10 Top Ecommerce Companies List and Guide (2026)

In 1994, a Sting CD (Ten Summoner’s Tales) became the first item sold online via an encrypted credit card transaction. Since then, ecommerce companies have experienced explosive growth. In 2025, years after that first online sale, global ecommerce accounted for more than 23% of total worldwide retail sales.

Because experts project ecommerce sales to make up for 25% of sales by 2030, there’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs to join a growing industry and places to set up shop. Learn about the leading ecommerce companies and how to choose the best platform to sell your products.

10 top ecommerce companies

1. Shopify
2. Amazon
3. eBay
4. Etsy
5. Mercado Libre
6. Meta
7. Rakuten Ichiba
8. Walmart
9. Target
10. Alibaba

1. Shopify

• Year founded: 2004

• Headquarters location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

• Pricing and fees: Shopify plans start at $39 a month. 

Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform that enables sellers to start, manage, and scale their shops online and in person. It supports small and medium-sized shops, as well as enterprise-scale businesses. Brands like Allbirds, Murad, and Quad Lock have found success on Shopify. 

To set up your online store, use Shopify’s website builder, which features customizable drag-and-drop tools to create an online shop quickly without coding skills. There are also more than 1,000 free and paid (ranging from $100 to $500) Shopify themes you can use to quickly launch your store.

To start selling online, you’ll need to source products, list them on your shop, integrate additional sales channels (like the ecommerce marketplaces listed below), set up payment processing, and select your shipping methods.

Shopify’s built-in AI assistant, Sidekick, can help you launch and run your store by completing time-consuming tasks (such as setting up your domain and creating email campaigns). It also provides suggestions based on your specific shop. With embedded financial services tools, it’s simple to spend, save, transfer, receive, and earn money. 

Shopify’s point-of-sale system lets you sell anywhere and sync inventory across your digital and physical storefronts. Additionally, when it comes to expanding your reach across the internet, the Universal Commerce Protocol connects your store to AI platforms, so you can sell in AI Mode on Google, Gemini, ChatGPT, and more.

The Shopify App Store features more than 16,000 apps and makes it easy to connect to your favorite third-party tools.

2. Amazon

• Year founded: 1995

• Headquarters location: Puget Sound, Washington, and Arlington, Virginia

• Pricing and fees: The Individual plan charges 99¢ per listed item, and the Professional tier starts at $39.99 a month plus referral fees.

Amazon is a global technology company with 2025 net sales of $716.9 billion. Amazon started as a direct-to-consumer (DTC) company, but in 2000 it began allowing third parties to sell on its platform. Today, 60% of Amazon’s sales come from third parties, and it’s the US’s largest ecommerce marketplace.

There are three ways vendors sell on Amazon: 

• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) products are shipped by Amazon from the company’s warehouses. 

• Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) orders are shipped by vendors themselves. 

• Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP) is for Prime Sellers who choose to outsource fulfillment or fill orders themselves.

Use Shopify Marketplace Connect to connect your Shopify store to Amazon and manage your Amazon sales from your Shopify Admin. 

3. eBay

• Year founded: 1995

• Headquarters location: San Jose, California

• Pricing and fees: eBay charges an insertion fee for each listing. There’s also a selling fee, which is a percentage of the sales price. Learn more about how much eBay takes from a sale. 

eBay is a US multinational ecommerce corporation that facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sales. eBay’s annual net revenue was about $11.1 billion in 2025.

Use Shopify Marketplace Connect to join your eBay account to your Shopify store. Track your inventory and sales in real time, manage inventory, and automate and bulk import products to save time from Shopify Admin.

4. Etsy

• Year founded: 2005

• Headquarters location: Brooklyn, New York

• Pricing and fees: Etsy charges vendors 20¢ per listed item, plus a 6.5% transaction fee per sale. There’s also a nonrefundable set-up fee for new stores. Sellers can also opt into an Etsy Plus subscription ($10 per month) for more tools. 

Etsy is an ecommerce marketplace specializing in handmade and vintage products, including jewelry, clothing, home décor, furniture, craft supplies, and tools. It reported revenue of $2.88 billion in 2025. 

For some store owners, selling on Etsy is worth it for the exposure to its more than 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.

Genna Tatu, owner of CrochetByGenna, sells crochet patterns and amigurumi (stuffed animals). She started on Etsy and then launched a Shopify store. Genna currently uses both because each has its advantages.

“Etsy is pretty low-risk,” Genna says. “It’s not like you have to buy a whole website platform and domain upfront. Then, with Shopify, you can customize everything. You can make it exactly how you want it. I think it comes off more professional when you have a standalone website.” 

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

• Year founded: 1999

• Headquarters location: Montevideo, Uruguay

• Pricing and fees: There are no listing fees. Other fees (selling, shipping, storage, and pick-up fees) depend on the seller’s location. 

Mercado Libre is the largest ecommerce marketplace in Latin America. With 65 million buyers, 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. 

Shopify store owners can use a third-party app like Bitmeli ML to import products from Mercado Libre to their Shopify stores. 

6. Meta

• Year founded: 2004

• Headquarters location: Menlo Park, California

• Pricing and fees: Varies based on platform.

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. Meta has 3.58 billion daily active users across its platforms with 2025 revenue of $200 billion. 

There are several ways to sell on Facebook, including Facebook Marketplace and Shops on Facebook and Instagram. 

Facebook Marketplace allows individual sellers to list items for local pickup or shipping throughout the United States. Buyers can pay directly on Facebook Marketplace.

With Shops, you set up an online storefront on Instagram or Facebook. Customers can browse products on posts, Reels, or Stories without leaving the app. When ready to buy, shoppers are directed to complete their transaction on your website. 

Shopify store owners can connect their stores to Facebook and Instagram for free with the Facebook & Instagram app. That way, they sell from one inventory while increasing reach with shoppable social content on popular platforms. 

If you’re active on Facebook and Instagram, you can install a Meta pixel on your website. It helps you track conversions and website activity, and improve your ads’ reach to your target audience.

7. Rakuten Ichiba

• Year founded: 1997

• Headquarters location: Tokyo, Japan

• Pricing and fees: A Basic Shop Open plan has a roughly $385 registration fee and a $420 monthly fixed fee. There are also commission fees that range between 2% to 4.5%. 

Rakuten Ichiba is one of the leading ecommerce platforms in Japan, boasting more than 100 million members. 

Rakuten 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 helps you submit your materials before Rakuten screens your store.

8. Walmart

• Year founded: 1962, then launched an ecommerce marketplace in 2009

• Headquarters location: Bentonville, Arkansas

• Pricing and fees: Walmart Marketplace charges sellers a fee that ranges from 5% to 20%.

Walmart is a multinational retail company that operates a chain of big-box stores, as well as a major ecommerce website of the same name. The company has stores in all 50 states and a significant presence (both physical and digital) in Canada and Mexico as well. Walmart’s revenue in 2025 was $681 billion.

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 and pick them up at the nearest store with availability.

Shopify store owners can integrate their store with Walmart Marketplace via Shopify Marketplace Connect. This expands reach while still managing all transactions from Shopify.

9. Target

• Year founded: 1962

• Headquarters location: Minneapolis, Minnesota

• Pricing and fees: No monthly fees, referral rates vary. 

Target is the second-largest retailer in its category, behind Walmart. It operates almost 2,000 stores throughout the country and has an extensive ecommerce footprint alongside its brick-and-mortar operations. Target’s US revenue was about $106 billion in 2024.

Like Walmart, Target sells a wide range of consumer goods, from fashion items and home décor to electronics and groceries. Like Walmart, Target uses its brick-and-mortar stores as alternative warehousing for online orders shipped around the country. 

Target.com also sells items from third-party vendors through its marketplace program, Target Plus. You’ll need to apply to sell on Target Plus. In 2024, Target teamed up with Shopify to bring a curated selection of store owners onto the marketplace and its stores. Shopify store owners can apply to Target Plus via Marketplace Connect. 

10. Alibaba

• Year founded: 1999

• Headquarters location: Hangzhou, China

• Pricing and fees: Plans start at $166 per month with 0% sales commission.

Alibaba is a Chinese multinational technology company offering services in ecommerce, internet, and technological development. The company provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) services.

AliExpress is Alibaba’s consumer site, functioning as a one-stop ecommerce marketplace offering an expansive range of products. The Alibaba site is a business-to-business (B2B) site selling wholesale goods. 

Alibaba Group’s revenue for fiscal year 2025 was more than $130 billion. AliExpress operates in more than 200 countries and regions, giving store owners access to buyers in the United States, South Korea, Brazil, France, and beyond.

Shopify store owners can also dropship products from Alibaba or AliExpress using manual or automated ordering. Apps like Dropshipman and AutoDS let you easily import items to your Shopify store and even dropship branded products.

How to choose the best ecommerce platform

• Volume of sales
• Audience
• Tools and services
• Integrations

If you’re considering adding ecommerce functionality to your small business or a digital store 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. Jewelry brand Keyzar began on Etsy. As it quickly grew, fees began to impact its profitability, so they moved to Shopify to have more control and fewer fees.

To decide which platform is most affordable for your business, consider your projected sales volume per month and calculate the fees for each of them. 

Audience

Where does your primary 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 also offers comprehensive customer analytics to help you learn more about your customer base.

For example, Morgan Cros, founder of umbrella brand Original Duckhead, used Shopify Analytics to better know her audience. Data from audience analysis revealed the brand had year-round appeal and showed where its customers lived. 

On an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, Morgan explains that climate and seasonal changes in weather don’t always impact sales in the way you’d expect. 

“We even find that in sunny countries, they still like a good umbrella. And they will buy more than one,” she says of the brand’s customers. “We also discovered what our main markets were. That really helped us pinpoint exactly where most of our consumers are.”

Tools and services

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 cannot send email campaigns from your Etsy account.

Business software like accounting services, marketing automation, and other tech and business practice compliance tools can reduce the number of third-party websites you need to run your store. 

For example, if you want to automate your loyalty program or want to time your email campaigns better, you can try Shopify Flow. It connects to any part of your store and creates workflow automations using triggers, actions, and conditions. 

Platforms like Shopify also facilitate shipping and fulfillment. The Shopify Fulfillment Network, for example, connects your store with 3PL providers who handle logistics for you.

Integrations

Ecommerce integrations are third-party tools that enhance the functionality of your store. A large catalog like Shopify’s helps you do things such as eliminate manual entry, scale your business, and increase efficiency.

The Shopify App Store features integrations across different categories like orders, store management, store design, marketing, and conversion. 

For JJ Follano, co-founder of sustainable product brand Zero Waste Store, the Shopify App Store is a way to expand your store’s capabilities without investing too much money.

“The App Store probably has the largest database of apps in the ecommerce industry,” JJ says on Shopify Masters. “There are functionalities that you can implement into your business with the Shopify App Store, which is huge for somebody that doesn’t want to pay a developer all that upfront cost to do that.”