Guides / Ecommerce Platforms & Infrastructure
Decision guide
Ecommerce Platforms & Infrastructure
Selling online means running more than a website: a catalogue, a checkout, payments, tax and shipping rules, and the operations behind them. This guide explains how the main platform models divide that work, how to weigh them against your business, and what you depend on once you are live.
- Five situationsEach with a way into Solutions
- About 11 minutes12 sections, jump to any
- Informational guideNot personalised advice
The short answer
Choose the platform model by who will run the operations behind the shop, then check it against the business-fit table. Start with the closest match.
A small or growing catalogue, a quick launch and limited technical staff
A hosted ecommerce platform usually fits: the vendor runs the storefront, checkout and security. Check fees, plan limits and export options.
Custom logic, unusual products, deep integrations or content-led commerce, with developers available
A self-hosted or composable stack gives control, and hands you the operations: hosting, updates, security, performance and payment-security responsibilities.
Selling mainly through marketplaces
Treat marketplaces as a sales channel with their own fees and rules, and decide whether to build your own store to own the customer relationship.
Digital products, courses or memberships
Look for delivery, access control, licensing and refund handling, not just a cart.
Selling in person as well as online
Decide early how stock, orders and customers sync between the shop and the till.
The commerce stack: who runs what
An online shop is a stack of jobs. Each platform model runs some of them for you and leaves the rest to you. Read across a row to see the difference, and use the last column as your questions for any vendor or agency.
Show the table
| Layer | What it does | Hosted platform | Self-hosted or composable | Ask before you commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storefront and catalogue | Product pages, categories, search and content | Vendor-managed templates and editor; limits on custom structure | Full control; you build or configure it and maintain it | Can the product data model handle the variants, bundles or subscriptions you need? |
| Cart and checkout | Basket, shipping and tax at checkout, order placement | The vendor’s checkout, often with limited customisation | Your checkout; customisable, and yours to secure and keep fast | Which checkout steps can you change, and who supports it when it fails? |
| Payments | Passing card and wallet payments to a processor | Choose from supported providers; integration is built in | Any provider you can integrate; you build and maintain it | Which providers work in your countries, who handles card data, and what are the total fees? |
| Tax, shipping and compliance | Rates, rules, labels, invoices and consumer notices | Built-in options plus apps; coverage varies by country | Plugins or custom integrations; you verify the rules | Do the tools cover every market you sell to? |
| Orders, inventory and fulfilment | Stock, order routing, returns and warehouse links | Native features plus apps | Whatever you integrate or build | Where is inventory the source of truth, and how do returns flow? |
| Hosting, performance and security | Servers, HTTPS, patching, backups and caching | Included and vendor-managed | Yours; see the Hosting guide | Who is on call at peak, and what limits apply during a surge? |
| Integrations and data | Accounting, CRM, email, analytics and reporting | App marketplace and APIs; limits vary | APIs and custom integrations | Can you export orders, customers and products in a usable format? |
Where this shows up in Solutions
Business-fit criteria
Eight questions about your business, and which way each one leans. If most answers land on one side, that model is your starting point. If they split, look for a hosted platform that can be extended, or a managed self-hosted option.
Show the table
| Your situation | Leans hosted | Leans self-hosted or composable |
|---|---|---|
| Technical capacity | Little or none in-house | Developers or a reliable agency on retainer |
| Catalogue and pricing rules | Standard products, variants and discounts | Complex bundles, configurators or business-to-business pricing |
| Speed to launch | Weeks | Months are acceptable |
| Integrations | Mainstream tools that are already supported | Legacy systems or custom workflows |
| Markets and payment methods | Supported countries, currencies and methods | Unusual markets or local payment methods you must integrate |
| Brand and content control | Templates are enough | A bespoke experience is part of the product |
| Cost profile | A predictable subscription plus fees | Higher build cost, more control over running costs |
| Exit needs | Export options are adequate | Owning the code and the data is essential |
Where this shows up in Solutions
Payments: the parts people mix up
A payment gateway is the service that securely passes a card transaction from your checkout to a payment processor and returns the result. The processor routes it through the card networks to the customer’s bank, and the funds settle to your merchant account through an acquiring bank. Many providers bundle these into one product, so you may never see the split. It still matters for fees, approval and where your money sits.
Ask any payment provider:
- What approval does my business type need, and how long does it take?
- Which countries and currencies are supported, and how are conversions charged?
- When are payouts made, and are reserves or holds possible?
- How do disputes and chargebacks work, and what do they cost?
- What is the full fee structure, including refunds?
- How is card data handled, and what does that mean for my security duties?
Card data is governed by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The PCI Security Standards Council’s FAQ on the simplest self-assessment, SAQ A, says merchants whose own pages embed a provider’s payment form, for example in an iframe, must be able to show those pages are not open to script attacks. It says that criterion does not apply to merchants who redirect customers to the provider’s page. It advises checking with your acquirer or payment brand which self-assessment applies to your setup. This page is not compliance advice.
Design for the checkout, not just the catalogue
Baymard Institute’s aggregate of 50 studies, updated in September 2025, puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22%. Many of those shoppers were only browsing, so not all of it is fixable. Among the reasons it lists for those who did intend to buy: extra costs that were too high (40%), delivery that was too slow (20%), not trusting the site with card details (19%), being forced to create an account (18%), a long or complicated checkout (17%) and site errors or crashes (17%).
Turn that into tests you can apply to any platform:
- Can customers check out as guests?
- Is the full cost, including shipping and tax, visible before the final step?
- Are delivery options and dates clear?
- Are the payment methods your customers expect available?
- Does checkout stay fast and stable at peak? Core Web Vitals call for Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less.
- Are trust signals, returns terms and contact details easy to find?
What your shop depends on once it is live
The platform is only one dependency. Each of these can stop sales or create risk, whoever runs the software:
- Payment provider. Approval, continuity, payout timing and dispute handling.
- Shipping and carriers. Rates, labels, tracking and the countries you can serve.
- Tax rules. What applies in each market you sell to, and who calculates and files it.
- Inventory accuracy. One source of truth across channels, and what happens when stock runs out.
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- Customer service and returns. Who answers, how refunds are made and how fast.
- Fraud and chargebacks. Detection, evidence and cost.
- Accounting and reporting. How orders, fees and refunds reach your books.
- Hosting, updates and backups if you self-host. CISA’s small-business guidance suggests three copies of important data on two kinds of storage with one off-site, backed up automatically and tested by restoring. See the Hosting guide.
Marketplaces, digital products and in-person sales
Three variations change the decision.
Marketplaces
A marketplace supplies traffic, checkout and trust, in exchange for fees and rules you do not control.
Suits: testing demand and reaching buyers who already search there
Trade-off: you may not own the customer relationship, pricing freedom or your data. Consider a store of your own alongside it.
Digital products, courses and memberships
Selling access instead of shipped goods changes what the platform must do.
Suits: creators, trainers and software or content businesses
Trade-off: you need secure delivery, access control, licensing and refund rules. Tax treatment can differ from physical goods, so check it for your markets.
In-person sales with an online shop
Shop and till share stock, orders and customer records.
Suits: retailers and venues that sell in both places
Trade-off: decide which system holds inventory, how returns work across both, and how prices and promotions stay consistent.
Working out the real cost per order
Prices and fees change often, so this guide gives no figures. Build your own model from these components:
- Platform. Subscription, plan limits and any per-transaction charge.
- Payments. Percentage and fixed fees, currency conversion, refunds and chargebacks.
- Apps and plugins. Recurring licences for features the core product lacks.
- Running the software. Hosting, security, updates and developer time if you self-host.
- Fulfilment. Packaging, shipping, returns and any warehouse service.
- Marketing and support. Often the largest costs, and separate from the platform.
Model cost per order at a realistic order value and volume, including refunds, for three cases: a slow month, an expected month and a peak. The cheapest platform on a low volume is not always the cheapest at scale.
Changing platforms
Moving a live shop carries revenue risk, so plan it like a launch:
- Export first. Confirm you can get products, customers and order history out, in what format, and what does not carry over.
- Map product and category URLs. Google’s site-move guidance recommends permanent server-side redirects (301 or 308) from old to new URLs, kept for at least a year.
- Test payments, tax, shipping and emails on a staging copy before launch, and remove any noindex or crawl block used during the build.
- Pick a quiet window, pause changes and plan for orders in flight.
- Watch results after launch. Check errors, indexing, conversion and payment success daily at first.
Rules you may need to check
Selling online brings legal duties that depend on where you and your customers are. This is a checklist of questions, not legal advice; take qualified advice for your situation.
- Consumer information, distance-selling, returns and refund rules for each market.
- Tax registration, collection and invoicing.
- Privacy and personal-data rules for customer records and marketing.
- Card-data security requirements through your payment provider.
- Duties if you operate a marketplace for other sellers.
The rules differ by country, and sometimes by state or region. UNCTAD’s Global Cyberlaw Tracker shows whether a country has e-commerce, consumer-protection, privacy and e-transactions legislation, and each country’s government or regulator publishes the current texts. Read the official sources for every market you sell into, and check what applies to your business.
Common mistakes and warning signs
- Choosing on the monthly subscription alone and ignoring payment, app and transaction costs.
- Picking a self-hosted stack without anyone to run it.
- Assuming the platform’s security makes you compliant. Responsibilities are shared, so confirm them.
- No tested export, so leaving costs a rebuild.
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- A checkout that forces an account, hides shipping costs until the end, or is slow at peak.
- No plan for returns, chargebacks and support volume before launch.
- Launching in new markets without checking tax and consumer rules.
- Depending on one payment method or provider with no fallback.
Frequently asked questions
Should I choose a hosted or a self-hosted platform?
It depends on who will run the operations. Use the commerce stack table to see what each model runs for you, and the business-fit table to test it against your situation.
Do I need a separate payment provider?
Many platforms include a default option, and some let you choose. Confirm which providers work in your countries, what they charge and how disputes are handled.
If my platform is PCI compliant, is my shop?
Not automatically. Responsibilities are shared between the platform, your payment provider and you. Ask your provider and acquirer which self-assessment applies. This is not compliance advice.
Marketplace or my own store?
Marketplaces give reach and trust at the cost of fees, rules and less ownership of the customer. Many sellers use both. Decide who owns the customer data and the pricing.
Can I move my shop to another platform later?
Yes, but only as easily as your exports and redirects allow. Test an export before you commit and plan URL redirects for any move.
Should I offer guest checkout?
Where you can. Baymard lists being forced to create an account among the reasons shoppers abandon a purchase, at 18% of those it surveyed who intended to buy.
How much does running an online shop cost?
It varies with the platform model, payment fees, apps, fulfilment and support. This guide gives no prices because they change; use the cost components above to build your own estimate.
How often is this guide updated?
We review it when material information changes, and the review date is shown at the top. See How We Evaluate.
Ready to compare available providers?
This guide explains the decision. When you are ready to shortlist by business need, see Ecommerce Platform Solutions.
Sources and method
Sources and how we work (7 sources)
This guide is based on public documentation, standards and published sources, and on general industry practice. Provider claims, public documentation, published sources and our own observations are kept distinct, and where we have directly tested or used something, we say so explicitly. This guide names no products as recommendations. Figures that change are dated where they appear. Sources used:
- Baymard Institute: Cart abandonment rate statistics Average rate and reasons, updated 22 September 2025.
- PCI Security Standards Council: FAQ on SAQ A eligibility for e-commerce merchants Embedded payment pages, redirects and script protection.
- Wikipedia: Payment gateway Background definition of gateways, processors and acquiring banks.
- web.dev: Web Vitals Core Web Vitals metrics and thresholds.
- Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes Redirects, testing and monitoring.
- CISA: Back up business data The 3-2-1 approach and restore testing.
- UNCTAD: Global Cyberlaw Tracker Country-by-country status of e-commerce, consumer-protection, privacy and e-transactions legislation.
Read How We Evaluate for our criteria and the limits of what we claim. If you spot an error or an omission, please email info@kybervega.com.