Dropshipping has become a popular eCommerce business model. It is simple to start with a very low initial investment. However, one of the most challenging steps in setting up a dropshipping business is choosing a suitable eCommerce platform.
There are tons of eCommerce platforms for dropshipping, but not all can guarantee you success. Also, not all the platforms would be idle for the type of products you want to sell; of course, the budget plays a deciding factor for it.
Here are a few things that you should look for in an eCommerce platform for dropshipping –
- Easy to use
- Supports dropshipping tools
- Business scalability possibilities
- Excellent customer support
- Affordable pricing plans
In this article, I have compared some of the best eCommerce platforms based on the above pointers and listed them here to help you pick the most suitable platform for your dropshipping business.
Ready to dive in? Let’s get started.
1. Shopify
Shopify is the most popular eCommerce platforms for dropshipping that is easy to use and provides everything you need to build an online store without requiring any coding knowledge. It supports direct integration with almost every dropshipping suppliers like Spocket, which make it super simple to identify the winning products and import them directly to your store.
The platform comes with several built-in marketing tools and free apps that you can use for email marketing, abandoned cart recovery functionality, gift card promotion, etc. Over that, by using its in-house payment gateway, Shopify Payments, you can save a lot on your transaction fees.
Overall, Shopify is a subscription-based eCommerce platform that allows non-tech savvy to easily start a dropshipping business and grow it exponentially.
Key Features –
- Ease of use: It has an intuitive editor and offers responsive dropshipping themes to create an attractive store.
- Scalability: While Shopify is designed for SMBs, Shopify Plus is for enterprise-level businesses, ensuring high scalability levels. (Read Shopify vs Shopify Plus to know more)
- Dropshipping: With Shopify, you can integrate many product-sourcing apps to find and import high quality products to your store.
- Customer support: It gives you access to community forums help center, and you get in touch via email and chat options.
Pricing Plans – Start a 3-day free trial (no credit card required) and then enjoy the next 3 months at just $1/month on your chosen plan. It has three pricing plans and three major pricing plans as follows –
- The Basic Shopify plan costs $29/month and charges a transaction fee of 2%. It is a suitable platform for beginners.
- The Shopify plan costs $79/month, is suitable for growing stores, and charges a transaction fee of 1%.
- The Advanced Shopify plan costs $299/month, suitable for scaling businesses that require advanced reporting features. With this plan, the transaction fee reduces to 0.5%
Further reading –
2. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is another trusted eCommerce platform for dropshipping. It is a free WordPress plugin that enables you to add all the eCommerce functionalities to your website. Since it is an open-source platform, it gives you complete flexibility to customize as per your business needs.
It is extremely easy to use and SEO friendly as it inherit the SEO features of WordPress and allows you to add other plugins to extend its functionalities. With direct integration with popular dropshipping suppliers and other sales and marketing apps, it makes it easy for anyone to set up a functioning dropshipping store on the platform.
Despite WooCommerce is a free platform, you will have to invest in a reliable hosting platform and other plugins to build your online store. Still, it will be cheaper than most paid eCommerce platforms.
Key Features –
- Ease of use: As the platform is open-source, you can easily customize it per your design needs and standards.
- Scalability: It offers great scalability as you can add unlimited products as long as it doesn’t cause your eCommerce site to get slowed.
- Dropshipping: You can find WordPress plugins for majority of dropshipping suppliers with direct integration with WooCommerce.
- Customer support: It has an excellent range of support teams spread across the globe.
Pricing Plans – It is completely free to use. You will have to only pay for hosting your WordPress site.
Further reading –
3. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another self-hosted eCommerce platform packed with powerful features and tools that you will need to set up a robust dropshipping store. It comes with drag-and-drop page builders, advanced SEO tools, abandoned cart recovery systems, and marketing tools to help you easily build and grow your store efficiently.
As BigCommerce focuses mainly on mid and large size businesses, it is an ideal eCommerce platform for growing dropshipping stores. The best thing about it is that unlike majority of eCommerce platforms, it doesn’t charge any transaction fees on sales.
Key Features –
- Ease of use: It comes with an easy-to-use drag and drop page builder, which make it super easy for non-techies to design and create the store.
- Scalability: The platform aims are providing mid-market and enterprise level solutions, so, you don’t have to worry about scalability of your store.
- Dropshipping: It supports direct integration with popular print-on-demand services and dropshipping suppliers, making it easier to import and manage your products.
- Customer Support: BigCommerce provides 24/7 technical support and also assigns a dedicated account manager to help you at every step of your business.
Pricing Plan – BigCommerce has two different offering for mid -large business and small businesses. The BigCommerce essentials, which is dedicated for small businesses offers 15-day free trial on its paid plans, starting at $29.95/month.
The BigCommerce enterprise focuses on mid & large businesses with high number of sales and revenue. For its pricing, you will have to contact their sales team.
Further Reading –
- BigCommerce Review
- Best BigCommerce Themes
- Must-have BigCommerce Apps
4. Squarespace
Being a leader in creating design-oriented websites, Squarespace is a flexible eCommerce platform for dropshipping, allowing merchants to launch a rich and professional store. It offers eye-catchy templates, various selling options, and good payment options to unlock considerable profit rates.
Squarespace also offers different kinds of fulfillment extensions to make your life easier. Remember that even if you connect fulfillment extensions, you need to set up the shipping rates for your products.
Key Features –
- Ease of use: With its well-designed and neat interface, you can build your online store catering to your needs.
- Scalability: Though it can handle a high amount of traffic, sometimes, slow loading of pages occurs.
- Dropshipping: It provides direct integration with Printful and Printify for print on demand dropshipping and also lets you source products via Spocket.
- Customer support: The support options are extensive as they are available 24/7 via email, Twitter, offers live chat support, and offers a detailed knowledge base to solve issues quickly.
Pricing Plans – Squarespace offers a 14-day trial and has three pricing plans, which are as follows –
- The Business plan starts at $26/month, is suitable for entry-level merchants, and incurs a transaction fee of 3%.
- The Basic commerce plan starts at $35/month and offers powerful merchandising tools, cart recovery, and eCommerce analytics.
- The Advanced commerce plan starts at $54/month and gives you access to all the stunning features to build an optimized storefront.
Fortunately, both the Basic and the Advanced plans do not incur a transaction fee.
Further reading –
5. Wix
Wix is a popular website builder with powerful eCommerce features for dropshipping. It is completely beginner-friendly and gives you lots of options to sell. As an added advantage, you can use its secure and free web hosting that makes your dropshipping store active 24x7x365.
Wix eCommerce platform enables you to launch a beautiful online store by using its wide array of features. You can browse through the list of best dropshipping apps from the Wix app store and choose the best one that ideally fits your needs.
Key Features –
- Ease of use: Wix offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor to build your online store, or you can choose Wix ADI to do all the work for you.
- Scalability: Scalability with Wix is quite tricky as its eCommerce platform is tailored for small-sized businesses.
- Dropshipping: It enables you to sell a wide variety of products via a recently acquired dropshipping platform, Modalyst.
- Customer Support: Wix provides active support via Twitter, and you can access their help center. Currently, it does not provide support via chat or email but provides phone support in different languages.
Pricing Plans – It allows you to create a free account and has three major pricing plans, which are as follows –
- The Business Basic plan starts at $23/month. You can accept payments, sell unlimited products, bring back abandoned customers, sell on social channels, etc.
- The Business Unlimited plan starts at $27/month. It lets you sell upto 25 products on Modalyst and allows you to sell in multiple currencies.
- The Business VIP plan starts at $49/month. It gives you access to a complete set of eCommerce features to create a full-fledged online store.
Further reading –
6. Ecwid
If you wish to get started with an easy-to-use eCommerce platform for drop shipping, then Ecwid sounds like a good choice. It is a SaaS-based eCommerce platform that lets you easily create an online store and start selling either in-person or online.
You can quickly get started by installing any dropshipping apps from its App Market. Ecwid is highly user-friendly, and anybody with minimal to less technical skills can quickly launch their store, and it’s that simple.
Key Features –
- Ease of use: It is beginner-friendly and offers great eCommerce marketing and sales options.
- Scalability: It is suitable for small-sized businesses or beginners, so scalability is limited.
- Dropshipping: It integrates with Alibaba, Syncee, Spocket, Printful, and Wholesale2B.
- Customer support: You can contact Ecwid via email and get an immediate response within 24 hours. It also offers phone support and has a help center that covers in-depth about the platform to get started easily.
Pricing Plans – It offers a forever-free plan that allows beginners to start easily. The paid plans are as follows –
- The Venture plan starts at $15/month, letting you sell on other sales channels and advertise on various marketing platforms.
- The Business plan starts at $35/month that offers a mobile responsive shopping cart, product variations, and wholesale pricing groups.
- The Unlimited plan starts at $99/month, allowing you to build your own branded iOS and Android shopping app and access to various POS systems.
Further reading –
Wrapping Up
Remember that there’s no ideal eCommerce platform that is perfect for every dropshipping niches. So, you must examine each platform listed above based on your business requirments, budgets, skills and other factors to pick the right platform.
Now you know some of the best dropshipping eCommerce platforms that you can use to set up your store without having to manage inventory by yourself. Some of these platform are free, while others have a free plan or offers a free trial. So, make sure to try every platform that seems right to ensure it has everything you need for your business.
Once you have selected an eCommerce platform for dropshipping, you can should check out our guide on starting an eCommerce business and these hand-picked articles for more information –
- Best dropshipping products to sell for high profits
- Most effective marketing strategies for eCommerce brands
- Proven tips to boost conversion rate of eCommerce sites
