Best Ecommerce Platforms in 2026: 15 Platforms for Every Stage of Online Selling

Updated August 2026

The best ecommerce platform in 2026 depends on what you're actually building, not which name shows up first in a search result. Shopify still wins for the fastest path from an idea to a live, hosted storefront with the largest app ecosystem in the category. BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce lead when you need open architecture without a Shopify-level per-transaction fee. WooCommerce and PrestaShop lead when you want the code and the data on your own server. Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow Ecommerce lead when the store is secondary to a design-first marketing site. And Salesforce Commerce Cloud sits at the top for retailers who already live inside the Salesforce ecosystem and need commerce sized for a nine-figure catalog.

This guide ranks 15 platforms for founders, ecommerce managers, COOs, and operators choosing or replatforming a store, whether that's a first shop going live this month or a mid-size operation selling across a website, marketplaces, and social channels at once: setup speed, transaction and processing fees, multi-channel reach, customization depth, and total cost once hosting, apps, and payment processing are all counted. If you've already narrowed the field to a specific incumbent, the sibling BigCommerce alternatives, Magento alternatives, Squarespace alternatives, and Wix alternatives guides go deeper on that single switch, and Shopify vs BigCommerce covers the most-searched head-to-head in the category directly. Every price below was checked against the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026, with monthly versus annual billing stated explicitly, and where a vendor publishes nothing, this article says so instead of dressing up a third-party estimate as a confirmed number.

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Key Facts

• The global ecommerce market is on track to reach $6.88 trillion by the end of 2026, per eMarketer's forecast.
• The average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 70.22%, calculated across 50 separate studies, per the Baymard Institute.
• The majority of US online holiday transactions (56.4%) happened on a smartphone in the 2025 season, up from 54.5% the year before, per Adobe's Digital Economy Index.
• A 0.1-second improvement in mobile site speed lifted retail conversion rates 8.4% and average order value 9.2%, per a Google-commissioned study run with Deloitte across 37 retail brands and more than 30 million user sessions.
• Omnichannel shoppers spend 4% more in-store and 10% more online than single-channel shoppers, per a Harvard Business Review study of 46,000 shoppers.

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Quick Comparison Table

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Platform Type at a Glance

Fifteen platforms in one list is a wide range because the category itself is wide. Before comparing features line by line, it helps to know which shape of platform you're actually looking at.

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1. Shopify: The Default Hosted Storefront

Shopify remains the platform most founders reach for first, and the reason isn't a single feature so much as the ecosystem around it: thousands of apps in the Shopify App Store, a theme marketplace that covers nearly every visual style, and Shopify Payments built in so a first-time seller can go from signup to a live checkout in an afternoon. Shopify POS extends the same product and order data into a physical register, which matters the moment a purely online seller opens a pop-up or a permanent retail spot.

Shopify's own pricing page lists the US list as Basic $39/mo, Grow $105/mo, Advanced $399/mo, and Plus from $2,300/mo billed monthly, and it publishes the annual rates too: Basic $29/mo, Grow $89/mo, and Advanced $359/mo billed yearly. The $5/mo Starter plan still exists for merchants already on it, but per Shopify's Help Center it is not available to new stores, so it is not an entry option today. Shopify also localizes pricing by country, so the same plan can show a lower USD-equivalent figure depending on where a business is based. Third-party payment gateway fees run 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, and 0.6% on Advanced, dropping to zero when a merchant uses Shopify Payments directly. Staff accounts are capped at 5 on Grow, 15 on Advanced, and unlimited on Plus.

The honest limitation: the headline plan price is only part of the bill once a store adds a handful of paid apps and isn't using Shopify Payments for whatever reason. Most Shopify stores also end up pairing the platform with a dedicated tool for abandoned-cart recovery and lifecycle email rather than relying on Shopify's native email features alone; see the Klaviyo alternatives guide if that's the app doing the heavy lifting. For the direct comparison against the other platform most often cross-shopped with Shopify, see Shopify vs BigCommerce.

Best for: Founders and teams wanting the fastest, most supported path from an idea to a live hosted store. Not ideal for: Merchants who need a zero-transaction-fee platform without adopting Shopify's own payment processor.

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2. BigCommerce: Open Architecture Without a Core Transaction Fee

BigCommerce's pitch has stayed consistent for years: an open, headless-capable platform that doesn't charge its own transaction fee on top of your payment processor, paired with native multi-channel listing tools for Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and social storefronts that most competitors leave to a third-party app. That combination makes it a common landing spot for B2B sellers and stores that outgrow Shopify's app-dependent approach to wholesale pricing and multi-storefront catalogs.

BigCommerce's own pricing page lists Core at $39/mo ($29/mo billed annually, saving 25%), Growth at $105/mo ($79/mo annually), and Scale at $399/mo ($299/mo annually), with a custom Performance tier from $1,499/mo billed annually. Each tier carries an online sales limit measured on a trailing-twelve-month basis (up to $30K for Core, $100K for Growth, $33,333/month with overage above that on Scale), and an Open Payment Provider fee that runs 2.0% on Core down to 0.0% on Performance with a contract. It's worth naming plainly: BigCommerce retired its old Standard, Plus, and Pro tier names in favor of Core, Growth, Scale, and Performance, so a quote or review using the old names is out of date even if the dollar figures look familiar.

If BigCommerce itself is the platform you're moving away from rather than moving toward, the dedicated BigCommerce alternatives guide goes deeper on that specific switch.

Best for: Multi-channel and B2B sellers who want to avoid a platform-side transaction fee as volume grows. Not ideal for: A seller who wants the largest possible app marketplace on day one.

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3. WooCommerce: Full Ownership on WordPress

WooCommerce isn't a hosted platform at all: it's a free, open-source plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store, which is exactly why it remains the top choice for content-driven brands, blogs-turned-shops, and anyone who wants total control over code, data, and hosting rather than a vendor's roadmap. Because WordPress already powers a large share of the web, WooCommerce inherits an enormous plugin and theme ecosystem well beyond commerce alone.

WooCommerce itself carries no license fee and no revenue share; the real cost lives in the pieces around it. WooCommerce's own guidance estimates hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, extensions at $29 to $299 a year apiece, and WooPayments card processing at roughly 2.5% to 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. That's the honest way to describe it: a free plugin, with hosting, extensions, and processing as the real recurring cost, never a genuinely $0 platform once a store is actually live.

The tradeoff is clear: WooCommerce rewards a team with WordPress familiarity or developer access, and punishes a team that wants a single vendor to call when something breaks. For a business that wants that ownership without WordPress itself, PrestaShop later in this list solves a similar problem from a different starting point. And since abandoned-cart recovery matters more on a self-built stack than a fully managed one, most WooCommerce stores pair the plugin with a dedicated lifecycle-email tool; see best email marketing software for that category in full.

Best for: Content-driven brands already comfortable running and maintaining a WordPress site. Not ideal for: A team that wants a single managed vendor handling hosting, uptime, and security.

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4. Wix: A Store Built Into a Marketing-First Website

Wix's ecommerce tools exist inside a much bigger product: a drag-and-drop website builder most small businesses reach for to get a marketing site live fast, with a store as one feature among many rather than the whole point. That makes Wix a strong fit for a business whose real need is a polished website that also happens to sell a modest catalog, not a dedicated commerce operation.

Wix's plans page renders pricing dynamically and geo-varies by location, which the vendor states directly. The reliable figure to budget against is that Wix's paid plans run $17 to $159 per month billed annually, with the entry Light plan at the bottom and Business Elite at $159 at the top, Core and Business sitting between them. The Light plan is worth flagging specifically: it does not support accepting online payments at all, so a seller has to move up at least one tier before checkout works.

The honest limitation is depth: Wix's store tools cover a small-to-medium catalog well but don't reach BigCommerce or Adobe Commerce-level customization for a large or complex product line. If Wix is the platform you're evaluating alternatives to rather than shopping toward, see Wix alternatives for a deeper look at that specific move.

Best for: Small businesses wanting a polished marketing website with a modest store attached. Not ideal for: A catalog large or complex enough to need dedicated commerce tooling.

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5. Squarespace: Design-First Storefronts for DTC Brands

Squarespace built its reputation on template quality before it built out serious commerce features, and that design DNA still shows: it remains the platform brand-forward direct-to-consumer sellers reach for when the storefront itself needs to look like a design portfolio, not a generic template. Squarespace Payments now handles processing natively across tiers, alongside third-party options.

Squarespace's plan names changed in late 2025: the old Personal, Business, Commerce Basic, and Commerce Advanced tiers were retired in favor of Basic, Core, Plus, and Advanced, and any review still using the old names is describing a product that no longer exists. What actually differentiates the tiers now is the fee structure: Basic carries a 2% commerce transaction fee and a 7% fee on digital content and memberships, Core drops the commerce fee to 0% but keeps 5% on digital content, Plus cuts digital content fees to 1%, and Advanced removes both. Squarespace Payments processing itself runs 2.5% to 2.9% plus $0.30 depending on tier. Reported monthly prices billed annually are Basic $16, Core $23, Plus $39, and Advanced $99, though Squarespace's own page renders these figures in JavaScript rather than publishing them as static text.

If Squarespace is the platform you're moving off of, Squarespace alternatives covers that specific decision in more depth.

Best for: Design-forward direct-to-consumer brands prioritizing storefront aesthetics. Not ideal for: Sellers needing deep multi-channel listing or B2B catalog tools.

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6. Rework: Commerce Operations on the Same Platform as the CRM

Rework's Commerce module handles order and commerce operations inside the wider Rework platform, which also carries Sales CRM, Lead, Inventory, Invoice, Product, Work Ops, and People. The pitch isn't a themed storefront; it's that orders, inventory, invoices, and the customer record all sit on one platform instead of a storefront synced separately to a CRM, an inventory tool, and an accounting tool through three different integrations. Rework also runs a unified multi-channel inbox, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram DM, web chat, email, and SMS all on the same contact timeline, which is part of why it fits social-commerce sellers and B2B teams that close deals over chat as often as through a cart.

Said plainly, because it matters more here than almost anywhere else on this list: Rework is not a storefront builder. It doesn't host a themed web storefront, it doesn't ship a template gallery, and it isn't a checkout platform for a D2C web shop. In a list of storefront platforms, it's the operations layer behind or beside one, not a replacement for Shopify's or BigCommerce's actual storefront.

Rework does not publish a price for Commerce. Rework sells packaged plans, not per-user document-management-style licenses, and Commerce is quoted per organization. See rework.com/pricing for the published product lines, or ask the team directly for a Commerce quote. If the CRM side of Rework is the more relevant evaluation than Commerce specifically, the broader best CRM software roundup covers that category in full, and back-office teams tracking invoicing alongside commerce operations may also want best expense management software.

Pricing: Quote on request. Best for: Mid-size operators (roughly 10 to 200 people) who want orders, inventory, and invoicing living on the same record as the CRM and the deal, instead of a storefront synced to three separate tools. Not ideal for: Rework is not a storefront builder. A team needing a themed public storefront, a template gallery, or a standalone D2C checkout page should look at Shopify, BigCommerce, or one of the website-builder platforms in this list instead.

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7. Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source: Enterprise Depth, Two Ways to Pay for It

Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source are really one architectural lineage split into two very different cost models, and understanding which one you're evaluating matters more than any individual feature comparison. Magento Open Source is the free, self-hosted core: no license fee, full code access, and the same extensibility that made Magento the default enterprise choice for over a decade, at the cost of the buyer owning hosting, development, extensions, and maintenance entirely. Adobe Commerce is the licensed, enterprise-grade layer on top, sized and quoted against annual gross merchandise value rather than published as a price list, and its cloud-hosted SaaS version, Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, launched in June 2025 as a third deployment option.

Neither half of this pairing publishes a number you can drop into a budget spreadsheet without a conversation. Adobe Commerce is quote-only by design; Magento Open Source is free to download, but the real cost shows up entirely in hosting, developer time, and the extensions a serious catalog will need. Any specific dollar figure you've seen attached to Adobe Commerce online is a third-party estimate, not an Adobe-confirmed number.

The honest fit: this pairing rewards a team with a real development budget and a catalog complex enough to justify it. For a narrower, more specific comparison against the field replacing Magento specifically, see Magento alternatives.

Best for: Enterprise catalogs that need deep, code-level customization and have the development budget to support it. Not ideal for: A team without in-house or agency development capacity to run either half of this platform.

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8. Shopware: Open-Source, API-First Commerce for Europe and B2B

Shopware built its name in Germany and has kept a strong European and B2B footprint since, betting on an API-first, headless-ready architecture rather than a template-locked storefront. Shopware 6's core is genuinely open source through the Community Edition, which gives a technical team the same self-hosted ownership story as WooCommerce or PrestaShop but built specifically for commerce rather than adapted from a general CMS.

Shopware's own pricing page lists Community Edition as free, Rise starting from EUR 600 per month excluding VAT, Evolve from EUR 2,400 per month excluding VAT, and Beyond priced custom. Its Intelligence+ AI add-on runs EUR 29 a month on Community and EUR 19 a month on the paid editions. It's worth flagging directly: Shopware's older "Professional" tier at EUR 199 a month has been retired, so a quote using that name is out of date, and every figure here is priced in euros, not dollars, which matters for a US-based buyer budgeting in local currency.

The honest limitation is geography and audience: Shopware's commercial tiers and support are built primarily around EU-based merchants, and a US buyer evaluating it will be pricing in a foreign currency against a smaller local support bench than Adobe Commerce or BigCommerce offer.

Best for: European merchants and B2B sellers wanting open, API-first commerce without a US-centric platform. Not ideal for: A US-based seller who wants dollar-denominated pricing and a large local support bench.

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9. Ecwid by Lightspeed: A Store That Drops Into an Existing Site

Ecwid solves a specific problem none of the storefront-first platforms on this list solve as cleanly: adding a real store to a website that already exists, whether that's a WordPress blog, a Wix or Squarespace site, or a standalone page, without rebuilding the whole site around commerce. Its multi-channel selling is native rather than bolted on through apps: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Amazon, and Google Shopping all connect from the same dashboard, which suits a seller whose actual sales come from a mix of channels rather than one storefront URL.

Ecwid's pricing runs Starter at $5/mo (up to 10 products), Venture at $35/mo or $29/mo billed annually (up to 100 products), Business at $65/mo or $49/mo annually (up to 2,500 products), and Unlimited at $149/mo or $119/mo annually, with no setup or transaction fees at any tier. It's worth stating plainly because it's one of the most repeated stale facts in this category: Ecwid's free-forever plan is gone. Entry today starts at the $5/month Starter tier, not a $0 plan.

The tradeoff is straightforward: Ecwid is the right tool when the store is meant to embed into something else or sell across many channels at once, and the wrong tool when the goal is a dedicated, fully custom storefront experience. Sellers running inventory across that many channels at once often add a dedicated automation layer to keep stock levels and order data in sync rather than checking each channel manually; see best Make alternatives for that category.

Best for: Adding real commerce to an existing website, or selling across many channels from one dashboard. Not ideal for: A seller who wants a fully custom, standalone storefront design.

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10. Square Online: Free Storefront Tied to In-Person POS

Square Online exists mainly to extend Square's point-of-sale system into online sales, and that's exactly why it fits a specific buyer well: a retailer or restaurant already running Square hardware in a physical location that wants inventory, orders, and reporting unified between the counter and the website instead of reconciling two separate systems. For a business built around in-person sales that's adding online as a secondary channel, that unification is worth more than deep storefront customization.

Square's own pages block clean automated extraction, so this article won't assert specific Square Online plan dollar figures the way it can for platforms with a fetchable pricing page. What can be said reliably: Square publishes a free tier for a basic online store, paid upgrades above that for more advanced features, and card processing charged per transaction rather than bundled into a flat monthly fee, the same processing-first pricing logic Square uses across its point-of-sale products.

The honest limitation: Square Online's real strength is the in-person-plus-online combination, and a purely online seller with no physical location gets less unique value from it than a retailer already invested in Square's hardware ecosystem.

Best for: Retailers and restaurants already running Square point-of-sale hardware in a physical location. Not ideal for: A purely online seller with no in-person sales to unify.

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11. Webflow Ecommerce: Full Design Control With a Store Layered On

Webflow's core appeal has always been design and code control without needing a developer for every change: a visual canvas that outputs real, clean markup, paired with a CMS for structured content. Webflow Ecommerce layers a store on top of that same visual builder, which is why design-led brands and agencies that already build marketing sites in Webflow often extend into commerce there rather than standing up a second platform.

Webflow made a significant pricing change on 13 May 2026: the old CMS and Business site plans were retired entirely and replaced by a single Premium site plan at $25/mo billed yearly or $39/mo billed monthly, alongside a new $2,500/mo Team platform plan and a custom Enterprise tier. That change did not touch the Ecommerce site plans specifically, and Webflow's Ecommerce plans carry a 0% Webflow-side transaction fee. Existing customers keep their current pricing until their first renewal on or after 29 June 2026 (16 November 2026 for Freelancer and Agency workspaces and legacy sites). Because Webflow's own pricing and help-center pages block automated fetching, this article won't print a specific Ecommerce plan dollar figure, only the confirmed 0% transaction fee and the fact that the CMS and Business plan names no longer exist as current products.

The honest limitation: Webflow rewards a team that wants design and code control and can absorb a fast-changing pricing structure, and it's a heavier tool than necessary for a seller who just wants a template and a checkout.

Best for: Design-led brands and agencies wanting full visual and code control over a store built on an existing Webflow site. Not ideal for: A seller who wants a fast, template-driven setup without a design-and-code learning curve.

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12. Big Cartel: Built for Independent Makers, Not Scale

Big Cartel has stayed deliberately small in scope for its entire existence, built specifically for independent artists, musicians, and makers running a hand-managed catalog rather than a growth-stage retailer. That narrow focus is the whole value proposition: a genuinely free tier and the simplest setup on this list, with none of the multi-channel or enterprise features a bigger platform carries (and charges for).

Big Cartel's pricing runs a free Gold plan with limited features, a Platinum plan at $15/mo, and a Diamond plan at $30/mo, with annual billing reportedly bringing those down to roughly $12/mo and $24/mo respectively. The Gold plan's reported five-product cap is one of the details worth confirming directly before committing, since Big Cartel doesn't publish it as prominently as the paid tier prices. It's also worth flagging that Big Cartel's older $9.99 and $19.99 tier pricing has been retired in favor of the current Platinum and Diamond figures.

The tradeoff is the whole point: Big Cartel intentionally doesn't try to be BigCommerce or Shopify, and a seller who outgrows a small, hand-managed catalog will outgrow this platform specifically because it wasn't built to scale past that.

Best for: Independent artists and makers running a small, hand-managed product catalog. Not ideal for: Any seller expecting to grow past a small catalog within a year or two.

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13. Shift4Shop: Feature-Bundled Commerce Tied to One Processor

Shift4Shop's pitch is that most of what other platforms sell as paid add-ons comes bundled into its End-to-End plan instead: inventory, marketing tools, and storefront features included rather than metered app by app. That bundling appeals to a seller who'd rather budget one plan price than track a growing list of monthly app subscriptions.

Shift4Shop's own End-to-End eCommerce plan page prices the plan at $41 per month, and the page itself served a notice during research that the platform isn't yet available in every country or region, so availability should be confirmed for a specific market before committing. Third-party sources still describe an older $0-per-month US plan conditional on processing exclusively through Shift4 Payments; if that option is part of your evaluation, treat it as reported and confirm the exact processing-volume conditions directly with Shift4, since it isn't accurate to describe the platform as flatly free.

The honest limitation: the value of Shift4Shop's bundled pricing depends heavily on accepting Shift4 as the payment processor, which is a real lock-in tradeoff a merchant should weigh against processor flexibility elsewhere on this list.

Best for: Merchants comfortable processing through Shift4 Payments in exchange for a bundled, feature-complete plan. Not ideal for: A seller who wants full freedom to choose their own payment processor.

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14. PrestaShop: Open-Source Ownership for Europe and Latin America

PrestaShop occupies a similar niche to WooCommerce and Magento Open Source but with its strongest adoption in Europe and Latin America: a free, open-source Classic download that a merchant self-hosts, paired with a large native modules marketplace for extending checkout, shipping, and catalog features without custom development for every add-on.

PrestaShop publishes the Classic edition as a free open-source download and offers a separate Hosted option, but does not publish a price for that hosted offer on any of its public pages. That's worth stating exactly as the vendor presents it rather than guessing: no invented figure, just the fact that Hosted pricing requires a direct conversation.

The tradeoff mirrors WooCommerce's: real ownership and no license fee in exchange for the buyer taking on hosting and maintenance directly for the self-hosted Classic edition, or accepting an unpublished quote for the Hosted alternative.

Best for: European and Latin American merchants wanting open-source commerce ownership. Not ideal for: A buyer who wants a single published price before evaluating.

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15. Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Enterprise Scale Inside the Salesforce Ecosystem

Salesforce Commerce Cloud sits at the top of this list by design: it's built for large, multi-brand, multi-region retailers that already run Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, or Sales Cloud and want commerce data flowing through the same customer record and the same Einstein AI layer as the rest of their Salesforce stack, rather than stitching a separate commerce platform in through integrations.

Salesforce does not publish a simple price list for Commerce Cloud, and its pricing page blocks automated fetching entirely. Commerce Cloud has historically been sold against a percentage of gross merchandise value rather than a flat license fee, but this article won't assert a specific percentage without a Salesforce page that states one directly. The honest answer for a buyer evaluating it: expect a quoted, GMV-influenced enterprise contract and a sales cycle measured in months, not a self-serve signup.

The fit here is narrow but real: a retailer already deep in the Salesforce ecosystem gets integration value nothing else on this list matches, and a retailer without that existing investment is very unlikely to choose Commerce Cloud as a standalone platform.

Best for: Large multi-brand or multi-region retailers already invested in the Salesforce ecosystem. Not ideal for: Any retailer outside enterprise scale, or without an existing Salesforce relationship.

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How to Choose: Decision Framework

Start with the constraint that will shape the store for the next two years. Launch speed, fees, ownership, design control, channel reach, operations, and ecosystem fit produce different winners.

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What to Do Next

Pick two platforms that sit on opposite ends of what you actually need: one that fits your catalog and technical comfort today, and one built for the scale you'd grow into over the next two years. Then run the same test on both before committing. Load your real product catalog, not a demo dataset, set up an actual test order end to end including tax and shipping, and add up every real cost, plan price, payment processing, apps, and hosting if it's open source, before comparing a final number.

If the shortlist still feels wide, decide first whether the real gap is setup speed, transaction-fee avoidance, multi-channel reach, or design control, since that's what actually separates these fifteen platforms more than any single feature checklist. And if the honest answer is that your bigger problem is orders, inventory, and customer records living in three disconnected tools rather than the storefront itself, that's a different conversation than a platform migration, and worth having before you sign a new ecommerce contract at all.