eCommerce platforms
The most important factor about building your online store, is your ecommerce platform. We took our team together to give you a full overview about ecommerce platforms here in Estonia and around the globe.
Here is a following comparison between four well-known established platforms and three Estonian made platforms.
Here are Estonian made ecommerce platforms:
As you can see there are pros and cons to every ecommerce platform. Make sure to choose the perfect one for your needs. But this decision could be rather complicated. Firstly, let us help you to clarify few things and take a brief look of the economical situation in 2020.
COVID-19 effect on eCommerce
A simple look at the stock market will tell you that COVID-19 has damaged economy in many ways. You might wonder how ecommerce platforms and online stores will survive the battle?
Indeed, the initial outbreak of the coronavirus in China disrupted global supply chains. We might as well say that most probably dropshipping will be gone or heavily disrupted in the future. Physical stores or businesses who don’t have online presence, will most probably loose their businesses.
Economy and stock market is hugely disrupted
Covid-19 showed the world its a time for a wake-up call. The solid truth is, even when the short-term effects end, the long-term economic impact will last for years. If your stores were only open in US, you might start to overthink where you could sell next, including what products you are selling.
In the following chapters, we will explain you in more detail the biggest differences between Shoperb and other ecommerce platform providers.
Let’s sart with Shoperb
When you are already here and reading our blog, lets start with us and compare one-by-one with other ecommerce platform providers. Shoperb is an ecommerce platform for a smaller or a bigger department store.
A lot of the ecommerce platform providers out there can provide their services rather for smaller online stores or in limited locations. With Shoperb its not a problem. Our core strength is localization.
Shoperb team
What does it mean?
It means you can open your store wherever you like, in whatever language you prefer, using this particular location’s local bank links and shipping providers. Yes, it is as easy as that with Shoperb.
Shoperb vs Shopify
Every person on the planet has probably heard about Shopify. It’s no secret, that it’s one of the main ecommerce platforms out there. However, there are some differences between Shoperb and Shopify.
Setting up
A lot of the times Shopify customers need extra apps for extra features and most of these integrations aren’t for free. With Shoperb you can easily set up your online store without worrying to be updating or integrating anything yourself.
Same goes for the themes. You have limited themes you can use for free. With Shoperb you have a selection of themes you can use for your online store, you can hire our in-house front-end developer or your own developer who will develop the design exactly how you would like it. Check more info about it here: https://shoperb.dev/
Localization
Depending where your stores are located, you might encounter different VAT rules, translations, shipping and bank links. If you take, for example, Estonia, we have our own local bank links, shippings and languages.
Besides Estonian speakers, we have also have 30 % of Russian speakers, and 0.6% Ukrainians. Also, Estonians are used to pay in in their bank links, PayPal or any other international payment gateway is still new. Shopify offers localization, but yet their interface is not fully translatable. If you consider using Sopify in Estonia, make sure they will recommend you the most suitable payment method in here.
Are you thinking local?
Shoperb vs Wix.com
Localization
Even when Wix.com is bringing up its game in ecommerce space, there are some things which are still rather limited. Like with Shopify, Wix.com has some limits in native language support. Which means they are not able to support all of the native languages, shippings and payments.
This hugely important when your store or stores are located in Europe. There are 28 countries in Europe, where are 24 official languages and 11 currencies. While cross-border sales are hugely growing in Europe, its something you just can’t miss it!
Did you know that European eCommerce market was over 600 billion euros in 2019?
SSL Certificate
The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can access it. SSL prevents malicious actors from intercepting password or credit card information, which is hugely important for an ecommerce store.
While Shoperb, Shopify and Voog offers SSL certificate for free, Wix.com has rather chose not to. Even if it might seem like a simple thing, its actually crucial to have it. Shop owners who have never built their stores before, it just sounds little bit doubtful they can integrate it on their own. So, why not to choose a platform you don’t need any coding experience nor uploading the SSL certificate yourself?
Shoperb vs Magento
SaaS platform vs open source
Lets start with the biggest difference. First of all, Shoperb is a SaaS platform (software as a service), while Magento is an open source platform. Even if Shoperb is not an open source platform, it still offers opportunities for developers to develop themes and custom development choices for the clients. We can say that Shoperb is almost an open source even though on paper it's not. Magento is suitable for experienced engineers.
Do you have buring desire to code?
Price difference
Magento is more suitable for a bigger online store, however, the cost difference compared with Shoperb is huge. Shoperb will cost you between €29-349 + transaction fees, while Magento could be between €5000-50 000. Even though Magento doesn’t have its own transaction fees, it is still very costly, complicated to develop and it has only one free theme. Also, with Magento you have to include SSL certificate yourself.
There is a huge price difference between SaaS and open platforms
Shoperb vs Woocommerce
SaaS platform vs open source
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It has to be installed which can be a little difficult for the beginners. WooCommerce itself is free, but you have to pay for the hosting and if you need more extensions, themes and a domain name, including SSL certificate. At first it might seem simple, but if you take a closer look, the more complicated it might get.
Customer Support and Setting Up
Wordpress doesn’t offer free customer support, so you need to pay for the service. Indeed, Woocommerce has available articles and you can email for the support, however, it will be more dependent the nature of your question. Woocommerce doesn’t provide any setting up.
Compared with Shoperb, you will always have a team of experts who will do all the updating and maintenance for you. This is a huge save up, if you consider that normally developer's hourly rate can go up to €60-200 per hour,.
What would you do if your site is not working? Or you are stuck with a feature? With Woocommerce you would most probably have to hire a develope, while with Shoperb you can build your store with couple of hours.
Choose experts in their field
Estonian made
As we are based in Estonia, we decided to compare Shoperb with two other ecommerce platforms made in Estonia.
Fun fact: Wired news website has claimed that Estonia is the most advanced digital society in the world. You might start to think there are other great solutions from here too. But first, let's take a quick look! 
Tallinn, Estonia
Shoperb vs Voog
As you can see on comparison chart, Shoperb and Voog are quite similar. However, there is one big difference differences.
Transaction fees
Depending on your subscription, Shoperb charges between 2% to 0-5% transaction fee from every successful purchase. Compared with Voog, their charge rate is 3 % when using Standard and Plus subscription, which is actually one of the highest rates in our comparison table. Even though Voog might have more design choices, higher transaction fees can cost you a lot more in the long run.
Point of Sale
Each online store owner has their own specific needs for running their business, whether it’s selling from physical stores and online stores, several warehouses or selling only for registered wholesale customers. Voog has enabled an integration with Erply, which is an efficient POS and retail software system.
However, did you know? Shoperb has it own Point of Sale, which can be easily integrated with your online store. Also, it no problem for us to integrate our system with Erply any other POS system if there is a requirement for it.
Shoproller vs Shoperb
Shoproller is an another ecommerce solution provider from Estonia. Even though, transaction fees are zero with Shoproller, there are some things to keep an eye on.
SSL
Even though Shoproller offers free updating, it doesn’t provide free SSL certificate. At first, Shoproller might seem easy to use, it could be one of the drawbacks for the client. This kind of things are definitely more convenient if it is already included in the bundle.
Localization
Shoperb has no limits with the locations, even though we are merely focused on the European market, there is no problem to open your store also in Japan. Shoproller has nine translations and various local shipping and payment integrations opportunities in Europe. However, they feel often limited to specify where your stores can exactly be opened in Europe.
In Conclusion
The most important here is to consider how painful, less painful or costly it will be in the long run. If you plan to open your online stores in certain areas, it might be a good idea to consider all the pros and cons first.
With Shoperb you will hire a full team of ecommerce specialists who know all the information about the best third-payment gateways and shipping providers in your region.
Our wide experience in e-commerce and 15 years of technical background in software engineering will guarantee you best advice with starting or scaling your business. Ask us and we will do our best to find you the best answer!
Choose wisely and have fun in the process!
