Which eCommerce Solution is best?

The simple answer to this question is “the solution that works best for you.” In fact, you’d probably assume this statement is a way of getting out of producing an answer. However, this is a solid truth that I’ve seen time and time again. I don’t try to force clients into the biggest and baddest option simply for sake of, “well… it’s awesome.” I’ve had the pleasure to see some really happy clients on not so super powerful tools, simply because they needed a quick and clean way to sell t-shirts with no major bells and whistles.

So if you’d like to continue on, I’ll attempt to produce some detailed scenarios and reasons why I’d suggest a client to go one route or another. We will compare various hosted solutions such as Shopify and Volusion, to self-hosted frameworks like the powerful Magento, to the up and coming OpenCart. I’ll even introduce you to a few eCommerce applications that successfully integrate with self-hosted WordPress installations. I will not cover every single eCommerce solution in the world as to keep the gist of this article on track. However, if you have a favorite eCommerce framework that we haven’t talked about, we’d love to hear your pitch down in the comments.

Within the last 5 years, we’ve seen an explosive growth of Open Source and Premium eCommerce Frameworks. This growth is a natural response to the increase of demand, surprisingly despite the state of the economy.