Dropshipping is fast becoming a popular way to earn passive income. Its business model, which allows entrepreneurs to sell products from anywhere in the world without holding inventory and with low startup costs, contributes to this growing popularity.

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If you’re interested in starting your own dropshipping business and have already chosen your niche, products, and suppliers, the next step is to create your online store. An online store makes it easier for customers to buy products and builds credibility and legitimacy.

There are several e-commerce platforms where you can easily set up your online store. We’ll explore some of the best options in today’s post.

Factors to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform for dropshipping

1. Hosting environment: the hosting platform used for your online store can significantly affect the success of your dropshipping business. Before choosing a domain host, ensure it offers the best user experience for customers and can handle increased traffic with little to no downtime.
2. Ease of use: entrepreneurs wear many hats, which can be challenging. That’s why it’s important to simplify your processes when possible to make life easier. Choosing the right e-commerce platform for your online store can significantly ease your workload. The platform you choose should be easy to maintain, allow integrations, and be user-friendly for your customers, providing them with the best shopping experience.
3. Customer support: Look for platforms that offer 24/7 support via email, phone, or live chat. There should also be FAQs, forums, and tutorials that can help you navigate the platform and find quick fixes.
4. Price: Cost is another essential factor to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform. You must ensure it aligns with your budget and business goals and, more importantly, offers features and functionality that give you the best value for your money.

Now that you know what to look out for, here’s an overview of some of the top e-commerce platforms for dropshipping in 2024.

Shopify:

Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms and with good reason. It is known for its intuitiveness, ease of use, and customer experience, which makes it an excellent choice for beginners.

Another reason this platform is a favourite among business owners is that it integrates with hundreds of dropshipping suppliers and apps like Spocket and Printful. These apps make it easy for businesses to find products and automate order processing.

Shopify also has several customisable templates (free and paid) that businesses can use to create visually appealing and professional-looking websites.

Other key features of Shopify include:

• 24/7 customer support
• Marketing automation
• A free SSL certificate
• Inventory management
• User-friendly interface
• Abandoned cart recovery

Shopify’s pricing for solo entrepreneurs starts at $24 annually and $32 monthly. However, you get to pay just $1 for your first month!

Wix:

Wix is another easy-to-use e-commerce platform with a drag-and-drop editor that lets you customise your store with over 900 free templates.

It integrates primarily with Modalyst, a dropshipping app with reliable suppliers that offer several products. However, it also integrates with other dropshipping apps and tools, making your business operations smoother and more effective.

Wix also offers excellent customer service 24/7 and self-help resources. It offers different pricing plans for different business needs, starting at only $17 per month.

Squarespace:

Squarespace is a drag-and-drop website builder with stunning, professionally designed, customisable templates.

However, beyond website hosting, it offers marketing and social media services with in-built SEO tools to generate organic traffic.

However, a downside is that this platform offers limited integrations with third-party apps, unlike Wix and Shopify. Squarespace also has no phone support; customer service can only be contacted via email or live chat.

Squarespace offers pricing plans for businesses starting at $36 monthly and $23 annually, with a 14-day trial period.

WooCommerce:

WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress. It allows you to turn a WordPress website into a fully functional online store.

Being an open-source software, WooCommerce is free to use and highly flexible. However, you’d have to pay for hosting, domain name, extensions, and plugins that add features and functionalities to your store. Some examples of these features include payment gateways, shipping calculators and advanced product filters.

It’s important to know that unlike the other e-commerce platforms discussed above, WooCommerce is self-hosted. This means you have complete control over your online store and can customise as you deem fit. However, it also means that you’re responsible for managing software updates and ensuring the security of your site.

Ecwid:

Similar to WooCommerce, Ecwid is a plugin that can integrate and transform content management systems like WordPress and Joomla, as well as social media platforms such as Facebook or TikTok, into online stores.

This allows you to sell simultaneously on multiple platforms, making it an excellent choice for dropshipping merchants. Ecwid also integrates several platforms that automate your business processes, such as shipping, inventory management, and tax calculations. This platform also has a mobile-friendly design, making it even more convenient for customers.

When it comes to pricing, Ecwid has a free subscription plan, but you’ll only be able to list products in your store. Upgrading to a paid subscription, however, lets you list from 100 products to an unlimited number, depending on the plan. Paid subscriptions also give additional benefits such as live chat and phone support, discount coupons, a multilingual store, and an abandoned cart saver.

Wrapping up

Dropshipping gives you global reach to customers, and you’ll need a reliable payment platform to transact globally. With Grey, you can open a foreign currency bank account for free to manage your international payments more efficiently.

You can also integrate Grey with e-commerce platforms to streamline your financial operations and scale your business. Create an account now to get started for free.

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