Ecommerce Platform Selector Tool

How It Works

From questionnaire to defensible shortlist in 5–8 minutes

Four stages. No black box. Every input you give the tool becomes a visible, weighted factor in the output.

STEP 01

Answer

Up to 18 adaptive questions on business model, stack, catalogue, integration, architecture, and TCO.

STEP 02

Weight

13 criteria are weighted by your business segment, with overlay multipliers for your use case and region.

STEP 03

Rank

All five platforms scored and ranked. Top pick flagged. Delivery model and fit gaps surfaced for each.

STEP 04

Report

Full report unlocks: per-criterion scoring, 5-year TCO band, sensitivity analysis, evidence checklist.

Quick answer

How to choose an ecommerce platform

Choose an ecommerce platform by matching five factors against your business: (1) business model — B2B, B2C, hybrid B2B+B2C, or marketplace; (2) technology ecosystem you are already invested in — SAP, Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, or Shopify; (3) integration surface including the system of record for orders and pricing — ERP, CRM, PIM, OMS; (4) architectural preference — SaaS, PaaS, or composable (MACH); (5) total cost of ownership over a five-year window, not year-one licence alone. Most mid-market and enterprise merchants narrow to a shortlist of two to three platforms; the selector below does that shortlisting for you and flags sensitivity and hidden-cost risks alongside the ranking.

Interactive Tool

Run the selector

Takes 5–8 minutes. No signup needed to see the ranked shortlist.

Ranked shortlist is free. The full report — per-criterion scoring, 5-year TCO estimates, sensitivity analysis, hidden-cost risk flags, and evidence checklist — unlocks with a work email. Typical completion time: 5–8 minutes.

Scoring Rubric

13 weighted criteria across four clusters

Every recommendation is scored against 13 criteria, grouped into four clusters. Overlay multipliers adapt the weighting to your industry, use case, and region — so an ERP-led manufacturer and a D2C fashion brand don't get the same answer to the same catalogue question.

Business Fit

Who you sell to, and where your data lives.

1 Business Model 2 Technology Ecosystem 3 Source of Truth

Technical Fit

The functional load the platform must carry.

4 B2B Procurement 5 Catalogue Complexity 6 Multi-Store & Global

Architecture Fit

How the platform wants to be operated.

7 Delivery Model 8 Frontend Architecture 9 Advanced Use Cases

Commercial Fit

Time, cost, and operating posture.

10 Implementation Speed 11 5-Year TCO 12 Partner Region 13 Governance & Compliance

At a Glance

Ecommerce platform comparison, five contenders

A plain-English view of where each platform is strongest before you run the selector. Fit for B2B, time-to-launch, and 5-year TCO are the three variables that most often decide the ranking.

Platform	Best Fit For	B2B Depth	Time-to-Launch	5-Year TCO
Adobe Commerce PaaS / Enterprise	B2B manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers with ERP-led commerce	Deep	Long	Higher
Shopify Plus SaaS	D2C and mid-market B2C brands prioritising speed and simplicity	Moderate	Short	Lower
Salesforce Commerce Enterprise SaaS	Enterprise brands committed to the wider Salesforce stack	Moderate	Medium	Highest
BigCommerce Open SaaS	Mid-market merchants wanting SaaS economics with real B2B features	Strong	Short	Lower
commercetools Composable / MACH	Enterprise merchants needing differentiated UX, multi-brand, or multi-region architecture	Moderate	Long	Higher

Coverage

Platforms included in the selector

The five platforms Elogic Commerce engineers on at production scale.

PaaS · Deepest native B2B

Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Deepest native B2B feature set of any major platform — company accounts, quote workflows, shared catalogues, requisition lists, negotiable quotes out of the box. Strongest fit for manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and complex B2B2C merchants with heavy ERP integration.

Compare: vs SFCC · vs commercetools · ERP integration

SaaS · Fastest time-to-launch

Shopify Plus

Fastest time-to-launch of any enterprise-grade platform and lowest run-rate engineering cost. Best fit for D2C and mid-market B2C brands prioritising speed and operational simplicity. B2B has matured but stays lighter than Adobe Commerce for catalogue-heavy scenarios.

Compare: Plus overview · vs Magento 2 · Enterprise readiness

Enterprise SaaS · Salesforce-native

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Tight native integration with the wider Salesforce stack — Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud. Strongest fit for enterprise brands already running Salesforce core. GMV-based licensing can surprise finance teams on high-volume years.

Compare: SFCC consulting · vs Adobe Commerce

Open SaaS · B2B-capable

BigCommerce

Stronger native B2B features than Shopify Plus (price lists, customer groups, quote management) and open APIs that make headless straightforward. Good fit for mid-market merchants wanting SaaS economics without the B2B ceiling.

Compare: vs Shopify Plus · Pricing breakdown

Composable · MACH

commercetools

Canonical MACH platform — composable, API-first. Strongest fit for enterprise merchants with a mature platform team, genuinely differentiated UX, or multi-brand and multi-region architectures where a monolith is a constraint. Highest flexibility ceiling; hard dependency on engineering maturity.

Compare: vs Adobe Commerce · Headless platforms · Pricing

Outputs

What the selector gives you

Every run produces a structured decision artefact you can take into an architecture review, an RFP, or a board paper.

Ranked shortlist

All five platforms ranked by weighted fit score. Top pick flagged. Delivery model called out per platform.

Per-criterion breakdown

Line-by-line score against all 13 criteria — see exactly why each platform ranked where it did.

5-year TCO band

Expected 5-year cost class per platform — licence, hosting, implementation, run-rate engineering, transaction fees.

Sensitivity analysis

How stable your ranking is. Knife-edge decisions are flagged; robust ones are confirmed.

Hidden-cost risk flags

Licence creep, per-transaction fees, mandatory re-platforming, partner-tier dependencies. Surfaced per platform.

Evidence checklist

Specific validation points to put to each shortlisted vendor — reference calls, PoCs, contract clauses.

Ranked shortlist is free. Per-criterion breakdown, sensitivity analysis, hidden-cost risk flags, and evidence checklist unlock with a work email.

Audience

Who the selector is built for

Designed for leaders running real platform decisions, not for small-business owners choosing between Wix and Squarespace.

Strongest fit

B2B merchants — manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers — evaluating platforms for contract pricing, account hierarchies, and ERP-led commerce.
Enterprise and mid-market brands replatforming off Magento 1, SAP Hybris, or a heavily customised monolith.
D2C brands scaling past the ceiling of Shopify Advanced or a self-hosted WooCommerce setup.
Digital commerce directors, CTOs, transformation leads preparing an internal recommendation or platform RFP.
Private equity operating partners assessing platform fit as part of a portfolio company commerce review.

Better served elsewhere

Running a simple low-budget B2C store with no integration complexity — a standard SaaS quiz serves better.
Need a pure brand or creative decision, not a platform engineering one.
Looking for hosting, SEO audits, or ad-spend management rather than platform selection.
Under ~$1M GMV with no planned scale-up — the rubric is calibrated for mid-market and above.

Reading the Output

How to interpret the recommendation

Three things the selector is telling you — and one it is not.

Fit score, TCO band, sensitivity

Each platform gets a weighted fit score across all 13 criteria, a 5-year TCO band, and a sensitivity read on how stable the ranking is to changes in your answers.

A shortlist is the correct output

Serious decisions come down to two or three platforms. A clear single winner usually means your constraints are unusually well-defined — still worth a PoC or vendor reference call.

What the selector does not decide

Not your implementation partner, PIM, OMS, or frontend framework. It narrows the platform field so those downstream decisions are made against a stable foundation.

Methodology

How the selector is built

A weighted scoring model refined across Elogic Commerce platform-selection engagements since 2009. The rubric is published — every weight, every criterion, visible below.

Scoring model

13 criteria, each with a base weight determined by your business segment (SMB mid-market B2C, mid-market B2B, enterprise B2C, enterprise B2B hybrid, or marketplace). Overlay multipliers adapt the weighting to your primary use case and region.

Data inputs

Vendor-published capability documentation, Elogic Commerce implementation data across all five platforms, and post-launch issue patterns observed in replatforming engagements.

Transparency & refresh

Every recommendation includes the criteria that drove it and the platforms that fell short. The rubric is reviewed annually and after any major platform release.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do I choose the right ecommerce platform?

Evaluate five factors in order: business model, technology ecosystem, integration surface (including source of truth for orders and pricing), architectural preference (SaaS vs PaaS vs composable), and five-year total cost of ownership. Use a structured tool to produce a shortlist of two or three platforms, then validate with a proof-of-concept, a reference customer in your vertical, and a partner-led architecture review.

What is the best ecommerce platform for B2B?

For integration-heavy B2B with contract pricing, account hierarchies, and ERP-driven catalogues, Adobe Commerce has the deepest native feature set. For mid-market B2B wanting SaaS economics, BigCommerce B2B Edition is often the best fit. Shopify Plus has closed much of the gap and is strong when simplicity outranks catalogue depth. commercetools is the reference when composable architecture is required. See the B2B platform guide for manufacturers and wholesalers.

When should I replatform my ecommerce store?

Replatform when three conditions hold together: (1) your current platform is blocking a revenue-relevant capability that cannot be added through integration, (2) your engineering team spends more than ~30% of its commerce capacity on platform workarounds, and (3) the 3-year TCO of staying exceeds the 3-year TCO of moving. Replatforming for one reason alone — usually "our platform is end-of-life" — is often the wrong call. A well-scoped RFP surfaces whether replatforming or re-integration is the better move.

How long does a serious platform selection take?

A structured platform selection typically runs 4–8 weeks: requirements workshop (1–2 weeks), vendor shortlisting and demos (2–3 weeks), reference checks and proof-of-concept (2–3 weeks), final recommendation and board paper (1 week). This selector compresses the first two steps into minutes.

What is composable commerce?

Composable commerce is an architectural approach that builds an ecommerce stack from independent, API-connected best-of-breed services rather than a single monolithic platform. It follows the MACH principles — Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless. Composable delivers the highest flexibility ceiling but requires a mature platform engineering team to operate.

What is the best ecommerce platform for enterprise?

There is no single best enterprise platform. Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and commercetools dominate the enterprise tier, with Shopify Plus and BigCommerce increasingly competitive at the upper mid-market. Deciding factors are business model, existing stack (particularly CRM and ERP), and appetite for composable architecture. See the enterprise ecommerce platform comparison.

Adobe Commerce or Shopify Plus — which should I choose?

Choose Adobe Commerce when catalogue complexity, B2B depth, or ERP-driven pricing are central — typical for manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers. Choose Shopify Plus when time-to-launch, operational simplicity, and a proven checkout matter more than catalogue complexity — typical for D2C and mid-market B2C brands. Honest tiebreaker: engineering capacity. Full comparison: Magento 2 vs Shopify Plus.

The selector is in beta — what does that mean?

The tool is published and working. The scoring rubric, question flow, and recommendation logic are being iteratively refined based on usage data and practitioner feedback. Results are reliable for producing a shortlist but you may see minor changes to weightings or question wording between versions. Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions: office@elogic.co.

Help us refine the tool

Found a bug, a rubric gap, or a missing platform use case?

We are actively refining the rubric, the question flow, and the report output. Send corrections, suggestions, or just the output you got and why it felt off.

office@elogic.co

Ecommerce Platform Selector