Shopify vs. Competitors: Which Platform Wins for E-Commerce in 2025?

• Shopify

If we look back at how shopping has changed throughout human history, we will notice drastic changes from simply exchanging goods with each other to inventing big shopping malls.

During their time of appearance, shopping malls were a big shock. They offered dozens of stores in one place, with food courts and cinemas. Now, we have online stores or, better say, e-commerce platforms.

In modern days, we have the luxury of accessing various stores in one place and building them, too. Moreover, the statistics show that in 2025, e-commerce will account for 24% of global retail.

This article aims to help you understand how to choose an e-commerce platform for your online business. Also, look into the best ones out there. If you are eager to start, then let’s go.

How to Choose the Best Platform for E-commerce

Prior to choosing any e-commerce platform where you will open your online store, you have to know what you should look into to find a platform that will fit your business needs the most.

 

 

That’s why we have briefly summarized the key points that the platform should satisfy to make it into your shortlist of potential places where you may open your e-commerce store.

• Support Multiple Payment Methods: Depending on your target audience you may need to have different payment options. That’s why you should try to choose a platform that has strong support for important gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Square). Keep in mind that various payment methods enhance customer experience and conversion.

• Choose an Easily Customizable Platform: You have to go for a platform with customizable templates and mobile responsive designs. If you don’t know how to code, look for a platform with available drag-and-drop editors to handle website-building.

• Consider the Costs: You should aim for a platform that fits with your overall budget. Take into account extra charges for themes, extensions, and integrations. Pick scalable platforms that go along with your budget and growth.

• Look for Customer Support: Choose platforms with enough documentation and responses, like live chat, 24/7 responses. The level of support should match your know-how and operational needs.

These criteria are essential for you to be able to make the right decision. The platform that you will select depends on the success of your online store.

Remember that it will also depend on the experts you will work with. That’s why you should choose to work with experts in Shopify development to make sure that your store runs smoothly.

Best of the best top 5 platforms to Run Your E-commerce store

Now, after learning the key aspects that you should look into to find an e-commerce platform for your store, you may be quick to jump on the search. However, there is a wide variety from which you can pick and choose, with Shopify being the most popular one.

 

 

Just for you to imagine, Shopify holds 26.2% of all e-commerce platforms, making it the absolute leader. However, we don’t want to simply impress you with numbers; we want to provide substantiative arguments as to why it’s a really great platform. That’s why we should start looking into it more closely.

1. Shopify

We position Shopify as our first choice for opening an e-commerce store since it offers various advantages for stores of all kinds and sizes.

One of the main reasons is that Shopify is really suitable for shops that are just starting their journey. Also, it is one of the few platforms that allows e-commerce businesses to have not just one page but also host the whole store. Since, Shopify is an omnichannel website builder that allows a business to sell online, in person, on social media, and through the marketplaces without any experience in coding. You can do it just by choosing from more than 100 professionally built themes.

Plus, it’s quite cost-efficient since the built-in checkout system keeps transaction fees low, while Shopify POS makes it simple to handle in-person sales. Business owners also benefit from discounted shipping rates with major carriers like USPS, UPS, and DHL Express.

With Shopify’s hosting platform, you’ll get unlimited bandwidth and storage, so your costs won’t increase as your business expands.

The platform also assists with digital marketing. It comes packed with email marketing, the recovery of abandoned carts, and search engine optimization. And if you’re on the move, you can use the Shopify mobile app to run your business: add products, fulfill orders, and follow real-time sales.

That’s why we suggest it as a go-to choice for e-commerce businesses who are just starting their journey. Also, we suggest using the expert assistance of Shopify development services to make sure that your online store runs smoothly and that you can benefit from the platform.

2.eBay

Our next choice is eBay. Surprisingly enough, although eBay started gaining popularity in the 2010s, the company was founded in 1995.

 

 

The great difference between Shopify and eBay is that eBay is a marketplace itself. It’s not a platform that helps you build an entire online store from ground zero. It just allows you to post the goods that you want to sell. You won’t find all the great features that you can get from Shopify to enhance your business here. You won’t get data about the clients or see where they are coming from.

However, the good thing about eBay is that it doesn’t charge a transaction fee for the items sold. Rather, you create an account and pay for the list of the goods you post. For each one, you have to pay 0.35$, and that is only after feeling out the first 250 items that you can post for free.

Yet,eBay is not the only platform like this. One of the most popular ones similar to eBay is Amazon, so let’s see what the differences are between them.

3. Amazon

It’s not news that Jeff Bezos established Amazon in 1994. It started as an online marketplace for books. Then, it grew into an e-commerce site where you can buy virtually everything: electronics, clothing, groceries, and various services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Prime video subscription, Kindle devices, etc.

The major difference between eBay and Amazon is that Amazon is a two-sided marketplace. It sells directly and allows a platform for third-party sellers. But let’s go over the differences a bit more.

• Fulfillment Services: Amazon offers fulfillment services, known as Fulfillment by Amazon, whereby it stores, packs, and ships products for sellers to ensure quicker delivery via Prime.

eBay does not offer direct fulfillment; the sellers ship.

• Pricing Model: At Amazon, most products are priced at fixed prices. Hence, consumers enjoy buying through it, just as in the case of a normal retailer. eBay is basically an auction site, although recently, fixed-price listings have been more prevalent.

• Customer Experience: Amazon offers convenience orientation, thus offering features related to one-click buying, customer reviews, and the so-called ‘Prime benefits’ or fast shipping, along with other added streaming services. eBay has more unique items, collectibles, etc., where people negotiate via bidding.

Thus, you can understand that Amazon and eBay are suitable for driving quick sales. While eBay gives you the opportunity to store many items, it doesn’t provide you with the ability to ship them, and you have to take care of them yourself. The design is more complex than that of Amazon.

Unlike both of them, with Shopify, you will get the ability to create a full store enhanced with various features. Alongside that, you can also use the assistance of Shopify development services to create a great store with unique content and operate without issues.

4. Squarespace

Squarespace is another easy-to-use option for small businesses that need to set up an online store. It has intuitive templates, drag-and-drop tools, and dependable features that will enable one to create a professional website.

 

 

Though it was not really designed as an e-commerce platform but rather as a website builder, Squarespace has grown over time into a tool with features to support online selling. Although most of its users are focused on offering services, the platform is just as fit for businesses selling physical products.

Key features include scheduling and calendar tools, email marketing integrations, social media integration, and embedding maps to enable customers to locate stores easily. Squarespace has recurring billing support, which is the main reason subscription-based business models are fond of the place.

5. Wix

We have come to our last choice, which is Wix. Wix is known as a website builder that has grown into one of the go-to options for small businesses due to its many e-commerce-specific features.

Some of it includes access to order tracking, online payment processing, multichannel selling, and abandoned cart recovery campaigns on a paid plan to make running and scaling your online store easier. You can also keep track of KPIs with analytics tracking, available in paid plans, to help you understand and optimize the performance of your store.

Besides, while building your online store, Wix has more than 500 professional templates that let you choose the best for your brand. Moreover, Wix can support subscription-based billing models and integrates seamlessly with third-party dropshipping platforms, so it’s flexible for various business models.

Conclusion

So, the key thing to keep in mind from our article is that e-commerce is not going to go anywhere anytime soon. If you want to be a part of this big world, you have to first identify a platform that suits your business needs.

 

 

You can remember to choose from platforms that offer you the ability to post a selection of items or build a full-blown store. However, you can give priority to Shopify as it is one of the largest platforms out there and gives you all the features to run a successful online store.