Top 7 Enterprise eCommerce Platforms for B2B, B2C, D2C Marketplaces & Online Stores

Offline retailers are on a hunt for the best enterprise ecommerce platforms to build their online shopping store or B2B marketplace. And why not? The following stats would lure anyone to pursue eCommerce business ideas–

• eCommerce market size is estimated to grow with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.22% between 2023 and 2027. — Statista
• As per Statista, eCommerce is a $6.35 Trillion opportunity.
• By 2027, 5.29Bn+ people will be transacting online, globally.

To seize this emerging online opportunity, are you planning to launch your own online eCommerce website & mobile app.

Beware, that’s no easy task. 

If you read GrowthRomeo’s blog on the components of an eCommerce website, you will understand that developing an eCommerce application can often get complex. And you may feel lost in a labyrinth of obstacles.

That’s where an enterprise eCommerce platform enters the picture. 

Enterprise eCommerce software simplifies developing your online store. It makes maintaining your eCommerce application a cakewalk for you. 

Read this blog till the last word and you’ll have a comprehensive understanding of the strengths and shortcomings of each of these platforms, with a list of platform-specific features that these eCommerce solutions have to offer. 

Basically, we cover the following in this blog-

• Find detailed coverage of critical platform factors for eCommerce apps. We cover factors like customization, scalability, performance, and security. 
• Delve into the intricacies of eCommerce platforms. Understand how AI, automation, and analytical capabilities assist you with eCommerce operations. 
• We enlist 7 enterprise eCommerce platforms in this blog. For each, we have highlighted their strengths, and their limitations (if any). 

Here is a sneak peek into the list of top enterprise eCommerce software:

1. Adobe Commerce
2. SAP Hybris
3. Salesforce Commerce Cloud
4. Shopify Plus
5. BigCommerce Enterprise    
6. Oro Commerce
7. Woo commerce (Enterprise edition)

Why read this guide on enterprise eCommerce platforms?

There are a lot of enterprise eCommerce platforms that are scalable. They are secure, and intuitive too.

But there is a problem.

Today, every single enterprise eCommerce platform (1124 in total) claims to be the best.

Literally, every eCommerce platform parrots the same thing — WE ARE THE BEST. 

At times, it becomes annoyingly noisy, just like a fish market.

But with so much noise, how do you zero in on one single eCommerce software? Does it not sound more complex than moving the mountains?

You need to rip through this noise and find the best enterprise eCommerce platform for you. In fact, this is one of the major problems that even Fortune 500 organizations grapple with. Yes, even those with the best of the best tech teams STRUGGLE. They struggle to decide on one single enterprise eCommerce platform.

And so, to make an informed purchase decision, you must read this whitepaper. Here, we unthread & compare 8 enterprise eCommerce platforms with all their PROs & CONs.

Our intent is to make it quite easy for you to decide on one single eCommerce software to power your enterprise.

Buckle up, and hydrate yourself. And get ready for the most comprehensive guide on enterprise eCommerce development platforms. Read this blog to evaluate the 7 best enterprise eCommerce platforms to architect your scalable online marketplace. This blog is a must-read if you’re not sure about which platform to choose for building your online eCommerce website. It helps you identify the right eCommerce software, aka eCommerce platform for you. 

Why invest time in researching enterprise eCommerce platforms?

Enterprise eCommerce platforms help simplify the eCommerce application development process. Yet, not every enterprise eCommerce platform is designed for convenience. Some can still make you bang your head against the wall. They are complex to use. 

So, invest time & resources in researching the right enterprise eCommerce platform. Else, you will get stuck in a quagmire of problems.

What do we mean by the right enterprise eCommerce software? 

Something that doesn’t limit what you can build, and the customer experience (CX) that you can weave.

To become indispensable to customers, companies need to develop a radically deeper and broader understanding of what their customers really want and how to provide it. — McKinsey

What factors to weigh for researching your enterprise eCommerce platforms?

As a de facto, always prioritize your eCommerce application’s CX.

Also, always build for

• usability
• scalability
• availability
• performance
• reliability
• security
• compatibility
• maintainability

Especially, scalability & compatibility. 

Don’t buy enterprise eCommerce software without considering the above factors. Otherwise, your decision could lead to serious losses of revenue and profits.

By mistake, if you choose the wrong eCommerce platform, you will limit the growth potential of your store.

The best enterprise eCommerce platforms in the market are designed to take care of the above factors. These platforms help aspiring innovators like yourself to build scalable eCommerce marketplaces… build your online store the right way. Some empower you to lead with AI-powered enterprise eCommerce marketplace development capabilities. More on that soon. But what’s scalable marketplaces?

Wait, what’s a scalable marketplace?

“More than 4,000 items are bought in a minute on Amazon” — Similarweb

A scalable marketplace can serve hundreds of thousands of online buyers concurrently. That too without any noticeable latency or glitches.

In simple words, imagine buying a pretty small bungalow only to complain later about congested interiors and no space for parking even 2 cars, leave alone installing a small pool or a garden?

Okay, what if you find that the the 3-seater sofa that you bought for comfort is now a trouble as it takes up all the space and barely leaves any room to walk & talk in your drawing room?

Feels frustrating. And the interior looks bizarrely odd. Uninspiring. Right?

That’s exactly what happens when teams are ignorant in choosing their enterprise eCommerce platforms. A wrong decision, and the hefty investment you made into the eCommerce software may go waste. The tool you bought to build your online store may limit its growth prospects. So, be careful. Do your due diligence before you buy an enterprise eCommerce software.

Enterprise eCommerce platforms vs eCommerce platforms

They’re not really different. An enterprise eCommerce platform is more mature than a typical eCommerce platform. It’s akin to a man vs boy comparison. 

Anyway, here’s a head-to-head comparison of enterprise eCommerce platforms vs eCommerce platforms.

What’s an ideal enterprise eCommerce platform?

Today’s digital-first business should provide a contextualized and personalized digital commerce experience that enhances connections between itself and its customers. However, this organizational effort is often challenged by scalability issues, disconnects between lines of business and IT, legacy applications, fragmented data, and siloed technology environments. This event consequently stresses the importance of harnessing the power of data and artificial intelligence to provide innovative, scalable customer experiences. It also highlights the need for modern digital commerce applications that are cloud-native, API-driven, and loosely coupled. — IDC

Everything that glitters is not gold. And that applies to enterprise eCommerce platforms as well.

A well-decorated & marketed eCommerce software may not be the best.

So, before making a purchase, it’s very important to do in-depth research. 

Assess multiple enterprise eCommerce platforms for compatibility with your business and team.

Compatibility with your business requirements, aspirations, and evolving market conditions.

After all, compatibility matters.

Besides, re-platforming (switching your eCommerce software) costs you money. Additional costs include peace of mind and future complexities i.e., tech debt. 

Wrong software often ends up in spine-chilling horror stories. So, engage in the due-diligence process. Make smart purchase decisions that take your organization to new heights.

Here are a few factors to consider before choosing your enterprise eCommerce platform:

Customization

Companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue than average players. — McKinsey

The more customizable your platform, the more personalized experiences you can deliver. 

Customization is the key to differentiating your eCommerce website or app. Stand out from your competitors. It can help you win customer loyalty.

Amid the massive rise in e-commerce and broader changes in shopping habits spurred by the pandemic, consumers are increasingly willing to abandon brands that don’t meet their expectations. — McKinsey

Without customization, it’s a pricing bloodbath in the market. When pricing is the sole competitive factor, either you lose market share, or profit margins are way too thin to stay competitive. 

Ideally, enterprise-grade eCommerce platforms should be able to customize everything. It should help you customize your customer onboarding process. Put you in control of their browsing experience. It should allow you to design a custom cart flow. And should support multiple payment options. From product discovery to shipment, everything should be customizable.

For example, let’s say Christmas is on the edge, and you want to run 2 festival sales. 

A pre-Christmas clearance sale to clear the old stocks. (SALE-1)

A Christmas special sale during Christmas. (SALE-2)

Now, to entice buyers to participate in SALE-1, you want to offer a flat 10% extra discount* in SALE-2 to people who buy products worth a minimum of USD XX in SALE-1. Of course, the 10% value will be capped, why else do you think there is an asterisk 🙄. Anyway, this might sound like a crazy idea for many, but some marketers may want to try this. But do you really think that any enterprise eCommerce platform would provide this option out of the box (OOTB)? Nope. None will. But we believe marketers should get everything that they need to grow the business. And so, we tried to benchmark platforms that help you execute such OOTB ideas. 

Well, that’s an extreme example, but the point is whether you want to gamify your eCommerce platform, add new features like voice/video commerce, live product streaming, content-led commerce, live sales support, modify your store UI, or something as simple as offering extra 5% off if minimum 3 products are ordered at once — your enterprise eCommerce platform shouldn’t be the barrier to your growth.

Initially, enterprises make the mistake of selecting enterprise eCommerce platforms with templated UI. But standard templates with no customization option are limiting in nature. Later, they have to bear replatforming costs which can leave a dent in the revenue pipelines.

Your commerce stack isn’t the root of your problem; your low maturity is your problem. You have to fix your maturity before you can fix your commerce stack. — Joe Cicman, Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation

Extensibility

In the enterprise eCommerce world, integration is the kingmaker. 

If you want to be the king, look for software that integrates well with other eCommerce tools. 

Your platform should be extensible. Extend it with product information management systems (PIM) and content management systems (CMS). Add payment gateways, warehouses, shipping, and fulfillment software for operational efficiency.

The more extensible is your eCommerce platform, the more customizable it is.

In an ever-evolving eCommerce landscape, continuously deliver new & engaging experiences to your customers. This helps you build your brand identity as an innovative market leader. Also, this positively impacts conversion & revenue by meeting customer expectations.

71 percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76 percent get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. Ratcheting up the pressure on companies, if consumers don’t like the experience they receive, it’s easier than ever for them to choose something different. — McKinsey

But developing everything by yourself from scratch is going to take a lifetime. 

As a hack, entrepreneurs & enterprises need to expand their offerings. They can do so by integrating with third-party solutions in the market.

You need to integrate your storefront with APIs, extensions, themes, and connectors. This unlocks

• More payment options for the end user.
  
• A better & transparent review & ratings system.
  
• An effective product recommendation engine.
  
• Platform analytics & reporting capabilities.
  
• Enhanced security features like 2FA.
• Higher performance.
• Personalized CX with internationalization & localization.

Besides, it unlocks operational efficiency, builds trust, and wins customer loyalty.

For example, you’re a global eCommerce giant. You support Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, Stripe, and other payment options. Now, you’re entering Indian market. Here, platforms like Paytm, Google Pay, Freecharge, and other UPI payments are all the rage. 

So, you want to provide those options as well on your platform. Thus making it easy for Indian consumers to transact on your app/website.

Now, you can integrate with the platforms directly. Or partner up with platforms like Razorpay, and PayU to extend the payment options for your user base.

You do not need to build a UPI payment gateway from scratch. And hence, you can scale by being lean.

Scalability & high performance

An obvious attribute! 

Who likes an app that crashes on the payment page? 

Nobody. 

Neither do we like a website that keeps buffering for eternity, nor do we adore seeing the 404, or 503 errors in our web browsers. 

Besides, Google loves a high-performance website i.e., it can help you with your SEO juices.

47 percent of consumers expect a website to load in no more than two seconds. — Neil Patel. 

The world is a diverse place. And it has varying levels of internet connectivity (speed bandwidth). Every next person has a different device to access the digital world. These devices vary not just physically, but also in terms of performance.

Your enterprise eCommerce platform must acknowledge this. It should be designed to give a seamless experience to everyone. Then no matter what their device hardware or network capabilities are.

For example, it’s not possible to render multiple 5MB product images to a 3G phone. That would just keep loading. So be sensitive to network bandwidth.

In technical terms,

• The server & database scalability should be elastic. They must have high availability & reliability with huge spikes in traffic. That means, in the festive season, the system shouldn’t have any significant downtime. Else, the business may suffer.

Enterprise commerce businesses typically rely on a complex microservices architecture, from fulfillment, to website security, ability to scale with holiday traffic, and payment processing – there is a lot that can go wrong and impact revenue, damage customer trust, and consume engineering time. If an eCommerce site isn’t 100% online and performant, it’s losing revenue. — Gremlin

• The front end of the system shouldn’t be erratic if APIs take longer than usual to fetch responses from the server. UI shouldn’t break. It should still be aesthetic, and not appear spammy.

Cost-effective

Ah, this one is a no-brainer. 

You’re in business to make money, not to bleed the bucks. No one ever stored any water in a bucket with a hole at the bottom. 

Ensure that whatever you add to your tech stack— it’s cost-friendly. Then be it an enterprise eCommerce platform or a random extension. This also applies to your cloud server and to the database you deploy. 

Your eCommerce tech stack must align with your financial team’s budget. 

Usually, you’ll have to bear the–

• Initial cost of implementing the enterprise eCommerce platform
  
• Ongoing maintenance costs (software upgrades, bugs fixing, tech support
  
• Scalability costs

Security should also be in your focus if you want to be cost-effective. 

This is because security mishaps can break your bank. 

It’s reported that every retailer has downtime. On average, about 13 hrs of downtime during the holiday season. Especially due to DDoS attacks. — Imperva

And you know, the impact downtime can have on your revenue channels. 

In fact, it would cost Amazon a whooping $13.2Mn+ if it goes down for an hour. — Gremlin

So, you do not just need to stop the leakage but also fix the barriers that may slow you down on the road to growth.

Security

Over a half (57%) of all attacks recorded on retail websites were carried out by bots in 2021, a notable difference in comparison to all industries (33%). Bots are a common presence on retail websites, due to their many use cases — like user account takeover, price and content scraping by competitors and third-parties, inventory abuse by scalpers, credit card fraud, and more. — Imperva, The State of Security Within eCommerce 2021 – Report

Your enterprise eCommerce stack should be designed to protect the sensitive data. That means, personally identifiable information (PII) of users. Strive to prevent sensitive data breaches (actually all data breaches). And of course, ensure secure transactions. In short, your eCommerce stack should be an unbreachable fort.

And what do we mean, when we say eCommerce stack? It means your entire eCommerce tech stack infrastructure. This would include your eCommerce architecture, resource access management system, and a firewall. Also, the third-party services that you use, and their stack as well.

Though we are in an era where you can blindly pick a date (Hey Tinder & Bumble), always be picky about your enterprise eCommerce stack.

For instance, the most infamous eCommerce hack is that of Target’s 2013 data breach. The hackers (actually, crackers) gained access to Target’s network. 

This was done by exploiting a vulnerability in a third-party vendor’s software. 

Told you, you need to keep an eye. 

That software allowed them to install malware on Target’s point-of-sale systems (damn). 

The breach resulted in the theft of 40 million credit and debit card numbers. 

This was on top of leaked 70 million PIIs of customers. 

The total cost of the breach was estimated to be north of $202 million. Not just that, Target’s revenue plummeted by 46% in the following quarter i.e., a south dive of > $400 Mn+.

Security-related features to look at in your enterprise eCommerce platform software:

• Fraud prevention and detection capability
• SSL certificate integration
• Two-factor authentication
• PCI compliance
• Data encryption
• GDPR compliance

Mobile optimized

More than half of US online adults who own smartphones use them to research or purchase products and services. — Forrester

Mobile commerce accounted for 44.88% of the total sales in the Holiday Season Sales 2022. — Adobe

Mobile online spend was likely driven by the desire to make purchases from anywhere. It is also reflective of growing trust in smartphone transactions and improvements in mobile online experiences (compared to past years where consumers chose to shop on their computers).— Vivek Pandya, lead analyst with Adobe Digital Insights.

• 74% of retail traffic comes from mobile devices.
• Mobile accounts for 63% of online eCommerce conversions. 

You literally CANNOT ignore the mobile experience. Your eCommerce platform must be optimized for mobile phones in terms of—

• User experience (UX) 
• Performance
• Customization. 

For example, the availability of a screen that you can interact with on a phone is way too small. And most people browse their phones with their thumbs. So the icon size with which you interact on the phone matters. 

And today, almost everyone uses social media, banking apps, and news apps. Probably, your competitor’s eCommerce apps as well.

The UX/CX that you deliver needs to be consistent with the level of CX these apps deliver, if not better. 

So, your UX/CX shouldn’t be very different from what the users experience elsewhere. 

For instance, your eCommerce app’s hamburger icon can look a little different (that’s fine). But the functionality should remain the same. When it gets clicked, it should show product categories and profile control options. If you plan to show recommended products inside the hamburger component — that’s not a good idea. DO NOT CONFUSE THE USER.

That on a high level outlined what features or characteristics of an online store development software make it an ideal eCommerce platform. Now, explore the enterprise ecommerce platform features that you should check for in an eCommerce application development software to see if it upticks the needs of all stakeholders, esp the backend operations teams, the marketing and sales teams, and of course, the client.

7 Best Enterprise eCommerce Platforms In 2023

As mentioned above, there are thousands of products in the market. But we made it easier for you. We have shortlisted the 7 best enterprise eCommerce software solutions for you. So that you can build large-scale online selling websites.

For each of the platforms, we have detailed out-

• Their core USPs 
• Who is it suited for 
• How much it may cost
• Pitfalls

Note: Ordering here is not a reflection of their rankings or how good they are. All these enterprise eCommerce platforms are equally good. Comparing them is no different than comparing — Lionel Messi with Christiano Ronaldo. Or Roger Federer with Rafael Nadal, or Johnny Depp with Shahrukh Khan. It’s just that each of the platforms has its unique benefits and tradeoffs. So keep in view what your organizational vision and expectations are. Accordingly, you can choose the enterprise eCommerce solution that’s most compatible.

1. Adobe Commerce (Magento)

In 2018, California-based Adobe Systems acquired the open-source eCommerce platform Magento. They wanted to provide it to the enterprise customers. So, they made it available with their Adobe Experience Cloud Suite of software. 

In 2021, they integrated Magento into the Adobe ecosystem. Then, Adobe rebranded Magento to Adobe Commerce. And positioned it as the AI-heavy eCommerce platform solution for large enterprises.

Let’s find out if Adobe Commerce ticks all the boxes to be your enterprise eCommerce software.

Customization Features of Adobe Commerce

• A platform to help you build an AI-powered, tailored commerce experience.
• A global ecosystem of implementation partners to build custom solutions.
• Adobe provides you with a marketplace of extensions & third-party integrations for eCommerce customization.
  
• Drag and drop page builder for UI feature development.
• Customized dashboards & report generation from data.

Extensibility & Integration capabilities of Adobe Commerce

• Adobe provides Channel Manager to integrate with Walmart. And you have an Amazon Sales channel to sell on Amazon.
  
• Adobe has a dedicated extensions marketplace. It has 3500+ extensions. They span categories like customer support, payments & security. Extensions are also available for marketing, accounting, and finance. Shipment & fulfillment, site optimization, and other extensions make your eCommerce store scalable.
  
• You have interesting extensions like the First order coupon. This provides an offer to a first-time customer. There are extensions for address verification, cross-border fulfillment, and a lot more. The extensions marketplace is not free.

Scalability & Performance with Adobe Commerce

• Sell anywhere 24 x 7.
• There is a central hub for multichannel commerce. With it you can scale to any number of brands, sites, sales channels, and marketplaces. Icing on the cake, you can do so without having to deal with any complications. Central hub saves you from disparate efforts of managing different platforms. You can manage all channels from a single unified interface.
  
• Adobe Commerce enables you to launch a traditional coupled storefront. Also, you can launch a decoupled hybrid PWA or a completely headless solution.
  
• You can deploy multi-tenant, multi-region headless storefronts. You can use out-of-the-box localized currencies and languages from one integrated backend platform.
  
• Headless commerce & API-based integrations to third-party extensions make your store extensible. Thus enabling delightful experiences and ensuring high performance.
  
• You can customize your platform by using Adobe Headless Commerce capabilities. Adobe App Developer Builder provisions and scales your compute storage and CDN resources.

Pricing/Cost of Owning Adobe Commerce

• As per reports, license pricing for Magento commerce enterprise is USD 22k per annum. This is for customers with gross merchandise value (GMV) less than USD 1 Mn+.
• License pricing goes up all the way to USD 125k annually for enterprises with GMV 25Mn+.
• License pricing for the Magento commerce cloud is in the range of USD 40k to USD 190k per year.

Security Aspects of Adobe Commerce

• Adobe Commerce provides future-proof headless architecture with security & compliance features. It protects your customer’s and business data
• Adobe Commerce is a PCI-certified level 1 solution provider
• Adobe Security Scanning Tools boosts your platform security. It keeps you on top of any security risk, malware, or unauthorized access. It helps safeguard your customers & yourself from all known and emerging security threats.
  
• You get HTTPS/SSL access, WAF protocols, CDN & DDoS attack protection. Add to the list, VPC-based servers. These help you maintain enterprise-grade security for your storefront.
  
• Adobe also conducts rigorous penetration tests. This is to ensure the security of Adobe-owned products. For securing third-party integrations, you need to contact your respective solution providers.
• Adobe makes use of AES-265 encrypted AWS Elastic Block Stores to store your commerce data. Your store will share customer card data with payment merchants. Adobe won’t store it.

Mobile/web CX Capabilities of Adobe Commerce

• Mobile-friendly checkout flow
• Quick Checkout extension integrates with Adobe Commerce without the need for any coding. Also, this helps in quick customer sign-up and onboarding. It adds a sign-up checkbox at the end of the checkout process.
• Guest checkout without login helps your guest or infrequent shoppers become regular customers
• Progressive web apps (PWA) for app-like experience in mobile web browsers
• Responsive out-of-the-box templated themes for a consistent experience across desktop and mobile screens
• You can deliver curated B2B experiences for customers with drag-and-drop merchandising tools. The platform provides CSV-led SKU uploads for bulk orders. Sellers also get self-service portals, seller-assisted shopping, quote management, and price negotiation features.
• Headless commerce capabilities enable you to provide your customers with mobile-specific features. This is without interrupting the web experience.

Operational Platform Features of Adobe Commerce

• It supports omnichannel commerce, aka multi-channel selling to businesses and retail consumers. Manage B2B & B2C operations from one common interface and backend system.
  
• Expand to new geographies & brands from a common platform
• Through Adobe Commerce Channel Manager, Magento provides seamless integration with Walmart. It supports many eCommerce merchants like Amazon. You can sell on these platforms using the familiar dashboard of Adobe Commerce.
• The intelligent repricing feature of Adobe Commerce is a game-changer. It helps you win the Amazon Buy Box feature.

The buy box feature adds a ‘BUY NOW’ button to your product detail page. Enables you to sell directly from there. Thus skipping the usual cart-to-checkout process.

And hence brings you more conversions and revenue. Pricing, shipping, and stocks are important factors that decide if you win the buy box. Pricing is the most critical factor

• You can also provide B2B tiered pricing to your Amazon Business customers. This facilitates higher sales.
• You get centralized Amazon/Walmart order management, fulfillment management, and inventory management solutions.

Client-side Features That You Can Provide To Your End Customers

• Mobile responsiveness
• User-centric interface (UI/UX)
• Customizable storefront design
• Live search & filtering options
• Multi-language support
• Multi-currency support
• Customer account creation and login
• Wishlist functionality
• Product reviews and ratings
• Customizable checkout process
• Social media integration
• Seller-assisted shopping
• Shipment tracking
• Customer complaint redressal

Marketing Features That You Can Leverage For Driving Conversions

• Adobe Commerce integrates with Adobe Real-time CDP. Enables you to squeeze value from your commerce, marketing, advertising, and analytics data.
  
• You have dynamic data analysis & reporting dashboard features to visualize your data

Analytics, Automation, & AI Capabilities for Intelligent Commerce

• Adobe Commerce seamlessly integrates with Adobe Real-time CDP to squeeze true value out of all your data from commerce, marketing, advertising, and analytics
• CDP integrates with any data source. You do not need to stitch data from many sources.
• Adobe CDP makes running complex queries a cakewalk. It simplifies the process to discover insights in real time. Deliver personalization at scale using rule-based dynamic promotions and cart pricing.
  
• Adobe Commerce business analytics tools make use of Adobe Sensei. It’s Adobe’s AI/ML framework to help you identify profitable sales opportunities. 

It gives you the tools to segment your customers and hyper-personalize your marketing. It does so by targeting the right audience, at the right time, using the right channels. Thus maximizing impact & ROI.

• Analyze key commerce, business transactions, and customer behavior attributes.
• Gain insights from customers’ browsing habits, products wishlist, and purchasing history. Use social media engagement, average order value, and other metrics to tailor your CX.
• Influence customer decision-making by assisting them with high relevance in the live search.
• Personalize product recommendations across the web and mobile.

Technical support

• The Adobe Commerce platform is well documented.
• Platform-related technical guidance is available
• You can take help from your Adobe-certified solution provider. This can be for new extensions & API development. Or, for resolving platform-specific complications.

Brands using Adobe Commerce

• SHOEBACCA
• LIEBHERR
• ROSSIGNOL
• HP
• FoodServiceDirect

Adobe Commerce platform highlights

• The top highlight of Adobe Commerce is its open-source version. It is free to try for enterprise POC projects.
• The second best highlight is its easy integration & access to Adobe Experience Cloud. It opens the gateway to a plethora of opportunities for B2B marketing. You can leverage the Intelligent CMS, Analytics & AI capabilities of AEC.

Adobe Commerce Cons

• Purchasing third-party extensions can be cost-intensive and expose to external vulnerabilities
• The UI and the platform, in general, are not favorable for small enterprises
• BI tools could be better

Not that suited for people with not much coding experience.

2. SAP Commerce Cloud (Hybris)

SAP Commerce Cloud positions itself as a composable commerce, agile & innovation-centric eCommerce platform.

It acquired Hybris in 2013 and rebranded it to SAP Hybris. In 2018, SAP Hybris was completely integrated into the SAP cloud ecosystem. Later, SAP started providing it to enterprises as SAP Commerce Cloud.

SAP commerce cloud isn’t a standalone end-to-end product. Instead, it’s a suite of products. Enables large enterprises to offer omnichannel eCommerce capabilities to their audience. SAP commerce cloud is part of the SAP Customer Experience Portfolio.

Let’s understand its offerings in detail to assess if this product suits your business needs.

Customization

• SAP BTP & KYMA runtime enables you to leverage fully-managed Kubernetes solutions. You can build containerized microservices. You may even customize the SAP Commerce Cloud experience that you deliver.
• You can develop new features from scratch. Use the existing SAP platform & the APIs, and extend your eCommerce platform functionality.
• SAP Commerce Accelerator is a framework to build your storefront. You can use AddOns and Extensions to customize your storefront. You don’t need to interfere with the base files.
• You can customize the entire front end of the store. From the category page to product details, and even the payment page. Offer bundled selling capabilities, simplify checkout flow or user registration/login process.
• You can customize everything. Even the existing email templates for user communications!
  
• SAP Upscale Commerce allows you to set custom attributes. These attributes help you learn about your customer preferences. For example, what color they like and what size of apparel fits them. Or, their preferred coffee strength.
• You can also provide custom order attributes to your catalog items. For example, preferred delivery window, or gift-wrapping.
• Custom product attributes for different colors, sizes, and characteristics are available as well.

Extensibility & Integrations

• You can integrate SAP Commerce with the SAP business technology platform. This enables you to extend your technical capabilities.
  
• Replicate your eCommerce data to backend master DBMS — S4/HANA or SAP ERP.
• You may integrate SAP Upscale Commerce with Google & Facebook. This helps you manage your product advertisements on the respective platforms.

Scalability & Performance

• Decoupled JS platform lends you the capability to plug and use components. This way it is simple to scale the platform by adding new functionalities. You may also remove redundant functionalities.
  
• SAP BTB, Kyma-powered containerized microservices & Kubernetes architecture make your eCommerce platform scalable.
• SAP commerce comes with a lightweight database — HSQLDB. But you should prefer SAP Hana, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL servers. In production (live website) these are better for frictionless performance.
  
• SAP Commerce comes with an open payments framework. So, you can integrate any payment service provider of your choice. It supports 3 options i.e., iFrame, hosted page, and gateway page for payments & transactions.

Pricing

• $54000 for enterprise SAP commerce cloud
• No standard transparent pricing. 
• You can demand a quote based on all capabilities you need in your eCommerce store.

Security

• SAP Commerce ticks all the boxes of the PCI DSS 3.2 security standard compliance.
• SAP Commerce Cloud on SAP infrastructure comes with SAP HANA database implementation. It has robust security features for database confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This is not available for the public cloud.
  
• Disaster recovery capabilities

Mobile/web CX

• SAP Upscale Commerce helps you build & deliver mobile-first shopping experiences for your customers. It’s available for SAP Commerce Cloud users.
  
• Engage customers with templated or customized email communication. Keep them in the loop throughout the order lifecycle management.
  
• The Consent Management feature helps you in compliance with European data regulations.
  
• Customize the experience for your customers with product carousels & storybooks. Add custom HTML/CSS components to improve the aesthetics of your storefront.

The operational platform features

• SAP provides a suite of tools to carry out system & business administration. These include Administration Console, Backoffice Administration Cockpit, Product Management Cockpit, etcetera.
  
• SAP Upscale Commerce workbench lets you process refunds and returns. 
• You can update orders. Resend notifications to customers. Review customer history. And make modifications to invoiced active orders on customer requests. All this is possible with automation and/or through a manual process.
• You can add fulfillment locations. And organize them by brands, business units, or geography.
• You can use a specific fulfillment base to serve particular pin codes.
• Buy Online, Pickup in-store (BOPIS) is also supported.
• One-tap payment options like Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
• Also supports Paypal, Klarna, manual & voucher-based payments.
• You can configure the language and currency for your storefronts. Also, you can provide on-demand bulk pricing options, aka volume pricing.
• You can custom manage product promotions and configure cart messaging/UI. Let the consumers know how far they are from a coupon. For example, “add items worth $40 to get an extra 15% off on the cart value.”

Client-side Features

• Customers can view their order history.
• Users can get notifications of stock replenishments (back-in-stock products).
• Your eCommerce platform users may change their saved addresses. They can also update personally identifiable information (PII) data.

Marketing Features

• The platform facilitates continuity retention techniques (CRT). It helps you drive more revenue by intelligent user shopping behavior pattern analysis.
• For enhanced user experience, use SAP commerce to configure & execute continuity retention techniques. For example, offer free gifts, discounts, free shipping, etcetera.
• SAP doesn’t have marketing features in-built into the platform. But you can avail of a robust marketing tool — SAP Marketing Cloud. This will enable you to carry out account-based personalized marketing.

Analytics, Automation, AI

• AI Sort uses real-time customer buying data. It uses this data to identify the most profitable products in a category. These products are then given more exposure for higher sales & revenue.
  
• Mobigram Heatmap, Next Sell, Tailored Categories, and Sets are all intelligent features. These give more exposure to deserving products & categories. And even to sets of products that sell well together.
  
• Behavior-based product recommendations and real-time optimization algorithms drive more sales for you.

Technical support

• You get live support from the SAP Commerce Cloud team via chat.
• Extensive documentation & help resources. But documentation usability can be better.

Brands using SAP Commerce Cloud

• General Electric
• ABB
• West Marine
• Thomson Reuters
• 3M
• Levi’s
• Nikon
• Johnson & Johnson

SAP Commerce Cloud platform highlights

• Supports Subscription based eCommerce businesses with subscription renewal capabilities.
• Customized omnichannel support is one of the top USPs of the SAP CC. 
• You can ship from brick-and-mortar stores. You may sell on a Pop-Up store or a Kiosk. Even engage in BOPIS-themed transactions as well.
• Extensibility & deep integration with the SAP cloud ecosystem is an added advantage.

SAP Commerce Cloud Cons

• The documentation of SAP commerce cloud could be more friendly for new users.
• AI-based feature offerings could be significantly improved.

3. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce is a California headquartered American Cloud company. It acquired DemandWare in 2016 to offer commerce capabilities to its customers. Salesforce avails you of the powerful trinity of AI, Data, & CRM under one umbrella.

Customization

• Empower in-store associates with customizable mobile apps. Make custom apps with open commerce APIs. These apps help associates assist walk-in customers.
• Supports many languages, currencies, and custom tax formats & compliance.
• Dedicated features for B2B, B2C, and D2C eCommerce.
• Use Page Designer to build custom UI interfaces with drag-and-drop reusable components.

Extensibility & Integrations

• Merge your digital commerce with social channels. Be present on Facebook & Instagram, and say yes to social commerce.
• Integrate pre-built apps from AppExchange with Salesforce Order Management. Streamline invoicing, tax, payments, warehouse management, etcetera to extend your commerce platform capabilities.
  
• Easy integration with Salesforce Platform’s Sales, Service, and Marketing products.
• Salesforce has an extensive library of ready-to-integrate extensions. These extend your commerce offerings. Examples include certified payment accelerators, ratings & review systems, and loyalty program extensions.
• Tap into unified data capabilities by integrating together PIM, ERP, OMS, and the #1 CRM in the world.

Scalability & Performance

• Headless storefronts are built on top of Commerce Managed Runtime. These have auto-scaling capabilities to keep your website/app available during peak hours.
  
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s decoupled APIs & SDKs make it very customizable. These allow you to give your store the shape and speed that you desire. Also, the developer-efficiency-focused dev tools make coding joyful.
• The headless commerce capabilities help developers & third-party apps to extend their shopping experience.
• You can make use of Salesforce’s Open Commerce APIs. These come with pre-built B2C eCommerce functionalities.
• Salesforce provides developer-centric javascript tools and development frameworks. These make it easier to build mobile-first commerce apps with scalable APIs.

Pricing

• $0.30/order to $0.50/order for smart order orchestration for complex distribution networks.
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud comes with a starter, growth, and plus plans. They charge 1%, 2%, and 3% respectively of the gross merchandise value that you sell.
  
• As per unverified sources — the cost comes to be around $150,000/year. This is for large enterprises that clock multi-million dollars in sales. Actual platform implementation costs may vary.

Security

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s (SCC) fully-managed version comes with 99.99% uptime.
• It protects you with a robust web application firewall in place. Also accompanies an efficient security monitoring system.

Mobile/web CX

• Salesforce commerce capabilities provide you with a powerful suite of mobile-first functionalities. Deliver delightful CX — responsive design, data-led UX, and one-touch payment options.
  
• You can integrate with Page Designer and Experience Builder tools. These help you design, publish, and syndicate tailored content to mobile users.

Operational platform features

• Reduce abandoned cart events with saved carts to continue incomplete orders. Deliver frictionless & optimized checkout flows, and integrate payment accelerators. Steer customers from consideration to purchased status within seconds.
  
• You have the necessary tech stack to enable live chat. Also, there is over-the-call customer support functionality. Store representatives can browse on behalf of the customers in real time. This is without exposing the storefront or the users to any security vulnerabilities.
  
• Salesforce Commerce’s add-on Cloud Endless Aisle enables omnichannel commerce. It empowers physical in-store associates with inventory and customer data. Thus, helping them drive more conversions from the floor.
  
• In-store shoppers can also leverage many fulfillment options. The Salesforce enterprise eCommerce solution is integrable with SCC Order Management.
  
• Single source of truth for inventory data. This empowers you to fulfill orders from anywhere with Distributed Order Management.
  
• You get unified product information. This includes pricing and catalog data across sites, currencies, and locations.
  
• For B2B eCommerce, you get specific features. For example, customer account hierarchies, contract pricing, custom catalogs, etcetera.
  
• Tailored solutions for major industries like manufacturing, automotive, grocery, telco, and Insurance. Design customized B2B, B2C, D2C, and B2B2C experiences.

Client-side features

• Put customers in control of their order management. Allow them to avail of return, refund, and exchange services with self-service features.
• Mobile responsiveness
• AI search & sorting options
• Multi-language support
• Multi-currency support    
• Customer account creation and login
• Wishlist functionality
• Product reviews and ratings
• Social media integration
• Shipment tracking
• Customer complaint redressal
• User Profile management

Marketing features

• Execute innovative marketing strategies. Run promotions to drive more conversions with A/B testing, and channel optimization. Run location-targeted campaigns without any need for technical intervention.
  
• Provides you with all the tools for eCommerce SEO optimization. Optimize product and category pages, metadata, images, and everything.

Analytics, Automation, AI

• Create automated order fulfillment, invoice generation, and payment-capturing workflows. There is a simple WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor to do this.
  
• Salesforce Commerce provides you with an AI product Einstein. This helps you deliver a consistent experience across devices. It offers type-ahead search suggestions for a better search experience.
• Attract higher footfalls to your digital real estate with personalized merchandising rules. Create dynamic customer segments. All this with an AI-powered product recommendation engine.
  
• Help customers leverage intelligent AI-powered intent-driven search results. Show customers the products that they are looking for.
  
• You don’t need to be a data scientist to use Einstein and analyze customer purchasing behavior.
• Einstein Commerce Insights is a powerful shopping basket analysis dashboard. Using this you can bundle amazing products & deals together.

Technical support

• Salesforce customers enjoy good support in the form of a Free Standard Success Plan. Access self-guided, and self-service resources like trailhead, help portal, webinars, etcetera.
  
• For dedicated support and guidance from experts, buy Salesforce Premier & Signature Success Plan. It is a paid plan.

Brands using Salesforce Commerce Cloud

• Puma
• Cargill
• Stonewall Kitchen
• Bajaj Finance
• Pidilite
• Mercedes-Benz
• House of Anita Dongre
• Pepe Jeans

Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform highlights

• Integration with #1 CRM is the top highlight of the Salesforce Commerce cloud
• Einstein AI is an amazing feature for product recommendations. Predictive sort, commerce insights, and search dictionaries are a good catch too.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud cons

• It claims to be providing a lot of customization options and omnichannel capabilities. But there is still scope for improvement. Also, SCC needs to catch up with the emerging market trends.
• Today, digital trial rooms and beacon-led shopping is already a trend of the past. The online eCommerce market is now flirting with generative AI capabilities. Salesforce Commerce Cloud needs to keep up with market expectations.

4. Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level e-commerce platform offered by Shopify. 

It caters to the needs of large-scale enterprise businesses. Those with high-volume sales and complex operational requirements. 

Shopify is a very popular eCommerce platform in the small business segment. It’s known for its ease of use, and store customization capabilities.

Shopify Plus is its enterprise eCommerce product. Plus is here to repeat Shopify’s SMB success in the enterprise market as well.

Customization

• Shopify Plus has built-in headless commerce tools. These make it easy to launch your digital store for all platforms and devices.
  
• Shopify Plus is an eCommerce enterprise software with great customization options. You have 8,000 apps to integrate into your store. Plus, hundreds of Shopify Plus Partners to help you build & integrate new features.
• Shopify Plus comes with 70+ responsive, customizable themes designed for conversion. You also have an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. This helps you customize your storefront, and build custom checkout experiences.
  
• You can also get your hands dirty with the code for advanced customizations. Use Liquid, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  
• Play with Shopify’s Selling Plan APIs for offering custom discounts. You may also build online wallets, and do a lot more.
  
• You also have cutting-edge product features. You can make use of immersive capabilities. Use AR, Video, and 3D on your product pages to drive higher conversions.
  
• Tailored features for streamlined & customized wholesale eCommerce. 
• Shopify empowers you to do interesting stuff for improving wholesale CX. Release a unique product catalog for a specific set of buyers. Provide custom pricing & payment terms for a group of company profiles. Creating custom landing pages using Liquid. Designing personalized email templates or branding assets for a hyper-curated buying experience. 
• You also have the functionality to remind buyers about overdue invoices.

Extensibility & Integrations

• Shopify Plus is an extensible enterprise eCommerce platform. It integrates well with industry-leading third-party integrations. Including the ones from Microsoft, Acumatica, SAP, Quickbooks, and Netsuite.
  
• You can integrate your ERP software & third-party logistics provider software into your store. Also, you may integrate OMS, PIM, and IMS into your enterprise eCommerce software. Use Shopify Plus’ APIs and SDKs.
  
• Shopify comes with Headless commerce capabilities. This enables you to work with your preferred programming language. Thus, making it easier to integrate Shopify into your enterprise eCommerce stack.
• Let’s say, you’re developing new custom features on top of the Shopify infrastructure. You can work on the front end & the back end independently. You need not worry about the underlying technology behind the Shopify Plus infrastructure.
• Integrate loyalty programs not only online, but also for in-store customers.

Scalability & Performance

• Shopify Plus customers deliver lightning-fast eCommerce experiences. It’s blazing fast with record response times. Thanks to Shopify Storefront Renderer.
  
• Global dual content delivery networks further speed up website performance. SCSS.liquid minification and automatic WebP image conversions also boost website speed.
  
• Shopify handles 10,978 requests per minute across its network. This speaks loads about the scalability & performance of the platform.
• You get unlimited sandbox & development environments. This is to test the new features that you are building. Test before rolling them to real-world customers.
  
• Build storefronts in clicks with Shopify’s React-based framework i.e., Hydrogen. And deploy your storefront without any extra charges. This is possible with Shopify’s global hosting solution i.e., Oxygen.

Pricing

• Shopify Plus costs $2000/month i.e., $24,000 annually. This is not inclusive of your outsourcing service provider charges. That might be in the range of USD 10k to USD unlimited. It depends on the outsourcing company’s region. And also on the complexity of what custom features you are developing.
• Third-party integrations and themes are extra costs. 

Security

• Level 1 PCI DSS compliant and SOC2 certified for enhanced payment security.
• Free SSL certificates on all stores for secure data exchanges.
• Data encryption in transit and at rest for all user & platform interactions.
• Built-in fraud analysis and bot mitigation system to safeguard from automated attacks.
• Chargeback recovery and auto-reconciliation features build merchant and customer trust.
• Custom access management allows executives to control feature accessibility. They can configure who has access to what sort of data and platform functionality. This enhances platform integrity & security.

Mobile/web CX

• Provide in-store mobile device product browsing feature. This is integrable with shipping capabilities. Enables the buyers to buy in-store, and get it delivered to the door.
  
• Customized themes and templates for the storefront UI which are mobile optimized.
• Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Shop Pay one-tap payment options for faster checkouts on mobile.
  
• Makes use of mobile hardware capabilities. Integrates with a suite of services and connectors to give a smooth UX to mobile users.

Operational platform features

• Add unlimited catalog items with custom attributes to your POS system.
• You can run personalized promotions. Offer discounts on products and shipping to boost orders for a product or a set of products.
  
• Delight your customers with custom checkout experiences.
• Make it convenient for your customers to pay using local payment methods. Activate one-tap checkout. Provide in-app digital wallets. Ease payment without having to share the card details for every transaction.
  
• To boost customer loyalty give them rewards and brownie points. Help them avail flexible buying options like subscriptions and try before you buy. Let them pre-order a product for upcoming products or for sold-out products.
  
• Shopify Functions help you clock a 20% higher average order value. It dynamically applies discount codes at the checkout to increase sales.
• Delight customers around the world with a global shipment facility. Use Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN).
• Robotics and machine learning smart fulfillment centers help high-volume businesses to ship affordably. And with agility. Note: SFN is only available to customers in The USA and Canada.
• Sell on 20+ marketplaces & social channels globally. Support 133+ currencies, 21+ languages, and region-specific international domains. Tap into the potential of true multi-channel international commerce.
• 73% of shoppers interact with a brand on many channels before making the final purchase. So, go omnichannel with Shopify Plus to clock 190% higher revenue.
• Shopify Plus supports emerging consumer shopping trends like BOPIS, ‘Buy in-store, and ship-to-door’. It also supports ‘Browse in-store and buy online’, etcetera.
  
• Take customer experience to the next level with omnichannel returns and exchanges. Let customers return or request for exchange on any channel as per convenience. This should be independent of the channel a customer used to make the purchase.

Client-side features

• Mobile responsiveness
• User-friendly interface (UI/UX)
• Customizable storefront design
• Customizable product listing pages
• Text/image/voice search functionality
• Advanced search & filtering options
• Multi-language support
• Multi-currency support    
• Customer account creation and login
• Wishlist functionality
• Product reviews and ratings
• Customizable checkout process
• Social media integration
• Live chat support
• Shipment tracking
• Customer complaint redressal
• User profile management

Marketing features

• You can make use of Shopify Flow to automate messaging and email marketing campaigns. 
• In-built SEO capabilities to help drive organic traffic to your eCommerce website.
• One of the top marketing features offered by Shopify Plus is its flash sales capability.
• You can plan your product drops and flash sales, ahead of time with Launchpad. It’s a Shopify plus automation tool. 
• The entire sale event can be streamlined end-to-end. Shopify simplifies it all.
• Develop custom themes for the duration of the sale. Automatically activate them at a specified time and revert back post the sale end. Apply discounts to products under sale at an individual level or at a collection level. And update the inventory data across channels in real time.

Analytics, Automation, AI

• Shopify Plus helps you better understand your user behavior. Use built-in unified data analytics & reporting capabilities of Shopify Plus.
  
• Unified data analytics from in-store and online stores helps you identify emerging trends. Extract business insights by analyzing consumer behavior and transaction data.
  
• Almost all the Shopify tools come with AI & analytics capabilities. This includes Launchpad, Shopify Flow, SFN, Oxygen, and Hydrogen.
• Automate day-to-day tasks and workflows using Shopify Flow. Shopify Flow can automate inventory management and marketing campaigns. No need for any coding.
• For example, add Trello cards when the inventory is running low. Or to kick off the welcome campaign after the first delivery or after sign-up. You can automate price-drop alerts. Also, publish or reject new product reviews. Create and track a support ticket post negative reviews. Even drop Slack alerts for ticket resolution.
• ShopifyQL Notebooks help you analyze your commerce data at speed. They use pre-built query templates. They also have auto-report generation functionality.
• Notebooks add some power and some zing to your analytical reports. It can add intractable images and charts.

Technical support

• Shopify Plus provides 24/7 on-priority technical support to its users. Support is available via phone, email, or live chat.
  
• Shopify Plus users can use the merchant success program. They also get eCommerce industry insights that Shopify discovers through its extensive research.
  
• Easily migrate from any other enterprise eCommerce platform. Shopify takes care of that. In fact, it offers account management support at no extra cost.

Brands using Shopify Plus

• Westside
• Nilkamal
• Sony Center
• ITC Limited
• Duroflex
• Knix
• Brooklinen
• TRESemme

Shopify Plus platform highlights

• Shop Pay, which claims 4x faster checkouts, is one of the top highlights of Shopify. 100M+ shoppers use it across the world.
• You can build omnichannel eCommerce capabilities. It’s not limited to web & mobile. You can have your store on any smart device including smart speakers for voice commerce.
  
• What makes Shopify Plus unique is its omnichannel capabilities. 
• Shopify is no longer limited to a digital tech commerce enabler company. Now, it provides you with both hardware and software. Especially for payments & catalog management.
• Shopify Tap & Chip Card readers and barcode scanners are enablers of omnichannel commerce.

Shopify Plus Cons

• You need to learn Liquid to get started with most of the stuff for Shopify’s store front end.

5. BigCommerce Enterprise

Bigcommerce is Austin, Texas-based eCommerce Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. It’s popular among small businesses.

It was founded in 2009 by Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper in Sydney, Australia. Later, they moved it to Texas.

Today, Bigcommerce powers 60,000+ small to medium business stores on the web.

Bigcommerce Enterprise is an extension of its eCommerce platform to enterprise  customers. It comes equipped with enterprise-grade features.

Customization

• Bigcommerce drag-and-drop page builder helps you customize your store’s front end. It lets you do so by modifying out-of-the-box themes.
• You can also build the front end of the store from scratch. Deliver a unique brand experience to your customers. This is possible using the headless capabilities of Bigcommerce.
• Bigcommerce’s Uniform enables users to personalize shopping.
• You can localize your content, currencies, and channels for targeted marketing.
  

Extensibility & Integrations

• Manage your eCommerce with ERP, CRM, and PIM of your choice. Integrate the best in-the-market platforms with the open API architecture of Bigcommerce.
• Easily extensible with omnichannel commerce enabler tools. For example, Bigcommerce integrates well with Feedonomics. It’s a full-service product catalog feed management platform. Promote your products across 300 global ad networks, social channels, and marketplaces. It is currently in use by 30% of the top IR 1000. IR 1000 is the annual ranking of eCommerce businesses in the North American market.
• It supports WordPress, Contentful, Prismic, and Contentstack. So that you have a powerful CMS stack for your eCommerce store.

Scalability & Performance

• MACH — Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless capabilities make Bigcommerce highly scalable.
• Besides, it offers managed services for hosting. And thus takes care of the platform scalability as well.
• Bigcommerce has Next.js commerce engine. It leverages the static site generation capabilities & supports server-side rendering. And serves the pages over Vercel’s edge network hosting capability. This makes your website ridiculously fast and high-performing.
• With the trinity of Next.js, Nuxt.js, and Gatsby.Js — you’re in control of your website frontend performance.
• Storefront API, catalog API, and checkout API help you streamline the customer journey. It simplifies product management and the transaction experience of the users.

Pricing

• Bigcommerce enterprise pricing ranges between $400/month to up to $20,000/month.

Security

• Bigcommerce provides managed hosting and thus takes care of security, updates, and compliance. 
• The Bigcommerce enterprise provides 99.99% uptime, i.e., it’s available even when there is a spike in traffic.
• Basic security hygiene like sitewide HTTPS and dedicated SSL is available.

Mobile/web CX

• The entire purchasing journey is mobile-friendly, including the buyer portal.
• The portal has an intuitive interface and self-service transactions.

Operational platform features

• Scale to localized multi-storefronts that are tailored for your audience, and manage them all from one common Bigcommerce dashboard.
• An awesome partner network of agency and technology partners to assist you in implementing Bigcommerce enterprise solutions. 
• Bigcommerce is loaded with B2B and b2c commerce growth tools like search capabilities, marketplace & social integrations, and accelerated checkout button functionalities to bring in more revenue.
• Integrates with ShipperHQ — a leading provider of shipping rate rules engine to optimize your shipping and logistics-related offerings.
• B2B-specific pre-built tools including immediate quote generation, user permission, and reordering features to deliver a seamless B2B customer experience.
• You can automate the buyer’s buying process with CPQ – to auto-configure, price, and quote with preset shopping list items.
• Wholesale-specific customer segmentation and pricing management from one single unified portal.

Client-side features

• B2B buyers can view company-wide purchase history to reorder items within clicks

Marketing features

• NA

Analytics, Automation, AI

• You can automate administrative tasks in the buyer portal.
• You can integrate analytics tools with the Bigcommerce platform, native support is not there.

Technical support

• Receive personalized guidance in regard to Bigcommerce technical services, solution architecting, and customer success.  

Brands using Bigcommerce

• WPP
• USCutter
• ResMed
• United Aqua Group
• Berlin Packaging
• SkullCandy
• BB Wheels
• NATORI
• Ted Baker

Bigcommerce platform highlights

• Support for accepting Crypto payments is what makes Bigcommerce unique among its competitors.

Bigcommerce Cons

• Not many native in-house tools and architecture.
• It’s a barebone platform with minimal out-of-the-box features, but Bigcommerce can become a full-fledged enterprise eCommerce platform with industry-leading app integrations for PIM, CMS, CRM, OMS, and 3PL software.

6. Oro Commerce

OroCommerce is an open-source B2B eCommerce platform built on the Symfony PHP framework. 

The open-sourced platform is branded as a community version, and it’s in the market for 10 years. There is also an enterprise solution that is not free (of course). 

Enterprises often get lured towards OroCommerce for its end-to-end capabilities as it is not a standalone software but a suite of services including OroCRM, OroMarketplace, OroPlatform, and OroCommerce.

Customization

• You can create a custom self-service eCommerce website for your brand, equipped with a customer portal, or wholesale portal depending on your business model. 
• You can have a multi-site eCommerce infrastructure, with individual websites targeting specific countries — each with its own content language and custom currency suited for the reason. 
• You may also map these websites with their own local warehouses, administer separate inventory options, and catalog each of these websites.

Extensibility & Integrations

• OroCommerce extensions marketplace has more than 90+ integrations available for streamlining your commerce business. 
• You’ve free & paid integrations available for customer account management, accounting, business intelligence, document management, email, order management, payment, security, shipping, sales, reporting, and price quotations.
• Popular integrations include Paypal for payment, Avalara for Tax compliance, Akeneo for PIM, etc.

Scalability & Performance

• OroCommerce can be hosted in the cloud or on-premise.
• Cloud hosting comes with in-built backup and security features.
• OroCommerce cloud ensures 24/7 availability of your website, and quick restoration if there are any interruptions to avoid any downtime.
• OroCommerce platform implementation can be easily configured to be GDPR, HIPAA, SOC, HITECH, and other necessary regulations for eCommerce businesses.

Pricing

• OroCommerce community edition is free.
• OroCommerce enterprise edition is charged based on three factors. 
  • First, installation and launch charges.
  • Second, charges for a number of admin user access for teams with a size north of 25 members.
  • Third, pricing is based on the gross merchandise value (GMV) of products sold through your website.

Security

• Custom access control lists (ACLs) to grant or deny rule-based access to administrators, marketers, sales executives, and other stakeholders.
• Encrypt the entire database, keep passwords stored as irreversible hashes and encrypted text, and use HTTPS/SSL encryption for all website data transactions/requests.
• Mitigate bot attacks or brute force attacks by limiting the number of login attempts, enforcing password change policies, and defining rules for desired password complexity/history.
• Additional security with features like multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Supports OAuth, LDAP, and Google SSO.
• Keeps an audit log for tracing back the root of the issue and quickly fixing the same.
• OroCommerce features are built with rigorous penetration testing as part of the DevOps-led SDLC lifecycle.
• It’s compliant with OWASP’s best practices, certified with SOC2 Type 2 Compliance, and PCI DSS compliant too.

Mobile/web CX

• Optimized for mobile with store themes.
• As the platform is more B2B focused, not much emphasis is on mobile commerce.

Operational platform features

• With in-built CRM i.e., OroCRM you can segment your customers, organize your sales pipeline, and plan your marketing & sales projection without having to juggle between a dozen of software.
• With self-service website capabilities, the OroCommerce enterprise edition eCommerce platform is well equipped to be customized for any B2X experience, be it B2B, B2C, B2B2B, or B2B2C.
• OroCommerce suite of applications is purpose-built to be a B2B eCommerce platform for large enterprises. It comes with out-of-the-box B2B features like corporate account management, unique price books customized for individual B2B customers, buyer-specific catalogs, and Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) capabilities.
• You can also create custom workflows to automate manual work.
• Multiple pricing lists, dynamic pricing engines, tiered pricing, and multiple currencies are supported in the enterprise edition.
• Multi-channel integrated CRM, Leads & opportunities management tools, customer account management tools, and sales task management with pop-up alerts & flash messages all empower your sales teams to be more effective.
• Completely digitize your eCommerce store with automated inventory management, order management, pricing management, taxation & invoicing, shipping & logistics, and keep data from all the varied business operations into one integrated ERP. 

Client-side features

• Enables procurement specialists to grab good deals with personalized product offers, configurations, and purchasing based on a segment at an account or individual level.
• Corporate account-holding buyers get access privileges to browse, place orders, and self-serve with price negotiation, shopping lists, CSV-based ordering, and reordering features.
• Buyers also enjoy unique & custom payment terms, billing, and invoicing options.
• Marketplace also helps in the easy onboarding of vendors, has no cap on the number of SKUs, and enables you to gain visibility into sales activity through reporting & forecasting.
• Filter navigation, repeat order, quote request, guest checkout, and multiple product catalog views are some other useful features available to buyers.

Marketing features

• Easy SEO management for driving organic traffic.
• Google Analytics 4 for user browsing behavior and insights.
• You can leverage search term reports to identify emerging in-demand products.
• Perform RFM (Recency, Frequency Monetary) analysis of users to identify and target top users.
• Reap the benefits of custom landing pages, and WYSIWYG widgets to customize the user experience for your customers.
• OroCommerce comes with an in-built marketing engine that can trigger free-form emails, or templated transactional emails that get triggered based on certain events.

Analytics, Automation, AI

• Oro Marketplace provides tools & integrations to automate your workflows, segment users/products by data points (tags), be in control of your product’s visibility, and implement complex pricing rules.
• You can design automated workflows for back-office processes, custom checkout journeys, and auto-handling of quote-to-sale tasks.
• OroCommerce’s dynamic pricing engine helps you set rule-based pricing for individual and group websites/customers.
• Segmentation-based product recommendations, marketing campaigns, and communications (push notifications) for higher conversions via cross-selling and upsells.

Technical support

• E-mails & ticketing support are available for enterprise edition customers, and forum support is available for both community and enterprise edition users.
• OroCloud can be integrated with platform monitoring tools like Blackfire, Quanta, Stackdriver, and NewRelic to keep any interruptions at bay.
• OroCommerce has a dedicated SWAT team that proactively alerts concerned executives about incidents as they arise for quick & timely troubleshooting.
• OroCloud’s excellent support team helps you throughout the customer journey — from purchasing the software license to deploying it live, and beyond.

Brands using OroCommerce

• Animal Supply Co.
• Saltworks
• Braskem
• EECO
• DUNLOP
• Lawson Products
• Azelis
• Testrut
• CdiscountPro
• DiversiTech

OroCommerce platform highlights

• OroCommerce is built for B2B eCommerce businesses and is turbocharged with custom B2B features for vendors, buyers, and operators — to own the complete ecosystem.
• Integrated suite of OroPlatform, OroMarketplace, OroCommerce, and OroCRM is the top highlight of the OroCommerce enterprise eCommerce edition software — it helps you manage your entire commerce from one screen.  

OroCommerce Cons

• Not much in-built AI, analytics, and customized features for B2C commerce.

7. WooCommerce (Enterprise edition)

In 2011, Automattic, the company behind the most popular content management system — WordPress, launched a simple plugin for WordPress that enables small and large businesses to launch their own eCommerce store within days. 

But this off-the-shelf plugin is good only for newbie stores with small traffic. Large enterprises have unique platform requirements, especially for customization and scalability. 

And so, Automattic came up with Woo Enterprise, a customizable and scalable enterprise eCommerce platform for large businesses. 

Customization

• No-code customization tool with modular blocks to design your storefront.
• WooCommerce Cart and Checkout blocks let you customize your online store’s cart and checkout flow as per your cart’s specific needs.
• WooCommerce blocks enable you to have featured products, categories, best-selling, top-rated, newest, and on-sale product blocks on your store pages. 
• You can add review blocks by product and by category to win customer trust.
• You may also add advanced product search, filtering, and sorting blocks. 
• Product add-ons plugin facilitates you to offer custom features like product gift wrapping, and custom messaging.

Extensibility & Integrations

• WooCommerce stores are highly extensible with integrations.
• As WooCommerce is built for WordPress, you can leverage the WordPress plugins JetPack for high performance and basic security.
• LiveChat for WooCommerce adds live chat & messaging capabilities that empower the sales team with the tools to engage website visitors with live conversations to increase average order value and overall sales.

Scalability & Performance

• WooCommerce as software is very scalable, but the challenge is mostly with the infrastructure. 
• Insufficient RAM & CPU resources, capped PHP workers, incorrect caching mechanism, and high memory usage may result in degraded performance,  and 504, 500 error codes, abandoned carts, and subsequently loss of revenue.
• Proper implementation of load balancing, caching, and optimized database transactions can significantly help improve the performance of your WooCommerce store.

Pricing

• WooCommerce enterprise software is a free plugin, but you’ll need to invest in your tech team who would implement, run, and maintain the WooCommerce store for you. 
• Other costs include theme cost, and additional plugins cost, which you might use for improved accessibility, security, performance, observability, and maintenance of your WooCommerce store. 
• Example, SSL certificate, backup plugins to roll back to a previous date, and plugin for two-factor authentication (2FA). Of course, you also need to pay for the domain, hosting, and any other extra infrastructure resources. 

Security

• Security For WooCommerce is a plugin that puts you in control of who visits your website. You can block traffic from a specific or a set of countries, or allow only a few selected countries depending on your business needs.
• Your WooCommerce store is only as secure as your WordPress installation itself, which is infamous for infrastructure vulnerabilities and data hacks. But that’s often an outcome associated with negligence and casual infrastructure management.
• Your WooCommerce store can be PCI compliant if you integrate the right payment solutions, and you can also comply easily with the GDPR and other regulations.

Mobile/web CX

• WooCommerce literally has 1000s of good themes which can be installed in a couple of clicks. But how responsive they are for different screens is totally dependent on the theme you use.
• Themes are often made for generic use, so, you may need to optimize them for mobile performance. There are plenty of plugins for this as well. 

Operational platform features

• WooCommerce ecosystem can accommodate almost all the known eCommerce functionality which you might be aware of.
• For payments, you have WooCommerce Payments that enable you to accept online and in-person payments and provide you with a store dashboard to track all revenue-related activities. 
• Easily provide your customers with the payment options that are most convenient to them including Google Pay and Apple Pay.
• There is of course, a fee associated with using WooCommerce payment, which includes base fee (1% – 2.2%), international payments (1.5%), and currency conversion charges (2%) go as much as 5.7% of the transaction value for some countries.

• Product CSV import suite helps you import 1000s of products to and from your store using  CSV files. Of course, you can also export your customer, product, and transaction data from your store for logs and records.
• Facebook for WooCommerce is a plugin that helps you extend your eCommerce store to Facebook. Similarly, you have plugins for listing and managing your products on Google and some other platforms.
• WooCommerce Membership, Subscription, and Bookings plugins help you tap into different models for generating revenue. You can provide membership to your store as an offer with product purchases on your website, allow the customers to avail of recurring membership, and even run a business that needs booking rentals.

Here’s an extended list of platform capabilities/possibilities of WooCommerce—

• Selling products as a bundle — useful for wholesale stores.
• Selling chained products that are clubbed together with an offer and sold as a combo pack.
• Toggle the visibility of homepage components and reorder with the plugin ‘Homepage Control’.
• Make use of smart coupons, store credits, vouchers, and a lot more to drive sales.
• Accept pre-orders for a product.
• Help your customers with easy product returns with WooCommerce Smart Refunder.
• Easily add ‘you may also like’, ‘frequently bought together’, and some other product recommendation features to your store.
• You also have plugins and integrations available for shipping, taxation, invoicing, etcetera.

Client-side features

• Platform users can perform advanced WooCommerce product searches.
• Add to favorites
• Keep products in carts
• Multi-language support
• Multi-currency support
• Shipment tracking
• Product returns & refunds

Marketing features

• Email Customizer Pro, as apparent from the name, lets you customize your email templates and build loyalty toward your store among your customers.
• Extensions library has endless plugins for SEO, social integrations, reporting and analytics, advertising and promotions, and CRM tools.

Analytics, Automation, AI

• WooCommerce sales analysis helps the management of a business to evaluate key metrics, international sales, revenue, and other aspects that reflect the economic health of your store.
• Automation plugins are available for marketing.

Technical support

• WooCommerce enterprise has support teams across the world.

Brands using WooCommerce

• All Blacks
• Wood Offerman Shop
• Airstream Supply Company
• Orange
• Weber
• Stroopwafels
• Chaka Khan
• Singer
• Dogtv
• Godin Guitars

WooCommerce platform highlights

• The drag and drop visual store editor, and 1000s of themes and plugins are the top perks of choosing WooCommerce as your enterprise eCommerce solution.

WooCommerce Cons

• PHP as the programming language can be problematic for development speed, as building and designing new solutions using modern programming languages like Javascript and Python.
• You do not have control over customizing the plugins you use. In fact, a security loophole in the plugin can be fatal for your entire organization.

How to choose the right enterprise eCommerce platform?

As an organization, be selfish and self-aware. 

What we mean to say is that you must be specific about what features & capabilities you need in your eCommerce store, and accordingly choose an enterprise eCommerce platform that ticks all your requirements. 

Honestly, there is no single solution that would come with all the features off-the-shelf. 

At times, you will need the flexibility to innovate and come up with your own solutions to better run your business. 

So, give priority to a platform that comes with enough lean muscles that you can easily bulk upon i.e., your platform must be customizable and scalable.

In general, while evaluating enterprise eCommerce platform, you must look out specifically for features & offerings related to Payments, Shipping, Delivery, Fulfillment, Merchandising, Store content customization, UX/CX customization, mobile experience, marketing, sales, customer services, warehouse management, store management, customer conversion tools, and reporting. 

Cost, platform security robustness, and available technical support shouldn’t be overlooked either. Explore further the ideal features to look for in an enterprise eCommerce platform, and make your purchase decision.

Which enterprise ecommerce platforms are worth consideration?

All these 7 platforms are actively being used by some of the top Fortune 500 enterprises across the world. So, you can go with any that suits your immediate requirements and ticks the boxes for future needs. 

Bigcommerce, OroCommerce, and WooCommerce – enterprise eCommerce platforms for MSMEs & small startups

The best eCommerce platforms would give you the triceps: AI/ML, Ops automation, and built-in marketing tools. 

Which lacks in enterprise eCommerce platforms like Bigcommerce, OroCommerce, and WooCommerce. 

We believe these three platforms are more suited for small to medium-sized enterprises that have small and stable traffic.

Shopify Plus – enterprise eCommerce platform for SMEs and startups with a lot of SKUs

This I would recommend for a small D2C brand, or B2B e-commerce brand who is just starting out and lacks a big team to manage the ops. Maybe, this is suited better for small & medium scale enterprises who have catalog item in 1000s but not in 10s of thousands.

SAP, Salesforce, and Adobe – enterprise eCommerce platforms for the sharks, aka large enterprises

Adobe, SAP, and Salesforce are almost equivalent in terms of what they bring to the table for eCommerce enterprises, esp when it comes to scalability, performance, analytics, and AI capabilities. 

They are all highly customizable and gives you enough flexibility for innovation to let you deliver unique brand experiences to your eCommerce customers, and is also equips you with plugins and integrations that help with smart marketing & sales automation. These are recommended for large enterprises with 10s of thousands of SKUs.

• If your enterprise uses any of these three for CRM or cloud capabilities, and is deeply integrated with their ecosystem, maybe you can consider using their eCommerce platform based on your experience so far with their other services/products. 
• If building a highly recognizable brand identity is a high-priority preference for you, and if delivering unique customer experiences is part of your strategy for brand building, we would highly recommend going for IT services companies that build applications from scratch as you need it. 

Besides, in the long run, an in-house tool can be comparatively more affordable than SAP, Adobe, Salesforce, or any other enterprise eCommerce software.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)