Best eCommerce tools for small stores
A small store needs tools that earn their keep from day one, with a free plan or a low entry price and setup you can do yourself in an afternoon.
Omnisend and Brevo are the obvious starting points for marketing; Shippo covers shipping with a usable free tier; Katana’s free plan handles inventory for makers up to 30 SKUs.
An affordable all-in-one email, SMS and marketing-automation platform with a built-in CRM, popular with small stores for its low entry cost and unlimited contact storage.
Our top pick for eCommerce marketing: email, SMS and web push unified in one platform, with prebuilt store automations that get revenue-driving flows live faster than anything else — and a genuinely usable free tier.
A multi-carrier shipping platform and API that lets stores compare rates, buy discounted labels and automate fulfilment across dozens of carriers from one dashboard or integration.
A multi-carrier shipping and label-management platform that imports orders from many channels, compares carrier rates and batch-prints labels from one dashboard.
A marketing-automation and email platform with a built-in CRM, known for deep automation workflows and eCommerce 'Deep Data' integrations for growing SMB and mid-market teams.
A cloud inventory and order-management platform for product sellers needing multi-channel stock sync, accounting connectors and light manufacturing/WMS — with transparent published pricing.
The eCommerce marketing platform built around customer data — email, SMS and predictive analytics with the deepest Shopify integration in the category. The pick when segmentation depth is the whole point.
An eCommerce-focused email and SMS automation platform that ties campaigns to store and purchase data, aimed at growing online retailers.
A tech-enabled managed 3PL that handles warehousing and pick/pack/ship across a distributed fulfilment network, with a unified dashboard and native eCommerce/marketplace integrations.
Intuit-owned all-in-one email marketing and automation for small-to-mid businesses, with a generous free tier and broad — if shallower — eCommerce integrations.
A demand-forecasting and replenishment tool (by Sage) that turns multi-channel sales history into purchase orders and stock recommendations — it sits on top of your platform and ERP rather than replacing them.
A multichannel order and inventory management platform that centralises selling across marketplaces and storefronts from one system — for retailers scaling beyond spreadsheets up through enterprise.
A cloud manufacturing ERP and inventory platform for makers and small-to-mid manufacturers — syncing production, stock and sales orders with direct connections to major eCommerce channels.
Brightpearl by Sage is a retail-operations platform — inventory, orders, fulfilment, accounting — built for high-volume omnichannel retailers and wholesalers.