In the 21st century, the business should have an online existence to grow and expand globally. There are several ecommerce platforms used in Dubai, where business owner can develop their desired ecommerce website, add products and sell them online easily. These ecommerce platforms provide excellent solutions for small to big companies to sell products online and grow their business to overseas.

Building an Ecommerce website is a complex task for non technical or for them who have no idea about any developing language. But there are few platforms, which provide easy steps for ecommerce store setup. WordPress is the name, we call whenever building an e-commerce website. WordPress is founded long ago than the social Media we use today like Instagram or Facebook. Magneto owned by adobe is also a tool for developing ecommerce website in both single or multi vendor mode. These are open source ecommerce platform written in PHP.

Explore Top 10 Popular Ecommerce Platforms Used in UAE. These are as follows:-

1. Woo Commerce
2. Magento
3. OpenCart
4. Shopify
5. MonsterCommerce
6. Wix
7. SquareSpace
8. PrestaShop
9. Bigcommerce
10. 3dcart

 

Woo-Commerce:

Woocommerce is the best and most used open source ecommerce platform in the Middle East. Actually it is a plugin of wordpress, which is basically free but you need to pay for premium features and if you want to use customised features then also you need to pay. Woocommerce is very user friendly and have a great UI deliver great experience for the store owner & customer as well.  WordPress content management system integrated with the world’s best CMS is another advantage of using woo commerce. It has a great support system and a geographical support system too for providing quick solutions. The development cost in UAE will vary between 10k to 20k AED.

PROS:

·       It is completely free and open source platform.

·       It is one of the best lively communities out there.

·       It is usually built for WordPress CMS.

·       There are thousands of themes available, which can be customised for E-Store.

·       It is flexible to any type of products selling.

·       It is very secure as it is updating every time for optimal security.

·       Thousands of plugins available, that suits each type of business

·       It has strong SEO optimization tool.

CONS:

·       It requires a punctual payment, even monthly fees for certain extensions.

·       Sometimes it may hamper the performance when if we don’t know much about what plugin we are using. Therefore plugins come at a cost.

·       You need to purchase the themes.

·       You can experience poor support

·       You have to pay for hosting.

Magneto

WordPress is not solely developed for ecommerce, but magneto is an open source ecommerce platform developed completely for ecommerce. Magneto has a wide range of themes and features to be used in ecommerce sites. Magneto is PHP platform but high level coding, so skilled and intelligent programmers required to development store in magneto. Magneto has two versions. One is free named as Community version and another one you have to take subscription plan named as the enterprise version. The range of enterprise version from $22,000 to $75,000 yearly and it is based on your store’s total revenue.

PROS:

·       Magento is highly customizable

·       Strong SEO Tools for SEO Optimization

·       It provides customizations and optimal scalability.

·       Multiple customizations available at the root.

·       Community Support, as it has huge community of developers & support.

CONS:

·       It is costly will paid edition.

·       Need development skill while developing E Store

·       Requires Hosting Plan

·       It’s plugins are costly.

Open cart

Open cart is a store management platform developed for the purpose of e-commerce store. It is a PHP based ecommerce platform using HTML components with more than 13000 extensions and 36 payment methods. It manages your inventory and helps you to process your orders. Its best thing is that it is an open source platform so you can freely develop your ecommerce using themes and extensions as you wish. It is free to use but some extensions are chargeable. Open cart doesn’t use complicated extensions and codes, that’s why it doesn’t cost much, such as magneto and other platforms does. Development cost in UAE may vary between 10k to 12k AED.

Prons:

·       There is large database of plugins are available

·       There is an extensive active community support

·       There is Ajax real-time functionalities

·        It is very easily customisable

·        It is very efficient

·        It is very perfect for beginners as admin panel is very user friendly

·        It has admin panel mobile support

Cons:

·        Functionalities scale is less than other options

·       It can’t update easily

·       The paid plugins are erroneous

·       There is less support of CSS and JS

Shopify

It is a ready-made platform and was purposely developed for the sole purpose of ecommerce. It is very user friendly and has great speed and load time. Anyone having zero technical skills can use this platform and can set up a shop at shopify. It lets user access codes and gives them a command to change them according to their needs. It is SEO optimised and have a large collection to choose themes from and there various payment gateways available too. Shopify offers flexible monthly subscription plans at $9 $29 $79.00 and $299. You can do many changes in the site and have a great freedom upon choosing the themes and customisation of your site. It’s development in UAE don’t cost much it depend upon the requirement and need of store owners and usually are around 15k AED

Pros:

·       It has inbuilt hosting service

·       It is SEO optimised

·       There are various themes available

·       It has large community

And there are various payment gateways are available

Cons:

·       It is expensive than other E-Commerce platforms

·       There is hosting service is inbuilt but it is paid

·       The transaction fee is higher

·       There are most plugins which are very expensive

MonsterCommerce

Monstercommerce is single source ecommerce platforms offers easy ecommerce setup, search engine optimization, merchant accounts and SSL security for small and medium size business. It is a SEO optimised fully customisable platforms, available with hundred of themes and templates to customise your ecommerce website that suits every type of business. In UAE it is very demanding due to easy store setup and selling online products of every type.

PROS:

·       Complete customizable store front

·       Reliable and secure shopping cart

·       Mobile optimize design

·       You can add your existing store

·       Convenient product catalogue to manage 10000 products easily

·       Easy search engine optimization tools

·       Online marketing tool inbuilt with every plan

Cons:

·       It requires hosting.

·       No FREE upload / download facility

·       Its shopping cart software isn’t that much customizable

·       Less support service

Wix

Wix is like other ecommerce ready made easy to use websites as it offer excellent drag and drop site builder facility. You don’t have to stress out yourself because of coding and don’t worry if you don’t have any technical knowledge regarding creating a website. You have to do just a simple task: pick a stunning template, choose your theme and customise it and you have your e-commerce website now. It is completely free, but if you want profession features like domain & hosting for ecommerce you must go for their premium plan. Its premium plan varies from 11 AED to 25 AED per month.

Pros:

·       It is completely free for simple website.

·       Drag and drop features make easy to setup

·       Need less technical skill

·       Large list of creative modern templates

·       Easy customization facility

·       Best for Beginner and small ecommerce

 

Cons:

·       It offers weak SEO features.

·       Some lacking features compares to other platforms

·       Not suitable to large or medium ecommerce business

·       Best for less than 100 products

SquareSpace

Square space is an ecommerce platform with wonderful design temples, solely developed for ecommerce website. It is SEO customised and have a great amount of themes and templates to choose from inventory. It offers all in one hosted ecommerce feature with drag and drop feature for making creative & modern design ecom websites.

Pros:

·       Very Easy to setup as Wix

·       Drag and drop feature make easy to develop website

·       Large no of creative template designs

·       Strong search engine optimization tools

·       Affordable pricing plan

 

Cons:

·       Lack of features as compare to others

·       No multi channel selling feature

·       No phone support feature

·       Limited payment gateway integration

·       Best for small ecommerce

PrestaShop

Prestashop is an open-source ecommerce platform, as you can easily download and customize as you wish free of cost. It offers both facilities either download and develop self or pay for paid version for ready-made hosted ecommerce website. Its pricing plan depends on sales in year, as you have to pay 108 AED/month.

Pros:

·       Free to use

·       Offer both option either self-hosted or hosted plan

·       Highly customizable

·       Strong SEO tools

·       Large developer community for help

·       Best for small to medium size ecommerce business

Cons:

·       Required development skill to use it

·       Hosted version has some fewer features as compared

·       Add-ons are costly

·       No Free support, you have to pay each time.

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce is a platform that provides Saas e-commerce. It has great features like search engine optimization (SEO), grouping and segmentations, web hosting and more. It allows users to create and manage their online stores according to their wishes and requirements. It has various customizable temples easy to setup store.

Pros:

·       Strong SEO marketing tools

·       Various customizable templates

·       Multi channel selling

·       Support available on phone, live chat and email

·       Large community

Cons:

·       Sales limit with each plan

·       No mobile application feature

·       Lack in scalability

3dCart

3d cart is company that own excellent ecommerce developing software. It has designed in a way that any type of business of any scale can be developed in the platform. You have complete control over the looks and the way you want of your online store. It is Saas based ecommerce platform focusing on 3 dimension store owner, search engine optimization and shoppers, but limit on sale with each plan

Pros:

·       Relatively easy to setup

·       Strong SEO Tools

·       Payment integrations to Paypal & amazon etc.

·       Easy management tool as inventory and email.

Cons:

• No latest design templates
• As compare less customer support
• Not best for beginners

By using different platforms like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, etc., We at Quanta Software Solutions is competitive in delivering e-commerce solutions in Dubai UAE to business of every scale. Our team of professionals designs e-store with two objectives in mind: better customer experience and increase in sale. We boast to announce that so far we have achieved our objectives by designing attractive and SEO- friendly e-stores.