As your business grows and becomes an enterprise-level business, you’ll need a robust, feature-rich e-commerce platform to manage your stores, provide unique customer experiences, and help you manage worldwide shipping, among other things. While there are dozens of e-commerce platforms to choose from, only one will be best for your unique business.

Today, let’s break down the best enterprise-level e-commerce platforms in 2022. You’ll learn which platform is suitable for your enterprise due to its features, ease of use, and other factors.

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The Top Enterprise-level E-commerce Platforms of 2022

Shopify
CommerceTools
Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Kibo

Let’s break down four of the best enterprise-level e-commerce platforms you can try in 2022.

Shopify

Price: $2000 for Shopify Plus
Features Offered: Omnichannel e-commerce tools, merchant tools, mobile optimization, automation tools, SEO tools
Performance: Fully hosted and high stability
Usability: Very easy to use and user-friendly
UX: Intuitive, streamlined UX for store creation/operation
Integrations: Excellent integrations with popular tools and plug-ins, including WordPress, Oracle, Adobe, Amazon, and more

Shopify offers the best enterprise-level e-commerce platform overall. It’s powerful, easy to use, and comes with everything a potential business owner may need right out of the box.

Shopify provides users with

Excellent integration potential for third-party apps
Tons of plug-ins to customize your features and experience
PCI compliance and security via the platform provider

Of particular note are the Merchant Success Manager and Launch Manager, which are tailor-made to assist enterprise clients.

However, this SaaS platform offers limited design flexibility since business owners can’t code their own modules/designs. It’s not an open-source SaaS solution, so you have to stick with pre-made templates for your store(s).

Overall, Shopify is the best enterprise-level e-commerce platform for most businesses. Most Shopify users describe their experiences as rewarding and that the platform is relatively easy to use.

Pros of Shopify:

Very easy to use straight away
Has one platform for managing multiple stores/sites
Very stable and reliable
Works with numerous plug-ins or extensions
Ideal for omnichannel commerce

Cons of Shopify:

Limited design flexibility, not the most customizable tools
Not the best for B2B businesses

CommerceTools

Price: Starts at $299 per month
Features Offered: API keys, cloud controls, and tools, lots of e-commerce store functions
Performance: High performing, good stability
Usability: Not very easy to use
UX: Complex, requires a dedicated API team
Integrations: Lots of potential integrations

CommerceTools is a “headless” and fully API-enabled e-commerce platform. This enables maximum customization and includes a wide range of functionalities depending on what your enterprise requires. As a cloud solution, you don’t need to worry about hosting or maintenance.

However, CommerceTools is held back to some extent by its pricing limitations if you run a business with a lot of contract-based pricing for your customers. Furthermore, CommerceTools does not have out-of-the-box data mapping for full ERP platforms.

Many current CommerceTools users indicate that it’s a viable e-commerce platform, provided you have a team able to work on it and ensure its efficacy for your enterprise’s operations.

Pros of CommerceTools:

Fully API enabled, so no need to use SQL
No back-office hosting or maintenance requirements
Functions are always expanding as new capabilities are rolled out

Cons of CommerceTools:

Pricing controls for your e-commerce products are limited
Not very many integrations for modern third-party platforms
No built-in data mapping for ERP platforms

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Price: Variable based on the merchandise value
Features Offered: Customization tools, user-specific customer experiences, many touchpoints for mobile apps, POS systems, and more
Performance: High-performing and generally stable
Usability: Not very easy to use
UX: Complex – requires some programming experience
Integrations: Can integrate with some tools, including Salesforce CRM

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is created by the same company responsible for the titular CRM (customer relationship management) platform. Commerce Cloud includes multiple components for retail sales, wholesale operations, individual shopping experiences, product management, and order management. As an omnichannel platform, it’s a good choice for enterprises that want to leverage consumer information and data analytics as much as possible.

That said, Salesforce Commerce Cloud does require some programming expertise to make the most of it. It’s not a very intuitive platform and costs can be relatively high. Still, some Salesforce Commerce Cloud users praise the platform for its robust feature set.

Pros of Salesforce Commerce Cloud:

Allows business owners to personalize content for consumers/user experience
Lots of touchpoints
24/7 customer support
Very easy to customize
Integrates well with Salesforce CRM

Cons of Salesforce Commerce Cloud:

Pricing can be very expensive due to sales based pricing model
Only a few implementation agencies are available
Not very intuitive to use

Kibo

Price: Custom
Features Offered: Mobile access, inventory management, and optimization, CRM, etc.
Performance: Stable and high-performing
Usability: Easy to use
UX: Complex UX, robust platform
Integrations: Few native integrations

Kibo is a headless e-commerce platform ideal for large enterprises and small businesses alike. It includes a variety of important tools, like front-end integrations and omnichannel starter kits. Using the platform is quick and easy thanks to a variety of training tools and tutorials you can access on the Kibo site.

However, there aren’t very many pre-existing integrations (meaning you have to personally facilitate any integrations you desire). It’s also not a very fast e-commerce platform to launch.

Furthermore, it doesn’t have very good shipping capabilities upfront. Kibo users are most frequently impressed by its suite of marketing tools.

Pros of Kibo:

Good business reporting tools
Good marketing and content management tools
Excellent customer service and tutorials
Pricing structure of the product catalog can be customized and as complex as necessary

Cons of Kibo:

Not the best if you have complex shipping processes/business processes
Have to do most of your integrations by hand
Not fast to deploy
Product recommendation functionality could use some work

How to Choose an Enterprise E-commerce Platform

Decide what features you need
Understand why you have decided to replatform
Identify what is wrong with your current platform
Ask yourself what features you would like to have
Determine whether your current third-party APIs will work
Determine which APIs you plan to add

As you can see, there are many different enterprise-level e-commerce platforms to choose from. If you’re not sure which is ultimately right for you, consider the below factors. These will help you pick the best enterprise e-commerce platform for your business needs.

Decide What Features You Need

First, consider the core features you deem absolutely necessary for your enterprise e-commerce platform. By determining your “must-haves”, you can eliminate platforms that don’t have these features from your list.

Multi-store capabilities (B2B/Wholesale)

Top-tier e-commerce platforms should let you manage multiple stores simultaneously, especially if you run a B2B or wholesale business. Single-dashboard e-commerce tools are excellent for their convenience and accessibility.

International Commerce Features

Good e-commerce platforms for enterprise-level businesses should include international commerce features. These features will enable you to handle international orders and customer management tasks more easily, plus organize your sales and shipping around the globe.

API Capabilities

The best enterprise-level e-commerce platforms include access to application programming interfaces through tokens. Your IT team can then access the API and tweak the platform specifically for your needs.

More customization means you can better serve the needs of your target audience and your chosen platform will be even better for your unique requirements.

Subscription Capabilities

If you already run a subscription-based enterprise-level business, subscription capabilities are must-haves for your enterprise e-commerce software. With subscription tools, you’ll have a payment gateway that allows you to automatically bill and/or invoice your customers periodically, such as on weekly, monthly, or annual bases.

ERP Integrations

Enterprise resource planning tools are perfect for big e-commerce platforms with scaling ecommerce businesses. These tools will help you manage your orders, customer data, and enterprise-level planning across your online store(s) as your scalability needs increase on the back-end of things (in addition to storefronts, of course).

Understand Why You Have Decided To Replatform

After determining what features you must have, consider why you need to replatform in the first place. You might need to replatform for the following reasons:

You need something more affordable
You need a platform with different tools
Your business has grown or scaled beyond the capabilities of your current platform

By identifying your reason(s) for replatforming, you’ll be able to determine the best new e-commerce platform for your business.

Identify What is Wrong with Your Current Platform

Similarly, you can and should identify the core issues affecting your current platform.

For example, if your current platform doesn’t let you manage multiple ecommerce websites from the same dashboard, that means you’ll need to replace it with an e-commerce platform with this functionality, such as Shopify.

Shopify lets you manage multiple ecommerce sites from the same primary location, enabling easier enterprise-level store management.

Ask Yourself What Features Would You Like to Have?

Just like it’s important to identify your must-have features, you should also identify the features you’d like to have in a top-tier platform. Features that are nice to have, such as Shopify’s omnichannel e-commerce tools, can help you break ties between platforms that are similar on the surface.

Determine Whether Your Current Third-party APIs Will Work

If you already rely on third-party tools for one or more business functions, you need an e-commerce platform that plays nice with those tools. Therefore, be sure to check which integrations an e-commerce platform allows before shifting to it fully.

Determine Which APIs You Plan to Add

Lastly, try to predict what integrations you may add in the future. That will let you choose a great e-commerce platform for your enterprise business in the coming years, not just in the next few months.

What To Do Next

All in all, Shopify is the best all-around enterprise ecommerce solution for most businesses. However, it’s ultimately up to you to determine the best platform for your unique needs and preferences.

Need team members to get your e-commerce platform up and running or to customize its abilities through the API? You can add quality, hard-working members to your team through Anatta. Contact us today for more information!

Sources:

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Definition | Investopedia

The Future Of ECommerce Is Headless | Forbes

What is an API? In English, please. | Free Code Camp