The 18 Best eCommerce Platforms according to Gartner

Gartner is a global research and consulting company that provides advice and analysis on technology, particularly in areas such as information technology (IT), telecommunications, and other related sectors. They offer research reports, strategic advice, and market analysis to help businesses make informed decisions about technology and business strategies.

To begin with, it is important to know that this research was conducted using Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, a research tool that provides market analysis, visuals, and comparative assessments of technology and service providers. It is used to help businesses understand the relative positions of providers in a specific market based on specific criteria.

What are eCommerce Platforms?

eCommerce platforms are software solutions that enable businesses to create, manage, and operate online stores where they can sell products or services. These platforms provide all the necessary tools to build an eCommerce website, manage inventory, process payments, and handle shipping logistics, among other functionalities.

Using an eCommerce platform will facilitate the growth of your online business without needing to switch platforms, and it will also simplify the management of daily operations like inventory, orders, and payments. Additionally, it allows you to sell to customers anywhere in the world with support for multiple currencies and languages.

Businesses that choose to open an online store must carefully select their eCommerce platform. This is because implementing an eCommerce site requires a significant investment of resources, time, and money.

Summary of Gartner's Evaluation

This Magic Quadrant evaluates the viability of 18 digital commerce vendors to help application leaders make informed decisions.

The vendors were divided into four categories: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players.

Gartner tracked over 150 vendors, but only 18 met the inclusion criteria. However, even if some vendors are excluded, their products are still viable. Among them are: Intershop with its InterShop Commerce Platform, NuORDER, Optimizely with its two platforms Configured Commerce and Customized Commerce, and finally, Sitecore with its OrderCloud platform.

Methodology

This Magic Quadrant is based on Gartner's primary and secondary research. This research relied, among other things, on:

• Gartner Peer Insights reviews for "Digital Commerce" published from April 30, 2022, to April 30, 2023.

Other sources:

• “Forecast: Enterprise Application Software, Worldwide, 2021-2027, 2Q23 Update.”

• Recorded sessions and demonstrations in which vendors provided Gartner with information about their product capabilities.

• Feedback on vendors and their products collected during thousands of conversations and other interactions with Gartner's client inquiry service users in 2022 and the first five months of 2023.

• Generally available information sources.

• The Gartner State of Digital Commerce survey, an online survey conducted in 2017, 2019, and 2021 across multiple regions and sectors.

Evaluation Criteria for Digital Commerce Platforms

Gartner used definitions for inclusion criteria such as: platform product description, functionality, production, new customers, and recognized annual revenue.

Additionally, platforms had to meet at least one of the following three conditions: year-over-year customer growth, revenue growth, and total revenue for their digital commerce platforms.

The evaluation criteria highlight requirements for future success, architectural vision, innovation, and breadth of possibilities. These are important as digital commerce platform customers seek to increase their customer base by offering a unique, compelling, and consistent experience across their platforms.

The criteria that vendors had to meet to be included in the evaluation were:

• Ability to execute, which took into account: product or service, overall viability, sales execution and pricing, and market responsiveness.

• Completeness of vision relative to the specific needs of their customers, including: market understanding, geographic strategies, sales strategies, product offering strategies, vertical industry/market strategies, and innovation.

The study revealed the following strengths and weaknesses of the vendors:

Leaders

Adobe

Adobe Commerce offers a platform that can be deployed on-premises or in public clouds, without requiring managed services from Adobe.

It is available worldwide on Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, with most of its customers in the manufacturing and retail sectors, followed by telecommunications, technology, and life sciences sectors.

Strengths: core B2C commerce functionality, search and personalization, and headless commerce architecture. 

Weaknesses: lack of some B2B functionalities, additional costs, and challenges with updates.

Commercetools

Commercetools offers a multi-tenant SaaS platform on Google Cloud Platform and AWS. Its products include B2B, B2C, and frontend solutions with functional add-ons.

It has a presence in Europe and North America, with a small base in Asia-Pacific (including China) and Latin America. It serves a variety of sectors, mainly retail manufacturing and wholesale in life sciences and healthcare.

Strengths: composability, focus on large enterprises, and global footprint. 

Weaknesses: lack of innovation, less OOTB (Out of the Box) functionality, and implementation complexity.

Salesforce

Salesforce offers B2C Commerce Cloud for large-scale consumer sales, B2B Commerce, and D2C (B2B2C). It has many complementary products to digital commerce with additional costs, such as CDP, OMS, SFA, B2B marketing automation, and customer service solutions.

Its customers range from medium to large enterprises across many geographic regions and sectors.

Strengths: product development speed, personalization capabilities, and headless enablement for B2C. 

Weaknesses: B2C architectural evolution, additional licensing, and B2B pricing.

Shopify

Shopify offers a wide range of products, including solutions for payments, POS, social and marketplace integration, and financing.

Shopify Plus has a global reach; however, most of its customers are in North America. Its customers are primarily retailers and branded businesses, ranging from medium to large companies.

Strengths: consolidated offering, bottom-up market approach, and speed of innovation. Weaknesses: lack of core B2B functionality, lack of robust multisite functionality, and go-to-market realignment.

SAP

SAP offers its platform SAP Commerce Cloud, which includes a basic PIM, workflow engines, and subscriber sales on the same platform.

SAP’s customers are located across many geographic regions and sectors, with key markets in retail verticals, business and consumer services, and wholesale.

Strengths: modern user interface, catalog management, and complex use cases. Weaknesses: monolithic core, limited decoupled storefront capabilities, and greater integration efforts required.

Challengers

BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers a multi-tenant SaaS platform hosted on Google Cloud Platform. It supports both B2B and B2C use cases on the same platform and has a B2B Edition add-on for enterprise packages.

Its customers are primarily located in North America, with a growing presence in Europe and Asia-Pacific. BigCommerce focuses on retail and business/consumer services vertical markets, with a presence in the transportation, high-tech, and media sectors.

Strengths: headless architecture, strong growth, and application ecosystem. 

Weaknesses: insufficient functionality for large enterprises, focus on smaller customers, and limited geographic and industry presence.

HCLSoftware

HCLSoftware offers a hybrid single-tenant and multi-tenant platform with single-tenant components managed by HCL customers.

Its customer base is primarily in North America and Europe, with fewer customers in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Customers are usually larger companies in retail, manufacturing, and telecommunications sectors.

Strengths: bundled functionality and applications at no additional cost, adaptability, and product discovery. 

Weaknesses: disconnected enterprise user experience and limited growth.

Kibo

Kibo offers a multi-tenant composable commerce SaaS platform hosted on AWS or Google Cloud Platform. This platform includes three main capabilities: B2B/B2C commerce, order management, and subscription commerce.

Most of its customers are in North America and are part of the retail sector, with a presence in Europe in the manufacturing, distribution, life sciences, and healthcare sectors.

Strengths: breadth of offerings, headless operations, and licensing options. 

Weaknesses: limited geographic presence, limited focus on personalization, and fewer ecosystems and partner networks.

Visionaries

VTEX

VTEX offers a multi-tenant SaaS commerce platform that includes 22 independent modules. It provides five packaged enterprise capabilities: Core B2B and B2C Commerce, distributed order management, marketplace and seller management, experience management, and the VTEX IO development platform.

Its most frequent customers are small businesses in Latin America, but it continues to add larger international clients. It also serves multiple vertical markets, with most being in retail and manufacturing.

Strengths: modern platform, support for unified commerce, and a broad ecosystem of application partners. 

Weaknesses: limited global and enterprise reach, insufficient pricing structure, and lack of customer experience personalization.

Spryker

Spryker offers its Spryker Cloud Commerce OS platform, which is multi-tenant and provides a SaaS core with extensibility through a single-tenant PaaS environment. It is deployed on AWS infrastructure and is compatible with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Spryker’s customers have B2B, B2C, and enterprise marketplace business models in key geographic regions. Most of its customers are in manufacturing, retail, and distribution sectors.

Strengths: modern architecture for complex business models, application composition platform, and growth and scale. 

Weaknesses: weaker product discovery and personalization functionality, low market presence, and fewer industry-specific solutions.

Oro

Oro offers its OroCommerce platform, which includes digital commerce, marketplace operations, and CRM capabilities, allowing customers to replace their own CRM.

Oro has few large enterprise customers, with most being mid-sized manufacturing and distribution companies in North America and Europe. It primarily focuses on B2B and B2B2X businesses, though it also supports B2C use.

Strengths: B2 workflows, B2B sales capabilities, and multisite management. 

Weaknesses: lack of B2C focus, lack of decoupled storefront capabilities, and limited productive integrations.

Shopware

Shopware offers its Shopware 6.5 Commerce Cloud platform, built on the PHP Symfony framework. It is commercially licensed for on-premises or cloud implementations, as SaaS or as managed/hosted.

It primarily operates in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, focusing on Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with expansion into Asia-Pacific. Shopware targets mid-sized B2C branded and retail manufacturers but increasingly supports B2B businesses across a range of industry verticals.

Strengths: ease of use, deployment options, and B2B innovations. 

Weaknesses: monolithic architecture, limited unified retail commerce, and mid-market focus.

Elastic Path

Elastic Path offers two platforms: Elastic Path Commerce and Elastic Path Commerce Cloud. The former is for customer self-hosting, either on-premises or in the cloud environment of their choice, while the latter is a multi-tenant SaaS platform.

Elastic Path’s customers are mid-sized retail and manufacturing companies based in North America, primarily using the solution for B2C businesses.

Strengths: package composability, incremental modernization, and customer success support. 

Weaknesses: limited core capabilities, low overall vendor growth, and narrow scope.

Niche Players

Infosys Equinox

Infosys Equinox offers a platform that utilizes a modern, API-first architecture with 20 independently deployable modules. It offers three deployment options: multi-tenant SaaS, single-tenant hosted, and managed services.

It has a very small operational presence for digital commerce in North America and Europe, with the vast majority of its digital commerce operations in India. It appeals to various sectors, particularly retail, manufacturing, media, and telecommunications.

Strengths: modern composable architecture, core commerce functionality, and holistic approach. 

Weaknesses: missing functionalities like storefronts, digital rights, or product recommendations, advanced personalization requires additional cost, and limited digital commerce operational presence.

THG Ingenuity

THG Ingenuity offers a multi-tenant SaaS solution, which includes core commerce components called Elysium (store and OMS management), Personify, and Checkout. It is deployed on THG’s private cloud environments using a microservices architecture.

Most of its clients are based in Europe, with some in North America and Asia-Pacific, serving mainly manufacturers and brands in fast-moving consumer goods like fashion, beauty, and personal care.

Strengths: offers a comprehensive platform, unified retail commerce, and native loyalty management.

 Weaknesses: difficult-to-navigate enterprise user tools, limited verticals and geography, and lack of advanced personalization functionality.

Sana Commerce

Sana Commerce offers its all-in-one payment platform, Sana Pay, which is natively optimized for B2B and included in the cost of its license.

Its clients are located in Europe and North America, including mid-tier B2B distributors, wholesalers, and manufacturers with Microsoft or SAP ERP applications.

Strengths: ERP-first approach, integrations with independent software vendors, and native headless storefront through GraphQL APIs. Weaknesses: limited multisite support, basic search management, and unsophisticated workflow management.

Unilog

Unilog offers its product CX1 CIMM2, an all-in-one B2B and B2C single-tenant SaaS solution deployed on Google Cloud Platform.

Its clients are small and medium-sized businesses in the US, typically B2B and B2B2X companies in the distribution, wholesale, and retail verticals.

Strengths: focus on product configuration management (PCM), proposal generator, and B2B-centric search. 

Weaknesses: lack of headless storefront, limited IT system partnerships, and limited advanced commerce capabilities.

SCAYLE

SCAYLE offers its SCAYLE Commerce Engine platform, which covers marketplace operations with product syndication, OMS, payments, DAM, PIM, and its headless storefront (Vue.js).

Its clients are primarily retailers and some wholesalers.

Strengths: modern architecture, flexible product data model, and extensive product features.

Weaknesses: limited geographic and ecosystem breadth, limited B2B functionality, and lack of integrated AI.

Publication of the Evaluation

The full results of this study were published on the Gartner website, intended to serve as a reference point for companies looking for an eCommerce platform.

You can find it on their website: https://commercetools.com/resources/analyst-report/gartner-magic-quadrant

Conclusion

According to Gartner’s analysis published in August 2023, the revenue growth of the digital commerce platforms market continues to increase, growing by 11.2% compared to 2022. Therefore, it is essential to make a well-informed choice and consider each business's functionalities.

The criteria for this evaluation highlight the requirements for future success, architectural vision, innovation, and breadth of possibilities. Digital commerce platform providers are seeking ways to offer and support a unique, compelling, and consistent customer experience across their platforms and multiple channels.

Each company's requirements are different, so they must use critical capabilities to rank vendor products according to specific functional and non-functional criteria.