If you are about to select an new ecommerce platform you should select the platform that meets the criteria in line with your business needs or better said that fits your business plan and organization.
Trends in ecommerce solutions are changing rapidly and moving more towards the affordable SAAS solutions however are the platforms ready for that move. If you look at the players in the market like Intershop, Demandware, Hybris, Oracle, Websphere, Prestashop, Magento and Drupel they are not getting closer in aligning with the market need in SAAS solutions, but rather continue the more expensive license models.
Also the free plugin solution providers like WordPress plugin WooCommerce is very close to Magento as the ecommerce platform leader in terms of usage among the Alexa top 1 million ranked websites, you as a company or business may be wondering whether they should build their sales website using WordPress, or implement an enterprise solution and or look into a cloud-based solution.
Enterprise solutions like Intershop is one of the pioneers in the market with a very strong link to B2B solutions, they continue to focus on their license models, but are also now introducing the B2C SAAS solutions. The only challenge they have is the lack of recognition in the market. Company was founded in 1992 by Stephan Schambach the later founder of Demandware.
Demandware (now a Salesforce company) is more to a 100% SAAS solution which includes the software and hosting services. It becomes a more plug and play model however still rather expensive due to their revenue share models. Their target is more in retail and brands directly and no integration in to B2B capabilities.
WooCommerce is one of the most popular WordPress ecommerce solutions, offering its users a free, but valuable tool to build and grow their online businesses. With the freedom of WordPress’s platform, creating a personalized and efficient online store is easy. WooCommerce users can sell anything on their site they can imagine and, with an innovative inventory system, they can keep track of their stock in real time in order to deliver their quality products to their customers.
Magento thereafter is also very popular but more in to the direction of small business also a freemium model and more linked to small budgets. Their flexibility is high and therefore fit both B2C and B2B.
If you look at them all you can basically conclude there is no best in class ecommerce platform or solution for every business. You should select your solution driven by needs of your business plan and fits your organization forward. So write your business plan as a guide to eventually select the right solution.