8 popular e-commerce platforms in Europe

Almost three-quarters of European Internet users made an online purchase in 2020, a recent Eurostat survey showed. Of course, we already knew that online shopping is hugely popular in Europe. But on which e-commerce platforms do all these sales actually take place, and to what extent does this vary from country to country?

Using a market analysis tool we looked at 8 popular e-commerce platforms in Europe. We selected seven countries with an active e-commerce sector and looked at which platforms were chosen most often in these countries.

In this article you can read all about the 8 largest e-commerce platforms in Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The big players

According to G2 there are hundreds of e-commerce platforms available. Some are better known than others and each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages.

As you can see in the graph above, WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento are the most popular worldwide. Is this also the case in Europe? This appears to differ per country.

Popular e-commerce platforms in Europe

Below we list the eight popular e-commerce platforms by country.

Belgium

Belgium is one of the smaller players in the field of e-commerce in Europe. In ecommerceDB 's list of the largest e-commerce markets worldwide, Belgium is at number 24. It is clear that WooCommerce is the most popular platform in Belgium, followed by the French PrestaShop.

Germany

In Germany, WooCommerce is clearly the largest, although German Shopware is a close second in terms of numbers. The e-commerce market in Germany is much larger than that of Belgium. According to ecommerceDB, Germany is number five in the global list.

France

Of our surveyed countries, France is one of the two countries where WooCommerce is not the most popular platform. PrestaShop, a French company, is the obvious winner here. The ecommerce market of France is just a bit smaller than that of Germany. In the previously mentioned list of ecommerceDB, France is at number seven, which is just slightly below Germany.

Italy

Italy is known for its big luxury brands like Armani, Gucci and Prada. However, the size of the e-commerce market in this country is quite average. In the list of ecommerceDB Italy is at number 15, although Channable sees Italy as one of the countries with the fastest growing e-commerce market in Europe.

Netherlands

Just below Italy in the list of ecommerceDB is the Netherlands, at number 16. More returns take place in our country than in any other European country. Here, WooCommerse is also by far the post popular platform, well ahead of its number two in the list: Shopify.

Spain

PrestaShop, the French company that is doing well in the south of Europe, Is gaining terrain over WooCommerce in Spain. The e-commerce market in Spain is seen as average compared to the rest of Europe, compared to the rest of Europe. In the list of ecommerceDB, Spain is at number 13.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has a huge amount of online sales. This country has the highest score of all the countries we researched and is number four on the ecommerceDB list. Also in this country, WooCommerce is used the most here, with almost three times as many users as the runner-up: Shopify. It is worth mentioning that BigCommerce, a major US e-commerce platform, is also doing well in the UK.

BuildWith measures how many online stores use the above platforms. This does not take into account whether a shop is actively selling or not. The above figures may therefore differ from reality.

Some findings

While WooCommerce, Shopify and PrestaShop are clearly the most used in the above countries, we also came across several differences between the countries. Prestashop is doing well in the south of Europe, Shopware is mostly used in Germany and Lightspeed is popular in the Netherlands.

It is striking that WooCommerce is very high on the list of all countries. WooCommerce is a plugin of WordPress, the most used CMS system in the world. This is probably an important reason for the enormous success of the platform. In addition, WooCommerce is a very user-friendly and flexible e-commerce solution.

Some examples of online stores built with WooCommerce are Weber and AeroPress.

As mentioned earlier, PrestaShop is widely used in France and Spain. PrestaShop is a French company that is clearly popular in its own country. The widely used platform is open-source and is known for being flexible and user-friendly.

Currently PrestaShop is used by Adeko, Huygens and Housepet, among others.

Magento is in the top four in all of the above countries. The platform is known as relatively complex but very complete in its offering, and is mainly used by larger online stores.

Magento is used by Land Rover and Paul Smith, among others.

Shopify is also in the top four in all of our surveyed countries. Shopify is extremely user friendly and is mainly used by smaller online stores. In recent years Shopify has also convinced larger brands. For example, the platform is used by Red Bull and New York Times.

One platform that is often compared to Shopify is BigCommerce. BigCommerce is an accessible platform used by both large and small brands. Opinions differ on whether BigCommerce is better than Shopify. On the one hand, BigCommerce seems to offer a slightly more elaborate functionality than Shopify. Shopify, on the other hand, scores a little better in terms of usability.

Shopify and BigCommerce both offer a dedicated platform for enterprises: BigCommerce Enterprise and Shopify Plus.

Two well-known online stores on BigCommerce's platform are Pandora and Skullcandy.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud also focuses primarily on enterprises with larger volumes. This platform is used by Godiva and Versace, among others.

Two smaller platforms that are still doing well in all of the above countries are Lightspeed and Shopware. The Dutch platform SEOshop was acquired by Lightspeed in 2015 and is especially popular in the Netherlands. Shopware is doing especially well in Germany. This German platform is used almost as often as WooCommerce in its own country.

The Dutch company Mipacha uses Lightspeed, and the website of RAWBITE is built on Shopware.

Returnista integrations

An e-commerce platform usually does not come alone. There are numerous external apps that can be linked to the platform to make its operation even better and more complete.

Returnista has convenient partnerships with several large e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify and Lightspeed. This makes the connection between the platform and Returnista easy to set up and enables online stores to optimize their returns process.

Interested in the integrations Returnista currently offers? View the full list here.

Do you also want to improve your returns process?

We are happy to help you with this. Request a demo now and we will show you what you can expect from our software.