The 8 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Large Companies

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For larger businesses and enterprises, our extensive research and platform testing found Shopify is the best choice for setting up your online store, closely followed by the ecommerce industry titan BigCommerce.

No matter how big your business may be, in this chaotic post-COVID era, you don’t have time to search for and test different software yourself. That’s why we’ve conducted extensive research into the best ecommerce platforms for large companies, rigorously testing them and creating unique overall ratings out of five for each one.

We finalised our ratings by hand-testing each platform’s sales tools and website functions, and examining their inventory management and marketing features, paying particular attention to their multichannel integrations. For large companies, these are the most important areas of ecommerce.

Below, you’ll find a quick overview of the eight platforms that topped our research results, followed by individual reviews and real life examples of large companies using that platform.

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Shopify

BigCommerce

Wix

WooCommerce

Square Online

Squarespace

PinnacleCart

Americommerce

Score
4.6
Score
4.4
Score
4.4
Score
4.1
Score
4.1
Score
4.1
Score
3.5
Score
3.4
Best For

Inventory management

Best For

International growth

Best For

Value for money

Best For

Those looking to start from scratch

Best For

Payment integrations

Best For

Image-heavy websites

Best For

Shipping and payment integrations

Best For

Wouldn’t recommend for large or fast-growing businesses

Price Range
Paying for one year upfront

£5-£344/month

Deal: First three months for £1 each

(Enterprise pricing available)

Price Range
Paying for one year upfront

£23-£240/month

(Converted from USD; Enterprise pricing available)

Price Range
Paying for one year upfront

£14-£119/month

£12.60-£107.10 with code “TAKE10”

(Enterprise pricing available)

Price Range
Paying for one year upfront

Plugin is free, but monthly running costs average £30/month

Price Range
Paying for one year upfront

£0-64/month

(Enterprise pricing available)

Price Range
Paying for one year upfront
Price Range
Paying for one year upfront

$44.95-$199.95/month

Price Range
Paying for one year upfront

$24.95-$299/month

Key Features
  • Website design tools
  • Sell products or services
  • Order tracking
  • Inventory management
  • Self-hosts its sites
  • Shipping discounts
Key Features
  • Focused at larger businesses
  • Integrates with marketplaces like Amazon and eBay
  • Provides SEO guidances
  • More in-built tools than most competitors
Key Features
  • Around 900 design templates
  • Loads of website functions
  • Sell on Facebook, eBay, Amazon, and more
  • Tools to boost search engine visibility
Key Features
  • Plugin coupled with WordPress CMS
  • Allows for extensive tinkering
  • 24/7 text-based support
  • No set prices – you only pay for what you need
Key Features
  • Create a simple online sales site
  • Integrate with POS hardware
  • No web design templates
Key Features
  • World class templates
  • Unlimited storage
  • Free domain (one year) on annual plans
  • Members area
  • Subscriptions
  • Visitor analytics
Key Features
Key Features
Free Trial
Free Trial
Free Trial
Free Trial
Free Trial
Free Trial
Free Trial
Free Trial
Try Shopify Try BigCommerce Try Wix Competitors Try Square Try Squarespace Competitors Competitors

Shopify (4.6/5)

Best for inventory management

heinz shopify screenshot
Heinz – Shopify customer

Shopify review

Currently supporting the websites for Heinz and The Economist, Shopify is a heavy-hitting platform. And its hits have only gotten heavier, with their score increasing from an already solid 4.3 to a stellar 4.6.

That’s no surprise when you consider Shopify’s powerful and user-friendly inventory management features. We particularly liked how you can upload multiple products at once, generate daily revenue reports, and view all your multi-channel sales in one place.

Shopify’s multi-channel selling is excellent – enabling you to sell via Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, and more – but you will have to install additional apps to do so (in contrast to BigCommerce). You’ll also need to install an app if you want to sell subscription-based products.

While Shopify supports an impressive 100+ payment processors, making it easier for your business to make sales across the globe, you’ll need to pay transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments (again, unlike BigCommerce). You can get even more information in our full Shopify review.

Shopify pricing

Similar to BigCommerce, one of Shopify’s three price plans is aimed at large companies, while it also offers a bespoke plan, ‘Shopify Plus’, for businesses generating £1,500 or more per month in revenue:

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Advanced Shopify

Shopify Plus

Price (billed monthly)

£344/month

Price (billed monthly)

£1,622+/month

Key Features
  • 15 staff accounts
  • Third-party calculated shipping rates
  • Collect import taxes
  • Advanced reporting
Key Features
  • Faster checkout
  • Automate workflows
  • Security and compliance
  • Priority support

Pros

  • Powerful and customisable inventory management features to make your company’s growth even easier
  • Offers the best sales-specific features of any platform we tested
  • Far more user-friendly than BigCommerce

Cons

  • Transaction fees imposed unless you use Shopify Payments (unlike BigCommerce)
  • Required to reformat your entire site should you change templates after going live
  • Costs of installing apps can quickly soar
Shopify has incredible inventory management tools to help your large business scale

BigCommerce (4.4/5)

Best for international growth

toyota bigcommerce screenshot
Toyota – BigCommerce customer

BigCommerce review

Used by household names like Ben and Jerry’s and Toyota, BigCommerce is clearly one of the best ecommerce platforms for large companies.

In our testing, we were impressed by its seamless integration with all the main social media channels, plus Amazon and eBay, which could help your store reach enormous audiences across the globe.

BigCommerce also provides lots of SEO (search engine optimisation) guidance while you’re uploading products, so you can improve your site’s visibility on Google’s results pages. Your business can scale even further by signing up to the bespoke ‘Enterprise’ plan, with pricing based on your annual sales figures.

Don’t forget, these are all in-built features that are being continually updated, so there are no unexpected costs to worry about – unlike with Shopify, which relies on third party apps for some ecommerce functions. Another plus for BigCommerce is that, in contrast to Shopify, BigCommerce waives its own transaction fees. 

Though it dropped points due to our research participants finding it difficult to use, and restrictive in terms of design flexibility, BigCommerce’s significant advantages mean it’s still the best ecommerce platform for large companies.

Pros

  • Offers a wider choice of in-built features than any other platform, helping your business grow without unexpected costs
  • Brilliant SEO prompts and tips when you’re adding products
  • Superb multi-channel integration, exposing your business to billions of active users worldwide

Cons

  • Editing interface could be much easier to navigate, and there is no ‘undo’ button for anything other than text updates
  • The only platform that doesn’t provide a mobile app to help you grow on the go
  • Relatively restrictive design control

BigCommerce pricing

BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial period and three price plans, with the ‘Pro’ plan aimed at large companies. It also offers an ‘Enterprise’ plan for businesses earning over £300k per year, with custom pricing.

It’s worth noting that BigCommerce is the only platform that requires certain revenue brackets for your business to qualify for each plan.

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Pro

Enterprise

Price (billed monthly)

$399/month

Price (billed monthly)

Custom pricing

Key Features

Filter products through size and colour variants

Dedicated SSL security

Google reviews

Key Features

Priority customer support

API support

Price lists

0% transaction fees

99.99% web hosting uptime

BigCommerce is designed to help large companies like yours grow across the globe

Wix (4.4/5)

Best value for money

logmein wix homepage
LogMeIn – Wix customer

Wix review

Ensuring the success of your large business means cutting costs where you can, which is where Wix comes in. Its value for money also makes it an excellent alternative to Shopify.

Wix is far cheaper than BigCommerce and Shopify, and provides SEO guides, intuitive design tools, and access to the Ecwid app (costing £0–£99 per month, on top of your Wix subscription, depending on the size of your store), which gives your site powerful ecommerce tools to rival the more expensive platforms – all on a £20 per month price plan, which is actually Wix’s second-most expensive. You can read more about its pricing in our full Wix Ecommerce review.

Like Shopify, Wix relies on third party apps for most of its multi-channel integration, which will increase your monthly costs. It’s also worth remembering that you’ll be unable to switch templates after you’ve gone live, but you are able to preview your site before publishing.

Pros

  • Offers more creative freedom than Shopify and BigCommerce, allowing you to build and convey your brand message with ease
  • Add product videos to help improve the customer’s experience
  • More affordable than BigCommerce and Shopify

Cons

  • The amount of creative freedom can become a hindrance when trying to adhere to ecommerce best practice
  • Relies on apps for most of its multi-channel integration
  • Syncing your physical inventory is harder than on Shopify or BigCommerce

Wix pricing

Wix offers a 14-day free trial period and three ecommerce-specific plans. The most suitable plan for large companies is the Business VIP plan (remember you can install the ECWID app for extra ecommerce functionality):

Wix is brilliant value for money and can help your large business cut costs

WooCommerce (4.1/5)

Best for building a store from scratch

all blacks shop woocommerce screenshot
All Blacks Shop – WooCommerce customer

WooCommerce review

WooCommerce is the ecommerce plugin that turns your WordPress site into a powerful online store.  As an open-source platform, it’s free to install and you can build a totally unique website from scratch, as long as you know how to code, or hire a web developer to help you.

Unlike using website builders (that’s every other platform on this article), you’ll need to source and pay for your own web hosting (we recommend Bluehost), security, and domain name.  You’ll also need to handle all your site’s updates and maintenance, but that should be simple work for your IT department.

That said, WooCommerce is not for tech beginners, but it does offer limitless customisation, which can help you create a truly bespoke website without relying on templates.

Pros

  • Limitless customisation, allowing you to create a truly unique online store
  • Free to install (but you’ll have recurring costs to consider like web hosting, security, and other apps)

Cons

  • By far the least beginner-friendly platform we tested
  • Self-hosted platform which means you’ll need to handle all the updates and maintenance yourself

WooCommerce pricing

As an open-source platform, WooCommerce offers no set price plans. It’s free to install, but you’ll need to pay for different services in order to build a successful online store:

  • Web hosting (we recommend Bluehost at £14 per month)
  • Domain name (£10 per year)
  • Security (£8 per year)
  • Themes (£0 to £100+)
  • Other plugins (£0 to £300+per year)
  • Web developer fees (£70+ per hour)
WooCommerce enables you to create a truly unique online store for your large business

Square (4.1/5)

Best for simplicity

the salon square screenshot
The Salon – Square customer

Square review

In stark contrast to WooCommerce is Square, the all-in-one package that’s ideal for time-conscious users.

It's the best ecommerce platform for large companies that need a new website built within an hour, and don’t mind using one brand (Square) to provide both the online store and payment processor. Square packs a punch for such a simple platform, offering multi-channel integration, abandoned cart recovery emails, and excellent revenue and traffic reports. 

However, it does appear quite restrictive when you consider its limited design options, and its single available payment processor (you can install PayPal on the most expensive price plans, though), which isn’t ideal for large companies.

Pros

  • Easiest platform to use when you don’t stray far from the site’s generated design
  • In-built insight dashboard providing data on sales, customer journeys, and recovered sales via abandoned cart emails
  • Excellent marketing features for such a simple platform

Cons

  • Lacks prompts and tips to help you get started
  • There are no templates so you are restricted to the site’s generic design
  • Expensive transaction fees if you don’t use Square’s payment processor

Square pricing

While it’s one of the best free ecommerce platforms, we recommend that you sign up to at least the ‘Premium’ plan, which is aimed at large companies:

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Premium

Price (billed monthly)

£64/month

Key Features

Lower card transaction fees

Real time postage pricing

Square is the ideal solution for your large business if you're stuck for time

Squarespace (4.1/5)

Best for combining design with impressive sales features

squarespace subscriptions

Squarespace review

Squarespace is one of the bigger names in website creation, and is especially useful for those looking to combine sleek design with a bevy of sales features.

Squarespace has one of the better selection of plans when it comes to value for money, as it's extremely affordable. And with its focus on sleek and eye-catching design comes a very easy-to-use builder.

Squarespace doesn't offer the best stock monitoring capabilities, however. This means that it lends itself better to businesses like event planning or graphic design – businesses where you don't sell physical products. It's also not exactly known for its site speed performance.

Pros

  • Great value for money
  • Very firm focus on visual marketing
  • Easy to use store-builder

Cons

  • Site speed is subpar
  • Poor stock monitoring capabilities
  • Limited ecommerce templates

Squarespace pricing

Our pick for the best Squarespace tier is the Basic Commerce plan, costing £23 per month. The other two plans on offer are the Business plan, costing £17 per month, and the Advanced Commerce plan, priced at £35 per month.

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Business

Commerce Basic

Commerce Advanced

Price (billed monthly)

£24/month

Price (billed monthly)

£28/month

Price (billed monthly)

£43/month

Key Features
  • Sell unlimited number of products
  • Free domain (1 year)
  • Free Gmail (1 year)
  • Pop-ups and banners
Key Features
  • Collect reviews
  • Product waitlists
  • Free Gmail (1 year)
  • Free domain (1 year)
Key Features
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Sell subscriptions
  • Local shipping rates
  • APIs for custom integrations
Squarespace is great for building sleek and appealing websites

PinnacleCart (3.5/5)

Best for dropshipping

PinnacleCart review

At first glance, PinnacleCart scores our lowest score, but a 3.2 is still a serviceable platform, depending on what you're looking for.

As far as positives go, PinnacleCart offers a great range of templates, meaning that you can design and customise your site to your satisfaction. There are also built-in email marketing and SEO tools, which, while not the most comprehensive, can save you money rather than having to buy another software for these functions.

On the more sour end of things, PinnacleCart's pricing is steep, with even its lowest tier costing a fair bit more than other platforms' middle tiers. It also has pretty limited storage and bandwidth, which is never what you want in a website. You also can't use physical POS systems, meaning you'll have to adopt PayPal or Stripe.

Pros

  • Allows for sale of both physical and digital products
  • Built-in email marketing and SEO tools
  • Great templates

Cons

  • One of the most expensive platforms
  • Storage and site speed are lacking
  • Doesn't support physical POS systems

PinnacleCart pricing

Pinnacle cart offers three tiers.

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Start Up

Standard

Advanced – PinnacleCart

Price (billed monthly)

$ 44.95/month

Price (billed monthly)

$94.95/month

Price (billed monthly)

$199.95/month


Americommerce (3.4/5)

Best for operating in a B2B landscape

Americommerce

Americommerce review

Americommerce is one of our lowest scorers, but it still has something to offer for the right customer.

Americommerce comes packed with several useful tools, like a cloning tool. Customer support is known to be friendly and accessible, and it's also nice that there is a wide variety of payment tiers on offer, meaning you won't have to spend more than you want.

However, it scores low for a reason. The interface is notoriously difficult to navigate, and the backend features can be a bit lacking depending on what you're looking for. For example, there is little to no documentation, meaning you'll have to do this yourself.

Pros

  • Wide variety of pricing options
  • Solid support options
  • Handy copier tool

Cons

  • Not the easiest to use
  • Little to no customization options
  • Documentation isn't bulletproof

Americommerce pricing

Americommerce is split into a whopping five tiers, each named after a precious metal, which is quite fun. The main difference in tiers, despite the price, is the amount of products users can have on their site.

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Steel  – Americommerce

Bronze – Americommerce

Silver – Americommerce

Gold – Americommerce

Platinum – Americommerce

Price (billed monthly)

$24.95/month

Price (billed monthly)

$39/month

Price (billed monthly)

$99/month

Price (billed monthly)

$149/month

Price (billed monthly)

$299/month

Key Features

100 on-site products

Key Features

500 on-site products

Key Features

5,000 on-site products

Key Features

10,000 on-site products

Key Features

Unlimited on-site products


Expert verdict

Following an extensive period of research and testing, we’ve selected and reviewed the best ecommerce platforms for large companies available in the UK. You may already know which platform is right for you, but let’s recap the top three…

Shopify is our top recommendation, with its powerful inventory management and robust selection of sales features.

In close second is BigCommerce and its superb international growth potential, followed by Wix and its combination of affordable price plans and impressive ecommerce features.

The main reason these are the best ecommerce platforms for large companies is because they provide multi-channel integration. This feature is crucial for your business in reaching new audiences across the world and boosting sales, which is what running a large company is all about.


How We Test Ecommerce Website Builders for Businesses

We tested eight market-leading ecommerce website builders to evaluate them in terms of functionality, usability, accuracy, and aesthetics so we can make the most useful recommendations to UK businesses.

Our rigorous testing process means these products have been scored and rated in seven main categories of investigation and 47 subcategories – in fact, we covered 341 areas of investigation in total. We then gave each category score a ‘relevance weighting' to ensure the product's final score perfectly reflects the needs and requirements of Expert Market readers – and that's our product testing algorithm in a nutshell!

Our main testing categories for ecommerce website builders are:

Website Features: the capabilities and functionalities offered by an ecommerce website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.

Sales Features: the sales capabilities and sales functionalities offered by an ecommerce website builder, including shipping, inventory capacity, and payment options.

Design: the aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using the website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customisable themes.

Customer Score: external customer opinion; the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular ecommerce builder – the market position and reputation a builder holds.

Ease of Use: how user-friendly and intuitive an ecommerce website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.

Value for Money: the balance between the cost of an ecommerce website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.

Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using an ecommerce website builder. This can include tutorials, knowledge bases, and email or chat support.

 

Written by:
Dan’s a Senior Writer at Expert Market, specialising in digital marketing, web design, and photocopiers, amongst other topics.
Reviewed by:
A head shot of Natasha Willett - a blonde woman in a work shirt with a blue background
For over 9 years Natasha has worked as a mixed method researcher working across a range of sectors from insurance and policy development, to business services and software. As a member of the Market Research Society, Natasha is an advocate for high ethical, commercial and methodological best practices.