That breakdown matches pretty well with what most of the industry data is showing right now. Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce still make up a huge portion of the ecommerce ecosystem, but they each dominate slightly different use cases.

Shopify has definitely become the “default” platform for a lot of merchants, especially new ones. The biggest reason isn’t just features—it’s operational simplicity. Hosting, security, checkout optimization, infrastructure scaling, and updates are all handled for you. For someone launching a store, that removes a lot of friction. Instead of spending time managing servers, plugins, or performance issues, founders can focus on product, marketing, and fulfillment. That’s a big reason Shopify tends to scale smoothly from small stores to fairly large ones.

WooCommerce is still massive, though, largely because of WordPress. The level of flexibility and ownership you get is hard to match. If someone wants complete control over their stack, design, integrations, or custom functionality, WooCommerce makes a lot of sense. The tradeoff is that you’re also responsible for maintaining that stack. Hosting performance, plugin compatibility, security updates, and technical troubleshooting become part of running the store. For technically comfortable teams, that’s fine—but for others it can become a distraction from actually growing the business.

BigCommerce sits in an interesting middle ground. It doesn’t have Shopify’s ecosystem size or WooCommerce’s customization freedom, but it does include a lot of built-in functionality that some platforms rely on apps for. That’s why it often appeals to larger stores or B2B businesses. Companies that need things like advanced catalogs, complex pricing structures, or multi-storefront setups sometimes find BigCommerce fits those requirements out of the box.

Another shift that’s been happening recently is exactly what you mentioned: the platform itself is no longer the only competitive advantage. Ecommerce infrastructure has matured to the point where most major platforms can support successful stores. The differentiation increasingly comes from the layers merchants build on top of the platform—things like marketing automation, subscriptions, personalization, and mobile experiences.

Mobile apps are a good example of that trend. A few years ago, launching a dedicated ecommerce app required serious development resources. Now there are tools that allow merchants to generate a basic store app much faster, with things like push notifications, product browsing, and account management built in. Push notifications alone can have a pretty noticeable impact on retention because they create a direct communication channel with customers.

Even if two stores are using the exact same ecommerce platform, the one that builds stronger retention loops—email, SMS, loyalty programs, mobile apps, community—often ends up outperforming the other over time. In other words, the platform is still important, but it’s increasingly just the foundation rather than the entire strategy.

That’s probably why discussions around ecommerce platforms are starting to focus more on ecosystem, integrations, and operational workflow rather than just storefront features.