(2023) What Is the Best B2B Ecommerce Platform?
If you run a B2B ecommerce business, then you have likely already experienced the frustration of trying to identify the best ecommerce platforms to give your business the greatest chance of success.
Crafting a successful ecommerce platform can be a challenging task, so in this guide, we’re going to explore the best options on the market—from Shopify to OroCommerce. We’ll also show you how Upscribe can help you maximize your Shopify revenue.
Ready to build your B2B foundation? Let’s dive in.
What Are B2B Ecommerce Platforms?
Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce platforms are websites that allow people to set up and operate their own businesses in order to sell products and professional services to other organizations.
The best ecommerce platforms give merchants everything they need to set up their online stores, engage with their target audience, and fulfill orders placed for their products and services.
Why Are B2B Ecommerce Platforms Important?
Reach Potential Customers Anytime, Anywhere
The best ecommerce platforms provide new businesses with remarkable reach at a global level.
Once an online company is live on a major ecommerce platform it puts itself in front of a worldwide audience, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
There is no closing time for online businesses. There are no holidays. Once you have a business live on an ecommerce platform, you are open to business with anyone, from anywhere, at any time.
Improve Brand Awareness
The hardest thing for any business to do is execute successful marketing campaigns to raise awareness of their company and let prospective customers know that they exist in the first place.
This involves working at increasing brand visibility, and brand awareness. In the online space, these are achieved through various means, but the primary method of making an online business visible to new customers is SEO.
Shopify is recognized as one of the best ecommerce platforms for this very reason, it was designed with SEO at its core.
Improve Customer Experience
Using an ecommerce platform goes a long way to enhancing customer service and customer experience.
Having a responsive, attractive website that always works is another major benefit you get with the top ecommerce platforms.
Things to Consider Before Choosing a B2B ecommerce Platform
Budget
Always confirm that any platform you’re considering works with your budget.
The cost of setting up and hosting an eCommerce website can be anywhere between $40 and $4,000/month.
Customer Satisfaction & Experience
The customer is king (or queen) and that is truer now than ever. Ensure the platform you choose provides everything you need to deliver outstanding user experience and customer satisfaction.
Payment Options
Different businesses use different payment platforms for purchasing and procurement.
Your ecommerce platform should allow you to use all the most popular B2B payment methods.
Shipping Options
Similarly, businesses also use different carriers. Therefore, your chosen platform must accommodate all the top B2B shipping integrations.
4 Best B2B Ecommerce Platforms
Key Takeaways
- Shopify: for small- to mid-sized B2B businesses.
- Squarespace: for beautiful designs and templates.
- OroCommerce: for large- to enterprise-size B2B businesses.
- HubSpot: for B2B businesses looking to enhance their CRM and marketing.
1. Shopify
For small- to mid-sized B2B businesses.
Shopify is the third-largest ecommerce platform by market share but is considered to be the number one for start-ups and smaller businesses because of its scope and simplicity.
It comes with impressive in-built SEO and marketing facilities and everything is run through one, single dashboard. Businesses can sell through social media sites, blogs, websites, via email, and the integration of Amazon services has made it a genuine powerhouse.
Relevant Features
- B2B Ecommerce: Shopify works as a complete B2B platform allowing for wholesaling by merchants that includes customer-specific product publishing, quantity rules and customized, automated purchasing for buyers.
- Customer Engagement: Shopify gives you a complete suite of marketing tools to optimize your customer engagement including email marketing, SEO tools, Facebook ads and much more.
- Free Business Tools: With Shopify you are given a wide range of free tools to help your business including logo makers, QR code generators, invoice and PO generators and a great deal more.
Pricing
Pricing on Shopify starts at $19 per month for the Basic package, and most businesses find that this more than meets their requirements. For more established businesses, the Shopify package might be worth considering at $49 per month, or they can opt for the Advanced packages at $299 per month. Both of these packages come with a range of additional services and benefits, including lower transaction fees.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Can be tried for free
- Can be used effectively by anyone
- Good for dropshipping and multichannel selling
Cons
- Although you can try it with a free trial, there is no free plan available
- There are a limited number of themes for sellers to use
- Sellers must purchase a custom domain if they don’t already have one
2. Squarespace
For beautiful designs and templates.
Squarespace is a website builder and hosting platform that enables individuals and businesses to create their own websites without any preexisting coding knowledge or web development skills.
It uses a simple drag-and-drop interface and comes with a range of tools for SEO, analytics, and ecommerce.
Relevant Features
- Website Templates: Squarespace’s wide range of customizable templates makes it a walk in the park to get your website looking totally professional and exactly how you want it to look and feel.
- Squarespace Video Studio App: With video content becoming ever more influential in marketing and increasing brand awareness, Squarespace’s video studio ensures you don’t miss out by giving you everything you need to create great content.
- Shipping & Fulfillment all in One Place: Take total control of all your shipping and order fulfillment processes and requirements including taxes, payments, labelling and everything else you could need all in one place.
Pricing
For personal accounts prices are currently $12 per month, rising to $17 per month for a basic business account (no ecommerce). For those wanting ecommerce capabilities, the Basic commerce package starts at $23 per month, rising to $35 per month for the Advanced seller package
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Very easy to create and edit websites
- Websites look professional
- No transaction fees
Cons
- No multichannel selling
- No free plan
- Slow page speed
3. OroCommerce
For large- to enterprise-size B2B businesses.
OroCommerce is an open-source B2B e-commerce platform that helps midsize corporations and large enterprises create customized and scalable online stores.
Some of OroCOmmerce’s key attributes are its versatility and flexibility in what users can do with the sites they build. Because it is built on modular architecture, creators can add or remove features with ease.
Relevant Features
- Integrations : Every large enterprise knows that integration is a key component of introducing new tools and initiatives to help grow the business. OroCommerce can integrate with pretty much any systems you already use, including CRM, ERP, and PIM.
- Cloud-Based Ecommerce: Allows you to benefit from network capacity and storage that might be too expensive or simply not available with your existing on-premises hosting. This not only helps scalability but cost-reduction and execution times.
- AI Intelligence: OroCommerce integrates AI and machine learning into its architecture to drive sales through features like AI chatbots and intelligent product recommendations.
Pricing
As OroCommerce is built on open-source technology there is a free Community Edition available, but businesses looking to use OroCommerce will need to sign up for the Enterprise Edition in which the prices are always bespoke but typically start at around $3000 per month.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Excellent for established, large B2B companies
- Recognized as a leading enterprise-level platform by Gartner, Forester, and others.
- Built with advanced AI and machine-learning technologies
Cons
- Not suitable for smaller or mid-sized companies
- Steep learning curve
- Limited customization and development opportunities
4. HubSpot
For B2B businesses looking to enhance their CRM and marketing.
HubSpot is a cloud-based CRM software platform designed to help businesses handle every aspect of their customer relationship management activities.
This includes content creation and management, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, lead tracking and management, marketing automation, and analytics.
Relevant Features
- Marketing Hub: All of your marketing tools in one place. Handle your marketing campaigns with ease and complete visibility for all team members at all times.
- Sales Hub: All your sales needs in one place providing email templates, email tracking, and document management, with helpful features like AI-powered conversation intelligence tools and sales automation.
- Service Hub: Connect all your customer service data to enhance your customer support and outreach and improve customer retention and growth.
Pricing
All HubSpot products come with limited free versions but businesses will typically need to opt for one of the paid-for versions, Professional or Enterprise.
The Marketing Hub costs $800 per month for the Professional license and $3,600 per month for the Enterprise license. The Sales, Customer Service, Content Management, and Operations Hubs all come with their own pricing structures.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Good for businesses with established websites
- Includes good marketing and social media management tools
- Strong education and support with HubSpot Academy
Cons
- Not as configurable as other CRM platforms
- Marketing Hub requires users to sign up for an additional, paid-for subscription
- Getting everything optimized is a long and complex process
- Not suitable for smaller or mid-sized companies
- Steep learning curve
- Limited customization and development opportunities
Conclusion
Choosing the right ecommerce platform can mean the difference between your business succeeding or failing.
Unless you work for a large, enterprise, we recommend Shopify as being the best all-around platform for start-ups, drop shippers, and small-medium sized businesses.
But choosing the right platform isn’t enough—you’ll also need the tools to make the most of it. Upscribe is a tool that helps you maximize subscriber revenues by unlocking the full value of your Shopify customers. Easy setup and intuitive features mean you’ll be up and running in minutes!
Schedule a demo to see how you can reduce churn and capture reorders through scalable, intelligent software.
