7 Best e-Commerce Platforms In Australia For 2024

Not all e-commerce platforms are created equal. If you’re building an online store, you’ll need to look beyond the surface sheen of these neatly packaged and professionally marketed e-commerce platforms in order to arrive at a sound decision.

Maybe you’ve seen those Shopify social media ads and reels where entrepreneurs are pinged with dozens of notifications in quick succession – each one a new order.

Not to burst your bubble, but becoming a dotcom millionaire isn’t as easy as these ads imply.

Choosing the right e-commerce platform is a key decision that directly impacts your ability to service your target market.

And if you get it wrong, you can’t just hit CTRL + Z and “undo”.

There’s no hack for migrating to another ecommerce platform. So I’m glad you’re here because we can prevent that from happening (or happening again, if you have an existing website).

Let’s stack the odds of success in your favour and find you the best e-commerce platform without you having to kiss a thousand frogs.

1. Shopify.

Best overall e-commerce platform in Australia.

Shopify is perhaps the best-known and is the largest e-commerce platform by market share (28%), with WooCommerce in 2nd place (25%), and Wix in 3rd place (12%).

So you can relax in the knowledge that this is a safe platform trusted by many small business owners.

It guarantees a 99.99% uptime, is easy to use, has intuitive drag-and-drop pages, customisable checkout options, and a host of tutorials to get you started.

Other platforms like Squarespace are website builders first and foremost, whereas Shopify is a purpose-built lean, mean selling machine.

Pros.

Shopify goes beyond the basics and provides advanced features and marketing tools for driving online sales.

The system sends an email to those who have abandoned their carts at checkout, but unlike other platforms, it also includes a link so customers don’t have to re-enter their details.

There are a tonne of other marketing tools, too. Let me provide a quick summary of the ones that are designed to convert sales:

Aside from its marketing tools, its dedicated payment processing gateway makes online payments cheaper than elsewhere. Transaction fees are 1.75% + 30¢ for the Basic plan and are as low as 1.4% if you go with Advanced.

You’ll have access to everything, including order fulfilment data, real-time sales and inventory updates, and product listings creation.

Cons.

There are three main drawbacks to Shopify.

First, its fees are not cheap – when you transact smaller volumes. Shopify will feel expensive if your business sells $15 widgets and is turning over less than $200,000 per year.

Second, its website builder functionality isn’t as good as that of Squarespace. While it’s capable of creating beautiful websites, you’ll need to hire a developer to get the most out of it.

In contrast, Squarespace’s websites look great out of the box.

Finally, Shopify has fewer in-built applications and isn’t an open-source e-commerce platform.

And because of that, enhancing your site’s functionality with Shopify can get expensive. As you grow, you’ll find yourself adding proprietary plugins.

Even though each cost is small (usually less than $20/month), this can add up over time.

Overall.

Shopify is the best e-commerce platform for Australian businesses planning to hit aggressive growth targets within the next 1-2 years.

It’s a serious, comprehensive business toolkit for serious businesspeople.

Shopify e-Commerce System Scoring Criteria	Score
Ease of use	4/5
Fees	4/5
Scalability	5/5
Business Management Tools	4.5/5
Support	4.5/5
TOTAL	4.4/5

Pricing.

Also, as an introductory offer, you get your first three months for $1 per month.

Click here for more information about what’s included in each package. (All monthly prices are based on monthly billing. Discounts can be unlocked if billed annually.)

2. Squarespace.

Best if you need a website and an e-commerce platform.

With Squarespace, you can rustle up beautifully designed pages.

It’s a platform that creators of all levels can get used to – a place where the entry requirements for building a site are at their lowest.

That said, it wasn’t originally built with ecommerce in mind. Its e-commerce functionality isn’t as sophisticated for running a large online store with greater inventory management and customisation needs.

Pros.

In business, first impressions matter, and you won’t find a better suite of native tools for page design than those found in Squarespace.

With them, you can create beautiful and clutter-free web pages that are a delight to the senses.

But with Squarespace, you decide your main palette and fonts when setting up your website, so these predetermined “brand guidelines” keep you from veering off from your identity.

These are a great starting point and will save you hours (days… weeks…) of admin.

The quality on offer at Squarespace is far superior to the themes available on other platforms.

Some of these custom sections include:

There’s no need to sign up for a stock photos account elsewhere. With the integrated Unsplash, you can add images by clicking “Browse stock images”.

However, you have to pay for premium images.

Another well-received freebie is the free custom domain name on all plans. This applies to any top-level domains (TLDs) priced at $27.

It also has some nifty sales features such as an inventory manager, product image zoom, bookings and scheduling appointments, and the ability to sell online products, subscriptions, and memberships (with free trials and recurring payment processing).

You can customise page titles, ALT tags for images, URL slugs, and meta descriptions.

Cons.

If Squarespace wants to compete with the big fish, it needs serious investment into its app marketplace. At a grand total (sarcasm alert!) of 54 apps, it’s lagging way behind the others in this review.

It’s less than half of the next-worst when it comes to integration library (Weebly, which has over 100). WooCommerce has a mind-boggling 55,000!

And because it’s a platform aimed primarily at a website builder rather than an online store builder, a Squarespace site requires robust third-party e-commerce features to scale your operation.

For as little as $9/month, you can add this code to your Squarespace site and leverage Shopify’s advanced e-commerce tools.

With a Buy Button, you can use secure checkout for payment processing with more than 100+ gateways (Squarespace only has Stripe, Paypal, Apple Pay, and Afterpay).

You can also add unlimited products, track sales and growth, and integrate orders and shipping – meaning customers can purchase products without ever leaving your ecommerce website.

Overall.

If you find page design stressful, the dragging-and-dropping style of Squarespace allows you to create a professional online store with minimum fuss.

It creates a delightful user experience, but its commercial viability is severely restricted. You must plug into a powerhouse like Shopify to unlock advanced commerce features.

Squarespace e-Commerce System Scoring Criteria	Score
Ease of use	5/5
Fees	4.5/5
Scalability	4/5
Business Management Tools	3.5/5
Support	4.5/5
TOTAL	4.3/5

Pricing.

Click here for more information about what’s included in each package. (All monthly prices are based on monthly billing. Discounts can be unlocked if billed annually.)

3. BigCommerce.

Best for Australian companies with more than $5m in turnover.

As the name implies, BigCommerce is suitable for – you guessed it – big commerce, that is, enterprise-level companies.

It offers everything you need to scale your business into a powerhouse with > $10m in revenue.

On the Enterprise plan, you have unlimited API calls. This means you can go beyond the predetermined boundaries imposed by closed-source platforms such as Shopify. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Pros.

The tech wizards among you will appreciate the “headless architecture” of BigCommerce.

This functionality means you can separate a website’s front-end and back-end architecture.

Big businesses need not be afraid of migrating to an open-source platform with a headless architecture.

Your existing website can retain the same visuals and structure; you can cherry-pick the best parts of your existing model and combine them with something new and powerful.

But let me highlight one feature of the Enterprise plan that has broad appeal: Shipper HQ.

With ShipperHQ, you make your own dynamic shipping rules.

You can get as granular as you want by limiting postcodes and destinations like PO boxes, and you can automate shipping calculations from multiple warehouses and drop shippers.

In the platform trust centre, they’re wholly transparent (and proud) about their track record of audit logging, data security, compliance with international standards, data privacy, network security, and endpoint security.

And with all that in mind, you’re going to think I’m pulling your leg when I say there are no processing fees for all plans.

Nada. Diddy squit.

Pinch me. Punch me. Me, a liar?

How dare you! It’s true.

Cons.

BigCommerce is the least user-friendly platform in this review, and I suppose that’s to be expected.

With its limitless architecture and advanced tools, it sacrifices the intuitive layouts offered in Squarespace and Wix and pitches itself as an all-in-one e-commerce platform.

There are only 12 free themes to choose from, so if you’re a rookie, you’ve got little choice but to play with the cards you’re dealt – unless you want to fork out $150 to $399 for a premium theme.

To do so, you have to buy and register with another domain registrar and port it over – unnecessary hassle if you ask me.

When upgrading your membership plan, the choice isn’t always yours and is often determined by your sales revenue. If you exceed $50k, you have to move up from the Standard to the Enterprise.

You’re also limited to the number of inventory locations in each membership.

Shopify allows you to have unlimited locations on all plans (including its free plan), whereas BigCommerce goes from a maximum number of locations from 4, 5, 8, and custom for each respective package upgrade.

Overall.

If you’re an established Australian business that has outgrown your current e-commerce platform, BigCommerce will unlock the next stage of your business growth.

But with the tiered subscriptions of BigCommerce, demonstrable value and power can be unlocked with each successive upgrade.

It’s as though a stellar platform was built in the first place, which has then been augmented over time.

So, making that leap to the next package is much easier to justify.

BigCommerce e-Commerce System Scoring Criteria	Score
Ease of use	3.5/5
Fees	4.5/5
Scalability	5/5
Business Management Tools	5/5
Support	4/5
TOTAL	4.4/5

Pricing.

Click here for more information about what’s included in each package. (All monthly prices are based on monthly billing. Discounts can be unlocked if billed annually.)

4. Wix e-Commerce.

Great e-commerce platform with a built-in CRM.

Wix is often pitted against Squarespace, since it’s another ecommerce platform that started out as a drag-and-drop website builder.

But there are some distinctive differences between the two, and Wix just slightly edges out Squarespace when it comes to the overall online shopping experience.

Pros.

Firstly, Wix eCommerce offers over 70+ payment gateways worldwide compared to the meagre amount offered by Squarespace.

Multiple payment options give your customers more flexibility over how they purchase from you – making your products more accessible to the wider market.

For starters, you have eight times as many pre-built themes (800+) and over five times as many integrations and apps (300+).

One of these advanced tools is Wix Velo (previously Corvid), which is a full-stack development platform used to add advanced commerce functionality to your Wix website.

As for e-commerce capabilities, Wix has a few key features for growing an online business and is pretty much on par with Squarespace, with a couple of exceptions.

Oh, and you’ve also got telephone support, unlike Squarespace. But you could argue that it’s more of a necessity for Wix, given its UI is more complex to manipulate for new users.

The wizard guides you through optimising your website step by step and strips away the technical veneer that so often accompanies the subject.

Cons.

With all the additional customisations, and the lack of uniformity in the backend (compared to Squarespace), it’s easy for Wix sites to become cluttered.

Pages with poor readability and navigation will repel your customers, so be mindful when building. Less is more. There’s a reason why boundaries are imposed in Squarespace.

So what happens in Wix stays in Wix… If you decide you want to upgrade to another platform, you have no choice but to start from scratch.

If you have a decent portfolio of products, the lack of low-stock alerts, inventory turnover analytics, and demand forecasting make it hard to control.

You can, of course, integrate with a third-party app, but you’ll have to pay for the luxury.

Overall.

Wix is great value for money for those looking for a healthy balance of customisability and key features. Their lowest price plan is actually the second cheapest in this review.

Weebly’s basic package comes in at $10 per month but lacks the depth and features that Wix’s Core plan has.

Wix e-Commerce Platform Scoring Criteria	Score
Ease of use	5/5
Fees	4/5
Scalability	4/5
Business Management Tools	4/5
Support	4/5
TOTAL	4.2/5

Pricing.

Click here for more information about what’s included in each package. (All monthly prices are based on monthly billing. Discounts can be unlocked if billed annually.)

5. Square Online.

Good e-commerce platform for physical retail shops.

Here’s a wild card for you – particularly if you run a brick-and-mortar shop, a mobile business such as a food truck, or a boutique selling crafts at fairs.

Square Online (not to be confused with Squarespace) is a physical payment processor and online storefront rolled into one.

But Square does more than just act as your payment processor. A subscription comes with a digital storefront to build your digital identity.

Pros.

Square Online is one the few e-commerce platforms to offer a free subscription package, which includes a generous breadth of key features that you need to execute your sales.

My favourite feature is the synchronisation between your offline and online stores. Regardless of where and when you accept payment, your inventory will automatically be updated.

Accuracy inventory plays a key role in analysing trends, product performance, and safety stock thresholds – preventing you from going out of stock.

When a customer scans these codes, it initiates a seamless order and the checkout process. There’s even an “open tab” option, allowing customers in restaurants and bars to keep a tab going and pay at the end of their

And the best part? Transaction fees for Square are only 2.2%.

While that may not sound like a huge amount, Squarespace charging 3% represents an additional 36%. So, a business taking $50,000 in a year would pay $1,500 to Squarespace and $1,100 to Square Online in transaction fees.

Last, if your business runs from multiple locations, you can create unique business profiles for each, with specific business hours and bank accounts.

Simply head to your Square Online Overview page and assign items from your Square Item Library to each profile. To reiterate: there’s no additional cost for multiple profiles like with WeeCommerce.

Cons.

Despite the competitive transaction fees, some will find Square’s annual billing and lack of month-to-month billing restrictive.

This can quickly eat into your profits, particularly if you’re selling low-value products (anything less than $10).

While you have the choice of whether to cover the transaction fee or pass on to your customers, it puts you in an awkward predicament where you have to choose between inflating prices and annoying customers or taking the hit yourself.

The limited customisation choices built into Square mean the only way of circumventing your problems is to spend and upgrade with integrations.

A major source of frustration in the developer community is this lack of customisability.

The site editor doesn’t allow you to insert custom CSS. That means you’re stuck with the “style picker” that basically replicates the same layout in 20 different colour configurations.

There’s no true drag-and-drop functionality, and the page designs are entirely vertical.

Overall.

Square Online is a niche product and offers businesses an easy way to integrate their omnichannel sales. It bridges your online and offline operations by syncing your inventory so it’s easier to track and manage.

So you can easily get to grips with the platform and see if it meets your basic requirements.

You’ve nothing to lose by signing up and having a play around, except maybe a bit of time. Check it out.

Even if it’s not right for your business, it might be the perfect tool for running a one-off charity event or for your local sports team’s gala.

It’s the best platform for in-person sales.

Square e-Commerce System Scoring Criteria	Score
Ease of use	4/5
Fees	4/5
Scalability	4/5
Business Management Tools	3.5/5
Support	4/5
TOTAL	3.9/5

Pricing.

Click here for more information about what’s included in each package. (All monthly prices are based on annual billing. Monthly billing is unavailable.)

6. WooCommerce (& Woo Express).

Best for extensive features & integrations.

WooCommerce is owned by Automattic, which is the operator of WordPress.com. And it’s another open-sourced titan, just like BigCommerce.

In the clash of these titans, BigCommerce is dwarfed by WooCommerce with its plugins, themes, and gateways.

As far as the market share of e-commerce platforms is concerned, WooCommerce is a close second (25%) to Shopify (28%) and is trusted by three million active customers.

WooCommerce is a free-to-use plugin, meaning you can “theoretically” open an online store for $0. However, the reality is that you’ll need to integrate apps to make your online business functional.

Pros.

According to data from W3Techs.com, WordPress dominates 63.1% of the market share of content management systems. WordPress is the god of content management systems, and in WordPress we trust.

So, if you are familiar with the WordPress platform, you’ll find WooCommerce a walk in the park. If not, there’s a fairly steep learning curve you need to ride out.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a mind-boggling amount of integrations, totalling over 55,000 and growing by the day. The next closest in this review is Shopify with 8,000+ and BigCommerce with 1,300+. Crazy, right?!

Marketing tools, SEO tools, inventory management, you name it – you’ll find everything you need for selling online. If you can conceive it, WooCommerce can help you achieve it, and that’s no exaggeration.

There’s also a WooCommerce Payment feature, which is ideal for those running both online and offline channels, and it’s a worthy adversary of Square Online.

With your iPhone (and the WooCommerce Mobile App), you can take contactless payments without needing a terminal or any additional hardware.

Here’s a breakdown of what it costs to take in-person payments in Australia:

(Related: Best International Money Transfer Providers).

Cons.

While the WooCommerce plugin is 100% free, there are inescapable hidden costs if you want to scale your online store.

Many don’t realise the hidden costs until they’ve already invested time and money into their venture.

So before embarking on your WooCommerce adventure, be sure to cost up the following:

It’s likely to work out much cheaper if you go with the new Essential package.

Regardless of which package you go for, if you’re in Australia, or any other country outside of the U.S. for that matter, you’ll be paying an additional 1% per customer transaction.

There’s virtually no support with WooCommerce, and if you need assistance, you’ll find yourself going around in circles on their Contact Us page looking for nonexistent contact details.

Even the web chat, HappyBot, makes you jump through several hoops to raise a ticket. Curse you, HappyBot!

Overall.

If I haven’t made this explicit already, let me say it again louder for those at the back: WooCommerce is the most feature-rich e-commerce platform, and you can get involved and suss out the platform without parting with a single cent.

I love the unparalleled availability of apps and integrations, but the built-in functionalities for inventory management and analytics are weak for the Woo Express plans.

And costs can quickly spiral out of control.

It’s important to note that WooCommerce is a plugin, and you need a WordPress site to connect it. Other content management systems aren’t compatible.

Woocommerce e-Commerce System Scoring Criteria	Score
Ease of use	4/5
Fees	3.5/5
Scalability	4/5
Business Management Tools	4.5/5
Support	4.5/5
TOTAL	4.1/5

Pricing.

WooCommerce – $0 (a free-to-use plug-in)

Woo Express (all-in-one WooCommerce packages):

Processing fees are 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction made with U.S.-issued credit or debit cards. For cards issued outside the U.S., there’s an additional 1% fee.

Click here for more information about what’s included in each Woo Express package. (All monthly prices are based on monthly billing. Discounts can be unlocked if billed annually.)

7. Weebly.

Good e-commerce platform for side hustles.

Weebly, a sister company of Square, is a simple ecommerce website builder that’s a natural competitor to Squarespace and Wix in terms of functionality.

For that reason, it’s great for beginners dipping their toes into the e-commerce world, but ambitious and hungry entrepreneurs starting out might quickly grow out of the limitations and find themselves yearning for more.

Let’s kick a few tyres and see how things look under the bonnet.

Pros.

Weebly is the most affordable paid package offered by the best e-commerce platforms in this review. If you can grin and bear not using a custom domain, the free package is as good as they come.

It comes with SEO tools, lead capture tools, inventory management, a shopping cart, and the ability to list unlimited items.

That’s insane when compared to Squarespace and Wix. You’re paying a monthly subscription of $35 and $30, respectively, to unlock those features.

And if you’re willing to part with a little more, or if you want to sell digital products like ebooks, then you can unlock these features for a mere $10 a month.

When we get to the cons sections, it’s worth bearing the price in mind.

It has slick mobile app features that allow you to customise your small online store, such as the drag-and-drop builder, order fulfillment, inventory management, analytics, and integrated Square POS.

It’s straightforward to use, and you can create both mobile- and desktop-friendly sites using the app.

Most other platforms require integrations with third parties such as Google AdSense.

Another in-built feature that comes in handy is the native integration with 99Designs.

Cons.

It’s slim pickings when it comes to site templates. There’s a handful of good, many bad, and some are downright fugly themes.

Most are outdated and in need of some serious TLC.

I reckon if you let a monkey hit the keyboard at random an infinite amount of times, it could type out the code for templates that are better than the library on offer at Weebly.

I guess you’ll have to go through the rigmarole of signing up for free trials for stock photo websites (but don’t forget to cancel those memberships straight away).

So many others offer unlimited listings or cap listings at tens of thousands for their basic packages.

For Weebly, the caps for product listings are: Free (0), Personal (10), Professional (25), Performance (unlimited).

The platform also places ads on free websites, and these can only be removed by upgrading to a paid plan. That makes sense, I guess. Nothing in life is ever truly free.

Overall.

You get what you pay for with Weebly. In fact, you get more than what you pay for. Don’t get too hung up on what’s lacking.

The seamless integration with Square’s payment suite makes life so much easier for pop-up shops and brick-and-mortar stores.

It kinda makes me wonder why they don’t just disband the Square Online web builder and merge the two services. Weebly’s web builder is far superior in comparison to Square’s.

That’s why it’s perfect for side hustles; it’s not going to break the bank if you take the occasional break to pursue other projects.

Weebly e-Commerce System Scoring Criteria	Score
Ease of use	3.5/5
Fees	4/5
Scalability	3.5/5
Business Management Tools	3.5/5
Support	4/5
TOTAL	3.7/5

Pricing.

Click here for more information about what’s included in each package. (All monthly prices are based on monthly billing. Discounts can be unlocked if billed annually.)

How I Chose The 7 Best e-Commerce Platforms In Australia.

Just a few minor points to make before we get underway with our review of the best ecommerce platforms: almost all of those featured in this article offer website building, ecommerce capabilities, and web hosting services rolled into one.

Hosting is pretty standard feature in the ecommerce platform market, and it’s more relevant for those who are using a website builder like WordPress to build an ecommerce website from scratch.

Also, all platforms herein, with the exception of Weebly, offer multichannel integration, allowing you to connect to your social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), and some allow you to connect to other channels such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.

So, I’ve avoided repeating myself regarding multichannel selling in each successive product.

Oh, and the same goes for unlimited bandwidth, too.

Many online commerce platforms like to plug this in their marketing campaigns, but it’s nothing to get hyped up about. All plans for all platforms featured here offer uncapped bandwidth.

Final Words On The Best e-Commerce Platform In Australia.

I work with and consult a vast number of Australian ecommerce companies, and whenever the subject of the best ecommerce platform comes up, I find myself repeating the same thing:

Setting up your online business requires a tonne of planning and effort, which can all be rendered a waste if you decide to throw in the towel on your ecommerce platform and move to another.

One seemingly small decision could prove to be very costly and disruptive – as is so often the case in business.

Please don’t underestimate the importance of getting this right. Give it some serious thought and mull things over before choosing the first that catches your eye.

To help you recap, here’s a useful summary table of the best ecommerce platforms that we’ve analysed throughout this article.

Feature	Shopify	Squarespace	BigCommerce	Wix
Lowest price plan (excl. free)	$56/month	$35/month	$39/month	$30/month
Transaction Fee (lowest price plan)	1.75% + 30c	3%	$0	2.9% + 30c
Free trial length	14 days	14 days	15 days	7 days
Free basic plan	X	X	X	X
Themes	140	110	170	800
Plugins / integrations	8000+	54	1300+	300+
Payment gateways	100+	5	65+	70
Multi-channel integration	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Open-source platform	No	No	Yes	No
Free hosting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Phone support	No	No	Yes	Yes
OVERAL RATING	4.4	4.3	4.4	4.2

Augmenting Your Online Store With AI Tools.

The rise of AI has made web design and customisation easier than ever.

Generating complex code used to be the realm of the developers, but now even a newbie has access to game-changing tools.

You’ve heard of ChatGPT, and you might have dabbled with it for bits of work and life admin (emails, translations, research), but you may not have used it to create awesome functions on your ecommerce website.

You can create things like:

Another great feature for ecommerce platforms would be a “virtual try-on” where users can visualise how products would look on them or in their space.

And you can do all of the above in a few easy steps:

A Word On Real-Time Shipping For e-Commerce Platforms.

Most of the best ecommerce platforms tie in with regional and international shipping services to meet the diverse needs of consumers.

Real-time shipping (RTS) provides your buyers with an exact shipping rate at checkout, and it’s calculated based on several factors such as shipping origin and destination, weight, value of the shipment, dimensions, and requested speed of delivery.

As a result, you’ll get:

It’s really not worth trying to save a few bucks by manually managing your shipping. Scaling your operation just isn’t possible if you plan on micromanaging every aspect.

Before Launching Your Ecommerce Store… Test!

Stop what you’re doing right now, and just hold your horses for one moment.

What’s more important to you?

Launching your ecommerce site and declaring to the world that you’re now in business, or launching a fully functional ecommerce platform?

Okay, so while the two might not be mutually exclusive, the latter is the most important. It’s no good launching a site that’s crawling with bugs. Doing so will damage your brand.

So you’re going to need to subject your site to a phase of rigorous testing. Here are seven tests you can perform, even if this isn’t your forte:

Don’t skip this part and be sure to regularly retest your website after bug fixes or updates to ensure ongoing quality and functionality.

It’s a good idea to enlist the services of friends and family to gather their feedback. While they may not have the technical knowledge, they’ll be viewing your website through a customer’s eyes.

Tommy