Choosing an e-commerce platform: what to check
Choosing a platform: what to check before you sign.
Ten points a merchant should put to any e-commerce platform, wherever the shop sells: markets and currencies, languages, taxes and invoices, payment providers, carriers and labels, marketplaces, the counter, themes, AI tools, data ownership. Under each, how Crosphera covers it, and what other platforms’ own pages say where they say it.
Counted, not claimed.
The checklist.
Ask each point of every platform you consider. The answers on the Crosphera side are read from the platform itself; nothing here is a roadmap.
-
01
Markets and currencies
A shop that sells across borders prices in more than one currency and receives stock in the supplier’s; a platform built for one market makes every other one a workaround.
CrospheraPrice lists per customer group, receiving in the supplier’s currency, a currency per plan, and every price printed with its own symbol in the page’s language.
-
02
Languages, including right-to-left
A storefront mirrored by a plugin breaks at the edges: menus, forms, prices, the editor. The back office matters as much as the shop.
CrospheraA multilingual storefront, each language indexed as its own, and a multilingual back office (2 languages today), with full right-to-left support in every theme and in the editor.
-
03
Taxes and invoices
Tax rates change on a date, not “at some point”, and many markets want an invoice issued through an approved service.
CrospheraTax rates are kept per category with the date each one takes effect, so a change applies from its day without a hand edit of every price; invoices through Green Invoice or DokoPoint from the order.
-
04
Payment providers, and who takes a cut
Customers pay with the cards and wallets they already trust; a platform that charges its own percentage on top of the processor’s grows with you in the wrong way.
Crosphera18 payment providers: Stripe, PayPal Checkout, PayPal Express, Adyen, Klarna, Square, Amazon Pay, Authorize.Net, Skrill, Crypto, Pay by phone, plus 7 regional providers. The processing fee is the provider’s; Crosphera takes no percentage of a sale.
-
05
Carriers, labels and pickup points
The checkout has to offer the carriers and pickup points a customer knows, and the back office has to book the shipment and print a label the carrier scans at the first depot.
Crosphera19 shipping methods: DHL, FedEx, UPS, USPS, electronic delivery and self pickup, plus 9 regional carriers with 3 pickup-point networks. The shipment is booked from the order; labels are designed in a layout editor, and 6 carriers supply their own sticker, printed on the same sheet.
-
06
Selling on marketplaces
A product listed on a marketplace and in the shop is one stock count, or it is two and one of them is wrong.
CrospheraSales channels (Mirakl, Wolt) as a plan feature, feeding the same order book and the same inventory as the storefront.
-
07
The counter and the warehouse, one stock
Most merchants sell in a store too; two systems means two stock counts and a customer told “in stock” for a shelf that is empty.
CrospheraMulti-location inventory with a movement ledger, transfers, receiving and counts; POS terminals with closures and tender reports; click & collect with store availability on the product page: one order book for all of it.
-
08
Themes and customisation
A shop should look like its brand, not like the template; and a theme change should not mean a migration.
CrospheraA growing theme library over one storefront, presets per theme, private themes for one shop, and pages built from 39 kinds of section in a live editor. Switch themes and the content stays.
-
09
AI tools, and what they cost
Descriptions, translations and layouts are where the hours go; an assistant helps only if its price is a line you can read.
CrospheraDescription generator, translation, layout edits, theme import and a back-office assistant, metered in credits: 1 credit is US$0.001, with a plan allowance and top-ups at organisation level.
-
10
Data ownership
The catalogue, the orders and the customers are the business; leaving a platform should be an export, not a negotiation.
CrospheraExports are part of the back office, product import and export go through files, and your integrators connect with your own keys and event notifications.
The same points, on other platforms.
Only what their own public pages say, cited by number and linked under the table. A dash means we did not read that point on that platform’s pages, not that it lacks it; a point we read nowhere is named under the table. Check the pages yourself; they move.
| Point | Shopify | Wix | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02 Languages, including right-to-left | — | Right-to-left is set per language through Wix Multilingual; text direction, menus and images are then adjusted by hand per element.3 | — |
| 04 Payment providers, and who takes a cut | A sale through a payment provider other than Shopify Payments carries Shopify’s own fee on top of the processor’s: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced.1 | — | — |
| 05 Carriers, labels and pickup points | Carrier-calculated rates at checkout are part of the Advanced and Plus plans; a Grow store adds them for a monthly fee or by paying yearly.2 | — | — |
Not read on any of the three platforms’ pages, so not in the table: 01 Markets and currencies · 03 Taxes and invoices · 06 Selling on marketplaces · 07 The counter and the warehouse, one stock · 08 Themes and customisation · 09 AI tools, and what they cost · 10 Data ownership.
Why these ten points and not a feature list?
Is the comparison fair to the other platforms?
Can I move my shop from one of them?
Put the ten points to the platform yourself.
Open a shop and check each point in the back office; the packages table says what each plan includes.