Aero Commerce
Every platform is the best one,
according to its own website.
So here is Aero next to Magento, BigCommerce and Shopify, including the places where Aero is the harder choice rather than the easy one.
Side by side
Four platforms, four different jobs
None of these is bad. They are aimed at different people, and the trick is knowing which one you are.
| Feature | Aero Commerce | Magento | BigCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted | Self-hosted | Hosted, cloud-based | Hosted, cloud-based |
| Learning curve | More technically demanding, but the core functionality gives you a strong foundation to build on. | Open source, with little substantial technical support behind it. The curve can be steep. | Simple to set up. Guided questions walk you through to a dashboard where you customise the store. | A simple set-up process. You can be selling quickly. |
| Scalability | One high-performance version, suited to scaling to any size of business. | The community edition is the popular one; Magento Commerce is the scalable one. | Functionality depends what you pay: Standard, Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans. | Additional costs as you scale. |
| Ease of use | Better suited to agencies and established retailers than to individual users. | Robust and adaptable, but a challenge without technical expertise. | Suits beginners, with room for experienced users and bigger retail ambitions. | An effective launching pad, though expansion can bring extra expense. |
Our reasoning
Why we chose Aero as our commerce partner
We build on WooCommerce and on our own Velocity platform too, so this is not loyalty. It is what we would want if the shop were ours.
- Built on a modern technology stack for rock-solid performance
- Lightning fast and lean, whatever the catalogue size or traffic volume
- Highly optimised, which keeps infrastructure costs low
- Can be built bespoke to a retailer's specific needs
- Integrates with third-party solutions as needed
- Built for scalability, so store performance is never compromised
- Best practice built in — the essential features are there out of the box
- Customisable and extendable to suit every user
- Advanced SEO and marketing features
- Multi-tier customer support service
The honest bit
When Aero is the wrong answer
If you want to build and run the shop yourself on a small budget, Shopify or BigCommerce will get you trading faster, and we will say so. Aero earns its keep when the catalogue is large, the traffic is real, or the shop has to do something the off-the-shelf platforms will not. That is the point at which the cheap option starts costing money.
Not sure which platform you need?
Tell us the size of the catalogue and what the shop has to do. We will point you at the right one.