While Shopify is one of the most popular online store platforms today, it's not the best solution for a growing business. Transaction fees will hold you back, and Shopify is known for keeping many of the most important eCommerce features locked behind paid apps. Between your monthly plan and app charges, you'll end up paying over three times the cost of Shift4Shop to get a similar feature set. Other important tools are restricted to higher-tier and enterprise plans, but even after upgrading you'll still need to pay for the same apps. Shopify also has a limited selection of free themes, making it harder for a new business to brand their store, and the themes are written in a proprietary language called Liquid so customization is a task to learn.

AmeriCommerce may seem like an optimal platform based on the many features they offer. However, businesses that are trying to expand their reach may chafe at the solution’s inflexibility. They impose limits on bandwidth and disk storage, and anyone who dares to exceed them has to pay overage fees. Harsher still, they impose limits on how many different products you can sell. Anyone trying to enlarge their inventory must go for the most expensive plan they offer. A lack of after-hours customer support and long-standing issues with the programming are just two other ways in which AmeriCommerce limits what their clients can do.

ShopSite is a bit different from other hosted eCommerce platforms because it outsources its web hosting to partners. Unfortunately, this makes their pricing structure inconsistent and their support spotty. You'll have to put a lot of time into choosing a web host, and since your hosting won't be managed by the same company as the ShopSite software, you may have trouble getting the help you need. ShopSite's eCommerce tools are also lacking, with no built-in reporting and weak SEO and marketing features. ShopSite's basic level of eCommerce functionality will slow your growth until you upgrade to a plan that includes better tools, and even then, it will not scale with your business.

Miva Merchant offers both a hosted and licensed eCommerce platform, and both versions fall under the same limitations: extremely high price, time-consuming setup, and difficult customization. Regardless of whether you're looking at the hosted or licensed version of Miva Merchant, it's easy to see this is an eCommerce platform intended for large businesses. A software license only comes with a year's worth of updates and costs just under $20k, and you'll need to pay full price again to access updates after your year is up. Even Miva's cheapest option, a hosted "starter" online store, costs $79.95/mo. and you can be boosted to a higher plan without your knowledge if your store starts doing well — plus, be charged for bandwidth and storage overages.

BigCommerce is a popular online store platform for enterprise businesses that has no transaction fees. However, BigCommerce merchants often find themselves suffering financially in other ways: your plan pricing is based on your sales, and many BigCommerce users report an unexpected boost to a higher-tier plan that they couldn’t afford. The platform is also missing some key features and integrations that you'll need to pay for separately through apps. Successful, growing business often outpace the tools BigCommerce can offer and end up leaving for a more advanced (and affordable) platform like Shift4Shop.

Volusion is known as a user-friendly shopping cart platform, but that also means it's very basic. It lacks the tools for long-term success and many successful online store owners reach a point where they need a more powerful platform. Volusion also charges a transaction fee on every one of your sales, which cuts into your profits, and your plan will be increased automatically if your revenue goes above a certain amount. Volusion also lacks many integrations, meaning you'll need a paid account with Zapier to access some of your favorite tools. And while Volusion has recently cut down on their added fees, they have a longstanding reputation of surprising their customers with extra charges.

Big Cartel is a very limited eCommerce platform aimed specifically at artists and other creators. It's easy to use and very inexpensive, and there is even a Big Cartel free plan, so it's a natural choice for many new creators with a small inventory. However, Big Cartel has few choices for a serious eCommerce entrepreneur and is not scalable at all. Even the highest-priced plan only allows a maximum of 300 products, and there are limitations that affect both customers and merchants. There's no search feature, so customers can't search for products, and Big Cartel doesn't have built-in shipping calculations and only very minimal tax calculations. You can sign up for a Shift4Shop plan that could be as little as $0 and immediately access more features, more integrations, more payment methods, and more selling potential than you get with Big Cartel's $29.99/month plan.

GoDaddy is well-known as a domain name registrar, and secondly as a web host. GoDaddy also offers a rudimentary eCommerce plan that has become popular due to brand recognition and quick setup. However, GoDaddy online stores are only suitable for beginners, and provide neither the features nor the functionality to grow and support a successful business. You can add up to 1,500 products, but your store will start slowing down noticeably before you reach this limit, to the point that GoDaddy makes note of this in its own disclaimer. Serious online merchants will quickly find that GoDaddy is short on options, since it has very few integrations. Customization of your online store also falls short, as you can only make minor changes, which causes problems for branding and for building your eCommerce website the way you want.

Infusionsoft is a well-known CRM and marketing platform acquired and rebranded to Infusionsoft by Keap. Today's version of Infusionsoft combines its familiar digital marketing features with basic eCommerce functionality. And by "basic," we mean just that — it's not scalable at all. Infusionsoft's eCommerce features are only accessible on the $399/month plan and up, and are still so simplistic that every business is much better off using a full-fledged eCommerce platform like Shift4Shop instead. Shift4Shop includes a CRM and marketing tools as well, making Infusionsoft redundant, and also integrates with your choice of third-party CRM and email marketing services.

Lightspeed is an eCommerce platform originally developed as an extension to the company's POS system. It offers some basic eCommerce functionality, with many of the most crucial features unfortunately locked behind higher-tier plans or requiring third-party apps. Its pricing is also higher to begin with than many other platforms, and is much more expensive than Shift4Shop. Lightspeed's online store template selection is rather limited and it doesn't integrate with many payment processors. Additionally, even the highest Lightspeed plans still have limits on the number of products, images per product, product options, and more. Shift4Shop doesn't have these limits and could be as low as $0 — in other words, Shift4Shop provides much more value for your money.

There’s no denying Aptos Retail is huge, and has some impressive clients under their wing. But is it really the right choice for your business? If you’re ready to step into Enterprise eCommerce, you’re aware of the importance of smooth operations for all aspects of selling, whether online or in-store. The simple fact is that Aptos Retail tries to collect so many features, in such a huge platform, that your business could collapse under its own weight without constant help or vast technical knowledge of your own. And with the extra costs typically incurred by Aptos Retail clients, you’ll find the price skyrocketing quickly.

Ashop is a simplistic eCommerce platform with too many limitations. Every plan has storage caps, limiting the number of images you can add to your site and product pages, and there are no integrations with any other apps or software — you'll need an account with a third-party service like Zapier to connect Ashop to crucial business apps like QuickBooks or marketing services like MailChimp. And while Ashop may work for a brand new small business, many important features are locked behind the Professional plan tier which may not be affordable for a startup. Large businesses run into the opposite problem, as even the Enterprise plan is lacking many important features and capabilities. You simply get more for your money with Shift4Shop, regardless of business size.

If you're looking for a top-of-the-line eCommerce platform to give your online store all the advantages, fortune3 will not serve your needs. Everything from their admin dashboard to their store themes are lagging behind the times, and customers report a poor experience on mobile devices. Low product limits plague their pricing models, and business owners who want to switch away from fortune3 often have a hard time canceling their account. Not to mention fortune3 splits its admin across two separate dashboards, the "Store Builder" and "Administration Panel," and you can manage your inventory from both — but your edits don't carry over from one to the other. If you make a mistake and add a product through the wrong dashboard, this can become a hopeless mess very quickly. Support is also known to go dark for long periods of time.

GoECart targets merchants seeking a quick way to build an omnichannel online store at Enterprise levels, but their customers often report poor and frustrating results. GoECart tends to overpromise and underdeliver, according to numerous customers who discovered that promised features would actually take expensive custom development. And that's not all that's expensive: GoECart offers two plans at quote-only prices that usually come out around $1,000/mo. and $1,600/mo. and charges extra for support beyond a basic level. None of their prices are visible on their website, and they do not provide clear information regarding the full features and capabilities of their platform. GoECart is simply too uncertain, too expensive, and too limited for a business when there are better, cost-effective, and more transparent options out there.

Quick eSelling is an attractive eCommerce solution for many new entrepreneurs mainly because it's easy to use and offers a free plan. However, it's not without limits or disadvantages: the free plan caps you at 1,000 products, won't let you use a custom domain name, and imposes a 5% transaction fee on all your sales. Paid plans, which remove these downsides, start at $199/month. This is extremely pricey, especially when you consider that Shift4Shop's plan could be $0 and doesn't have any of the same limitations. Many Quick eSelling users are also disappointed with the platform's available features. Overall, it's not as powerful or cost-effective as Shift4Shop, and the free plan is not scalable for a growing business.

SamCart is a simplistic eCommerce platform meant to be used with an existing site, such as WordPress. It allows you to create checkout pages for individual products, but provides no way to create a website, so it's not even close to a complete solution. Instead, it's geared toward selling single products from their own landing pages rather than running a full-fledged online store. A small number of templates with little variety also distinguishes this eCommerce software as an extremely basic platform, and limited features mean you'll be paying extra for apps and third-party integrations — and considering you need to upgrade to their $99/month plan to remove SamCart branding from your checkout, you're paying too much already. Shift4Shop offers hundreds more features and a full online store builder for a far lower price.

SiteCube is a website builder with included hosting for a low price of $59 per year. However, it's just not made for eCommerce. You're limited to 100 pages total, and can sell no more than 1,250 products in 25 categories. And while this might be enough for a brand new small business, SiteCube's infrastructure will hold you back. There's no dedicated product page or shopping cart functionality, no order management, and no method for interacting with customers. The SEO is also outdated and will make it hard for customers to find your store. Overall, SiteCube offers only minimal eCommerce features and will make it difficult to run and grow your business. Even the newest, most financially-limited startup has better options.

Simvoly claims to be a powerful, easy-to-use multipurpose website builder. It offers eCommerce, landing pages, and sales funnels. However, it's actually quite limited and much more expensive than it appears to be. The introductory plan only lets you have 5 products and 20 pages on your site — removing these limits requires a plan upgrade. You even have a limit on the number of customers who can register on your site, which likewise requires a plan upgrade to get rid of. And no matter what plan you upgrade to, you'll still be subjected to bandwidth caps. On top of that, Simvoly is short on features and requires third-party integrations to handle some of the most basic tasks, like shipping. All integrations are done through Zapier which is yet another cost. Overall, it may be easy to build a website with Simvoly, but it's much too costly and limited to be a good choice for growing a business.

Storenvy is a social marketplace and online store builder that’s focused on giving creative small businesses an affordable way to sell their products to a wider audience. But that affordable cost doesn’t come without restrictions. Storenvy's most expensive plan still limits merchants to 5,000 products. Now, while you’re able to build and design your own free eCommerce website, customization is barebones and Storenvy branding is compulsory unless you upgrade to a paid plan. On top of all those extra fees, Storenvy also takes a 15% commission fee on every sale you make that was either on their social marketplace or influenced by it – even if the purchase was made on your website. With Shift4Shop, there’s no forced branding, commission fees, or customization restrictions – you’ll have total control over your online business for a much better value.

VTex may seem tempting to small businesses and up-and-coming entrepreneurs because it is a powerful platform. Unfortunately, they seem to center their business model on larger more established companies. The minimum monthly rate for their services is a whopping $500, significantly higher than even some of the premium plans that other platforms offer. In exchange, they take a piece of the profits from your sales — a less-than-ideal for a large business, and a severe hindrance for a smaller one. These vexing excesses make VTex a textbook example of exactly what to avoid if you’re just getting started.

Weebly has a strong reputation as a great introductory website builder, and while it can be great for hobbyists and anyone looking to create a simple website, it's simply not enough to run a serious eCommerce business. Most Weebly users are drawn in by the promise of a free plan, but crucial eCommerce functionality like a shopping cart is absent unless you upgrade to Pro. Other essentials, like customer reviews and real-time shipping rates, require further upgrades, as do many other features — if they're even available at all. To expand on Weebly's small feature set you'll need to turn to their App Center, and even there, you'll notice many types of features are missing, leaving you out of luck if you were relying on them for your business. Add restrictive product limits, forced SEO-unfriendly URL structure, and other issues to the mix, and you'll quickly see that Weebly doesn't even compete with Shift4Shop for eCommerce functionality to grow your business.

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for the WordPress blogging platform that allows you to add an online store to your website. It's free and very easy to use, but does require a lot of familiarity with WordPress and the ins and outs of its plugin system. WooCommerce has few out-of-the-box features which means you'll need to invest in expensive third-party plugins to expand your online store, and third-party plugins carry their own risks. Development can stop at any time and there's no guarantee all the plugins you use will work well together, so it takes a very knowledgeable WordPress expert to bring a WooCommerce store to a high level. Unfortunately, like several other free eCommerce options, WooCommerce is packed with unexpected expenses.

Zoey previously known as Pixafy, is an eCommerce platform that was created using another site-building platform, Magento. Like any copy of a copy, something seemed to get lost along the way. Several key features, including the CRM, are not included on any plan and cost extra. As for the plans themselves, any business interested in using Zoey for their eCommerce needs must already be booming. Their lowest price plan charges a whopping $299 per month, and even this plan is missing most of the essentials. To receive the full Zoey experience, one would have to pay $699 per month for the Advanced plan. One could also receive a substantially better experience at a lower price by simply skipping this platform altogether.