When people talk about social media, the first networks that come to mind are usually Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. While YouTube may not be your first thought, it needs to become a priority for you moving forward. Whether you're a business, Internet personality, or social influencer, your YouTube channel will help you increase sales with video content. Behind only Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. More than one billion people visit the platform every month. The amount of content on YouTube is astonishing. Today, 100 hours of video get uploaded to YouTube every minute. More content has been uploaded to this platform in 60 days than the three major US networks created in 60 years. If you want to learn how to run a successful video blog, you need to be active on YouTube. But your YouTube channel is only as good as the number of subscribers, traffic, and views you get on your videos. You could be producing the best video content in the world, but it's useless if nobody watches it. I love YouTube because it's a great way to repurpose content. After I upload content to my YouTube channel, I share it on my website, blog posts, and social media platforms. If you're struggling to grow your YouTube channel, it's probably because you're not using anything to help you create better content. While the YouTube platform in itself is useful, there are other tools you can use that will enhance your content and make it easier for you to manage your page. That was my inspiration for this post. I'll show you the top 12 tools you need to grow your YouTube channel. Let's dive in. 1. TubeBuddyI like this tool because it's a free browser extension as opposed to software you need to download and launch separately each time you want to take advantage of its features. TubeBuddy automatically integrates with YouTube and assists you with managing your channel. It allows you to run tests that will improve the performance of your content. You can test:
The tool helps you figure out which ones work the best for the exposure and growth of your channel. Another top benefit of TubeBuddy is the scheduling feature. You can determine when you want uploaded videos to get published in the future. The scheduling tool works both ways. You can also set a specific time and date for a video to be removed from certain playlists on the channel without having to do it manually. TubeBuddy tracks your rankings and compares your analytics to those of your competition on YouTube as well as in Google searches. This extension lets you update videos in bulk. It's a great option if you have hundreds of videos and want to update all the descriptions simultaneously. If you're planning to promote one of your videos in the description of all your other videos, consider this tool. You can also improve your thumbnail creation process with TubeBuddy. Plus, it has options for all different types of YouTube users:
No matter which category you fall in, TubeBuddy will have you covered. This extension makes it easier for you to reach your YouTube subscribers on other social media channels. It's truly an all-in-one tool. 2. Social BladeSocial Blade is another top option for you to consider. I like it because it tracks different statistics on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and Twitter. It's useful for effectively improving your social media marketing strategy. Track your own statistics, or look up your competitors. Here's a look at some basic analytics from my YouTube channel on the Social Blade platform: As you can see, it shows my subscribers, video views, and estimated earnings by date. That just barely scratches the surface of what this tool offers. You can compare up to three channels simultaneously. This will give you a great indication of how you stack up against competing channels. Social Blade also has a feature that determines whether YouTube creators belong to management agencies or multi-channel networks. Use this information to determine how other people are monetizing their accounts. This tool offers tutorials for both beginners and long-time YouTube creators. You can also take advantage of their consulting services to help your channel grow. 3. YouTube StudioYouTube Studio is the official YouTube app for creators. It's a must-have tool for managing your channel from mobile devices on the go, which is necessary for anyone who takes their channel seriously. You shouldn't need to find a computer every time you want to handle something on your page, especially if it's time sensitive. YouTube Studio allows you to monitor the performance of your channel with analytics in real time. You can respond to comments and filter them. Receive push notifications directly to your mobile devices with alerts for important events. You can control your monetization settings, thumbnails, scheduling, and other details directly from the app. This tool allows you to update your channel from anywhere. 4. WooboxIf you want to promote your YouTube content on other channels, which I highly recommend, Woobox is the ultimate tool for you. As I said before, social media is a great place to repurpose your video content. It's a strategy I use personally. Woobox lets you set up all your YouTube videos on a Facebook tab. Now your Facebook friends and fans can scroll through and view your YouTube content directly from Facebook. They can do this without being redirected to another page. Choose a featured video to be the first thing your audience sees when they navigate to this tab. Woobox is a great way for you to get more subscribers. Eventually, you'll be able to convert your social media followers into customers. People may not be navigating to your YouTube channel daily. But there's a good chance they're active on Facebook. Now you can expose your content to a wider audience without having to rely on them visiting YouTube to watch your videos. 5. BitlyAgain, you want to promote your content on as many marketing channels as possible. To do this effectively, you'll need to post links to your YouTube channel and YouTube videos. But sometimes, these links can be long, messy, and unappealing. That's why I recommend using Bitly to shorten your links: This will help you keep your descriptions neat and tidy. Bitly is great because it's not limited to just YouTube content. You can use this tool to shorten any link you're promoting. I also recommend using it if you have long links because you are tracking your leads with UTM parameters. 6. PixlrThumbnails help get the attention of users on YouTube. The right thumbnail can help you get more clicks and views on your content. Pixlr makes it easy for you to create high performing thumbnails. This tool is also great for including images into any video content. Pixlr allows you to add layers and effects to any image. This software offers tons of photo editing options. It can help you with any of your visual content needs outside of YouTube as well. Plus, they have a web app and mobile app. It's easy to edit and upload content no matter what device you're using. 7. Tubular InsightsFormally known as ReelSEO, Tubular Insights keeps you up to date with the latest trends, tips, and analysis for your video marketing strategy. Experts offer advice and guides on this network to help marketers producing video content. Tubular Insights tracks all video content from all devices and platforms from across the globe. Then, it breaks down these videos by trends. Use this information to create timely and relevant to your audience videos. Here, you'll find great blog posts about all topics related to YouTube. There are even extremely easy to follow how-to guides. You can search for top YouTube creators and learn from their success stories. 8. Keyword ToolAs the name implies, Keyword Tool gives you suggestions for YouTube keywords. You can use these keywords in your titles, tags, and descriptions. The great part about Keyword Tool is it offers long-tail keyword suggestions as well. Just as you optimize your site for search engines, you need to optimize your YouTube channel for search. In addition to YouTube, Keyword Tool can help you generate relevant keywords for Google, Amazon, Bing, and other search engines. You'll benefit from a higher ranking and more traffic to all your channels. Select the country you're targeting to improve your reach. As I said before, creating a great video isn't enough. You need people to see your content, or it won't be effective. You want to make sure your videos can be found through organic searches. That's why you should use Keyword Tool. 9. CamtasiaCamtasia is a screen recording tool and video editor. Screen recordings are a great way to enhance your content. Lots of times, you'll be explaining how to do something on your computer. But you don't want to record your screen with a camera or smartphone. It's not efficient and looks unprofessional. You'll likely have a glare on the screen as well. Plus, if you're just explaining how to do something without showing people, it will be extremely difficult for them to follow your instructions. Camtasia is my favorite tool for screen recordings. After you record your screen, you can mark up the videos, make edits, and add effects. It's ideal for anyone creating video tutorials because you can record the movement of your mouse and show keystrokes as well. Add notes and other annotations such as highlights, arrows, and captions for people watching your videos without sound. A voice narration feature allows you to record yourself speaking during or after you record the screen. Camtasia has other audio effects and even has an option to add music. It's great for showcasing presentations and slideshows via YouTube. This tool also has a green screen function, animations, and interactivity features such as quizzes. Overall, it's something you should have in your arsenal of your YouTube tools. 10. vidIQI like vidIQ because it's another way to monitor and track your YouTube audience analytics. Find out exactly who is watching your content. Then, you can create videos that appeal to that audience. Market to their needs accordingly. With vidIQ, you can get detailed reports to improve your YouTube channel. The platform also offers SEO tools. In addition, you can identify influencers, manage comments, and run a competitive comparison against other channels. Use the vidIQ free Google Chrome extension. The extension allows you to see the top keywords and tags used by other channels. Monitor keyword scores, views, and other search term metrics all from one place. You can also track your engagement metrics on both YouTube and Facebook with the vidIQ tool. 11. Creator AcademyCreator Academy is a resource offered by YouTube. You can find courses and tutorials that explain everything you need to know about how to do things on YouTube. While you can filter these by category and skill level, I highly recommend this if you are a beginner at managing a YouTube channel. This is a chance for you to learn the basics, e.g., how to upload, edit, and shoot content for your channel. Learn the top tips and tricks to make your life easier. Creator Academy also explains how to monetize your YouTube channel. 12. HootsuiteLast, but certainly not least, is Hootsuite: Some of you may be familiar with Hootsuite since it offers tons of tools to help manage your social media marketing strategy. In fact, it also made the list of my favorite time-saving social media marketing tools. It has a specific feature for managing your YouTube channel. Schedule video uploads from YouTube to your other social networks directly from the platform. Hootsuite also makes it easy for you to work with your team on improving YouTube content. Assign tasks to your employees. You won't need to give your YouTube passwords or account information to anyone. You can have separate logins on the Hootsuite platform. Like some of the other tools on my list, Hootsuite will track your engagement metrics. It generates reports that help you determine what you need to improve and what you should keep doing. Its mobile app allows you to take advantage of all these features from your smartphone and tablet. It's another way to manage your YouTube channel on the go. ConclusionIf you're just uploading videos to YouTube without any reason or strategy, your channel won't be a big hit. But those of you ready to take your video marketing strategy to the next level and grow your YouTube channel will need to take advantage of tools to reach your goals. The list above has tools for everyone. It doesn't matter if you're a marketer, influencer, Internet personality, or an agency team member. These tools will make your content better. In addition to improving the videos you upload, tools on this list will help you manage the way your content gets distributed. Share your videos on social media. Make sure the titles, tags, and descriptions are optimized for organic searches. You don't need to use all these tools tomorrow, but over time, I recommend incorporating them into your YouTube growth strategy. What tools are you using to grow your YouTube channel?
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Quicksprout is reader-supported. That means we use affiliate links. When you click, we sometimes earn a commission. Learn more. So, you're ready to build an online store and sell, ship, and manage your business. We're here to help. We took a look at six of the biggest names in e-commerce software to find out which store is easiest to set up, customizable to your liking, and economical. There's no stress needed here: all of our options offer at least 14-day free trial periods for you to set up your store and see if you like it and it has all the features you need.
What's the Right E-Commerce Software for You?There are two worlds in e-commerce software: hosted and self-hosted. With hosted platforms, like Shopify and BigCommerce, you'll get ready-to-go drag-and-drop templates, but you'll give up some customization ability and pay a subscription fee. For most merchants, Shopify and BigCommerce are going to be in a dead heat. Both companies offer products that provide the same thing: an all-in-one hosted e-commerce solution for online businesses. They both do it well and they both start with similar price points. If you're trying to decide between Shopify and BigCommerce, we recommend comparing both during their free trial periods and see which one is a better fit for your business. Both offer a couple of weeks to set up and explore your store, no credit card required. It's also possible to build a store with Squarespace or Wix site, monetize your existing site, or even build a non-store site and then convert it to a credit-card accepting store later on. This is a good option if you're already using Squarespace or Wix, if not sure how much of your sales you'll run through your site, or are just in the ideation phase. Wix will let you build you're whole site for free; you'll only need an e-commerce subscription when you're ready to take that first credit card transaction. You can get up to 21 days free with Squarespace if you ask to extend the two-week free trial an extra week. Want more customization power, or not ready to pony up a monthly fee? You want self-hosted software like Magento or WooCommerce - you'll be nearly limitless in what you can do, and there are plenty of pre-made plugins you can pay for and install to avoid coding every little thing (think abandoned cart e-mails or related products carousels). If you go this route, we recommend brushing up on the best practices for running a successful e-commerce site, making a list of all the features you want and tallying up the add-on fees you'll be paying before you commit to building your store. The Top 6 E-Commerce PlatformsShopify
Shopify is one of the most recognizable out-of-the-box solutions for small business owners - by some measures, it's the second most popular e-commerce platform in the world after WooCommerce, and continues to grow like crazy. We think it's a good fit for e-commerce sites that don't have a lot of in-house technical support and don't crave a ton of complex customizations. Shopify is a full-blown hosted e-commerce platform, which means that it takes care of everything you need to run an online business, from a website to website hosting to inventory management to accepting credit card information. It also offers point-of-sale hardware, and integrates into online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Shopify's core product comes in a few different plans for different prices, ranging from $29/month to $299/month. More robust functionality (and more perks, like better credit card rates, more user accounts, and advanced reporting) come with the higher price tag. If you already have a website and are interested in adding some shoppable products and a shopping cart, we recommend skipping down to where we discuss Shopify Lite. Full-blown Shopify is probably more than you need. Shopify makes it pretty straightforward for a small business to get up and running - like a lot of hosted e-commerce platforms (including BigCommerce), you have a 14-day free trial where you can actually build your entire store and try out the features and functionality without ever entering a credit card number. Shopify is template-based, which means you choose the basic look and layout of your store from 10 free or 57 for-purchase themes, and customize from there. Shopify claims that its templates are fully customizable, and it does give its merchants full access to the HTML and CSS of their stores, but heads-up: Shopify uses a Liquid setup, which will have a little bit of a learning curve for those who are more used to PHP. Because it's such a force in the industry, Shopify integrates with pretty much every other app, SaaS, and technology out there, be it live order tracking, automated up-selling bots, or finding dropship products to sell. Shopify has its own app store a la Apple and Google with built-for-Shopify (and often built-by-Shopify) technology that you can plug and play to make your store do everything you want. This is a double-edged sword for some merchants, who find that Shopify relies so much on third-party integrations that some of its built-in technology is lacking. A good rule of thumb: Make a list of all the functionality you want for your site and see if you're satisfied with what you get for free during your 14-day trial. If not, explore what add-ons and plugins are available (there are over 2,400 in the Shopify app store) and see how much they'll add to your bottom line. Speaking of bottom lines: You're going to have to do a lot of math to see which payment gateway makes the most sense for your business no matter which e-commerce platform you choose. But one of Shopify's biggest standouts is that it's built its own payment gateway, Shopify Payments. While you still can integrate with over 100 others (in fact, you'll have to if you have customers outside of the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore), Shopify Payments potentially eliminates one more integration you'd have to do to get up and running. At 2.9% + $0.30, Shopify Payments' rates are right in line with other leading payment gateways, including PayPal, stripe, and Authorize.net, but it does tack on an extra 2% transaction fee for any payment that isn't processed through Shopify Payments. Check to make sure you qualify to sign up for Shopify Payments in its Terms of Service, then get out your calculators. Remember, accepting multiple payment options is one of the 11 best ways to boost online sales. Outside of its core e-commerce hosting, Shopify offers a supercharged and highly customizable ShopifyPlus plan for high-volume merchants and enterprise businesses, and Shopify Lite, which is essentially just Shopify's payment processing functionality. The Lite plan might be interesting to very small businesses just entering e-commerce. It acts a lot like PayPal: you can pop a Shopify Buy Button into your WordPress or Squarespace site, swipe credit cards with its app, and sell on Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Shopify Lite is $9/month. Frontend features
Backend features
Customer support, training, and resources
BigCommerce
Like Shopify, BigCommerce's core product is available at a few different functionality tiers, ranging from $30/month to $250/month; also like Shopify, higher tiers are more robust, including features like abandoned cart saver, product filtering, and customer loyalty programs. Unlike Shopify, though, BigCommerce has a sales cap on each of its plans. If you're bringing in more than $50k/year, for example, you'll no longer qualify for the Standard plan, and be automatically upgraded to Plus ($80/month with a sales cap of $150k per year). Once you're inside the product, you'll see both are built to act similarly. BigCommerce is also theme-based, with 7 free mobile-friendly templates (plus 119 for purchase) for you to install and customize, be it through a drag-and-drop site editor or from the ground-up using the theme's framework. Shopify and BigCommerce are so comparable we recommend comparing both during their free trial periods and see which one is a better fit for your business. BigCommerce offers 15 days to set up and explore your store, no credit card required. One difference you'll definitely notice is how many native features BigCommerce has installed right out of the box. It offers an outstanding number of technical integrations and marketing features that Shopify might only be able to provide if you buy and install a plugin or extension (for example, single-page checkout). For some, BigCommerce's roster of pre-installed features is going to be annoying - kind of like how annoying it was for people who didn't like U2 having its most recent album auto-downloaded on their iPhones. BigCommerce customers might roll their eyes as they scroll by an option to add gift wrapping already built into their control panel. But those who aren't overwhelmed by the options may find that they don't need to pay extra for the functionality they do want. We recommend making a list of the features your business needs requires and testing if you like how they perform during your free trial, and check out what's available in BigCommerce's app store. That store isn't as massive as Shopify's (600+ add-ons and integrations compared to 2,500+) but there's a lot to choose from. You also have access to BigCommerce's flexible API if you need to make a custom integration BigCommerce doesn't have its own payment processing technology, which means you'll have to integrate with a payment gateway before you start taking orders. It gives you over 60 to choose from, including all the big hitters: Authorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, Square, Skrill. Like Shopify, the higher tier your plan, the lower your rates. Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn't charge a transaction fee to work with these processors, so you'll save a little there. In addition to its core e-comm platforms, BigCommerce is also available at the enterprise level and with products tailored to B2B wholesalers. In summer 2018, BigCommerce also announced its new Commerce-as-a-Service solution, which is geared to service content-first small businesses who already have an established web presence - namely, a WordPress website. Through an integrated plugin, WordPress users (and businesses using other content management software) will be able to work in their CMS while “centrally managing catalog, customer and order data through BigCommerce.” Prior, customers would have to port their entire websites over and rebuild it on BigCommerce's hosted platform, or opt for a self-hosted solution like WooCommerce or Magento. Commerce-as-a-Service is really new to BigCommerce - there's no pricing and interested customers need to request a demo - but we're excited to see where this technology goes. It could be an exciting bridge between the robust functionality of a hosted e-commerce platform and the hands-on DIY integrations of self-hosted solutions. Frontend features
Backend features
Customer support, training, and resources
Wix
You might know Wix as a drag-and-drop website builder, but it's also a drag-and-drop e-commerce shop builder, too. And the process is just as simple: create an account, choose your template (there are 60 e-commerce templates to choose from), load your inventory and product pages, set up payment information, and start selling. You can even get started picking your template, designing your store, and trying out the store manager where you'll track orders, manage inventory, and send out customer newsletters with coupon codes or sales - all for free. Signing up is a simple a logging in with your Google or Facebook account. It's not until you want to accept payments that you'll need to upgrade your account to a business / e-commerce account. Wix Business plans range from $20 to $35 per month - but they're billed in full yearly subscriptions at the time of purchase, so really you'll be laying out $240 to $420. You'll get 14-days to test drive the plan. All business plans allow you to accept online payments without paying commissions, and get unlimited bandwidth (so any number of customers can visit your store). The more expensive plans grant you more storage, up to 100,000 emails a month and higher-priority support response. You'll also get 30G of Google Drive and email storage, so once you connect your domain you can use Gmail as your email at your unique address. With a business plan, you can take credit cards, PayPal, offline payments, and don't have to pay any commissions to Wix. Not all businesses are the same, so neither are the Wix templates. Any Wix template can run a store, if you add the “Wix Stores” app, or you can get a head-start with a pre-made stores template. To do that, you'll first choose your business-type. Run a bookings-based business? You'll start with a Wix Bookings template. Your customers will get auto-email reminders about the event. Sell sessions individually or as part of a membership plan. If you accept offline payments, it's as simple as checking the “mark as fully paid” box on the bookings dashboard. There's even a bookings template for restaurants. We like that it's super fluid to make sales and note when you're busy: simply block off time you're not available in your Wix schedule on the mobile app; sync your Wix Bookings with you Google calendar automatically. Customers can also book directly from their mobile phones, too - by creating a club and inviting your customers to it, they can chat you, book a service, RSVP to an event, or start a discussion from the app. We haven't seen anything like the Wix Music page includes a customizable music player and a way to sell your music directly from your page, without paying any commissions. Your reporting will include most-played, most-shared, most-purchased, and most-downloaded songs. There's also a pre-made template for ticketed events businesses. You can set the ticket price, manage the RSVP list, invite and add guests, and edit details. From there, it's all the drag-and-drop joy Wix is known for. You'll want to design a “storefront” or homepage, product pages for each of the items you sell with images and product information. Want the menu in a different place, in a different font, with other elements? Drag it, change it, save it. If you've ever felt templates to be limiting - I can change that but only in those 3 predetermined ways?! - then you'll love the new Wix Code. It's a hybrid platform, with all of the ease of a drag-and-drop and the control of your own customization and scripting with a built-in database, JavaScript backend and integrated development environment. Simply turn on the Wix Code editor and you're in. (We should note: it's in beta.) We like the clean lines and look of the Wix templates, the drag-and-drop ease of it all, and the head start the pre-made stores give you. Unlike self-hosted e-commerce plans, which require upgrades to access features like coupon codes, everything's included with a Wix e-commerce plan. Frontend features
Courses and training videosSquarespace
Squarespace is best known as a website builder, but its e-commerce solution is one of the most popular in the world. In large part that's because e-commerce functionality is built straight into nearly all of its plans: Even if you start with just a basic website, you can sell products. That grow-into-it flexibility makes it an interesting option for businesses who aren't quite sure of their future plans. With a platform like Shopify, you're e-commerce or nothing. A business without a thriving online store would be never choose Shopify. But that makes choosing the right Squarespace plan a little bit more complicated. It splits up its products into Websites (with Personal and Business plans) and Online Stores (with Basic and Advanced plans). You can make transactions on both the Online Store plans, as well as the Business Website plan. A good rule of thumb: if you're primarily selling product through your site, definitely opt for an Online Store plan. If you're website is primarily content, and you happen to sell a few things, a Business Website plan might be plenty. All plans come with a 14-day free trial to test out the features and functionality, with the option to request an additional trial week if necessary. The Business Website plan has pared-down functionality - the reporting isn't as robust; there are no customer accounts; there are fewer inventory, order, and tax features - plus it tacks on a 3% transaction fee to all purchases. But it's also only $18/month, which is one of the cheapest hosted options available. Both of Squarespace's Online Store plans comes with the full toolkit you'd expect from an e-commerce platform. Basic starts at $26/month, billed annually (or $30/month if you want to pay month-to-month), and Advanced ratchets up to $40/month billed annually (or $46/month-to-month). The Advanced plan gets you more - flexible discounts, gift cards, abandoned cart recover, access to the API. If you do go with a Squarespace web store, it's going to be beautiful. That's not to say you can't have a beautiful store with any other e-commerce platform, but with Squarespace, it's basically a guarantee. They're all built for mobile and aesthetically modern, albeit lots are heavy on imagery - you're definitely going to want to have killer photography. It has over 20 template “families” to choose from (each family may have a few variations, but the same underlying structure), which can then be customized with Squarespace's drag-and-drop editor or by tinkering with the HTML and CSS. You can choose any, but some are better suited for web stores than websites, with features such as Quick View and Image Zoom, and advanced Product Page functionality. The best news: they're all free. With a lot of other e-commerce platforms, the really covetable templates come with a price tag. With Squarespace, what you get is what you get. Unlike pretty much every other e-commerce platform, it doesn't integrate with endless apps and extensions. It comes with about 70 of the most popular and most useful built right in, and provides setup support, troubleshooting, and general questions for all of them. But there's no app store or marketplace like you see with lots of other platforms. You can install third-party customization, but those will required some sort of code injection or “Code Block” - no one-click install. It's really important to test out the functionality of your Squarespace site during your free trial and see if you like what you're getting. If not, another platform with more integration capabilities might be a better option. Squarespace also doesn't give you options with who you use to process payments. With Squarespace, you're locked into Stripe and/or PayPal (there's also options for Apple Pay and Venmo). This won't be a problem if you're store services customers in certain areas, but Stripe doesn't support all countries - only 26. If that's the case, PayPal will be your only option (which means your customers must have a PayPal account to make a purchase). Frontend features
Backend features
Customer support, training, and resources
Magento
Magento is open-source self-hosted software - you can change anything in the code that you need to, and you'll need a web host of your own. There are quite a few pricing options: the community edition is totally free to download. WE recommend starting here for most small business owners choosing Magento. Depending on the host you choose, you'll pay between $4 and $100 a month for hosting. (Want help picking out a web host? See our web host review here.) Unlike Shopify, you have full control over your shop - “how you deliver your customer experience” - without any limitations. That's why for large-scale stores in need of the ability to create complex customizations without limit, Magento beats Shopify handedly. (In 2016, 202 Magento customers were in the Internet Retailer Top 1000 list, compared to 12 Shopify customers - and 42 merchants in the Internet Retailer B2B E-Commerce 300.) Magento held the top spot on that list. Impressive, but if you're you're starting a small, simple shop, you'll still likely be happier with Shopify or another hosted, out-of-the-box and less custom pick. Magento claims its stores grow faster than Shopify stores - 3x on average. Magento cites the ability to build fully custom experiences as the reason for this difference. They say these stores stand out more. We're not so sure: it might be a chicken-or-the-egg question: Magento is more customizable, so larger stores that know they're going to be growing may sign up with Magento at a higher rate. With a higher percentage of these high-growth stores, all Magento stores have a higher growth rate. We do love that Magento loves high-performance and letting you do what you want to do. With Magento, you have the option to build your own site from the ground up, or use Magento's drag-and-drop visual editor. If you've used Mailchimp or Squarespace, you'll find Magento's super familiar and intuitive. If you're not a coder, or don't have one on your team, the 5,000 extensions and add-ons are very important - using them you can still customize what you want to. Want to add an abandoned cart recovery to your site? There's a pre-built one for $39. Custom coupon error codes? User logins with permission sets? There are pre-built ones waiting for you. Custom doesn't need to be impossible even if you're not a developer. Frontend features
What's in a name?Magento recently changed some of its product names. Here's a before/after:
Courses and training videos
Magento enterprise licensesMagento Open Source is free. Magento Commerce - an “all-in-one cloud solution that delivers the power of Magento at affordable prices for Small Business” - is not. Prices are relative to your gross sales revenue. But it'll cost you ~$20,000 for up to $1M in annual revenue. Sell more, pay more. Though Magento is really open that their prices are negotiable - so schedule a demo and get negotiating! To get a sense of where Magento's pricing stake points are here are quotes Portland-based creative agency Graybox got from Magento in 2017:
There's no limit on store count, country count, language, or currency on your license. You can manage multiple stores, transact in multiple countries, in multiple languages and currencies, and use worldwide shipping all on your one subscription (instance). Go big, go global, launch more stores! WooCommerce
WooCommerce brags that it has 53,216,823 downloads, and as such is the most popular eCommerce platform for building an online store (stats from Builtwith). It's a lot like the 100 Billion hamburgers McDonald's has served. It doesn't mean it's the best hamburger, but they sure do sell well, so there's something good enough about it. They power 30% of online stores - the most of any e-commerce software. The catch? If you want to do more advanced or powerful things in your store, like run a recommendation engine or sell recurring subscriptions, you'll need to pay for extensions. Some extensions are free, but many aren't, they're $29, $79, sometimes $199 for a one-site subscription. When its integrated so well into a platform you're probably already using, well, it's no wonder that 53 million people have used it. WooCommerce runs on any self-hosted WordPress.org site. You'll need a theme. That's the beautiful outer layer of your website. (If you're already running a WordPress site, then installing Woo is as simple as activating any other plugin. You know the drill.) WooCommerce has a free template called Storefront, which prioritizes speed, uptime, and theme/plugin simplicity. It's the “official” theme, and it's purposefully clean and simple. It is built and maintained by WooCommerce core developers, and promises “water-tight” integration between the theme, WooCommerce, and any extensions or plugins you add. (WooCommerce.com is running on a $39 Storefront child theme, which gives the Storefront theme a new look.) There are also plenty of templates for sale that aren't created by WooCommerce or WordPress. You'll be able to sell physical and digital goods, instant downloads, or affiliate goods in online marketplaces. It also accounts for product variations and configurations. Shipping, including drop-shipping, “is highly configurable.” Want to calculate shipping prices per customer? Want to limit shipments to specific countries? Offer free shipping? It's all possible. If you upgrade, using any of the 300+ premium extensions, you can add on bookings, repeating subscriptions, and memberships. There are hundreds of extensions in the WooCommerce official marketplace. Popular ones include Stripe, PayPal, USPS, Amazon Payments, Authorize.Net, ShipStation, and MailChimp. For example, want to add reviews to your Storefront site? There's a $19 extension for that. Want a pricing comparison table to show the difference between your Bronze, Silver, and Gold Memberships? There's a $19 extension and you'll get access to a shortcode generator to copy and paste into your layout how you'd like. Notable extensions
At WooCommerce, the customer service team is manned by “Happiness Engineers.” These very same team behind WordPress.com, Simplenote, Jetpack, and Longreads. The motto? “We believe in making the web a better place.” They work remotely from 69 countries, speak 84 languages, and strive to live by the Automattic Creed, which includes the line, “I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation.” That customer loyalty and product-first mindset permeates the entire company. In fact, the first three weeks of any employees time are spend in customer service, and one week a year “forevermore” after that. Why? “We believe an early and ongoing connection with the people who use our products is irreplaceable.” To get in touch with this support squad, the first stop is documentation. You'll find extremely detailed step-by-step instructions, how tos, and ways to fix common issues like blurry images. Need more help than that? Woo also has a help desk where you can submit a ticket or start a live chat. There's no phone, Facebook, or Twitter support. Frontend features
Courses and training videos
Recap: The Best E-Commerce PlatformsMake a list of all the features you want, decide how much hands-on customization you're after, and give your first pick a spin. All of our top picks have at least 14 day trial periods for you to get your store up and test the software:
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June 2019
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