E-commerce platform — models, how to choose one and a guide to online store platforms

An e-commerce platform is the software an online store runs on: the product catalogue, cart, orders, payments and the admin panel you use to run all of it. Choosing one is, in practice, three decisions at once — who maintains the store technically, how fees are calculated, and what you take with you if you ever decide to leave.

This article organises our section on online store platforms. It doesn't repeat the detail from the other articles — it shows how to approach the choice, and points you to the article that answers your question. Prices and fees come from vendor price lists read on 30 September 2026 — price lists change often, so open the current version before you decide.

E-commerce platform — what it is and how the models differ

Before you compare brands, choose a model. That's what decides who pays for the server, who updates the software, and where your data lives.

SaaS — a store on subscription. Shopify and similar vendors rent you a ready-made store. The vendor runs the servers and updates the software — Shopify's Irish pricing page lists plans at €32/month (Basic, billed monthly; €24/month billed annually), €92/Grow (€69 annually), €384/Advanced (€289 annually), and "Plus, starting at €2,100/month." The subscription isn't the final price, though: you still pay for payments, sometimes for order volume, for apps, and for a higher plan once you outgrow the current one. The same platform runs thousands of stores at once, so you can't change its code, and you get new features and price-list changes together with every other customer on it — a multi-tenant architecture. What you gain and give up in the subscription model is explained in the guide to SaaS.

Open source — the code is free, everything else is on you. WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Shopware Community Edition can be downloaded with no licence fee and no revenue share — WooCommerce's own pricing page states it plainly: "no platform fees, no revenue share." You pay for hosting (WooCommerce's own estimate: "$25 – $350/month for most stores"), extensions, implementation and ongoing care — updates, backups, security. In return, the code and the database sit on a server you control.

Headless — a separate front end, the engine behind an API. commercetools defines headless commerce as an architecture that "separates the frontend experience layer from backend commerce functionality, exposing capabilities through APIs." The engine can be a SaaS or an open-source platform; the front end is built and maintained separately. That buys you freedom over look and performance, at the cost of a second layer to maintain.

Platform-by-platform cards, their limits, and head-to-head comparisons sit in our e-commerce platform comparison, and when headless actually pays off is covered in headless vs. a classic store.

How to choose an e-commerce platform — criteria, payments and exit cost

There's no single answer to "which e-commerce platform is best." There's a platform best suited to your catalogue, your budget and your team. The chart below shows the order to ask the questions in; a short version of each follows.

Five criteria, in short

Pick two or three candidates and score each from 1 to 5:

1. Total cost — not just the subscription, but the whole billing model: a flat subscription, a per-order fee, a percentage at an external gateway, or zero licence cost plus the cost of care.
2. Catalogue and features — your product and variant count fits the plan's limits, and the features you need from day one (variants, discounts, B2B selling, subscriptions) work without buying add-ons.
3. Channels and integrations — marketplaces, payment gateways, invoicing and warehouse software.
4. Control and data — what you can change yourself, and what you take with you if you leave.
5. Team skills — who updates the system and reacts when something breaks.

Every criterion, with price-list examples, is laid out in our platform comparison. Before you score anything, answer four questions: how many products will you sell, are you planning to sell across borders (languages, currencies, payment methods in other countries), which features are non-negotiable — physical or digital goods, invoicing, warehouse integration, marketplace integration — and what's your budget, counting payments and apps and ongoing care, not just the subscription. Test your shortlisted candidates for real: Shopify offers 3 days free, then €1/month for 3 months; PrestaShop Hosted gives a 14-day trial.

Payments as a platform-selection criterion

Payment methods aren't just a matter of buyer convenience. Which gateway you connect decides whether the platform adds its own fee on top of the processor's commission. Per price lists read 30.09.2026:

• Shopify — at an external gateway, Shopify's Irish pricing page adds a "third-party transaction fee": 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus, on top of whatever the processor itself charges. The fee doesn't apply to manual methods like cash on delivery or bank transfer, or to in-person sales (Shopify Help). Shopify Payments itself charges, on the same Irish page: 2%/1.7%/1.5%/1.4% + €0.25 for standard online cards by plan, and higher rates for Amex and international cards.
• Stripe (Irish pricing page) — 1.5% + €0.25 for standard EEA cards, 2.8% + €0.25 for premium EEA cards. Local methods available through the same PSP include iDEAL/Wero at €0.29, Bancontact at 1.4% + €0.25, BLIK at 1.6% + €0.25, and Przelewy24 at 2.2% + €0.25 — useful if your buyers span several EEA countries, each with its own preferred method.
• Mollie — per-method fees: EEA consumer cards 1.80% + €0.25, EEA commercial cards 2.90% + €0.25, iDEAL/Wero €0.32, Bancontact 1.40% + €0.25, BLIK 1.60% + €0.25, TWINT 2.30% + €0.25, PayPal at PayPal's own rate +€0.10.
• Adyen charges "a fixed processing fee + a fee determined by the payment method," with no setup or monthly fee — the model is confirmed, but the EUR fixed fee isn't: Adyen's page defaults to a USD view ($0.13), so we don't quote a euro figure for it.
• PayPal has no single EU rate. Fees differ by country even inside the eurozone: Ireland charges 3.40% + €0.35; Germany charges 2.99% + €0.39 (PayPal IE, PayPal DE). Always check the page for your own country.

Three EU-wide protections apply regardless of which gateway you pick: interchange fees on debit and credit cards are capped at 0.2% and 0.3% respectively (Regulation (EU) 2015/751); sellers may not surcharge customers for using a card whose interchange is capped this way (PSD2, Directive (EU) 2015/2366, Art. 62(4)); and a remote card payment of up to €30 can skip two-factor authentication under the strong customer authentication exemption, as long as the payer's cumulative total since the last authentication stays within €100 or five consecutive transactions (RTS (EU) 2018/389, Art. 16) — the €50 figure that sometimes circulates is a different limit, for contactless payments at a physical till (Art. 11), not for e-commerce.

Your sales model narrows the field too. If you sell by subscription, check whether recurring billing is built in or a paid add-on — on WooCommerce it's the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension, $279/year. If you sell to businesses — with per-customer price lists, credit limits and invoicing on terms — you need features a typical consumer store doesn't have; we cover them in the article on B2B platforms.

Delivery and mobile

Two mechanisms worth checking on every platform's feature list before you commit: parcel-locker integration and mobile checkout. InPost Group — one of the larger pan-European locker networks — reported 1,364.8 million parcels in 2025 (+25% on 2024) and 62.0 thousand active automated parcel machines (+30% on 2024) across its international footprint (InPost Group). As a rule, design and test for mobile first; we didn't find an EU-wide published figure for the share of checkouts completed on a phone, so we're not quoting one.

Exit cost: data export

Choosing a SaaS platform also means choosing a vendor and its future decisions. Before you sign, check what you can take with you if you leave. Per vendor documentation:

• Shopify exports products, customers and orders to CSV.
• PrestaShop Hosted states that you can recover all your shop's data after your subscription ends.
• In open source, the database sits on a server you control.

CSV is data, but it isn't the whole store: the template, configuration and URLs still have to be rebuilt on the new platform. Do a trial export during the free period and open the file. We cover why exit terms are worth checking before you sign in the article on cloud security.

Map of the section: seven articles on platforms

Each article answers one question. Start with the one you have right now.

How do I start an online store? The step-by-step guide leads from the product, margin and demand test through legal setup, model choice, obligations with dates, payments, delivery and a plan for the first 90 days.

How much does an online store cost? The article on costs separates start-up cost from monthly cost, lines up SaaS subscriptions and gateway fees from published price lists, and works through a cost example.

Which platform should I choose? The e-commerce platform comparison puts the main platforms — from Shopify and Shopware to WooCommerce and PrestaShop — through five criteria and tabulates model, starting price, sales/order fees and data-export scope.

Can I start for free? The article on free online stores shows what's genuinely free: trials, free builder plans, open-source software — and what always costs money.

What's a B2B platform? The article on B2B platforms describes a store for business customers — per-customer price lists, credit limits, multi-user accounts — and explains why implementation starts with ERP data, not the front end.

Headless or a classic store? The article on headless commerce explains what changes versus a themed store, who maintains which layer, when headless pays off and when it's premature, and covers the tooling: Shopify Hydrogen, Medusa, Shopware, commercetools and a Next.js front end.

How do I migrate to another platform? The article on store migration walks through seven steps, from inventorying URLs to launch day and the first 90 days.

Tools for choosing a platform

• [Quiz: which e-commerce platform](pages:69bfe4fe0d5d51379c34268c) — seven questions on catalogue, budget and plans, ending in a platform recommendation. Always compare the tool's prices against the vendor's current price list — that's what's binding.
• [Online store cost calculator](pages:69b1d28de5961b9519f27fbc) — estimates a start-up budget in a few minutes depending on platform, integrations and payments.
• [E-commerce TCO calculator](pages:69bfe4fd0d5d51379c34263c) — calculates annual running cost and a multi-year total: subscription, hosting, add-ons, fees, care.
• [Online store costs in Poland — 2026 edition](pages:6a881b92d619d2695247642d) — 108 publicly available price observations from 70 vendors on the Polish market, collected March–May 2026. Shows the price range vendors open negotiations at, not the price of finished projects — and covers Poland only, so use it for method, not as an EU-wide price list.
• [Migration checklist](pages:69b904aefd308268547d6339) — a five-phase checklist for moving platforms, from SEO and redirects through order history to the checkout flow.
• [UX checklist](pages:69b904affd308268547d6371) — cart and checkout elements to check before launch and after a platform change.

If you're considering a headless store with your own front end, see how we approach that model: an online store built headless.