Looking for some of the best e-commerce softwares in India? Don’t worry we got you covered. Firstly, let’s start with what is an e-commerce software? An e-commerce software are tools that help business owners easily build an e-commerce website. Running one’s business online has helped merchants conduct business efficiently. These platforms provide them with a larger customer database and enable them with a simplified self-service method. They empower business owners to easily create a website to sell products, manage inventory, accept and process payments.
Why Does One Need an E-commerce Software?
Owing to the pandemic, we have seen record growth in online businesses and many entrepreneurs have started selling their products on their own web stores. Furthermore, these e-commerce softwares in India support eCommerce efforts in a variety of ways. Keeping that in mind, here are the immediate benefits:
- Easily build a shopping website – A good ecommerce software primarily allows people to set up an online shopping or ecommerce website relatively easily and and quickly and it further allows in updating the info on the website and managing the business a relatively low effort task. In contrast, if you hire a software company or freelancers to build a custom shopping website for you from scratch, it would take a considerable amount of time and money and would still require to keep a technical team for maintenance afterwards.
- Excellent data management and processing– It maintains the order and payment history of each consumer. Moreover, it collects and processes the information, providing invaluable stats on selling trends for different time periods. The feedback system provides customers with a first-hand experience of the product.
- Convenient shopping – Now, just a few clicks fulfill the customers’ needs without stepping outside.
- Safer shopping –These platforms provide hassle-free payment options and well administrate the transactions which eventually builds the customers’ trust that their money will reach the desired destination.
- Marketing management – Shopping carts platforms come packed with advanced marketing functionalities that help retain customers and acquire new ones. A good shopping cart platform will ensure easy access to selected products/services but also intelligently pull off other related pages that may be of interest to the customer. The cart will adapt easily to the user’s browsing criteria, and further improve the shopping experience by keeping track of everything the customers are doing. This will help them develop a more professional image of what your brand can do for them and you end up with more sales. Discounts are also offered to retain the customers.
- Order Management – While a shopping cart ecommerce software can help brands build a great website, the brands would still need to keep a track of and process orders that are placed by the customers on a daily basis. Furthermore, if a business generates sales via other marketplace websites or offline stores, then those orders also need to be managed along with your own website orders. The best way to manage those orders are through a more advanced order management system that automatically pulls in orders from various sales channels and brings them in one place for ease.
Problems Faced by Small Businesses to Build an Online Website
Although many e-commerce softwares in India have managed to help small businesses get online. But there are still a lot of challenges being faced by the business owners. The few major ones are:
- The lack of knowledge to operate online softwares. This is why some traders hire a technical team and get a website designed for themselves.
- Although, after getting a website professionally designed; the traders would need a professional to maintain and update the site regularly. This brings out the issue of higher expenses to do so. This becomes a major obstacle, especially for small businesses.
Therefore, the need to help small businesses that do not have strong financial support and a tech-savvy background. E-commerce softwares are the platforms that provide many sample templates and themes for the design of websites. Their subscription plans and maintenance costs are low and hence the trader can choose any theme according to their choice and proceed further in no time.
Even so, these e-commerce softwares in India to come with some limitations such as:
- The inability to export the website to other platforms.
- The poor search engine optimization on these websites won’t be helping you rank on top at Google search.
- Changing themes also has its limitations as they can only be edited using the pre-available templates which limits your website from standing out from the rest.
- Another point to consider is that, since the website isn’t owned by you, upscaling your business will be an issue. Be it in terms of scaling into different areas or markets, this won’t be supported by these websites. This is why these website builders are only recommended for small and medium-scale merchants.
Top eCommerce Shopping Cart Softwares in India
1. Shopify
Shopify, is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. It was founded in 2006 and is a publicly-listed company. The company reported that it had more than 1,700,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries, currently using its platform.
Key Features:
- Allows you to setup an ecommerce store website without any coding skills with drag and drop functionality.
- It has a great range of themes and design templates – above 70 and customization features as well.
- It supports multichannel selling on websites like Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, and eBay.
- There is an extensive library of pre-built free and paid apps to add more features to the site.
- It has its own customisation language called Liquid which allows customisations on the website.
- There is a wide network of Shopify development specialists and agencies that can help you customise Shopify.
Pricing:
- It initially provided a 14-day free trial for the outlook and understanding of the model and later subscription became compulsory.
- The three main plans start at USD 29/month (which is around Rs 2,400/month). Further increasing to USD 79 per month (INR 5800 approximately) for the middle plan. And lastly reaching USD 299 /month (around Rs 25,000/month) on the highest plan.
- There’s also an extra, much cheaper Shopify Lite plan that costs $9 per month (almost Rs 750/month), which lets you add eCommerce to an existing site rather than building an online store.
- Shopify also charges transaction fees for third-party payment methods and the processing fees depend on the plan taken.
2. Magento
Magento is another one of the best e-commerce softwares in India. It has a seven percent eCommerce market share globally. It started in 2007 as an open-source platform, so its users can develop eCommerce websites with ease.
Key Features:
- It is completely free to use and it provides a multitude of customizing options to users.
- Also, it has an established user-base with a ton of resources for beginners and experts alike.
- It provides free/paid plugins to improve the UX of the eCommerce store.
- Magento-based stores are highly customizable. The users can customize every aspect of the e-commerce store down to altering the code structure and the data inside the databases. But here you should know how to code which limits some people to choose this.
Pricing:
- It is completely free to create a website but provides free/paid plugins to improve the UX of the eCommerce store.
- It offers subscription plans as a Startup plan at 733 INR, going up to the Grow Big plan at 1470 INR, and at last GoGeek at 2205 INR.
- Extra charges may apply if you go for paid features.
3. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin tool specially designed for WordPress. It was originally written by Mike Jolly and James Koster in the year 2011. The plugin is ideal for small to large-sized merchants using WordPress. Further, the plugin quickly gained users since it is positioned to be a freeware.
Key Features:
- This is a WordPress plugin that requires no specialized knowledge for the working
- WooCommerce allows you to have a free status until you have reached a certain range of profits.
- This is a customizable platform to fit any of your business needs.
- Allows you to handle your store from your phone for added convenience with the help of the app.
- WooCommerce is translated into 24 different languages.
Pricing:
- WooCommerce is free to use up until you have a certain profit range
- A few features are chargeable on this platform.
4. BigCommerce
Big Commerce is an eCommerce platform that provides SAAS service. It was founded in 2009 in Australia and is headquartered in Texas, US.
Key Features:
- It offers 150 plus themes for the store design.
- Its prime focus is on B2B and B2C.
- It is more flexible as the drag and drop method proves to be fast and efficient.
- It has more powerful sales features as compared to others which require a bit more learning curve.
Pricing:
- It provides a 15-day trial initially and later the subscription becomes compulsory.
- It starts with a Standard plan at 2205 INR, followed by a Plus plan at 5887 INR, and at last the Pro plan at 22053 INR.
- They offer a 10 percent concession when paid annually.
- No transaction fees are charged on any of the plans.
5. Ecwid
Ecwid is a software-as-a-service e-commerce company that provides online selling solutions for small businesses. It was founded in 2009 and is located in California. It is present in 175 countries with more than 9 million sellers.
Key Features:
- It is primarily designed to add e-commerce to an already existing website though it helps to create new websites too.
- Supports multichannel selling as sellers can add this website to Etsy, eBay, and Facebook.
Pricing:
- It is quite cheap in terms of subscription as compared to others. The first is the free plan which is a big win for a lot of people.
- There are then three paid plans starting with the INR 1102 Venture plan, working up to the INR 2570 Business plan, and peaking with the INR 7271 Unlimited plan. All these plans are per month plans when billed annually.
- Ecwid won’t charge you any transaction fees. It charges only a processing fee which depends on your plan taken, the higher the plan the lower the fee.
6. Zoho Commerce
Zoho started in 1996 as an Indian multinational technology company. It has its presence in seven locations having a global headquarters in Chennai, India, and corporate headquarters in Pleasanton, California. It has reached more than 50 million customers and is expanding its venture.
Key Features:
- It is primarily used for eCommerce and multichannel eCommerce.
- This software supports drag and drop methods with pre-build templates.
- It is suitable for all individual, small and medium kinds of business.
Pricing:
- Initially, it offers a 30-day free trial, and then subscription plans become mandatory.
- The first plan is referred to as the starter plan which starts at INR 999 per month, going up to INR 2999 per month professional plan, and at last the advanced plan with INR 6999 per month.
- Concession is given if the seller takes a subscription together for the whole year. It also offers mini-plans in case you want to add little features to the plan.
7. Wix
Wix is an Israeli software company founded in 2006 which provides cloud-based web development services. They have almost 200 million users! It is a stock-listed company that helps to build websites in all domains.
Key Features:
- Most of its templates have their prime focus on eCommerce.
- Wix offers more features and combines intuitive editing tools. Here you can sell on a website, social media, marketplaces, or mobile sites too.
- Its ‘drag and drop’ method makes it easy to build a store in no time and provides over 800+ templates.
Pricing:
- Creating your website is free here and then for the additional features, it requires subscription plans.
- The plans are quite pocket-friendly. It starts with business basic at INR 225. Then comes business unlimited with INR 300 and at last business VIP at INR 500. All these are per month charges when billed annually.
8. OpenCart
OpenCart is another open-source software for eCommerce merchants. One can build a professional and successful platform for your business. It was initially released in 2010. Up until 2016, almost 342,000 websites were using OpenCart.
Key Features:
- It is a PHP-based software that uses MySQL database as well as HTML components
- Build-in SEO management, and also your customers, taxes, coupons, orders, and more from one platform.
- 13000+ modules and these to choose from
Pricing:
- This platform is completely free with zero monthly fees. Yet have proper updates regularly.
9. Instamojo
Instamojo is an eCommerce website builder based in India. It has powerful features designed specifically for small business owners to start their online business journey. You get a store that comes with a payment gateway with no additional costs.
Key Features:
You can create an eCommerce website for free.
- It’s the easiest platform to set up and manage an online store with a plug-and-play model.
- The store comes with an in-built payment gateway to collect payments securely.
- You get a range of tools for activities such as email marketing, customer retention, abandoned cart recovery, and Facebook and Google Shopping integrations.
Pricing:
- Instamojo offers a free online store plan which comes with basic eCommerce features.
- You can sign up for the premium store plans starting at ₹3,999/year.
- There’s a transaction fee which ranges from 2% to 5% based on plans.
10. Builder.ai
Build your eCommerce site and app from scratch with Builder.ai, founded by Sachin Dev Duggal in 2012. This software company won several awards for their initiative to make eCommerce businesses easier. Their aim was to build a software that removes technology gaps, enabling anyone to build their own site.
Key Features:
- Builder.ai offers integration of secure payment modes via their site.
- Effortlessly build your app/site, at the most, in 2 weeks’ time.
- Offer your customers a better shopping experience with various catalogs and a carousel of your products. All tailor-made for both Android and iOS users.
- No additional charges from the profits earned from sales.
Pricing:
- The pricing structure isn’t the same for all; therefore the cost would entirely depend on what you use and opt for while building your eCommerce store.
Conclusion
There you have it the best eCommerce softwares in India. You can further take the demo and find out which of this software is the best for your business. Taking the demo will help you understand the software and make a well-researched decision. Creating an online store on e-commerce softwares proves to be a great resource for small and medium scale merchants to scale up their business.
