What is a B2B ECommerce Platform?
B2B eCommerce or business to business digital commerce refers to an online transaction involving a business selling its services or products to other businesses.
A B2B eCommerce platform is a digital store that helps to facilitate B2B business transactions.
Today, there are many eCommerce platforms to choose from for hosting eCommerce websites. Some platforms are easy to use, others are more complex, some platforms offer more customization options for your website, and some other platforms fit seamlessly with your budget.
Here, we’ll compare the three most popular B2B eCommerce platforms – Magento, Shopify, and Woocommerce. And help you decide which is best for hosting your eCommerce business.
B2B eCommerce Platform Comparison
Magento
Magento is one of the most popular B2B and B2C eCommerce platforms. It offers users a highly customizable and functional platform for online businesses. When it comes to choosing a B2B eCommerce, Magento offers a professional tool designed to scale big business.
The downside of using Magento is that setting up and managing your business will require you to have technical knowledge. However, you can hire the services of a web development company to build a functional eCommerce platform.
Woocommerce
Woocommerce is a robust, open-source WordPress plugin that helps you to build eCommerce stores for your B2B eCommerce business.
Woocommerce offers its users tonnes of customization options for building functional eCommerce platforms. More than this, because Woocommerce is designed to function with WordPress, users have access to tons of WordPress plugins to build a robust eCommerce business.
However, much like Magento, Woocommerce demands technical knowledge to build and operate; building, managing, and updating your eCommerce website is completely up to you. Therefore, for those starting a new WooCommerce Website, companies like this WooCommerce agency can discuss all of your options, walk you through the best parts of Woocommerce, and will be there to help you from start to finish on your new eCommerce web design project!
Shopify
Shopify is an eCommerce platform that lets its users build online stores without needing any technical knowledge to manage and run their business.
With Shopify’s ease of use comes a high price. The B2B eCommerce platform is the most expensive plan in the entire eCommerce industry.
Yet Shopify offers its users ease of use and the availability of all the eCommerce tools and support they need to get started.
With Shopify, users don’t necessarily need to have technical skills to build and manage functional eCommerce businesses.
What will be the perfect choice for your project?
All three platforms offer a reliable and valuable service to their customers. Choosing the best B2B eCommerce platform for your business will depend on a few factors – the size of your business, your immediate business needs, your experience, technical abilities, and your budget.
Shopify offers customers ease of use and simplicity. It is best suited for beginners and small businesses who neither have the time, technical skills nor the interest in building highly functional eCommerce websites.
Woocommerce is an excellent platform for building a more professional eCommerce website. The eCommerce platform works best for technical business owners and large enterprises. And it’s free to use.
Magento also offers a more robust eCommerce platform for scaling large enterprises. Though Magento allows users to get started building for free, they’ll need to shell out an expensive fee later on.
To wrap up
If you still find it difficult to pick one that will perfectly match your needs, just consider the broad criteria: technical support, cost, flexibility, performance & customizability. After choosing an eCommerce platform to build your eCommerce website, you can save a tonne of time by hiring an expert developer to build a professional website for your business.
