About five years ago AmeriCommerce seemed to be poised to become one of the leading ecommerce platforms. And maybe seeing that the financial industry giant Capital One bought it. Then something went wrong. First AmeriCommerce became SparkPay and then it just seemed to lose all the traction it had. However, a while ago the team behind the AmeriCommerce platform acquired it, raised funding and thus AmeriCommerce was reborn. In this review, we look at how good this old and new AmeriCommerce is in 2021.
What is good about AmeriCommere in 2021
The first thing I really like about AmeriCommerce is that they have no sales limits. In practice sales limits mean that you can only generate a certain amount of revenue before you are upgraded to a more expensive plan – and unfortunately those sales limits are quite common among ecommerce platforms.
The lack of sales limits means that using AmeriCommerce might in practice be cheaper than picking an ecommerce platform that is initially cheaper, but that forces you to quickly upgrade to a more expensive plan once you start generating revenue.
The second thing I like about AmeriCommerce is that their platform makes it easy to design traditional (but not outdated) looking ecommerce stores. Those stores where the products, instead of flashy graphics, are the main thing. Obviously, the fact that is that the traditional product grid -look fits some industries much better than others.
The third thing I really like about AmeriCommerce is that all their store themes are free. While all the major ecommerce platforms have some free themes, most of the themes on other platforms cost at least $100. Depending on your budget even that $100 can make a big difference.
The fourth thing I like about AmeriCommerce is that they give a good amount of freedom for modifying the URLs of store pages. That might not seem like a big deal but at least Shopify can be annoyingly strict with how the URLs of your store pages have to be.
What I don’t really like about AmeriCommerce
The first thing I don’t like about AmeriCommerce is that while they do not have sales limits on any of their plans, they do have product limits. So, for example, with the cheapest ($24.95/month) AmeriCommerce plan you can add at most 100 products to your store. Although, it should be mentioned that AmeriCommerce’s product limits are quite fair, as already on the $99/month-plan you can add up to 5,000 products to your store.
The second thing I didn’t particularly like about AmeriCommerce is that they don’t give discounts to those who pick one of their two cheapest plans and are ready to pay on an annual basis. That might not seem like a big deal but, for example, Shopify gives a 10% or 20% discount even to those who pick their cheapest plan and pay for a year, two or three in advance.
The third thing I don’t really like about AmeriCommerce is that it can be difficult to do dropshipping when using their platform. This as it appears that at least currently it is not possible to use Oberlo nor, for example, Modalyst (which are popular apps / extensions for doing dropshipping) with their platform. While Oberlo works (properly) only with Shopify, Modalyst works well also with at least Wix.
And the fourth thing I believe AmeriCommerce could improve on is their transaction fees. That is as if you use their own payment solution (simply called “AmeriCommerce Payments”) they charge a fee of up to 2.9% + 30 cents of each sale you make through your store.
That up to 2.9%+30c might not sound like a lot, but if you manage to generate a lot of sales those fees can really add up. If you are looking for an ecommerce solution that does not charge transaction fees, I would recommend BigCommerce.
What changed from 2020 to 2021
AmeriCommerce’s pricing and much of the platform seems to be the same in 2021 as it was in 2020. However, they seem to have recently done one big improvement: it appears that at least some of their themes now function much better on mobile screens than they did in 2020. That is extremely good as at least my biggest problem with AmeriCommerce in 2020 was the issues their themes seemed to have with mobile phones.
Summary of AmeriCommerce reviews by others
For the sake of this article, I wanted to find out how others felt about AmeriCommerce. Here is a summary of some of the pros and cons mentioned by them.
AmeriCommerce pros:
- Great customer service.
- Allows for a lot of customization.
- Themes and plugins are free with a subscription.
AmeriCommerce cons:
- The platform can be a bit complicated.
- The platform is not maybe as technically advanced as it could be.
- It can be pricey to get customization done on your store – this obviously assuming that you need to hire someone to do it.
Should you use AmeriCommerce as your ecommerce platform?
The boring and maybe somewhat annoying answer to this question is: it depends. This as while AmeriCommerce is not the cheapest nor maybe for many situations the best ecommerce platform, it can be a great choice for running a simple, traditional, ecommerce store. And as AmeriCommerce gives new users a 14-day free trial I would recommend at least trying AmeriCommerce if you believe that you might want to have that kind of a store. Try AmeriCommerce for free.
Quick questions and answers about AmeriCommerce
Which AmeriCommerce plan should I pick?
In a lot of cases the cheapest AmeriCommerce plan, “Steel”, is good enough to start with. Then if your store starts getting popular you can easily upgrade to a more advanced plan.
Can people from outside America use AmeriCommerce?
Yes. Despite of its name people from other parts of the world than America can also sign up for AmeriCommerce. However, it is good to note that if you are from a country that AmeriCommerce does not see as a key market for them, your options regarding the possible payment gateways to integrate with AmeriCommerce might be quite limited.
Which payment gateways does AmeriCommerce work with?
AmeriCommerce works with a rather large number of payment gateways. Some of the most well known of them include, for example, Stripe and PayPal.