6 Best eCommerce Platforms for India in 2024: What’s Your Favorite?
According to Oberlo, a dropshipping app built exclusively for Shopify, the estimated sales of global eCommerce sales is expected to be $5.7 trillion in 2022.
Based on the same source, India’s share of this cake in 2022 is $97 billion, making it the 7th biggest country when eCommerce sales are measured.
The estimated population of India is 1.4 billion people. This figure, combined with the popularity of eCommerce, makes the country an exciting market to start an online business.
The great news is that launching an online business has become easier than ever, thanks to all the major eCommerce platforms available in the country.
But this post is different, as we focus mainly on India-specific platforms, not just the big players.
There are many Indian players in the eCommerce market, and we’ve only included the solutions you can test with a free trial. This way, you can try a platform before investing in it.
1. Shopify
If you are starting an eCommerce business in India, you also have access to one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, Shopify.
Shopify is ideal for those who want to build a store without extensive technical knowledge about the platform.
You can build and manage your store easily through your browser. So, whether it’s creating product pages, picking/changing a theme for your store, or adding product images, you can easily do it yourself.
Other notable features include:
- Sell an unlimited number of products.
- Expedite your sales with discount codes.
- Send automatic emails to customers who leave your store without completing the checkout (abandoned cart recovery).
- Help spot fraudulent orders with fraud analysis (available with Shopify Payments).
- Get your shop issues solved with 24/7 customer support via phone, email, or live chat.
Shopify supports multiple payment gateways. While all the regular options, like PayPal, PayU, or Paytm are available, the platform also supports many other solutions.
2. StoreHippo
StoreHippo says it’s the best eCommerce platform in India. They cover B2C, B2B, and B2B2C markets, and their feature list makes you breathless.
As with any modern eCommerce platform, StoreHippo offers tools for entrepreneurs to build their stores from scratch with just a couple of clicks.
When you sign up with StoreHippo, you can access features like product and order management, mobile apps, analytics, reporting, and security.
In addition, you can also create multilingual stores for international audiences. Currently, StoreHippo supports over 60 languages to choose from.
The platform takes the mobile-first approach, so anyone with a smartphone can access your store. You can create your mobile apps directly from the store dashboard as a store owner.
On top of these features, StoreHippo also includes:
- Sell products with unlimited variants.
- Let your customers know the order status with SMS and email notifications.
- Help you to recover incomplete checkouts with abandoned cart recovery.
- Secure your store transactions with a free SSL certificate.
- Integrate your store with various external systems, like logistics providers, ERP software, email services, or accounting tools (to name a few).
StoreHippo provides multiple payment gateway options, including Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay. It also supports many national payment gateways like Paytm, PayU, and Razorpay.
3. Dukaan
Setting up a Dukaan store is simple.
First, you create your login account and verify your email. Then, you’ll choose the country your business is in and pick a name for it.
After these steps, your initial store setup is ready. You can then start filling the store with the products or setting up the payment gateways through an easy-to-use interface.
On top of adding unlimited products to your store, you can also view the current order statuses through a single view.
You can also view and manage the customers who purchased from your store, extend the store with plugins, or change the store’s appearance with themes.
Finally, your customers can access your store with a mobile app.
All you have to do is download an APK file, which you can share with your customers. Once they install the file, they have quicker access to your store through their mobile phones.
Dukaan offers even more features than the ones I just mentioned, and here are some of the notable ones:
- Access your store with a desktop application (for PCs).
- Extend your store with 60 plugins.
- Add unlimited products to your store.
- Get 24/7 support for your requests.
- Access premium tools like Invoice Generator, Image Enhancer, or Business Card Designer (among others)
Dukaan offers support for various payment gateways, which are location specific. In India, the list consists of Dukaan Pay and Razorpay. Outside India, you can use, for example, PayPal, Stripe, or Cashfree.
4. Shoppiko
You can start an online store with Shippiko in a few steps and test the platform features for 14 days for free.
All the Shoppiko stores are mobile-friendly, so anyone with a smartphone can easily access them. You can also choose from 15+ themes, and changing from one template to another happens with a click of a button.
As a separate download, you can also install a mobile app (available for Android) for managing your store, whether you’re uploading new products, managing orders, or tweaking the store settings.
You can also customize your store’s home page with a home page builder. And if you are CSS-savvy, you can customize the store skin even further.
The store management happens through a dashboard, which gives you an instant view of all the important metrics like total orders, total revenue, or recent orders.
But the list doesn’t stop here. Shoppiko also offers these exciting features:
- Set up coupon discounts to jazz up your sales.
- Help customers manage their funds in the store with the Store Wallet.
- Provide a user-friendly checkout experience – in just three steps.
- Access advanced reporting – including sales or abandoned carts – to understand your business better.
- Reward customers for repeating purchases in your store.
Before going live with your store, you must also configure the payment options. Fortunately, Shoppiko supports several ones, including CC Avenue, Razorpay, Stripe, and PayPal Standard.
5. BuilderFly
BuilderFly is yet another excellent option for starting an online store, and getting your store up and running happens with just a few clicks.
When you log in, you’ll land on the admin panel, which lets you manage every aspect of your store.
You can manage your inventory, view current orders, or access the analytics on the dashboard. You can also sell your products on social media platforms like Facebook or Google.
Other notable features include:
- Create your own mobile app for Android and iOS and let your customers access your store with their smartphones.
- Send personalized emails to entice your customers to finish incomplete checkouts (abandoned cart management).
- Get chat and phone support for your requests.
- Incorporate newsletter to your store with MailChimp.
- Generate coupon codes and offer special prices for your shoppers.
BuilderFly supports payment methods like PayPal, Razorpay, Authorize.net, and Paytm.
6. Shopaccino
The name, Shopaccino, sounds Italian. Yet, this eCommerce platform is indeed from India (Jaipur).
Shopaccino is filled with features. To test them, you can start a 14-day free trial without a credit card to see if it’s an excellent fit for you.
After creating your account, you’ll land on the admin panel. That’s the central hub for accessing your store’s important sections.
On the left, you see all the parts of your store you can configure, while on the right, you have a checklist of items you should take care of before launching your shop.
Shopaccino is packed with helpful features for running an online store. They include:
- Access to 30+ responsive themes for styling your online store.
- Reach international customers with multi-language, including English, German, French, or Dutch.
- Create up to 400 variants per product.
- Enjoy 0% transaction fees.
- View reporting and analytics, including the orders in various statuses, customers’ spending on your store, or product popularity.
You can also choose from various payment options, like Amazon Pay, PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, or Square.
Conclusion
Choosing an eCommerce service for your business can sometimes take time and effort. Even in Indian markets, you have plenty of excellent platforms to choose from, and this can make your decisions challenging.
In this post, our two favorites were Shopify and Dukaan. They included plenty of great features for running a successful online store.
While Shopify is a great all-around choice for running an eCommerce store, it can be expensive for some. Dukaan is a better choice if you are on a budget.
But don’t take it just from us.
Perhaps you have a different favorite in this list or even an alternative we didn’t mention. Whatever the case, please share it in the comments section below.
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