There is life beyond Shopify — the underdogs of e-commerce frameworks

3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 289

News 1. PayPal flirts with Shopware

The 14-year old Germany based e-commerce framework gathered its first (classical, external) fundings round of $100m from PayPal and private equity firm Carlyle. Shopware is in its 6th version and gains momentum. Shopware follows all e-commerce development: open commerce app store, APIs, no lock-in. Opinion: PayPal in Shopware is a sign of the intention of the payment method to integrate vertically into commerce. “The one that owns the payment, owns the commerce”, a quote from a PayPal VP that suits to the invest into Shopware. Now the new “PayPal Checkout” solution is brought onto the Shopware platform.

Shopware, the lab and the future of PayPal?

News 2. Prestashop, the French version

Prestashop has a straightforward model and architecture: freemium model and a non-sophisticated PHP/MySQL/Symphony set-up. It has historically been the leader in France, and also claims 300.000 webshops — mainly in Europe. Prestashop essentials in the new service — online marketing module in Facebook and Google. Opinion: The e-commerce frameworks today are a commodity and key is the integration into other “systems”. This is the angle for Prestashop with deals and integration into payment terminal (and more) Sumup and Google Search integrations.

Prestashop has grown like other frameworks in pandemics — 2022 and 2023 will show how this regional champion develops.

News 3. BigCommerce as alternative to Shopify

BigCommerce was also founded in 2008–2009 and positions itself today as THE alternative to the world leader Shopify. BigCommerce is a mature solution, on the NASDAQ. Growth leverage is above all upsell and cross-sell for present customers. This is visible in the new multi-store solution where merchants can easily add new shops and brands — on the same commerce and marketing system. Opinion: Upselling means a large partner network — BigCommerce displays 90 preferred and “elite” partners, high-profiled. And altogether more than 600 apps on the framework. Key for success of BigCommerce is pricing: under the Shopify price lines.

Austin (TX) is the home of BigCommerce, the new place for a lively digital ecosystem.

Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon Innovations (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting innovations in main tech geographies, AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with an opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch.

Come back next Monday and share your opinion.