Five Leading eCommerce Platforms

One of the most incredible opportunities the web as a whole brought the plucky entrepreneur is of course the eCommerce website. The ability to open any kind of store without the need for physical premises or even any employees made it possible for millions with unrealised dreams to take the first steps toward the most wonderful future.Here at Pivotal Hosting, we come into contact with thousands of eCommerce entrepreneurs each and every month – many of which ask for our thoughts on the various eCommerce platforms currently available. Generally speaking it’s difficult to go wrong if siding with the market-leaders, but at the same time there’s much to gain from looking a little deeper into what the very best players offer and why they’re worth siding with.       So with this in mind, here’s a quick rundown of five of the very best eCommerce platforms doing the rounds right now…in no particular order:osCommerceThe popularity of osCommerce speaks volumes for what it has to offer, not to mention its history. The team behind osCommerce put the platform together over 12 years ago as a labour of love and since then it’s managed to win over hundreds of thousands of professionals from all walks of life. It is extremely easy to use, comes with an extensive array of features to try right out of the box and has the kind of solid track record that breeds enormous confidence.WooCommerceWoo Commerce claims to be able to “transform your WordPress website into a thorough-bred ecommerce store for free” which is a pretty strong and attractive claim. Made specifically for the world’s millions of WordPress fans and followers, WooCommerce is all about making the best CMS on the planet even better for those with a penchant for web retail. It is completely free to get started with, very easy to use and covers most basic needs with what’s included as standard.VirtueMartPerhaps the most commonly used of all eCommerce platforms is VirtueMart, which is free to get started with and offers an exceptionally huge library of plugins and extensions. VM is however limited to sites using the Joomla CMS.MagentoAnother global favourite, Magento is free, very powerful and has a gigantic following all over the world. Some of the world’s biggest businesses are beginning to warm to the Magento way of life and the ability to get right into the software’s coding to make changes and refinements is truly superb.Zen CartAnd finally, Zen Cart is more than worth checking out with its huge popularity and decade-long history in the business. It’s another open source entry to the list so provides plenty of scope for playing around with the coding and while it is a little more complex than some of its rivals, there are some great training and educational resources out there.As mentioned above, it’s technically difficult to go wrong with any of the world’s top eCommerce platforms, especially given the fact that most are 100% free of charge to try out at least.