In 2021, the top 10 eCommerce software vendors accounted for nearly 68.7% of the global eCommerce applications market which grew 14.7% to approach nearly 7 billion in license, maintenance and subscription revenues.
Shopify led the pack with a 19.8% market share riding on a 52.4% jump in eCommerce license, maintenance and subscription revenues. Adobe was #2, followed by Salesforce, SAP and BigCommerce.
We ask the simple question: Who’s buying eCommerce applications from whom and why? And we provide the answers – supported by decades of research – to our clients around the world. (Sample from our Apps Database)
Through our forecast period, the eCommerce applications market size is expected to reach $8.7 billion by 2026, compared with $7 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 4.4%.
| Exhibit 2: Worldwide eCommerce Software Market 2021-2026 Forecast, $M | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2021 | 2026 | 2021-2026 CAGR, % |
| Total | 6996 | 8686 | 4.4% |
Source: Apps Run The World, September 2022
Top 10 eCommerce Software Vendors
eCommerce applications include those designed for shopping cart automation, order management, inventory management, Web-based point of sale, multi-channel retailing, procurement, sourcing, and supplier relationship management.
New apps from the likes of SAP and Shopify are taking eCommerce to the next level with more personalization and integrated capabilities such as mobile storefront, ad retargeting and subscription management.
Here are the rankings of the top 10 eCommerce software vendors in 2021 and their market shares.
| Rank | Vendor | 2020 eCommerce Apps Revenues, $M | 2021 eCommerce Apps Revenues, $M | YoY Growth | 2021 eCommerce Market Share, % | Recent Developments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shopify | Subscribe | Subscribe | 52.4% | Subscribe | In July 2022, Shopify acquired Deliverr, a San Francisco, California-based e-commerce fulfillment startup, for $2.1 billion. The largest acquisition in Shopify’s history will create an end-to-end logistics platform to unlock fast and easy fulfillment for millions of merchants. |
| 2 | Adobe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 18.3% | Subscribe | Adobe continues to flourish thanks to its burgeoning cloud subscription services, especially those from Marketo for marketing automation, which it acquired in 2018. Recurring revenue from subscriptions represented 90% of the company’s total revenue in 2020 of $11.6 billion. |
| 3 | Salesforce.com | Subscribe | Subscribe | 17.7% | Subscribe | In its 3QFY22, Salesforce split out the revenues of Mulesoft and Tableau as its Data unit with $900 million in revenue, while Slack goes under Platform with $1.3 billion in revenue. Marketing and Commerce topped $1 billion, while Service Cloud surpassed Sales Cloud by $120 million to reach $1.6 billion in revenue for the quarter. |
| 4 | SAP | Subscribe | Subscribe | 4.7% | Subscribe | By the end of 2021, SAP acquired Emarsys. Emarsys products will be added to the SAP Customer Experience portfolio, which includes market-leading solutions such as SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Sales Performance Management, and SAP Customer Data Cloud, as well as others, adding 1,500 customers worldwide to their solutions. |
| 5 | BigCommerce | Subscribe | Subscribe | 45.1% | Subscribe | In 2022, BigCommerce has acquired BundleB2B, a longtime BigCommerce technology partner that provides next-level B2B functionality for BigCommerce merchants. The deal follows the company’s recent acquisition of B2B Ninja, a premier enterprise quoting solution, and furthers BigCommerce’s ability to deliver dynamic powerful ecommerce functionality to B2B merchants at a time when B2B ecommerce continues to boom. Tens of thousands of B2C and B2B companies across 150 countries and numerous industries use BigCommerce to create beautiful, engaging online stores, including Ben & Jerry’s, Molton Brown, S.C. Johnson, Skullcandy, SoloStove, Ted Baker and Vodafone. |
| 6 | HCL Technologies Ltd. | Subscribe | Subscribe | 3.4% | Subscribe | HCL Commerce, after acquiring IBM WebSphere Commerce, is gearing up to expand its presence in the large enterprise business segment. More that 500 clients rely on HCL Commerce Platform to grow their business and beat their competition. |
| 7 | VTEX | Subscribe | Subscribe | 26.9% | Subscribe | In February 2021, VTEX acquired Workarea, a cloud commerce platform provider, to strengthen its presence in and commitment to the U.S. and Canadian markets. The deal brings VTEX’s U.S. headcount to nearly 100 employees. New customers from Workarea include leading retail merchants like sustainable fashion brand Reformation, and mattress and bedding manufacturer Sleep Number. Workarea’s customers have added more than $1 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) to VTEX, accounting for 20% of the company’s total GMV in the U.S. and Canada. |
| 8 | Shift4 Payments | Subscribe | Subscribe | 64.2% | Subscribe | In 2022, Shift4 Payments acquired Credorax, Inc. d/b/a Finaro (“Finaro”), a cross-border eCommerce platform and bank specializing insolving complex payment problems for multinational merchants. Finaro will provide the global infrastructure and cutting-edge technology needed to drive Shift4’s international ambitions to deliver a unified commerce experience. By integrating Finaro’s capabilities, Shift4 will be able to expand the company’s current services around the world, including its next-generation SkyTab POS solution, Shift4Shop eCommerce platform, and VenueNext stadium offering. Shift4 also has more than 425 software integrations and over 200,000 merchant customers, many of which have a multinational presence and provide immediate international opportunities that can now be unlocked as a result of this acquisition. |
| 9 | Lightspeed Commerce | Subscribe | Subscribe | 130.0% | Subscribe | Lightspeed Commerce does about $300 million in annual sales on $33 billion in annual gross transaction volume, and has over 150,000 customer locations in over 100 countries. |
| 10 | Digital River | Subscribe | Subscribe | 12.0% | Subscribe | Digital River manages over $35 billion in annual online transactions and has more than 65,000 clients like software publishers, consumer technology manufacturers, distributors, online retailers and affiliates. Among Digital River customers are Thunder Tiger Corporation, HarperCollins, Siemens, Logitech, WildTangent, Kaspersky, Microsoft, Spotify, Lenovo, Pacsun, Citrix, Adobe, Ubisoft, WmWare, Autodesk, Trend Micro, cNet, and others. |
| Subtotal | Subscribe | Subscribe | 25.8% | Subscribe | ||
| Other | Subscribe | Subscribe | -3.9% | Subscribe | ||
| Total | 6100 | 6996 | 14.7% | 100% |
Source: Apps Run The World, September 2022
Other eCommerce software providers included in the report are: ACI Worldwide, Inc., Amazon Web Services (AWS), Aptean, Aptos, ARI Network, Asseco Group, Automattic, Brightpearl, Capillary Technologies, CDK Global, ChannelAdvisor, Cleverbridge, Constellation Software Inc., Construction Industry Solutions Corp., Cox Automotive, CSG Systems International, Deem, Digital River, Ekm Systems, Elastic Path, Optimizely (formerly Episerver), FastSpring, Fiserv, Inetum (ex GFI Informatique), GHX, Heartland Payment Systems, a Global Payments Company, Intershop, iptor, Jack Henry & Associates, Kentico Software, Kibo, Kingdee, Kooomo, Liferay, NCR Corporation, Odoo, Pronto Software, PROS Holdings, Retail Solutions, Reynolds and Reynolds, Sage, Travelport, Unilog, Volusion, Inc., WisageTech, and many others.
Custom data cuts related to the eCommerce Applications market are available:
- Top 100 eCommerce Applications Vendors and Market Forecast 2021-2026
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By Industry (21 Verticals)
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By eCommerce Segments and Categories
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By Country (USA + 45 countries)
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By Region (Americas, EMEA, APAC)
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By Revenue Type (License, Services, Hardware, Support and Maintenance, Cloud)
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By Customer Size (revenue, employee count, asset)
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By Channel (Direct vs Direct)
- 2021 eCommerce Applications Market By Product
Exhibit 4 shows the enterprise applications market by functional area. The highest growth functional markets revolve around smaller segments like eCommerce, Enterprise Performance Management, Sales Performance Management and Treasury and Risk, where first movers remain less established than those that for decades have been entrenched in functional areas like ERP, CRM and PLM.
eCommerce Win/Loss Analysis As Part Of Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database
On the buyer side, customers are investing in eCommerce systems based on new features and capabilities that are expected to replace their existing legacy systems. In many cases, competitive upgrades and replacements that could have a profound impact on future market-share changes will become more widespread.
Since 2010, our global team of researchers have been studying the patterns of the latest eCommerce software purchases by customers around the world, aggregating massive amounts of data points that form the basis of our forecast assumptions and perhaps the rise and fall of certain vendors and their products on a quarterly basis.
Updated continuously, our database features extensive win/loss analysis. Each year our research team identifies tens of thousands of these customer wins and losses from public and proprietary sources.
The research results are being incorporated into regular updates in our Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database. You can access the Quarterly Win/Loss Analysis Scoreboard and our Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database by becoming a subscriber.
Source: Apps Run The World, September 2022
Further Readings
An expanded version of this report covers the top 100+ eCommerce software vendors, offering in-depth analysis of the market dynamics, vendors’ Strengths, Customers, Opportunities, Risks and Ecosystems as well as their ability to gain Shares (SCORES) within their respective space.
We also offer win-loss analysis of the quarterly wins of these top vendors and whether incumbents and upstarts pose any real threat to their standing amid shifting market requirements and user preferences.
More Enterprise Applications Research Findings
Based on the latest annual survey of 3,000+ enterprise software vendors, Apps Run The World is releasing a number of dedicated reports, which profile the world’s 500 largest Enterprise Applications Vendors (Apps Top 500) and the world’s 500 largest Cloud Applications Vendors (Cloud Top 500) ranked by their 2015-2021 product revenues.
Their 2021 results are being broken down, sorted and ranked across 16 functional areas (from Analytics to Treasury and Risk Management) and by 21 vertical industries(from Aerospace to Utility), as shown in our Taxonomy. Further breakdowns by subvertical, country, company size, etc. are available as custom data cuts per special request.
Research Methodology
Each year our global team of researchers conduct an annual survey of thousands of enterprise software vendors by contacting them directly on their latest quarterly and annual revenues by country, functional area, and vertical market. We supplement their written responses with our own primary research to determine quarterly and yearly growth rates, In addition to customer wins to ascertain whether these are net new purchases or expansions of existing implementations.
Another dimension of our proactive research process is through continuous improvement of our customer database, which stores more than one million records on the enterprise software landscape of over 100,000 organizations around the world.
The database provides customer insight and contextual information on what types of enterprise software systems and other relevant technologies are they running and their propensity to invest further with their current or new suppliers as part of their overall IT transformation projects to stay competitive, fend off threats from disruptive forces, or comply with internal mandates to improve overall enterprise efficiency.
The result is a combination of supply-side data and demand-generation customer insight that allows our clients to better position themselves in anticipation of the next wave that will reshape the enterprise software marketplace for years to come.
