The Best Online Store Resources for Your eCommerce Business

Launching your e-commerce business will involve utilizing a variety of tools and services. These invaluable resources will empower you to establish a robust online store website, optimize website performance, and boost your e-commerce business.

We research, use and test many tools, add-ons, and services, share our opinions and recommendations, and list the reliable ones we believe in here, you can check and get what you want if you also think so. Reader disclosure.

Platforms for Building Online Store Websites

To build an online store website on your own, there are 2 primary methods, using Content management systems(CMS) or SaaS online store builders. Below are some popular CMS and SaaS website builders we recommend.

Open Source Content Management Systems(CMS)

Open Source CMSs are free, scalability and people can use them freely, almost half of the websites in the world are built with CMS, and you will need hosting to install them to make your website online if you use CMS to build an Online Store

WordPress+Woo

This is the most popular method for building an e-commerce website, more than 40% of the websites are built with WordPress in the world. This method is straightforward for beginners to start their e-commerce business with its friendly dashboard, More and more people choose to use WordPress+WooCommerce to build online stores and sell products & services online, and there are thousands of resources for WordPress and Woocommerce on the internet you can learn, get, and use.

*our site: onlinestorebeginner.com is also built with WordPress, and we also help people build their online store websites with WooCommerce, you can follow the tutorials on our website to start your online store quickly too.

Magento(Adobe)

one of the most popular e-commerce CMS, it is a professional e-commerce solution for big online stores or malls, it may not be so easy for beginners, however, many managed Magento hostings and some excellent themes make it easier for normal people to use this system for their e-commerce business.

Prestashop

Prestashop comes from it France, it is also one of the most popular e-commerce CMS for online store, especially in Europe. it is lightweight, and friendly to beginners, The interface of PrestaShop is highly suitable for European users’ usage habits. In comparison to Magento, it primarily targets small and medium-sized businesses.

Opencart

Famous, Lightweight, easy eCommerce Platform

Joomla

Another famous CMS for eCommerce with extensions

There are indeed numerous CMS e-commerce systems out there, and we can’t list them all here. For example, Drupal Commerce, OSCommerce, Zen Cart, nopCommerce, AbanteCart, X-Cart, and many more each have their characteristics. If you prefer something hassle-free, then just go for WordPress with WooCommerce. It’s simple, affordable, and easy to use, suitable for everyone.

SaaS Online Website Builder

SaaS website builders offer a more user and beginner-friendly approach to website building compared to CMS platforms, but they typically come with a little higher pricing.

Shopify

it is one of the most popular SaaS online website builders, fast, comprehensive, and friendly for use, there are thousands of resources for this platform, Shopify has revolutionized the e-commerce landscape, empowering businesses of all sizes to create and manage their online stores with ease, earning it a reputation as a formidable competitor even for industry giants like Amazon.

Ecwid

Ecwid is a very simple e-commerce website online builder, primary for 1-page online store website, if you want a Minimalist style for your online store, it is absolutely the best one, the key feature for users is they can connect 3-part channels like social media to sell goods very easily on Ecwid, and it provides a free plan and can be installed in WordPress like a plugin

Weebly

one of the most popular online website builders, the key feature is drag-and-drop editor for building website, it provides a free plan, over 5 million websites were built with Weebly.

Jimdo

A famous online eCommerce website builder from Germany, very much like Weebly, if you have business in Europe and want to build a online store fast, I think this one should be a very good choice.

Shopline

Professional online store platform from Hong Kong, very popular in Southeast Asian, the features of Shopline is similar to Shopify, very good choice for business in Asia

Hostinger Builder

A new online website builder developed by Hostinger, it is much like Weebly, using a drag-and-drop editor for user create their pages easily

In summary, the best choice between a CMS and a SaaS website builder depends on your individual needs, technical skills, and budget. Carefully consider your requirements and preferences before making a decision.

Hosting and Domain Providers for CMS

Once you select the CMS to build your eCommerce website, you will need web hosting to install CMS, you can fully control your website files and data this way. And whichever type of platform you choose to build a website, you will need to register a domain name. The following are some recommended hosting providers and domain registrars.

Web Hosting and Domain Registrars

Web hosting is a type of hosting service that is affordable and pre-configured for everyone, good for WordPress and Prestashop, etc., it is a good choice for starting a small and medium businesses. You can find more excellent web hosting providers here.

Hostinger

A very famous hosting provider that provides cheap premium hosting, a friendly control panel, and high performance, we use this hosting to host this website, recommend beginners choose “Premium shared web hosting” to start your eCommerce website.

Interserver

An excellent hosting provider from the USA, they offer only one premium plan for beginners at a very low price. They use the most popular control panel-cPanel for hosting and offer a fixed price for renewal. it is one of the most cost-efficient choice for beginners.

Inmotion Hosting

Very good performance and price hosting provider for North America.

BlueHost

Famous hosting provider, it is officially recommended by WordPress.org.

SiteGround

Famous and High-performance web hosting with a friendly control panel, I don’t need to introduce it too much.

Hostgator

It is similar to Bluehost as they both come from the same company, cPanel.

GreenGeeks

This is the No.#1 green energy and eco-friendly hosting provider, it is a very good web hosting for beginners to build an eCommerce website with WordPress+woocommerce too, good prices, easy to use.

ChemiCloud

Chemicloud is a relatively new provider of web hosting, is fully functioning High-performance with cPanel , offers very good prices, almost 500,000 websites hosted on Chemicloud, and their customer service response is very quick.

Scala Hosting

Scala Hosting provides web hosting and features like Chemicloud. it also provides managed VPS hosting, which would be one of the best choices once your hosting plan needs to be upgraded.

NameSilo – Domain Registrar

One of the cheapest domain name registrar, it increased a bit for the price in present, but it is still a very cheap registrar, Low and transparent Price with free WHOIS privacy and DNSSEC, can be canceled in 3 days,

NameCheap – Domain Registrar

one of the cheapest domain name registrars, you can get a new domain with .com(TLD) not exceeding USD10/year on NameCheap, they also provide web hosting with low price.

Domain.com – Domain Registrar

Domain.com is a leading domain registrar offering affordable and easy-to-use domain registration, it also provides high-performance hosting with affordable price.

Fully Managed WordPress Hosting

Fully managed hosting offers superior optimization and comprehensive management, but a higher price point compared to standard web hosting. However, we still recommend it for beginners, as it relieves you from the headache of maintenance and operations. more Providers.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a fully managed WordPress platform created by the founder of WordPress.org. It provides a free plan and paid plans with various features, and is known for its fast loading speeds and user-friendly dashboard. Some popular plugins like WooCommerce, Gravatar, and Jetpack belong to WordPress.com too. Even Disney, Times, CNN, and other famous websites cooperate with WordPress.com

Nexcess

A web hosting company that specializes in providing high-performance fully managed hosting solutions for businesses of all sizes for over a decade, that are optimized for a variety of platforms, including WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce, and more. The company’s hosting plans come with a range of features, including 24/7 support, automated backups, and advanced security measures.

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that allows businesses of all sizes to easily deploy, manage, and scale their web applications on popular cloud infrastructure providers such as DigitalOcean, AWS, and GCP etc. it provides a user-friendly control panel and features such as automated backups, advanced security measures, and a CDN to help ensure high performance and uptime for websites and applications.

Elementor Hosting

Elementor is the most famous and popular page builder for WordPress, they now provide full WordPress managed hosting that includes Elementor Pro, which means, you can get all Elementor features once you subscribe to the hosting, and the hosting plans come with a lot of features like Nexcess too. The hosting is based on Google Cloud platform(GCP) with high performance and uptime.

WP engine

Mainly provides Fully managed WordPress hosting, if you are totally a newbie, and don’t know how to start with WordPress, it can be a very good choice since it can help you manage the whole WordPress website, but the price for WP engine is a little bit high, however, they boasts the largest user base in this field, currently hosted about 1.5 million websites.

Kinsta

If WP engine is good for small businesses, then Kinsta will be the best managed hosting for scaled companies, Kinsta is a good choice for businesses that require a high-performance hosting solution for their WordPress website. Its expert support and range of features make it a reliable and effective solution for businesses of all sizes.

Fully Managed Magento Hosting

If you want to choose Magento to build an eCommerce website, this type of hosting is the most recommended one. Service and features are similar to fully managed WordPress Hosting

Cloudways-Magento

Cloudways also provides Fully managed Magento hosting, Dedicated IP, Based on VPS from Digital Ocean, AWS and GCP

Nexcess-Magento

Nexcess specializes in Magento hosting too, with excellent performance and pricing for big eCommerce businesses solution

TEMOK

TEMOK, Headquartered in Dubai, provides Managed Magento Cloud service with expert support, flexible, financially wise

Fully Managed VPS Hosting

This type of hosting can be used for any type of website solution, service and features are similar to fully managed WordPress Hosting

Liquid Web

Liquid Web’s managed VPS offers high-performance, secure, and scalable VPS hosting with a focus on enterprise-grade reliability

Scala Hosting

Scala Hosting also offers affordable and easy-to-use VPS with a focus on WordPress performance and scalability.

Cloudways

Cloudways hosting is based on excellent VPS hosting configurations, with dedicated IPs and a very low starting price

Web hosting is good for starting small-medium websites, while fully managed hosting offers faster speeds, better optimization, comprehensive maintenance, and superior customer service, allowing users to focus solely on their website and business.

Themes and Plugins Marketplace

The majority of CMS and online website builders will need a theme or template to build a website, so when you start to build your website, you need to choose a theme and add some features by installing plugins

Themes and Plugins Marketplace

Envato Market

Envato Market can be the biggest themes and plugins marketplace, the famous Themeforest belongs to Envato, not only these items, you can buy some other media, coding, design, graphics and more digital files on this website.

Go to Envato Market

Templates Monster

You can also buy themes or templates, plugins for all the popular CMS and online website builders on Template Monster, it is the marketplace where you can buy everything you need to create a website

Go to Templates Monster

Elfsight Widget

Elfsight is a cloud-based platform that provides a variety of widgets and tools for businesses to add to their websites, regardless of the platform it is built on, fast speed and customizable, can be analyzed and tracked

Go to Elfsight Widget

* Reminder: if you use WordPress to build a website, we recommend you buy themes created by some expert teams, it may not be a good idea to buy WordPress themes on these marketplaces,  since there are a few are well-optimized for SEO, most of them rely on various plugins for beautification. Of course, some are good, but they can be challenging to find. You can find the professional WP themes here or directly on wordpress.org.

Recommend WordPress Themes and Plugins

WordPress official market should be the best place where you can get excellent themes and plugins, many expert teams created professional themes and published them on WordPress.org, here we picked the top ones.

Our Best Picked WP Professional Themes

Kadence WP

We’ve opted for this theme due to its lightning-fast loading speed, clean and lightweight code, as well as its high level of customization options. As Terry says he finally got why WordPress is so powerful after using Kadence, you can use their header, footer builder, and the block plugin to create any unique website

Astra

Astra is the most popular WordPress theme known for its lightweight nature, extensive customization options, and impressive loading speed. Whether you’re building a personal blog, a business website, an online store, or a creative portfolio, Astra seamlessly adapts to your needs and delivers a captivating online presence.

GeneratePress

GeneratePress is known for its exceptional lightweight nature. The core theme weighs in at a mere 50KB, making it one of the lightest WordPress themes available, websites can be load very fast with it, It caters to a wide range of websites, from personal blogs and business websites to online stores and creative portfolios.

Neve

Neve is created by Themeisle, it is a lightweight and multipurpose WordPress theme that prioritizes speed and simplicity. It offers a clean and modern design, is highly customizable, SEO-friendly, and responsive, making it suitable for various types of websites

Blocksy

Blocksy is a powerful and flexible WordPress theme designed to provide users with a seamless website-building experience. It offers advanced customization options, lightning-fast performance, and compatibility with popular page builders like Elementor and Gutenberg.

Zakra

Zakra is a lightweight，versatile and feature-rich WordPress theme designed for creating professional and visually appealing websites. It offers a wide range of customization options, including multiple header and footer layouts, color schemes, and typography settings.

Necessary Plugins for WP+WooCommerce Online Store

• Woocommerce — To build an eCommerce website, Woocommerce is the definite plugin that you need to install, it should be the No.1 eCommerce plugin for WordPress.
• Litespeed Cache — this is a cache plugin that can speed up our website, it is a very excellent plugin not only for LiteSpeed server but also for Nginx and Apache, it contains features such as automatically compressing and optimizing images for website, CDN, minify css, js and html files.
• Rank Math — The SEO plugins we used for the websites.
• Kadence Block — if you use the WordPress official page editor Gutenberg, Kadence Block is a very good block plugin for Gutenberg, we use it to create all the pages.
• UpdraftPlus — we use this plugin to backup and restore our WordPress website.
• WPforms — this is the most popular forms-building plugin for WordPress, you can use it to create subscribe forms on your website.
• Super Socializer — we use this social plugin to add share buttons and enable visitors to sign up with their social accounts directly.

If possible, we also recommend you install a security plugin and a GDPR plugin on your website.

SEO and Marketing Tools

After the online store building, Effective ongoing operations, encompassing SEO, marketing, management and other crucial aspects, are essential for driving traffic, generating leads, and ultimately converting visitors into customers.

Top Tools for SEO, Marketing, Growing and Management

SEMrush

The SEO and Keywords tool we are using, is a very famous and powerful toolkit, not only for SEO and keywords, but it is a comprehensive website analysis suite with Site Audit and Optimizationto help businesses with their SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media marketing, and competitive research efforts, and offers 7 7-day free trial.

Hubspot

HubSpot is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) cloud-based software platform, that offers a suite of tools such as a marketing hub, sales tools to analyze visitors’ activities and behavior, and customer service & business management hub, etc., it is a very popular choice for businesses of all sizes because it is easy to use, affordable, and effective.

ShareASale

ShareASale is one of the most popular affiliate networks for any size of business, as for the affordable price, many small and medium companies and sellers choose ShareAsale to prompt their products and services online. it is acquired by Awin now, with the Awin’s behind, it can be a great growth in future.

Impact.com

impact.com is a leading affiliate marketing platform that provides businesses with a comprehensive suite of tools and features to manage and optimize their affiliate programs. Many famous brands and companies are using impact.com, for example, Tiktok, SEMrush, Hubspot etc.

Online Advertising Platforms

Google Ads/YouTube Ads

Google Ads reigns supreme as the world’s largest online advertising platform, encompassing YouTube ads within its vast reach. it’s the go-to choice for businesses of all sizes seeking to expand their reach. From established corporations to budding startups, Google Ads serves as an indispensable channel for driving traffic and achieving marketing goals.

TikTok for Business

TikTok, the largest short-form video platform, has taken the social media world by storm, eclipsing even the once-dominant Facebook. Businesses worldwide are flocking to TikTok, With its captivating content and engaged audience, TikTok presents a powerful tool, called TikTok for Business, for brands to connect with their target market and achieve remarkable success.

Facebook Ads

Despite the emergence of newer social media platforms, Facebook remains a formidable force in the online advertising landscape, boasting a vast user base and a proven track record of delivering effective advertising solutions. For many businesses, Facebook Ads continue to be a valuable channel for reaching their target audience and achieving marketing goals.

Microsoft Advertising

Often overlooked in the realm of online advertising, Microsoft Advertising, powered by the Bing search engine, has emerged as a viable alternative to Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Microsoft Advertising offers several advantages, including competitive click-through rates and conversion rates, making it an attractive option for businesses seeking to expand their online reach.

More SEO, Marketing, Management Tools

• Google Analytics — Analytics tool by Google to track website traffic
• Google Workspace — Previously, it was known as “Google Suite”, you may know what it is, for team and office work together, business email, video meetings, etc
• Ahref — Similar to SEMrush, a very powerful SEO tool, you need to pay USD7 for a 7-day trial.
• Moz — also like SEMrush, one of the most powerful and popular tools for SEO and Keywords.
• Mangools — a very good tool for keyword and site audit for beginners
• Jaxxy keyword tool— an expert in keyword and website ranking tools, they offer a free plan but limited features.
• Keyword Planner — the keyword research tool of Google, you can find it in Google Ads, Tools& Setting->Planning.
• CJ, Awin, Admitad, etc — The affiliate program networks are very good and the most effective way to promote your products or services
• ActiveCampaign — similar to Hubspot, it is a toolkit, more like a CRM, that can help you analyze visitors’ activities or audience’s behavior, guide and help them learn what’s available to address their needs, meanwhile, it is also an email marketing tool.
• Buzzsumo — it is a platform for content analysis and research, you can explore, get, and create your niche with it, and it can also help you find accurate influencers to power up your website.
• Quora — the most popular Question and Answer website, you may drive traffic to your website to answer some related questions to your products or service.
• Mailchimp — the most popular email marketing tool
• MailPoet — very good email marketing too.

Editing and Design Tools

When you build a website, you may use some tools to edit pages sometimes, and also, you will use some images or videos or some other media files, So we show you some tools for editing and design.

• Elementor — The No.1 page editor for WordPress, you can create professional pages for websites with Elementor, it contains many readymade blocks for beginners to insert in the pages. but the official WordPress page editor Gutenberg is more and more popular, this may be a challenge for Elementor, however, Elementor started a managed hosting service in 2019, that includes all features of Elementor Pro.
• Canva — If you don’t know how to use Adobe Illustrator or Coreldraw to create graphic images, Canva may help you, it is an online media tool for ordinary people to create images, banners, videos, etc.
• Invideo — this is an online video tool for people to create or edit videos, very powerful.
• Awesome Screenshot — this is a Chrome extension, you can use it to capture any screenshot in the browser, even capture videos.
• Pexels, Unsplash  — famous free image websites, the images from these websites are commercially available.
• Nextend SmartSlider — a very powerful slider plugin for WordPress, can be used anywhere on your website to create professional sliders.

Payment Methods & Gateway

Payment should be one of the essential parts of an eCommerce website, there are many methods and payment gateway you can use.

• PayPal — The No.1 payment gateway for almost all CMS and online website builders, you can use it all over the world, it is also a digital wallet and can collect credit card payments even if you don’t have a PayPal account.
• Stripe — This should be the No.1 Credit card payment gateway, it is available for the majority of CMS and online builders too.
• Braintree — Similar to Stripe, it is a credit card payment gateway belonging to PayPal.
• 2checkout — another famous credit card payment gateway.
• Skrill — similar to PayPal, but it is mainly used in the UK and EU
• Payoneer — This payment method is not a gateway strictly, but it can be used for many eCommerce marketplaces to collect a payment, and the company is trying to make it work for eCommerce websites.
• Google Pay, Apply Pay, Amazon Pay, etc — more and more convenient payment methods or Gateway are developed and used due to the popularity of mobile devices in recent years, you may use those in your eCommerce website in some system or builder.

More Useful Online Store Resources

• Trustpilot — The most popular 3rd-party for people to review and rate a website, product, or service.
• Respond.io — a tool for you to contact and send messages to customers anywhere, anytime.
• Grammarly — like the name, a quick spelling and grammar check tool, that helps you correct your content, especially for people not speak English
• SEMrush Marketplace —A marketplace of SEMrush for people who hire people to write or create content.

The listed tools or services here are what we think are most popular and excellent, of course, there are some alternatives for each one, but the most important thing is the online store resources that can help you with whatever you choose.