Ecommerce is bigger today than ever. While it’s easy to assume that the age of online stores is focused strictly on the B2C marketplace, the truth is actually that B2B companies are gaining steam too. According to Statista, the B2B eCommerce market worldwide is worth $12.2 trillion (as of 2019). That’s more than 6 times the value of B2C ecommerce.
The question for today’s ambitious entrepreneurs, is how can you take advantage of this growing marketplace? As usual, it all starts with the right tools.
Companies in the B2B space rely on everything from ERP technology to self-service chatbots to generate sales in the modern landscape. However, we think that the most important asset of all for a beginner, is the right ecommerce software.
Whether you’re selling wholesale products to developers, business owners and investors, or you’re offering digital services and education, you need the right B2B ecommerce platform if you want to thrive in this competitive space.
Your B2B platform will give you everything from a customizable checkout experience that you can use to convert customers, to marketing tools and analytics.
So, where do you start looking?
Identifying the Best B2B eCommerce Platforms
There are a lot of factors that overlap between B2C and B2B selling.
Whether you’re selling to a company or an end-customer, you’re going to need a strategy for building relationships with your target audience. This means investing in tools like landing page builders, email marketing that you can automate, and even social media integrations.
You also need to ensure that you have a viable way to process transactions and fulfil orders. This means finding a B2B platform that delivers a reliable, (secure) checkout, alongside things like shipping rates for your online store, and inventory management.
However, B2B eCommerce also comes with additional challenges that need to be considered. For instance, when you invest in B2B commerce, are you going to:
- Offer digital services? If so, you need a B2B digital commerce platform that allows you to access plugins for downloads, and even create memberships for your clients.
- Provide consultations and quotes? This could mean that you need to add a booking form to your website, as well as easy-to-use contact systems.
- Deliver recurring subscriptions? This will mean that you need to give your b2b customers an easy way to reorder their services and products on a regular basis.
- Sell on multiple channels? This means investing in software for your eCommerce store that helps with order management across a range of systems, including social media.
- Provide wholesale offers: This could mean investing in automated systems that calculate discounts for bulk purchases and calculate appropriate shipping rates.
To save you some crucial time and effort in the hunt for the right ecommerce capabilities, we’ve put together this list of our top B2B ecommerce website builders and tools.
Best B2B Ecommerce Platform: Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is easily one of the most successful and popular selling solutions on the market. When it comes to premium B2B ecommerce solutions, there’s nothing like Shopify’s state-of-the-art service for delivering exceptional user experience.
Leading brands like Adidas, Motorola, Tesla, and more already rely on Shopify Plus for B2B selling, and it’s no surprise. This company has a proven track record for delivering the best in customer experience, B2B sales, and exceptional features. In fact, Shopify Plus now powers almost a million online stores! You can even reduce your transaction costs by using Shopify Payments as your top payment option.
Shopify Plus comes with access to a wholesale eCommerce channel that you can add to your website within a couple of clicks. What’s more, the extensible nature of Shopify means that you can basically tap into any feature you could want, from new payment options, to order quantity tracking.
Features include:
- Launching multiple websites from the same back-end
- 24/7 store performance
- Dedicated storefronts
- 20 sales channels available from your dashboard
- Advanced custom pricing
- Integration with Avalara for taxation
- Powerful platform for up to 8000 orders a minute
- One step checkout options
- Thousands of apps
- SSL certificate built-in
- Wholesale selling available
- Dropshipping via apps like Orbelo
Pricing: Available via Quote
Best B2B Marketplace: OpenCart
OpenCart is already a popular B2B eCommerce platform. The company delivers some of the most compelling free and open—source software for running an online store, with features like Powerful SEO tools, built-in store management, and endless extensions and themes.
OpenCart has also expanded it’s opportunities in the business-to-business environment in recent years, by offering a new extension called “OpenCart B2B marketplace”.
The B2B multi-channel marketplace allows businesses to access marketplaces like Alibaba, for wholesale selling. The great thing about this service is that you can update and import multiple products to your site in one go. What’s more, you can create customer groups and assign unique permissions to each selection of clients. This makes it easy to deliver things like paid courses and eLearning too.
Features include:
- Excellent free support
- Endless extensions and themes
- Powerful store management tools
- Built-in SEO
- Open source coding
- User group creation
- Email templates
- Access to wholesale marketplaces
- Group upload and export
- Sub-domain development
- Questions and answers
- Transaction status tracking
- Individual shipping modes for different customers
- Custom dashboard for managing orders from B2B buyers
Pricing: The OpenCart software is free to use, while the B2B marketplace extension from Webkul is $299.
Best Open Source B2B Ecommerce Platform: Magento
If you’ve ever looked into B2B ecommerce sites before, then you’ve probably heard of Magento. One of the best ecommerce solutions around, this popular platform can work seamlessly for virtually any kind of business. The great thing about Magento, aside from an excellent total cost of ownership value, is that it’s easy to install, and offers plenty of features with minimal maintenance.
When you’re looking for the best B2B ecommerce platform, Magento has the awards to prove its impact. For instance, Magento was named the best B2B platform by the Forrester Wave. It does lack a few features on the integration side, and it can be a little pricey for some companies, but it’s incredible for ecommerce functionality and shopping experience.
Magento is one of the few all-in-one B2B ecommerce software options that was designed specifically for businesses. You’ll be able to use this platform to accomplish even the most challenging business goals.
Features include:
- Reliable cloud-based performance
- Extensive B2B functionality
- Custom pricing and catalog
- Robust merchandising features
- Easy backend system integration
- Support for corporate accounts
- Excellent shopping experience
- Omnichannel selling features
- Effortless reporting and analytics
- Quotes and negotiations available
- Amazing order processing and inventory management.
Pricing: Magento starts at around $22,000 per year for a full Enterprise site, or $2000 per year for cloud support plus hosting.
BigCommerce Enterprise
BigCommerce is another incredible tool for eCommerce sales in the B2B landscape. Whether you’re a small business or a larger company, BigCommerce will provide you with a comprehensive set of tools designed to get you up and running fast. You can access your audience for ERP support, and you can integrate your platform with various leading tools too.
BigCommerce is one of the more powerful eCommerce business store builders on the market, offering support for those who want to access beautiful websites, with social media integrations and high-level checkouts. You can access things like PCI DSS support, so you know that you’re protecting the crucial information that you collect from customers. What’s more, organizing your product catalog and inventory is easy too.
One particularly compelling feature of BigCommerce is the fact that it comes with access to quote builders – ideal for SaaS companies and service brands. There’s also quick re-ordering available too. Features include:
- Easy subscriptions and re-orders
- Advanced shipping options
- Per-unit cost
- Automatically applied volume discounts
- B2B specific payment services
- Backend ERP system and CRM integrations
- Discounted and custom prices
- Segmentation for audiences
- Responsive and stylish website design
- Quote builder options
Pricing: Prices start at around $29.95 per month for the standard plan, and $79.95 per month for the Plus plan. If you want to upgrade to “Pro” that will cost $299.95 per month.
3dcart
3dCart is a sensational option for those in search of the best B2B ecommerce platform. If you need help turning visitors into customers as quickly as possible, 3dcart has you covered, with plenty of customizable themes, a mobile-friendly interface, numerous integrations, and controlled visibility. You also get access to amazing features like customer segmentation.
Customer segmentation within your B2B ecommerce platform means that you can divide your customers based on product information, or how much they buy. This means that you can sell things like webinars and premium content to certain customers. You can even hide your bulk pricing from other customers, so that you can always get the best income from your clients.
Other B2B features included with 3dcart include one-click reorder, excellent for subscription and membership purchases, and pricing customization. Your capabilities include:
- Pricing customization options
- One-click re-order and subscriptions
- Comprehensive back-end product information control
- Segmentation for customers
- Open-source extensibility
- Volume bulk ordering
- Product quantity discounts (automated)
- Flexible tax management
- Accounting integrations
- SEO friendly back-end
- 200+ built-in features
- Multiple payment processors
- Countless free themes
Pricing: Pricing starts at $19 per month for a startup store with no transaction fees. You can pay $29 for your basic store, $129 per month for the “Power store”, and $79 per month for the Plus store. Pro stores are available for $229 per month, with support for up to 15 users.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the best b2b eCommerce platform on the market today for those who love WordPress. This open source ecommerce environment currently powers about 42% of the online stores in the digital landscape. Thanks to the flexibility that this tool offers, and it’s deep relationship with the WordPress environment, launching and managing an online store with WooCommerce is easy.
There are plenty of fantastic plugins and themes to explore, as well as specific hosting and maintenance services too. You can even find a range of performance optimization tools built into WooCommerce that are designed to help you rank higher and earn more sales.
WooCommerce provides a fully-featured platform for B2B ecommerce that’s easy to extend and grow as your business evolves. Features include:
- Countless checkout options
- Huge community for support
- Incredible range of extensions and ad-ons
- Fantastic for open-source flexibility
- Wholesale-friendly
- Confidential information protection
- SEO friendly design
- High level of scalability
- Easy-to-use applications
- Works perfectly with WordPress
- Integrates with a range of existing tools
Pricing: The WooCommerce tech itself is free. However, you do need to pay extra for things like a domain name, hosting, and other premium essentials.
Oracle NetSuite
When looking for the best B2B ecommerce platform, it’s easy to caught up thinking about big names like WooCommerce and Magento. However, NetSuite is one of the most effective B2B commerce platforms that there is. If you’re looking for something that’s modern, scalable, and even affordable too, then you can’t go wrong with NetSuite.
This award-winning software in the cloud will give you everything you need to automate crucial operations, reduce business costs, and even increase the visibility of your site. As one of the most deployed ERP management tools in the world, supporting more than 40,000 organizations, this fantastic service is a great consideration or business owners.
Available across more than 140 countries, NetSuite will help you to sell to the customers that appeal most to you, for a price that you can afford. Major features include:
- Excellent integrations with CRM and ERP technology
- Back-office accounting and self-service portals for partners
- Fragmented data development and automated processes
- Hassle free and simple performance that’s great for beginners
- Click not code customization strategies
- Implementations with leading B2B tools
- Excellent pricing
- Support for selling around the world
- Extensible software that grows with you
- Access to multiple payment and checkout options
Pricing: The base license costs around $999 per month with access costs that increase depending on the number of users. Your price is likely to be tailored to you based on the unique needs of your business.
Volusion Prime
Volusion is another excellent B2B ecommerce platform for companies that want to go beyond just selling on Amazon and eBay. This excellent platform comes with everything you need in an all-in-one package. That means that you can create your store, manage your inventory, and even create various marketing campaigns all in the same place.
The Prime version of Volusion is it’s VIP custom pricing package. Although you could build a store with Volusion on one of the cheaper packages, it’s Prime that gives you access to things like VIP support, unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, and other essential features. You can also access unlimited staff accounts too, which means that you can easily add people into your team.
Volusion comes with access to things like customer loyalty plans, API access, Amazon and eBay Integrations, and even your own dedicated success team to help you out. There’s plenty of ways to expand your business with Advanced reports too.
Features include:
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Support for as many sales as you choose
- Unlimited staff accounts, products, and more
- VIP support
- Secure and reliable checkout options
- Various responsive themes
- Powerful site editing options
- Drag and drop functionality
- SEO built-in
- Excellent inventory management
- Import export support
- Abandoned cart reports
- CRM and phone orders
- Ebay and Amazon Integrations
- 3rd party shipping rates
Pricing: Available via quote depending on your business needs.
PrestaShop
Finally on our list of the best B2B ecommerce platforms is PrestaShop. This open-source eCommerce platform helps you to create a store that’s totally customized to suit you. With PrestaShop, businesses can access a huge amount of customization options with dozens of professional themes, and more than fifty payment solutions too. There are various integrated customer service tools, and quick install features too.
If you’re looking for something that will help you to create your B2B store from scratch as quickly and easily as possible, then PrestaShop is sure to be a good choice for you. This fantastic service comes with modules that allow you to update your B2B performance, including customer registration and membership options.
For B2B business leaders on PrestaShop, there’s also billing available with or without VAT, tax invoicing, and VAT1 dual display. You can also access options to hide prices for certain visitors.
Features include:
- Custom checkout
- Dozens of customizable themes
- Excellent inventory management
- Customer relationship tracking
- Reports and analytics
- Unique VAT and Tax features
- Price hiding options
- Membership and registration
- Social media and marketing tools
- Global selling
- Multiple currency choices
- More than 50 checkout options
- Demonstration PrestaShop
- Easy back-end performance
Pricing: Pricing for PrestaShop depends on what you need. For instance, you’ll be able to start with a cost of around $30, and work your way up depending on the various add-ons that you need.
Choosing the Best B2B eCommerce Platform
There are a lot of fantastic B2B ecommerce platforms available on the market today, all with their own unique benefits to offer budding business owners. The platform that you need will depend on your specific requirements. For instance, if you’re looking for something that integrates well with your WordPress website, and offers tons of extensibility, then you could try WooCommerce. If you need a product that delivers sensational CRM and ERP features, then the NetSuite solution might be better for you.
Shopify Plus offers an excellent choice for those who want high-level eCommerce features combined with a reliable and easy-to-use back-end, and dozens of apps and add-ons. On the other hand, Magento is one of the most well-known and popular B2B ecommerce platforms, with functionality that’s good enough to have earned it awards over the years.
When deciding which B2B ecommerce platform you should use, ask yourself which features matter most to you. The business leader in search of an eCommerce platform with plenty of back-end support will need something much different to someone who needs a platform that’s as flexible and scalable as possible. For instance, OpenCart is excellent if you want the freedom to adapt your online store to suit your needs, but it can be difficult to get used to for a beginner.
On the other hand, something like Volusion isn’t quite as extensible, but it comes with a lot of support, particularly if you choose one of the higher paying pricing packages, like Prime.
Which eCommerce Platform will you be using to transform your B2B business? Let us know in the comments below!
The post The Best B2B Ecommerce Platform for 2020 appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.
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