20+ Ecommerce Tools [For New & Growing Businesses]

In this post, you’ll find ecommerce tools that will help you to:

• Get more sales

• Manage your store easier

• Automate lead generation

And, of course, we’ll keep the budget in mind. So, you’ll get a free or reasonably priced alternative for every paid ecommerce tool on this list.

Ecommerce tools

Choose a category to get started:

• Lead generation and marketing 

• Ecommerce platforms

• Sales & store management

• Customer support

• Reporting

Lead Generation & Marketing

• Wisepops — for email capture and sales

• Klaviyo — for email marketing

• Stamped — for review marketing

• Buffer — for social media marketing

• Smile — for loyalty programs

• Octane AI — for quizzes

1. Wisepops

Wisepops is a powerful lead generation and onsite marketing platform for ecommerce stores, designed to help them grow fast. You get four onsite channels to engage and convert your store visitors with (onsite notifications, ecommerce popups, sticky bars, and embedded forms) and create just about any campaign possible.

Over 5,000 ecommerce stores of all sizes (including Brooklinen, Converse, OddBalls, Blume, and Asphalte) use Wisepops to capture leads and convert more of their traffic. If you’re a marketer but a non-technical person, you’ll find this ecommerce tool very easy to use, too.

Best for: Ecommerce stores and retailers that need a tool to a) keep building a customer base and b) convert their traffic with personalized shopping experiences

Why you might want to use Wisepops:

• Signup forms (targeted website popups, slide-ins, bars, embeds, spin-to-win wheels)

• Goal and revenue tracking for all campaigns

• Onsite notifications: a social media-like website feed for lead generation, sales promos, and product launches

• AI Wishlist: a machine learning-powered feature that predicts purchase intention and suggests products to visitors

• Over 60 templates for popups and onsite notifications

• You can create personalized shopping experiences by making campaigns that appear only when certain criteria are met (customer visits a certain product category, adds a product to the cart, views a specific product, etc.)

• Build-in ecommerce features, including creating and sharing unique Shopify discount codes, Klaviyo segment targeting, and visitor targeting based on Shopify properties

• Best-in-class targeting based on customer website browsing behavior, cart content, traffic source, device, and country

• Integrations with all popular ecommerce tools (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Postscript, GA)

• Powerful A/B testing: 5+ campaign variants, test one element at a time, auto estimate of test significance

Who uses Wisepops (and their results)

Check out Wisepops pricing

2. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is the most popular email and SMS marketing tool for ecommerce stores right now. It’s got a wide range of features to allow businesses to grow quickly.

Besides being an ecommerce marketing tool, Klaviyo is also a CRM that gives you highly useful and personalized insights about your customers. 

Best for: Mid-sized and large stores

Why you might want to use Klaviyo:

• Get best-in-class email marketing functionality

• Basic email signup forms

• Powerful audience segmentation features for deep personalization of marketing campaigns

• In-depth data analytics and reporting tools to track the performance of email campaigns

• Build-in ecommerce features, including customer profiles, personalized product recommendations, and predicted churn assessment

Klaviyo pricing

Note: Klaviyo integrates with Wisepops to help you combine both onsite (capture emails on your store) and offsite (outside of your store, like lead nurturing with emails) sides of marketing.

3. Stamped

Having an app reach out to customers after they purchase and ask them for reviews is a must. Getting reviews is super hard, so get an ecommerce tool to help out.

Stamped is one of the best for collecting, managing, and displaying customer reviews for some social proof. Getting started is very easy and you will be able to get 50 reviews a month for free—a great option if you’re a new business.

Best for: Ecommerce stores of all sizes

Why you might want to use Stamped:

• Collect textual, photo, and video reviews with emails and forms on your store

• Display customer reviews on your website in different formats (a feed, widgets, embedded forms)

• Motivate our potential customers to buy by showing them reviews at specific points in their journey (like a checkout or a product page)

• Automate the process of getting reviews by creating review request emails, including those with discount codes to incentivize customers

• Display only relevant and appropriate reviews thanks to an effective built-in moderation and filtering system

Check out Stamped pricing

4. Buffer

Buffer is the ecommerce tool you need to make sure your business has a consistent social media presence. It’ll help you easily create, schedule, and publish your content on social media—even if you’re a complete beginner. 

Best for: Small and mid-sized stores

Why you might want to use Buffer:

• Easy to use and visually appealing social media calendar

• Simple post creator with tips and best practices

• Manage your social media on the go with a mobile app

• Schedule and publish up to 10 posts per social media network for free

• View analytics like post engagement, top commenters, fans, and find opportunities to engage more potential customers

See Buffer pricing

5. Smile.io

This ecommerce tool allows to create, customize, and manage a loyalty program in one place, without having to ask a developer for help. You get a dashboard where you can create the loyalty program, choose how to encourage visitors to sign up, view participants’ activity, and get ideas on how to turn them into repeat customers.

Best for: Mid-sized and large stores

Why you might want to use this ecommerce tool:

• If you want to start a loyalty program for your store

• Get a widget your visitors can use to sign up for the program

• Build a customer base with a referral program

• You can use this ecommerce tool for free up to 200 monthly orders

Check Smile.io pricing (note that the pricing depends on your ecommerce platform)

6. Octane AI

This ecommerce tool is a quiz platform that recommends products based on the customer’s input. For example, if you’re selling skin care products, you can make a quiz to define the best products for each customer based on their skin type and goals.

Best for: Any ecommerce stores or service businesses

Why you might want to use this ecommerce tool:

• If you’d like to give your customers personalized product recommendations

• Engage your visitors by giving them interactive content

• Collect emails at the end of the quiz and segment them for more personalized email marketing

• Improve customer engagement and satisfaction

View pricing for Octane AI 

(A bit too expensive? You can quiz 100 visitors for free per month with Shop Quiz)

Ecommerce Website Platforms

7. Shopify

Shopify is the most popular website builder for ecommerce stores. And for a good reason: it’s super easy for beginners, needs no coding work, and makes beautiful online shops.

Estimates put the number of active Shopify stores between four and six million, with thousands of new ones being published every week. See the most successful Shopify stores (with how much they make).

Best for: Beginners

Why you might want to use Shopify:

• If you’re opening an online business for the first time

• If you want to sell apparel & accessories, beauty and personal care, or home decor products

• Diverse themes and store design customization (there are literally thousands of third-party store themes you can buy)

• Shopify App Store has 8,000+ apps for almost every need, be it SEO, inventory management, analytics, marketing, or customer visit recordings

• Useful built-in ecommerce tools, including online store editor, logo maker, invoice generator, domain name generator, and discount calculator

8. Ecwid

Ecwid is a free ecommerce tool for building beautiful stores. It’s becoming especially popular among small businesses and startups looking for an easy-to-use and intuitive app with reasonable paid plans. 

Best for: Small businesses

Why you might want to use this ecommerce tool:

• Super intuitive website editor, no coding required at all

• You can sell on social media thanks to a simple integration

• Connect your Google Shopping, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, or other accounts easily

• Built-in email and other marketing tools to help you save money

Check out examples of websites built with Ecwid

The full pricing and features

9. Squarespace

Squarespace is an ecommerce platform built with content creators in mind. While it may not be as ecommerce-focused as Shopify, for example, it still is a great option for businesses with a moderate product range and straightforward needs—all the features to sell are there, including even the Shopify’s Buy button.

If you need a basic (but good-looking) ecommerce store where you can sell up to 20 products, this ecommerce tool should be a great choice.

Best for: Portfolios, services, and restaurants

Why you might want to use Squarespace:

• If your business sells services—there’s an online booking system, content publishing tool, and other useful features to manage clients

• Easy store management: handle taxes, order fulfillment & shipping, payments, and customer profiles in one dashboard

• All the best-in-class ecommerce integrations are available (including Shopify’s Buy, Aftership, Stripe, PayPal, Printful, and UPS)

Examples of websites made with Squarespace

Squarespace pricing

10. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a platform you can build both a small store and an enterprise website with. It’s a super flexible builder, so it doesn’t matter if you'd like to sell physical products, digital downloads, or services—WooCommerce can be adapted to suit your needs.

Best for: Retailers, food & drink stores, service businesses

Why you might want to use WooCommerce:

• If you’re familiar with (and like) WordPress

• If you’d like to develop custom features for your website

• If you want a truly unique store design: WooCommerce is highly customizable and flexible

• If you’d like to take on some technical tasks like updates and hosting (WooCommerce may require more technical expertise than some other platforms)

Examples of sites built with WooCommerce

Sales & Store management

• Spocket — find reliable product suppliers

• Quickbooks — easy accounting for ecommerce

• Avada Size Guide — size charts for product pages

• Impact — for affiliate marketing programs

• Appstle — for subscription management

• NoFraud — for fraud protection

11. Spocket

Use this ecommerce tool to find products for your store. Not just any products, of course—you get high-quality, trending items from reliable suppliers from the U.S. and Europe. Spocket integrates with all ecommerce platforms and gives you one of the largest product ranges to choose from.

For: Dropshipping ecommerce stores

Why you might want to use this ecommerce tool:

• Find quality products to sell

• One of the biggest product ranges from verified and top-rated suppliers

• If you’re starting an US- or EU-based store (since all the suppliers are from there)

Check pricing for Spocket

12. Quickbooks

This ecommerce tool will help you simplify accounting for your store. It brings all your financial data (such as sales and payouts) into one dashboard to give you a view of all incomes and expenses. So, you’ll be able to get a clear picture of your business’s financial health.

Best for: Stores of all sizes

Why you might want to use this tool for your ecommerce store:

• Get all finances in one place

• No need for manual data entry on orders and inventory

• Generate financial reports and do profitability analysis easily

• Minimize the risk of human error in accounting 

Quickbooks pricing for ecommerce

13. Avada Size Guide

Selling clothing? Then you definitely don’t need your customers guessing their size and then returning their orders for exchanges. With this tool, you can add a simple chart with all the info necessary for your customers to understand what size suits them best.

Please note: this ecommerce app is made for Shopify.

Best for: New and small Shopify stores

Why you might want to use this ecommerce tool:

• Add a size chart and a size guide to your product pages

• Help customers buy in the right sizes

• Free for the first two campaigns

Go to Avada’s pricing

14. Impact

This tool for ecommerce is a great option for those looking to get access to fresh pools of potential customers with affiliate partnerships (including influencers). Impact is trusted by a lot of successful ecommerce stores of all sizes, including Taylor Stitch (here’s the affiliate signup page) and William Sonoma. 

Using a tool like Impact can help you reduce ad spending and improve ecommerce sales (of course, your affiliate partners earn commissions only when they help you make sales).

Best for: Ecommerce stores of all sizes

Why you might want to use this ecommerce tool:

• Create an affiliate program and get automatic partner recommendations

• Collect new partners on your store or through a special search tool

• Get performance reports about your partners, including sales they made

• Pay and receive payments automatically

Pricing: Impact does not share pricing for any of its products. Various third-party sources mention the starting price of $500 per month, but get in touch for updated information.

15. Appstle Subscriptions

Thinking of starting a subscription business on Shopify? This ecommerce tool will be helpful to ensure that your customers can order, renew, and otherwise manage their plans on your store effortlessly.

Designed for: Subscription businesses

Why you might want to use this tool for ecommerce:

• Create subscriptions for your products

• Highly flexible in terms of subscription schedules, terms, and conditions

• Seamless integration with Shopify and Shopify Plus

• Use the app for free until your subscription revenue reaches $500 per month

See the full pricing

16. NoFraud

NoFraud lets you protect your store from fraudulent orders with real-time screening and pre-gateway checks. The tool checks every order and assigns a special score, allowing you to spot potentially problematic items early in the process.

For: Small and mid-sized businesses

Why you might want to use this tool for ecommerce:

• Detect and prevent fraudulent orders in your store

• Review suspicious orders manually to ensure that harmful transactions don’t get though

• Minimize financial losses associated with fraud-related transactions and chargeback fees

Nofraud pricing

Customer Support

• Tidio — A standalone live chat app

• Gorgias — A suite (live chat, helpdesk, social media) for growing stores

17. Tidio

Tidio is a live chat and chatbot app for small businesses. You get everything you need to provide timely and effective support, even on the go (including analytics, a mobile app, and all support channels in one dashboard) and even some features to sell (like a real-time list of visitors on your store).

Best for: Small and mid-sized stores

Why you might want to use this ecommerce tool:

• If you need a free and reliable live chat on your store

• Basic but functional chatbot to answer FAQs for your business

• Get useful analytics about customer support

• Start proactive conversations with customers by messaging them first

See Tidio pricing

18. Gorgias

Gorgias is an ecommerce tool for stores handling thousands of customers. That’s why it’s used by top Shopify stores like Steve Madden (see the image above). Besides the support features, Gorgias also comes with product recommendation tools so your agents can do some selling, too.

Best for: Mid-sized and large stores

Why you might want to use this tool for ecommerce:

• Easy and convenient to use

• Has a lot of automation to speed up support

• Integrates with everything you need

• Consolidates website support tickets, social media comments and messages, and emails into one dashboard

Check out Gorgias pricing

Reporting

• Lucky Orange — Heatmaps for small stores

• Ahrefs — SEO research for better Google rankings

• Hotjar — User behavior for service businesses and SaaS

19. Lucky Orange

If you’re running a new or small ecommerce business and would like to know more about customer behavior on your website, consider Lucky Orange. It’s got everything you need for testing + top-rated customer support and regular updates.

Best for: Small and mid-sized businesses

Why you might want to use this ecommerce website tool:

• Heatmaps, real-time session recording, and live chat

• Helps to find anything from simple navigation mistakes to major frictions in shopping experience

• Get customer feedback with built-in surveys and forms

• Free plan with the best value for money (includes all the premium features + 100 monthly recording sessions) 

Go to Lucky Orange pricing

20. Ahrefs

Doing SEO for ecommerce websites is no walk in the park. There are a ton of things to take care of to be able to get higher in Google results—and it’s a lot of repetitive work, too. Ahrefs is a great ecommerce tool to help because it monitors your website for issues and helps you get the keywords you need for ranking.

Best for: 

Why you might want to try Ahrefs for your ecommerce store:

• Set up website monitoring for 100+ issues and find them on autopilot

• Get keywords to create optimized blog content and drive more organic traffic

• Do keyword research to know what keywords you need to optimize product and menu pages + what keywords your competitors are using

See Ahrefs pricing

21. Hotjar

Hotjar is another top-rated ecommerce tool for visitor behavior insights. Unlike Lucky Orange, it focuses more on collecting historical data such as recordings and heatmaps, which makes it a good fit for ecommerce businesses selling services.

Best for: SaaS businesses, service businesses

Why you might want to use this tool for ecommerce:

• Get feedback and client satisfaction rating for your site with surveys

• Understand visitor behavior on your website (clicks, journeys, areas where visitors are dropping off, etc.)

• Improve your website conversion rate by using the conversion funnel analysis feature that tracks and analyzes visitor behavior

Hotjar pricing

Summary

Whether you're just starting or looking to optimize an existing business, I hope this guide has been a useful resource for the best ecommerce tools.

If you’d like to get more app recommendations, check these out:

• Best popup software

• Lead generation tools

• Email capture software

• Conversion rate optimization (CRO) guide

• Guide to ethical marketing with examples