Running an online shop is more difficult than ever. You need to exceed your customers' expectations and provide a flawless experience if you want buyers to return to your website. Whether expanding an online store, looking for new solutions to improve, or starting a business from scratch, choosing an enterprise e-commerce solution will have a significant impact on the profitability and success of your online store. Therefore, it is essential to find the most reliable and secure platform among the many alternatives.   

In business, before making large investments, business have to make an assessment of how effective and profitable the investment in a premium online shop platform will be. Let's take a look at the possible options for Enterprise E-Commerce Solutions.   

WooCommerce  

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress (also known as "WP"), the most popular content management platform in the world.  

The advantages of WooCommerce   

• Free. The central system of WooCommerce is free and enables, among other things: inventory control, discount coupons, access to digital sales statistics.  
• Simple control of payment processes. It can be integrated with various services, e.g. PayPal.  
• Very safe, as updates and releases of new versions are carried out frequently, which reduces failures and errors.  
• Very flexible. It is possible to add new changes and features because the WooCommerce system is open source. This solution enables the creation of extensions and plugins.  
• Since it is based on WordPress and aims to prioritize content, WooCommerce offers excellent opportunities for good marketing and SEO measures that are very helpful in managing your online shop.   

The disadvantages of WooCommerce     

• In case there are a lot of products and customers, the WooCommerce system can slow down. However, if you have a development team this can be resolved, but it will require regular investments.    
• This plugin is perfect for working in simple online shops, but has few functions compared to ready-made systems. Now, if a company have a good developer or programmer for adding new functionality, this is not a disadvantage.

Various estimates suggest that this free, open source plugin supports almost a third of all e-commerce stores operated on the Internet. While small businesses are making the most of WooCommerce, several large companies believe that this ecommerce plugin does not provide the value and expertise their extensive operations require. So WooCommerce is not a suitable option for enterprise online shops.

Shopify   

Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform that can be used to create a custom ecommerce store. To use this software, customer just have to pay a monthly fee and then set up a webshop. It offers shop owners several functions such as organizing products, accepting payments, tracking orders and customizing the online shop. Shopify Plus is Shopify's Enterprise Edition for fast-growing, high-volume eCommerce businesses. 

The Benefits of Shopify Plus:  

• Shopify is the easiest platform to use when it is essential that the business is up and running as quickly as possible. It is very easy to use and is intuitively understandable.

• Simple workflow. Fulfilling tasks, tracking orders, completing transactions, and managing inventory is easy with Shopify. One will find all the functionalities ever wanted under one roof, making the workflow easier.

• Safe and reliable. With Shopify Plus, you don't have to worry about viruses and Trojans attacking the shop. Since Shopify developers continue to monitor their networks from time to time, issues will be fixed for sure. Shopify is the fast, agile and reliable solution.   
     
• Scalability. Shopify Plus offers scalable SaaS hosting. This has the advantage that IT and personnel costs are reduced. Performance and flexibility are also guaranteed.
      
• Multi-channel functionality. Shopify Plus is also available on all major marketplaces and social media. Get to know your customers, where they spend most of their time. The multi-channel functionality improves the company’s interactions with them, makes it easier to sell products and services, and increases brand awareness.     

The disadvantages of Shopify Plus:

• No changes to the checkout possible. If the store does not run under a Shopify Plus license, the checkout process (in this case the complete ordering process after the shopping cart) is no longer part of the respective template, but is outsourced to checkout.shopify.com.
• The checkout process cannot be adjusted. Checkout can be done using CSS, but additional fields cannot be edited and control is limited. For some retailers it can be very frustrating to add advanced features like searching for zip codes.  
• Region-specific functionalities. Shopify has been observed to be biased towards its customer base in the UK and North America. Some of its features, such as voice availability and payment methods, are more convenient for merchants from the above regions. While this is a very minor problem, it can cause certain problems for merchants belonging to different regions.  
• The markup language for templates. The markup language of Shopify is known as "liquid". Use the combination of objects, filters and tags to load content. Liquid knowledge can come in handy when building a shop.   
• Difficulty switching to other platforms. Although the content and products remain the same, the overall look and feel and functionality of the platform change. If in the future you decide to move from Shopify to another platform, then it might be necessary to build everything from scratch. 
• Limited CMS. Shopify's content management system does not allow business owners to post rich content such as blogs or vlogs. 
• Platform-bound. When Shopify gets into financial trouble, also their customers businesses are at risk. You don't have your own servers that can be easily back up and move to another company. This poses a significant vendor risk that needs to be considered.  

Pricing in Shopify Plus   

Shopify Plus doesn't have a set price. Pricing is negotiable but depends on the size of the business, current sales, annual sales, etc. Prices vary from company to company, and it can be helpful to know that the cheapest Shopify Plus cost is $ 2000 per month.   

Magento  

Although there are many big players in the e-commerce market, Magento is a leader in the online business world. The Magento platform was officially introduced in 2008 and has been further developed over the years with updates and redesigns. In 2018, Adobe finally bought Magento Inc for 1.68 billion. Magento is used in more than 240,000 stores worldwide and is present in more than 50 countries.   

Magento Enterprise is ideal for medium to large online shops with high sales and loyal customers. One of the main reasons for choosing this platform is the ability to segment buyers. This functionality allows you to treat unique customer groups in different ways: it is possible to make sales, offer special prices and encourage personal purchases.

The advantages of Magento

• Flexibility. Magento allows you to customize everything so that it is possible to build the web-shop exactly how you want it. With its flexibility, Magento is the best e-commerce solution for fast-growing companies. Magento offers a lot of flexibility in terms of offering products in multiple colours, materials and designs.    
• Third party integration. Magento offers third-party integrations for a variety of purposes, such as importing products, analysing website performance, and getting real-time information.   
• User friendly interface. Magento websites have one of the best navigation systems available. The personalized user interface makes you feel more comfortable when choosing a product.
• Scalability. Magento Enterprise can handle thousands of products. In fact, Magento can support up to five hundred thousand products and thousands of transactions per hour. This is a noticeable benefit as one can customize Magento without any restrictions. In Magento Enterprise Edition it is easy to create an unlimited number of SKUs. 
• Magento is a mobile- optimized platform because it allows to seamlessly create a mobile-optimized website and deliver the best mobile experience to your customers.   
• There is a large community of Magento users as it is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the world. 
• Magento Enterprise also supports multiple languages, multiple currencies, and localized payment methods. Among other things, it takes into account the specifics of the country and makes it easy to calculate VAT.   
• Magento Enterprise also offers great marketing opportunities. The system can be used to segment customers, and the functionality of product gifts, email marketing, SEO, customer loyalty programs and automatic up / cross-selling are also integrated.   

The disadvantages of Magento Enterprise   

• Complicated solution. Magento is a layered software and its complex architecture makes the website development process quite difficult and time-consuming. With Magento you often need more time to make the same adjustments as with other platforms at a lower cost.   

• Developer. Magento is a huge platform (over twenty thousand files and two hundred database tables). Finding qualified and experienced Magento developers is not easy. The main reason for this is the need for a deep knowledge of object-oriented development and a lot of experience with the software. 
  
• Costs. Magento Enterprise Edition is expensive compared to Magento Community Edition (when all functions are provided by third party modules). Licensing for Magento 2 Enterprise Edition ranges from $ 22,000 to $ 125,000 per year based on expected gross annual sales.   

Shopware

Shopware is an innovative German solution for creating online shops that is becoming increasingly popular thanks to the many advantages it offers and its commitment to innovation and adaptation to the current needs of digital commerce. This is an excellent platform for creating modern and innovative online shops, which are characterized by their ease of use and emotional customer approach when shopping. This is the most popular software in the German-speaking e-commerce scene with around 80,000 installations and is mainly suitable for medium-sized to very large online shop projects.  

With Shopware Enterprise you can easily map both B2B and B2C company processes in one system solution. Thanks to the modular software architecture, it is possible to implement classic e-commerce requirements as well as specific sales solutions. The modular platform even does justice to demanding and complex e-commerce projects and guarantees security, stability and maximum performance. 

The advantages of Shopware Enterprise Edition 

• Shopware is multi-shop capable. Just like Magento, Shopware also has the option of managing several shops under one roof. The extensive and flexible tools available from Shopware make it easy to manage Products and Catalogues.  
• Extensive marketing functionalities. The system provides numerous marketing functions. For example, it is possible to use customer streams to segment customers according to their interests or previously shown shopping behaviour. Digital publishing enables creation of beautiful banners for the best shopping experience. 
• Flexibility. Shopware is a flexible platform that allows you to build an online business of any size and for any industry.  
• High scalability. The built-in tools make it easy for developers to increase performance and scalability.  
• Specific functionalities for complex business models. These are offer management, rights and role management, field service functions.   
• Integrated ERP solution. Shopware has an integration with Pickware, this is an ERP solution that enables the connection between the cash register system and warehouse management.   
• Search engine friendly. Shopware is SEO optimized. It offers the ability to create SEO-friendly URLs, customize meta titles and descriptions, use rich snippets, has a built-in sitemap and makes it easy to work with redirects and canonicals. 
  
• Unlimited staging environments. The enterprise customers can benefit from the creation of an unlimited number of staging environments and carry out various tests.  
• Extended CMS functions. With the CMS extensions, you can design the shop pages according to customer requirements. With Shopware Publisher, creating, editing and publishing worlds of experience is easy and intuitive.  
• Elastic Search. The high-performance search function is available to users in Shopware Enterprise Edition Elastic Search.   

The disadvantages of Shopware Enterprise Edition    

• Complex solution. It is necessary to find an experienced Shopware agency with high-quality specialist knowledge in order to create a high-quality Shopware Enterprise Shop.  
• The cost. Shopware Enterprise Edition is quite expensive compared to Shopware Professional Edition. The licensing for Shopware Enterprise Edition ranges from € 2,495 per month or one-time for € 39,995

Choosing a B2C enterprise software is quite difficult. Enterprise-level digital trading requires seamless integration into existing processes and systems. Therefore, one should analyse the whole thing carefully. In our opinion, Magento and Shopware are the best enterprise solutions for a B2C shop. The second is cheaper and has been gaining popularity very quickly for a long time in and outside the DACH region, and is a perfect Magento alternative. We would be happy to advise you on this, please contact us.