Top 7 Dropshipping eCommerce Platforms for 2024: Insights and Comparisons

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Unveiling the Top 7 Dropshipping eCommerce Platforms for 2024

Rosie Greaves

Created on

May 9, 2024

Last updated on

June 2, 2024

Written by:

Rosie Greaves

Verified by:

Mohit Mishra

Welcome to Spocket's guide to the best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping.

Dropshipping is somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle—i.e., you need several pieces to create the whole picture. An essential part of this puzzle is a knock-out eCommerce store where you can sell your dropshipping products.

So, this begs the question: Which is the best eCommerce platform for dropshipping? Stick with us as we unveil the answer to that very question. We'll briefly examine each platform, including its pros, cons, and pricing.

Hopefully, after reading this listicle, you'll have a better idea of which platform best meets your venture's needs.

That's enough preamble; without further ado, let's dive in!

1. Shopify

If you know much about eCommerce, Shopify won't need an introduction. Shopify dominates almost 30% of the US eCommerce platform market share, making it one of the most popular platforms available—and for good reason.

Shopify makes creating an online store a breeze. It provides an array of customizable templates (some free, some paid). These are the perfect foundation for your web design, meaning you don't need any coding know-how to create a beautiful e-store.

Best of all, Shopify seamlessly integrates with various dropshipping apps (including Spocket!), allowing store owners to easily add products from their preferred suppliers, manage inventory, and fulfill orders automatically.

In addition, Shopify's 24/7 customer support is excellent, which again makes Shopify an appealing option for new dropshipping merchants.

Lastly, it's worth highlighting that because Shopify supports multiple languages and currencies, this platform is also a good option for selling drop-shipped products to a global audience.

Shopify Pros

Shopify is intuitive to use, making it an excellent option for newbies.
Shopify's themes are fully responsive.
Shopify's App Store is brimming with extensions. Not only will you find dropshipping apps like Spocket that provide access to thousands of high-quality dropshipping items to sell on your store, but you can also access apps that increase Shopify's baseline functionality.
Shopify is dropshipping-friendly. It actively promotes dropshipping on its website, and you’ll find tons of blog posts that will help you hit the ground running.
Shopify offers many free tools, including a logo maker, business name generator, slogan maker, and more.

Shopify Cons

There's a limited number of free themes available (13)
If you use a third-party payment gateway (i.e., not Shopify's own, Shopify Payments), expect to pay extra transaction fees.
Unfortunately, Shopify doesn't offer a drag-and-drop web page editor. As such, your customization options are limited to the confines of your chosen theme.

Pricing

At the time of writing, Shopify was charging $1 for the first month. After that, prices start from $29 a month.

2. BigCommerce

At the time of writing, BigCommerce fuels 44,061 online stores, so they must be doing something right!

So, why is BigCommerce worth using for your dropshipping store?

Firstly, BigCommerce integrates with several famous dropshipping apps. It also doesn't charge transaction fees on any plan, and users benefit from unlimited staff accounts on every package, making it an excellent option for dropshipping stores looking to scale their operations.

BigCommerce also integrates with a wide range of leading payment gateways. Plus, you can use a mobile app to manage your store while you're on the run.

One of BigCommerce's main selling points is its extensive range of built-in features, which minimize the need to install many apps. For example, real-time shipping quotes, coupons, discount rules, gift cards, SEO tools, and customer product ratings and reviews all come built-in.

Pros

BigCommerce integrates with 16 dropshipping apps.
You can offer customers a single-page checkout (which is excellent for boosting conversions!)
BigCommerce doesn't charge additional transaction fees.
Unlimited staff accounts are available with all plans.
You can access 24/7 support via live chat, phone, and email ticket (on all plans).
BigCommerce's multi-storefront feature offers excellent value for money to merchants running multiple stores (another reason why BigCommerce is suitable for scaling businesses)
BigCommerce provides a decent set of reporting tools on all plans.

Cons

Unfortunately, each pricing package has online sales limits. If you exceed them, you’re forced to upgrade to a more expensive monthly plan.
BigCommerce only scores 1.4 out of five stars on Trustpilot.
As BigCommerce's in-built features are so extensive, there's a slight learning curve for beginners.

Pricing

There's a 15-day free trial; after that, prices start at $39 a month.

3. Wix

Wix is best known for its easy-to-use interface. It's incredibly dropshipping-friendly, with a whole page dedicated to it in its marketing.

Wix is more geared toward sourcing products to sell from the Modalyst marketplace. However, Wix also integrates with several well-known dropshipping platforms, including Spocket.

Wix makes it easy to set default price markups based on your suppliers’ prices. You can also see how much you’ll earn on each product before pushing it to your store.

Wix also makes importing products to your Wix store straightforward, including details and image options from your chosen supplier. Your products sync with the supplier’s pricing and inventory, so there won't be any nasty out-of-stock surprises.

Pros

Wix is incredibly user-friendly.
Wix's drag-and-drop interface makes customizing your online stores a breeze.
Wix offers a vast catalog of professionally designed templates (900+!)
Wix boasts an extensive App Market. You'll find various apps to enhance your dropshipping store's functionality here.
There's a free plan available that allows you to test Wix's interface to your heart's content,
Wix's customer support is reportedly excellent. You can reach their support agents via live chat, email, and phone. Plus, their compilation of self-help resources is plentiful.

Cons

You can’t switch templates once your site is live.
Website storage is capped depending on your chosen plan.

Pricing

You can set up a Wix site for free, but if you want to launch it so that it goes live on the web (with eCommerce capabilities), prices start at $29 a month.

4. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is another dropshipping-friendly option. Its main appeal is that it's an open-source WordPress plugin, which means it's free to use, incredibly flexible, and benefits from WordPress's extensive range of plugins (including a vast range of dropshipping apps). You'll also find many extensions to help you manage your inventory, fulfill orders, and more.

However, the critical difference with WooCommerce is that you have complete control and ownership of your online store. Unlike the self-hosted eCommerce platforms listed above, you're not reliant on a third-party SaaS. Instead, you host and manage your own store, giving you complete freedom to customize your site as needed (providing you have the know-how).

Additionally, WooCommerce offers a colossal range of themes, plenty of customization options, and 140 region-specific gateways to choose from.

Lastly, WooCommerce is an incredibly scalable platform that will certainly accommodate your needs as your dropshipping business grows.

WooCommerce Pros

WooCommerce is free to install and use
WooCommerce is a highly customizable, open-source software.
1,400-plus themes are available (free and paid options)
WooCommerce offers comprehensive online store management features, including inventory management, product variations, shipping options, payment gateways, and more.
WooCommerce is excellent for SEO, providing tools for optimizing product pages, metadata, and site structure for better search engine visibility.
WooCommerce is translated into 24 languages.
Woo Blocks make displaying products modularly a breeze. This makes showing your 'Bestsellers,' 'Top-Rated,' 'New Products,' 'On-Sale Products,' and more, easy (no coding required!).

WooCommerce Cons

As WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you'll need a WordPress website (this isn't necessarily a drawback, but it's certainly something to bear in mind).
You'll need to organize your own web hosting and domain.
You're responsible for your website maintenance, which includes frequent updates and managing your website's security.
No phone support is available.

WooCommerce Pricing

WooCommerce is free to install and use.

5. Square Online

Out of all the eCommerce platforms listed here, Square is the least dropshipping-friendly.

Square's website mentions little about dropshipping. However, we know it integrates with Spocket, so you can undoubtedly use Square to fuel your dropshipping site.

As you may already know, Square is best known for its payment processing and POS services.

...However, you can also create an eCommerce store with them. You may be pleased to hear that you don't need to know anything about web design or coding to get started with Square Online. You just pick a theme you like the look of and edit it to your satisfaction.

You'll also benefit from free unlimited hosting, inventory management tools, responsive web design, and integrated reporting.

Square's Pros

Square's free plan doesn't charge a monthly subscription fee (just a transaction fee).
Square's pricing plans are cost-effective.
You can sell unlimited products on your Square site, Facebook and Instagram.
With Square's paid plans, you get a free web domain for a year.
Abandoned cart functionality and in-built analytics are available on Square's paid plans.
Square's themes are contemporary-looking
Square makes highlighting new products, top sellers, sale items, and related items easy.
You can schedule automated product drops, discounts, and flash sales, including website banners and pop-up alerts.

Square's Cons

Compared to the likes of Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, etc., Square's eCommerce capabilities are somewhat limited.
Managing your shipping settings is complicated. You have to choose either free shipping or a flat rate for your products. This is a problem if you're selling products with fluctuating weights and sizes, where shipping prices may vary.
Square's transaction fees add up, especially if you're selling large volumes.

Square’s Pricing

Square Online has a free plan that doesn't charge a monthly subscription fee, just a 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee.

6. Squarespace

Squarespace is an all-in-one eCommerce and website platform that provides hosting, domain registration, and a content management system under one roof.

Users also benefit from in-built eCommerce features like inventory management, a secure checkout, and an AI-fuelled product description generator.

However, Squarespace is most famous for its stunning templates. These customizable, responsive themes are beautiful and professionally designed with visuals at their heart, making them perfect for showcasing beautiful product photography.

Best of all, Squarespace provides an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, making building a professional-looking dropshipping store effortless.

Squarespace Pros

Access built-in SEO tools, including customizable metadata and clean HTML markup.
Squarespace offers fantastic reliability, with a 99%+ average uptime.
If you opt for yearly billing, you benefit from a free custom web domain for one year.
All plans come with a free SSL certificate.
24/7 customer support is available.
Squarespace offers built-in analytics that provide insights into website traffic and visitor demographics.
Squarespace includes plenty of integrated marketing tools, including email campaigns, AI-generated marketing copy, social media integrations, and more.

Squarespace Cons

Squarespace doesn't offer the same breadth of integrations as Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, etc.
Similarly, Squarespace provides a limited choice of payment gateways compared to other contenders.
Some users complain about slow customer support response times.

Squarespace Pricing

There's a free 14-day trial; after that, prices start at $36 a month (if you want to sell online).

7. Ecwid

While Ecwid allows you to create a standalone eCommerce site, its ability to let you add an online store to any existing website is where it truly shines. All you have to do is copy and paste a few lines of code to make this happen.

Similarly, Ecwid makes it easy to sell on social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as online marketplaces including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Google Shopping.

In other words, you can use Ecwid to sell on as many touchpoints as you want and manage them all from the convenience of one place.

For all these reasons, Ecwid is an excellent option for dropshipping merchants with their sites set on omnichannel selling.

It's also worth highlighting that Ecwid comes with plenty of in-built marketing tools, including the ability to launch automated Google and Facebook ads. You can also access TikTok, Pinterest, and Snapchat Pixel integrations, email marketing functionality, discount coupons and gift cards, and SEO tools.

Ecwid Pros

There are 100+ payment integrations to choose from
You can automate shipping, tax calculations, and inventory tracking.
Ecwid's smartphone app allows you to manage your orders, products, promotions, and customers while on the go.
Ecwid is pretty easy to use
Ecwid is incredibly versatile.
There's a totally free plan.
Ecwid makes adding an online shop to different eCommerce selling platforms easy.
Ecwid is GDPR-compliant

Ecwid Cons

While Ecwid offers a free plan, you can only list five products and are limited to selling via an online store in Link-in-bio-store.
Phone support is only available on the more expensive plans.
Product variations are only available on the more expensive plans.

Ecwid Pricing

You can use Ecwid for free (no monthly subscription or transaction fees!)

Best Dropshipping Platforms: Our Final Thoughts

After reading this round-up, we hope you have a better idea of which eCommerce platform is best for your dropshipping eCommerce website.

So, which comes out on top?

If we had to pick an overarching winner, we would crown Shopify as the best website to dropship on. Shopify provides everything you need to launch a beautiful dropshipping site, integrate with your favorite dropshipping apps, and scale as your business grows!

Fortunately, Spocket integrates seamlessly with Shopify. With just a few clicks, your Shopify store and Spocket account can be synced up, ready for you to push high-quality products to your online store. For more information about this, don't hesitate to contact us via the live chat widget located in the corner of your screen.

That's all from us! Which of these eCommerce platforms is your favorite? Please tell us about your experiences in the comments box below!

Best eCommerce Platforms for Dropshipping: FAQs

We hope this blog post inspires you to do some digging into eCommerce platforms that could be a good fit for your business.

But, before we wrap up, let's quickly answer some of the most frequently asked questions we get about the best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping:

What Is the Best Dropshipping Platform?

If you're looking for the best dropshipping sites to source high-quality products, we would have to recommend ourselves!

Spocket is an all-in-one dropshipping platform that provides everything you need for eCommerce dropshipping. From sourcing high-quality dropshipping products from reputable suppliers to excellent customer support and everything in between, we've got you covered!

Which Is the Easiest eCommerce Platform for Beginners?

In our opinion, Wix is the best dropshipping platform for beginners. Not only does Wix make it incredibly easy to start dropshipping, but its dashboard and website builder are also highly intuitive.

In addition, there are hundreds of themes to choose from, and its customer support is reportedly excellent. For all these reasons, we think Wix is the most beginner-friendly option on this list.

Which Is the Most Cost-Effective eCommerce Platform?

Ecwid offers an entirely free plan (I.e., no monthly subscription or transaction fee), making it the most affordable option on this list.

However, as you can only list five products on Ecwid's free plan, you'll likely outgrow this package quickly, so be sure to budget for its cheapest plan (The Venture plan), which will set you back $21 a month.