Recently one of our clients forwarded us a promotion from RBC about a free e-commerce platform for 6 months and asked us to evaluate if it’s worth in the long run. Below is the email he received promoting the small business offer for RBC clients.
Reading more – we realized that the email is about the e-commerce platform “Bookmark” from USA. RBC and Moneris payment gateway has built a partnership to offer Bookmark with the monthly fee waived for 6 months. We ran the numbers to compare this with Shopify and other offering to find out the best e-commerce platform in Canada and below is the comparison.
| Platform | Bookmark | Shopify | WordPress Woocommerce |
| Monthly cost | $39.95* | $38.65 | $5** |
| Transaction cost | 2.75%+30c | 2.9%+30c | 2.75%+30c*** |
| DIsclaimers | *First six months fee waived off with this promotion | Shopify is the platform that everyone talks about mainly because of how good their stock is doing | **This is prontos monthly hosting fee ***Depends on the payment gateway used (Eg you can use Moneris or Square or even Paypal) |
Looking at this Bookmark and Shopify comes very close. Shopify has a slightly higher transaction fee but their user interface is much easier to work with. WordPress woocommerce reduces the $40 monthly fee and is a bit difficult to customize. But once developed you are saving $40 a month – that’s $480 a year and $2400 a month.
How do i decide what’s best for my business?
Consider a couple of things –
Current payment gateway
eg If you are currently using a certain POS system eg Square – you might be able to use the same with Woocommerce. This can make things simpler as Shopify charges above 2% for external payment gateways. If you are just starting out – consider if you are going to do physical sales. And choose a payment gateway that can do both.
Seasonality of your products
If your product is seasonal and if you want your website to stay open only certain times of a year – the monthly fee wouldnt really matter for you.
Volume of your sales
If your sales volume is high – monthly fee and the per transaction fee wouldn’t really matter. And note that most platforms reduce or cap your transaction charges as your sales volume increases.
Want an e-commerce website for your business. Call us at 604-518-3429 or email [email protected] for a free consultation.