional’ plan, you can upload 5000 products.
• Shopify has more free templates than Volusion.
• Compared to Volusion, Shopify offers a lot more third-party payment gateway options.
• When it comes to ‘out of the box’ payment solutions, both of these e-commerce platforms offer them. Volusion Payments can only be used in the US whereas Shopify Payments can be used by consumers in 11 countries.

Shopify vs Squarespace         

Squarespace is a reliable software for building an online store whereas Shopify is content management systems and a web-builder. Both of these platforms are popular for their customer service and amazing features.

Pros & cons vs. Shopify vs Squarespace

• As far as templates are concerned, Squarespace offers some of the very best templates to its users. In this area, Squarespace wins. All the template designs are professionally and the number of options available is higher than Shopify offers.
• When it comes to customer support, Shopify takes the lead. Their customer service has been awarded multiple times for the quick and knowledgeable response to the users’ queries. They are not only available 24/7 hours but also have a toll-free number. Squarespace does not offer phone support but you can assistance from them via email, online chat, and even Twitter.
• While Shopify is a drag-and-drop web-builder, Squarespace expects the users to go the old-school way.

Bottomline

It is important to understand what your requirements are. Before settling on an e-commerce platform, sit down and write down what type of store you want to have, the number of products, customization options, and most important the resources you have. Once you are clear about them, choose the platform that provides you the most flexibility without overdoing your assigned budget. All of these platforms are amazing in their way. It all boils down to your business and requirements.