When there is a sea full of a variety of fishes, it’s important to catch the right fish! Similarly when you wish to start an Ecommerce business, it is important to choose the right ecommerce development agency and right development platform, considering how it will fit in your current and future ecommerce business.

However nowadays, there are so many good platforms to use for efficient ecommerce development, you need to choose the one according to your website requirements. Basically, there are two types of ecommerce platforms – Cloud ecommerce platforms and self-hosted (open source) ecommerce platforms.

1.Cloud ecommerce development platforms

Thumbs up for:

• As cloud ecommerce is subscription-based, no capital expenditure
• Offer high standard of technical support
• Offer high level of security
• Even little tech-savvy people can set up the sites using cloud platforms. So no need to pay for developers or specialists
• As the provider upgrades the software in the background with no disruption to the service, there is no upgrade fees or maintenance charges
• No charges for upgrade or maintenance
• Peaks in traffic caused by seasonal traffic or special promotions can be easily handled

Downside:

• Don’t support higher level of customization in websites with advanced functionality
• May not scale to meet the growth of your business plan over long term

2. Self-hosted ecommerce development platforms

Thumbs up for:

• Offer you the flexibility to develop a customized ecommerce store with unique branding options and contemporary functionality
• Provide scalable solutions and can grow with your business to handle larger volumes of products and transactions from customers
• Through various ‘extensions’, new features can be added ‘off-the-shelf’

Downside:

• Major security issues if free shopping cart or open source is used
• Unlike a cloud solution, the self-hosted solution may not always deal with seasonal peaks in traffic
• More expensive than cloud platform for choosing extensions, implementing required features as well as for testing and deploying the ecommerce site
• Might ask for a maintenance plan from your hired ecommerce development agency to make sure that your site is working properly and the ecommerce software you are using is secure and up-to-date.

Needless to say that there cannot be one platform that matches everyone’s requirements, and hence the idea is to choose the right platform, depending on your business needs.

Ecumen is a renowned ecommerce development agency that provides expert services for ecommerce development on all the major platforms. For more information, talk to our ecommerce experts!

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