Comparing Virto Commerce: Identify Top 9 eCommerce Alternatives in 2024

B2B ecommerce businesses that wish to build their own digital empires have to track the trends, needs, and opportunities of the market. And the most important modern market demand is to own a robust but flexible B2B ecommerce platform that can enable businesses to create whatever they need, whether they need it now or will potentially need it in the future.

An ideal B2B ecommerce platform distinguishes itself through cost-efficiency, rapid deployment capabilities, user-friendly interfaces, and exceptional efficacy. Let’s dive deeper into understanding Virto and see how it differs from multiple Virto Commerce competitors that serve all kinds of businesses — from SMBs to enterprises- why Virto offers worthy pricing models and what makes it an actual market leader.

1. UNMASKING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OF VIRTO COMMERCE
2. VIRTO VS. COMPETITORS
3. SOLUTIONS FOR THE LIMITED BUDGET
4. MORE AMBITIONS TO FOLLOW
5. HUGE OOTB PLAYERS WITH LIMITED INNOVATION CAPABILITIES
6. CONCLUSION

Before starting a new software project, even the best business people seek insights from industry experts who know the market. Virto is lucky to be founded by two deep experts, both in ecommerce and B2B software. Almost 15 years ago, B2B software expert Alexander Siniouguine, with a proven track record of developing a successful B2B ecommerce platform, joined forces with Evgeny Grigul, a multiple venture B2B ecommerce entrepreneur, to create a market-changing software solution able to cover the needs of any B2B ecommerce business. The combined expertise of Virto founders allowed them to clearly see the limitations and capabilities of the B2B ecommerce platform market, correctly assess the future of the B2B ecommerce market, and empower Virto with everything B2B business needs.

From the very start, the platform was tailored to serve enterprise-level businesses, and after a few tries, Virto gained its first huge customers like Heineken and Bosch Thermotechnik. As the years passed, these customers and other businesses from different industries, from FMCG to aircraft manufacturing and governmental suppliers, have successfully built and developed their B2B ecommerce projects and still keep working with the Virto team.

With all the customer success stories and huge implementations all around the world, from Singapore to the USA, Virto has gained global recognition among acknowledged analysts and experts: in 2021 and 2022, it was recognized as an Honorable Mention in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce. In 2023, the solution earned a SOC2 Type II Certification, was included in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide B2B Digital Commerce Applications for Midmarket Growth 2023–2024 Vendor Assessment report as a Major Player and IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise B2B Digital Commerce Applications 2023–2024 Vendor Assessment report as a Contender, was marked in the marketplace comparison report Q4 2023 from MCFADYEN, and more. With 100+ experts working daily on platform quality, Virto Commerce offers an industry-agnostic and global approach that any B2B ecommerce company can efficiently use.

Now that we clearly know the way Virto came through, it’s time to find out what the key features of Virto Commerce are that differentiate it from its competitors. We will not mention all the features of the platform in one short blog post, but we will cover the most important ideas of Virto’s core vision and capabilities.

Let’s start with the unique Virto Atomic Architecture™. Virto Commerce developers realized the need of the market to embrace modern B2B e-commerce approaches that can provide great time-to-value; this is why unique Virto Atomic Architecture™ was created. The architecture stands on some key pillars: modularity, API-first approach, cloud-nativeness, headless architecture, and more. Let’s take a closer look. Modularity means that every group of capabilities or features is wrapped in separate single-responsibility modules, that can be further renovated, created or exchanged.

API-first approach. This means that every piece of data and every function of a system is available through API. This is why Virto Commerce can seamlessly exchange any data and capabilities with literally any software.

Cloud-native architecture. We have mentioned before that cloud-native and cloud-based solutions are not the same. Cloud-based solutions are some software that were built before the cloud architecture became popular, and they CAN work in the cloud, with some specific configurations done. Virto Commerce was BORN to work in the cloud from the very beginning, and it easily scales with no losses in the cloud. Virto is capable of sudden expansion as the load grows, unlimited and fast.

Headless approach. The headless approach allows to work in one core backend with multiple separate frontends seamlessly and efficiently. The business API approach helps to connect ecommerce modules to any frontend and makes the process of building frontends easier.

Extensibility framework. Besides these four main principles, Virto Commerce’s fifth important capability is its unique extensibility framework: Virto Commerce is easily upgradable and capable of correct and continuous updates even when the solution was customized or extended with other modules. All the vendor updates will be successfully installed with minimum effort and will not create any system errors.

Virto offers market-verified Microsoft stack, .NET capabilities and more: the main goal of the Virto team is to ensure that the solution is aways based on proven widespread technologies and best practices.

With all that said, Virto Commerce is the perfect solution for everyone with ever-growing digital ambitions: mostly oriented to enterprises, it can actually enable any ecommerce to exponentially grow, whatever industry the company works in, as the main goal of Virto Commerce is support continuous innovation and keep the TCO stable and predictable in a long run, enabling companies to reach the highest time-to-value.

As a modular platform, the Virto team truly believes that the B2B ecommerce platform shouldn’t be just “a pack of features” as Virto Commerce alternatives and ancient platforms like SAP and Oracle still claim. As the business develops, they will need more and more unique capabilities, but sometimes there is no chance that any vendor will deliver it out-of-the-box.

This is why besides core ecommerce features like order management, B2B account management, and more, Virto Commerce offers the most essential capabilities that enable you to easily and quickly customize and upgrade any feature to provide the needed functions.

Among everything that you can build with Virto, here are the most popular commerce model types to adopt: 

1. B2B Portals. Build your own business portals for different types of B2B customers: distributors, retailers and more. Whatever you need, you can build your own system of internal cooperation, with role-based access, deep personalization, individual pricing and more, besides getting an omnichannel experience from you.
2. Another model is building your own B2B digital marketplaces that would allow your suppliers to sell their goods to your clients and realize any business model with clear control. Marketplaces come with any language, any currency, in any region and all this with the same backend.
3. eProcurement and any other solution that digital commerce might ever need. Each of these solutions allows for streamlining your ecommerce and makes communication with partners more cost-efficient.

And one more important thing: at every stage of communication, Virto supports its clients and provides them with the capability to participate in a solutions development roadmap. From the initial demo based on your real needs, to the close communication with Virto customers. Though, as we said, the team is always there to help whatever the question is, technical support or Virto engineers will help in no time. The company's main goal is to maximize the value for our clients, which is why we choose customer success over licenses sold: help our clients grow their competitions and deal with every stage of the software use.

Here we came to the part of Virto Commerce alternatives. Though we believe Virto Commerce fits every business, not only enterprises, but we can also agree that there are some situations when it’s too early for Virto. Let’s see when it makes sense to look at other solutions.

When choosing the solution, people often ask which Virto Commerce competitor is the best for small and medium businesses. This question makes sense as Virto Commerce offers high-quality services for businesses with high ecommerce ambitions that need innovations, and as it is not an OOTB solution, building needed features will require certain budget.

However, there are still businesses that cannot afford huge innovation capabilities or haven’t realized their ambitions scale yet, for example, startups (unless they are backed by another stable ambitious project with a budget). Such businesses that only start their B2B ecommerce journey, have limited budget, and do not need innovation but need some stable simple features, can choose some of the simplest Virto Competitors (until they start growing up and realizing they need more). We will start from the most affordable competitors and move on to the biggest ones that offer huge packs of features (but still not enough flexibility to build your own unique solution).

• About: Wix is a highly user-friendly, cloud-based low-code/no-code website development constructor with limited flexibility and poor analysis capabilities.
• Pricing: A freemium model, a basic free version with advanced features available through various paid subscription plans.
• Target Businesses: Wix is for small and micro businesses. It is particularly favored by businesses looking for an easy-to-use platform.

• About: Open-source software with built-in marketing tools built on Microsoft .NET.
• Pricing: Free to use open code, customization-based cost.
• Target Businesses: Small to medium, mostly simple retail and services.

• About: An ecommerce platform for building online webshops.
• Pricing: Tiered pricing plans ranging from basic to advanced, including an enterprise solution, Shopify Plus, with limited enterprise capabilities.
• Target Businesses: Suitable for a variety of business sizes, especially popular with retail startups and SMBs.

The next level are the companies that need some innovation and want to try something more, though the budget is still limited. These solutions cannot offer all opportunities to grow, they can be laggy and slow, but still can allow businesses to see where to move:

• About:  It is also headless and API-first solution that positions themselves as a B2B ecommerce platform. However, the solution offers poor growth capabilities and fits small to medium businesses. 
• Pricing: Subscription-based.
• Target Businesses: Small to medium, any industry. Works with B2B, good for B2C.

• About:  A multi-store ecommerce platform designed for customization but with limited access to code. 
• Pricing: Custom pricing based on specific business requirements and scale.
• Target Businesses: Ideal for medium businesses and enterprises with a small pace of innovations. Read more at www.virtocommerce.com/blog/znode-alternatives

• About:  An open-source B2B ecommerce platform targeted at B2B, B2C and B2X, offering ecommerce solution together with CRM.
• Pricing: Offers a community edition for free and an enterprise edition with custom pricing.
• Target Businesses: Geared towards B2B companies, particularly suitable for mid-sized to large enterprises.

And the next question companies ask is which Virto Commerce competitor is best for enterprises. This is a very tricky question that often leads to the market giants that offer OOTB enterprise solutions. Unfortunately, most of them are too rigid: they offer multiple ready features (often they come with plugins), that cannot be changed either by businesses or by the vendor (it would take an eternity to wait). These features are not tailored to develop unique CX and unique features in a long run as any change is hardly accessible. Let’s look at some of them:

• About:  A robust, open-source ecommerce platform known for many OOTB features. Most of them are barely customizable and come with plugins created by various developers. With all the plugins installed, the system quickly becomes hard to maintain.
• Pricing: Offers a free community version and a paid enterprise edition that can become cost prohibitive as the volumes grow. Pricing is based on business size and requirements. 
• Target Businesses: Favored by the biggest of SMBs and medium businesses. It is good for customizing small tasks but can fail building big CX.

• About:  A cloud-based OOTB solution created in the beginning of XXI. Acquired by SAP and customized to working in the cloud, the solution offers rigid non-flexible architecture, though full marketplace of ready features.
• Pricing: Custom pricing based on the scale and specific needs of the business. Market users claim that SAP is one of the most cost-prohibitive solutions.
• Target Businesses:  Large enterprises and multinational corporations with no digital ambitions, huge budget and need for stability.

• About:  A cloud-based, ecommerce platform integrated with Salesforce CRM. Very limited in terms of extensibility OOTB solution. Acquired by Salesforce and integrated into the Salesforce ecosystem.
• Pricing: Custom pricing based on the specific requirements and scale of the business.
• Target Businesses: Medium to large enterprises seeking an ecommerce solution with strong CRM integration (inside of the same ecosystem).

Here are even more competitors in this field, all are well-known companies that are compared to Virto. Though these solutions can be good for some goals, and can cover some needs, some of them are not actually platforms: they are tools for exact tasks. However, you can add them to Virto. We will write about them later.

When choosing the B2B ecommerce platform, it is important to understand where you are going. Choosing the most popular names or purchasing something that is “well-known” is bad practice. What you have to know first is what your competitors are and what they are doing: will they disrupt you soon? The second question (related to the previous one) is: do you need innovation? Spoiler: you do, if you are at risk of a disruption. And the last one is understanding that the growth is not linear: while you don’t think your business will skyrocket in five years, it might happen faster. And in order not to lose your chance, you had better have a solid, modern modular platform at hand. With Virto Atomic Architecture™, the platform stands out as a unique provider of B2B ecommerce capabilities. And if you are still unsure, see what our customers have achieved here. And one more option available to all: tell us your challenges, and we will show you how easily Virto can beat them at the demo session.