In 1994, a Sting CD (Ten Summoner’s Tales) became the first item sold online via an encrypted credit card transaction. Since then, online shopping has exploded in scope. In 2024, global ecommerce sales generated $7 trillion, accounting for more than 17% of total worldwide sales.
With ecommerce sales projected to top $10.4 trillion by 2028, there’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs to join a growing industry, and plenty of places to set up shop. Learn about the companies that are leading ecommerce and why they might be the right place to sell your products.
10 top ecommerce companies
1. Shopify
Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform, enabling sellers to start, grow, manage, and scale their shops online and in person. It can support small- and medium-sized shops as well as enterprise-scale businesses. Merchants like Allbirds, Silk Laundry, and Quad Lock have found success on Shopify.
Shopify’s website builder features customizable templates and drag-and-drop tools that enable entrepreneurs to create an online shop quickly and without coding skills. Shopify’s built-in AI tool, Shopify Magic, can help with content creation by writing product descriptions, changing image backgrounds, and optimizing your marketing emails.
When you’re up and running, the Shopify point-of-sale system lets you sell anywhere and sync inventory across your digital and physical storefronts. With embedded financial services tools, you can easily spend, save, transfer, receive, and earn money.
To help you scale, Shopify also integrates with more than 8,000 apps, including Marketplace Connect, which lets sellers sell online across a variety of marketplaces.
Shopify plans start at $29 a month (billed annually), and there are no third-party transaction fees when merchants use Shopify Payments.
2. Amazon
Amazon is a global technology company that hosts the world’s largest ecommerce marketplace. In 2024, its total revenue was $638 billion. Amazon sells products directly to consumers, but it also acts as a platform for third-party vendors. About 60% of sales on Amazon come from independent sellers.
From a consumer’s perspective, there’s not much difference between a product sold by Amazon or a third party. Behind the scenes, there are three ways vendors can sell on Amazon: Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) products are shipped by Amazon from their warehouses, Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) orders are shipped by vendors themselves, and Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP) for Prime Sellers who choose to outsource fulfillment or fill orders themselves.
Amazon has two plans for sellers: the Individual plan charges 99¢ per listed item, and the Professional tier, at $39.99 a month plus referral fees, which start at 8% of the item price. Both plans support FBA and FBM.
Shopify Marketplace Connect allows you to connect your Shopify and Amazon stores and manage both platforms simultaneously from one central location.
3. eBay
eBay is a US multinational ecommerce corporation that facilitates consumer-to-consumer sales on a best-offer basis, and as traditional priced-as-is sales. eBay’s annual net revenue was about $10.3 billion in 2024.
The platform allows sellers to list a certain number of items per month with no listing fees; after that, fees apply. Additionally, eBay charges sellers a final value fee after a purchase, which is a percentage of the sale price.
eBay is free to use, but power users might consider opening an eBay Store ($4.95 per month billed annually), which includes 250 listings.
Through Shopify Marketplace Connect, you can integrate your eBay and Shopify accounts and sync inventory and sales in real time, consolidate and manage inventory across both shops, and automate and bulk import products to save time.
4. Etsy
Etsy is a US-based ecommerce marketplace specializing in handmade and vintage products, including jewelry, clothing, home décor, furniture, craft supplies, and tools. The “global marketplace for unique and creative goods” reported revenue of $2.8 billion in 2024.
Etsy charges vendors 20¢ per listed item, plus a 6.5% transaction fee per sale. Since 2024, there’s also a $15 nonrefundable set-up fee for new stores. For some merchants, selling on Etsy is worth it for the exposure to its over 95 million active buyers. Unlike selling from your own online store, selling on marketplaces like Etsy means you won’t get access to valuable customer data.
Shopify Marketplace Connect makes it easy to sell on both Etsy and Shopify, so you can get the best of both worlds.
5. Mercado Libre
Mercado Libre is the No. 1 ecommerce marketplace in Latin America. With 65 million buyers as of April 2025, it’s also one of the largest ecommerce platforms in the world.
While only buyers in Latin America can shop on Mercado Libre, global entrepreneurs can access the marketplace, selling to buyers in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico from one account.
Listing products on Mercado Libre is free, but there are two types of fees: mandatory (selling and shipping fees) and non-mandatory (long-term storage and pickup fees, which depend on how you want to handle them). Selling fees, minimum listing price, and additional per-unit fees depend on where you sell your product. For example, the minimum listing price is $9 in Brazil and $12 in Mexico.
Shopify merchants can integrate their Mercado Libre listings with their Shopify store using a third-party app like Astroselling.
6. Meta
Meta is the parent company of some of the most popular social media platforms in the world: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. If you want to sell on social media, you’re probably interested in at least one Meta platform.
There are several ways to sell on Facebook, including Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Shop, and buy and sell groups. Facebook Marketplace allows individual sellers to list items for local pickup or shipping throughout the United States. Buyers can pay directly on Facebook Marketplace. For each online sale, the platform deducts a 10% selling fee.
Shopify merchants can connect their stores to Facebook and Instagram for free with the Facebook & Instagram app. That way, merchants sell from one inventory while increasing reach with shoppable social content on popular platforms.
7. Rakuten Ichiba
Launched in 1997, Rakuten Ichiba is one of the leading ecommerce platforms in Japan. As of the end of 2024, Rakuten boasts more than 140 million members.
Rakuten doesn’t sell its own products. Instead, it connects buyers and sellers, enabling customers to go from shop to shop without leaving the platform. Sellers from select countries like the US, Canada, Taiwan, France, and South Korea can open shops on Rakuten.
After you apply to open a shop, an onboarding consultant will help you submit your materials before Rakuten screens your store. With the Rakuten Shopify app, merchants can seamlessly integrate their listings across both platforms.
8. Walmart
Walmart is a US multinational retail company that operates a chain of big-box stores, as well as a major ecommerce website of the same name. The company, a household name in the US since the 1960s, is one of the world’s largest retail corporations. It has stores in all 50 states and a significant presence (both physical and digital) in Canada and Mexico as well. Walmart’s revenue in 2024 was $648 billion, and Walmart.com had nearly 500 million visits in December 2023.
Walmart has leveraged its brick-and-mortar footprint toward a successful ecommerce model by using existing stores as warehouses for online orders. Customers can buy items off the store shelf through Walmart.com, as opposed to off the shelf of a single warehouse hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Walmart launched a marketplace for third-party sellers in 2009. Walmart Marketplace charges sellers a fee that ranges from 6% to 20%. Beyond that, there’s no startup or monthly subscription fee. Shopify merchants can integrate their Shopify store with Walmart Marketplace via Shopify Marketplace Connect to expand reach while still managing all transactions from Shopify.
9. Target
Target is a US big-box department store, the second-largest retailer in this category behind Walmart. It operates more than 1,900 stores throughout the country and has an extensive ecommerce footprint alongside its brick-and-mortar operations.
Like Walmart, Target sells a wide range of consumer goods, from fashion items and home décor to electronics and groceries. Also like Walmart, Target uses its brick-and-mortar stores as alternative warehousing for online orders shipped around the country. Target’s US revenue was about $106 billion in 2024.
Target’s third-party marketplace, Target Plus, is invite-only. In 2024, Target teamed up with Shopify to bring a curated selection of merchants onto the marketplace and its stores. Shopify merchants can apply to Target Plus via Marketplace Connect.
10. Alibaba
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is a Chinese multinational technology company offering services in ecommerce, internet, and technological development. Founded in 1999 in Hangzhou, the company provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business sales services and product search engines.
AliExpress is Alibaba’s consumer site, functioning as a one-stop ecommerce retailer offering an expansive range of products. The Alibaba site is a business-to-business (B2B) site selling wholesale goods. Alibaba Group’s revenue for 2024 was about $130.35 billion. AliExpress has more than 431 million monthly visits.
AliExpress operates in over 200 countries and regions, including the United States, South Korea, Brazil, and France. There is no fee to open your store, but a 5% to 8% commission fee on every product sold.
Shopify merchants who want to sell on Alibaba or AliExpress can use an app like Syncee to use either platform for dropshipping.
How to choose the best ecommerce platform
If you’re considering adding ecommerce functionality to your small business or starting a digitally native ecommerce venture from scratch, here’s what to consider when choosing an ecommerce platform:
Volume of sales
Your sales numbers will influence how much you pay in seller and processing fees. To decide which platform is most affordable for your business, consider your projected sales volume per month and calculate the fees for each platform.
Audience
Where does your audience currently shop? Using secondary market research, you can learn what ecommerce companies appeal to your target audience to meet them where they are. Most major marketplaces connect to Shopify, which offers more tools to help you connect to your audience.
Tools
Some ecommerce companies feature more robust features than others. For example, Etsy does not have built-in email marketing. While you can link your newsletter to your Etsy shop, you can’t manage both from one place.
Business software like financial and banking services, marketing automation, and other tools that help you stay compliant with technology and business practices can reduce the number of third-party websites you need to access to run your store.
Integrations
Integrations are third-party tools that enhance the functionality of your store. A large catalog like Shopify’s can help you eliminate manual entry, scale your business, and make you more efficient.
For example, if you spend time cross-checking billing and shipping addresses against blacklists or want to time your email campaigns better, you can try Shopify Flow, which can connect to any part of your store and create workflow automations using triggers, actions, and conditions.
The Shopify App Store features integrations across different categories like orders, store management, store design, marketing, and conversion.
Read more
- What is Shopify and How Does it Work?
- 8 Dropshipping Software for New Dropshippers
- How To Write a Return Policy (+ Free Template) (2024)
- Top Wholesale Marketplaces to Sell Your Products (2024)
- How to Avoid Burnout As an Entrepreneur
- What is Ecommerce Website Development? A 2024 Guide
- 12 Checkout Process Optimization Tips to Increase Ecommerce Revenue
- What Is Digital Commerce? Learn How Digital Commerce Works
- What Is Ecommerce Fulfillment? Guide to Fulfillment Strategies
- What is an E-Commerce Shopping Cart and Why Does It Matter?
Ecommerce companies FAQ
What are the leading ecommerce companies?
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Shopify
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Amazon
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eBay
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Etsy
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Mercado Libre
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Meta
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Rakuten Ichiba
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Walmart
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Target
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Alibaba
What is the most popular ecommerce company?
Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce companies. More than four million ecommerce websites across 175 countries are powered by Shopify.
What are 5 examples of ecommerce?
Here are five examples of ecommerce:
1. Online retail stores: Companies like Amazon, where consumers purchase a wide range of products online.
2. Online marketplaces: Platforms like eBay and Etsy connect buyers and sellers for various products, including vintage items, handmade goods, and collectibles.
3. Digital downloads: Online platforms like Apple Music and Steam sell digital products such as music, video games, and software.
4. Subscription services: Businesses like Netflix and Spotify offer subscription-based access to digital content.
5. Click and collect: Also called “buy online, pickup in-store,” people make a purchase online but then pick it up in person.
