There are plenty of ERP solutions in the market. Especially, the cloud ERP solutions that utilize the power of the cloud. In today's article, we will compare four clouds based ERP solutions, Magento, Prestashop, Odoo, and Shopify. All of them are a viable option for any business who want to get their on-line presence felt and also want to organize their business work-flow. We will look at them from an eCommerce perspective.

Without much delay, let's get started with the comparison

General Features
The general features of all the platform are almost similar. All of them can be configured according to your requirement. The only outliers here is Shopify which uses SaaS platform and an app ecosystem to make things work. Odoo seriously lacks some essential features such as Sorting of search results, Wish-list, One-page checkout and Affiliate management. If you are looking for these characteristics, it is always a better idea to opt for Magento and Prestashop, both of them are more inclined to provide a better administrative and user experience. Shopify also doesn't come with Multi-store support and one-page checkout. Other key features that are shared among all the four platforms are Content management, newsletter, SSL support, Digital Goods, design features, etc.

In general features, the winner tag goes to Magento and Prestashop. Keeping in mind what Odoo is capable of as a business suite, it is not a bad idea to use Odoo. Shopify is ideal for those who are looking for SaaS platform where everything is almost used in an app interface.

SEO and Design Features
SEO is important for any business, and so does the design features. Out of the four platform, PrestaShop comes with the all the features. Magento lacks in the department of no graphic design and no programming certain section. This means that you need to use graphic design and programming to take full advantage of the platform. Other platforms offer better reconfigurability and design using drag and drop tools. Shopify is also not behind in this section. It comes with everything that you may want from a full-fledged cloud-based solution. Key features that all the four platform share include custom SEO meta tags, breadcrumb navigation, bulk image upload, etc.

Customer Management Features
Customer management is an important part of any business. Do all the four platforms stand greatly in this section? To my surprise, all the platform comes with distinctive customer management features. The characteristic features of all the four platforms include the following.

Cart Abandonment Tracking -- Odoo requires a custom support for this feature. On the other hand, Prestashop utilizes add-on for making it work.

• Customer account creation.

• Guest account

• Customer testimonials

• Customer contact form.

• Customer Order History.

• Customer Specific Offers

• Support Desk

• Shipping Features

eCommerce platforms have integrated shipping features. They are not restricted to one place, and that requires distinctive shipping features to work with. And, when it comes to comparing all the four eCommerce platforms -- there is no clear winner. All of them do provide a decent shipping features for the business. Only Shopify lacks in "Shipping methods by location". The user experience is top-notch in this aspect and taxes can easily be implemented by country or state. Now, let's list some of the common features offered by all the four platforms.

• Custom Shipping Rules

• Label Printing

• Shipping Price Calculator

• Weight based shipping

• Fulfillment by Amazon Integration

Hosting and Security Features
Our next section for comparison is hosting and security features. Hosting is needed to make the website live on the Internet. Security, on the other hand, makes sure that no one breaks the site. In this department, only Odoo stands strong as it provides excellent feature set including SQL injection monitoring, Shared SSL, suspicious activity tracking, daily backup, data encryption and others. All the platforms support caching system, dedicated SSL, data encryption, etc.

If you are serious about hosting and security features, Odoo is what you need. The next platform with the most feature set is Prestashop. It includes all the necessary functionalities excluding the daily backup option. Shopify do lack some serious security options.

Promotion and Marketing Features
The four platform comes with a decent set of features for promotion and marketing purposes. Being a SaaS platform, Shopify lacks a lot of features including product building, product comparison, etc. The most advanced platform for promotion and marketing feature is Prestashop. Magento is also not behind Prestashop and offers everything that Prestashop has to offer. Odoo is great in this section, but most of the features need to be custom implemented for it to work.

Administrative Features
Administrative features are what makes any platform to be easily managed. Shopify has the least administrative feature compared to the other three platforms. Shopify lacks Bulk order processing and bulk product import/export. All the four platforms support the API and User role and permission.

Inventory Management Features
Inventory Management is a crucial feature for business who rely heavily on inventory. In this section too, Shopify fails to provide features compared to other three platforms. Magento implements most of the features using the extension.

Payment and Pricing Features
eCommerce is all about payment and pricing. All the platforms support Worldline SIPS integration expect Shopify. Traditional payment gateways such as Paypal is also supported by all the platform. All the platforms also support Multi Currency, pricing per customer groups.

Reporting and Analysis
The last section in which we will pit all the four platforms against each other is Reporting and Analysis. Reporting is essential for any business as it provides an eagle eye view of the different activities in the business. It includes A/B testing report, inventory reports, Sales summary reports, etc.Traffic Analytics is also supported by all the platforms.

Conclusion
So, which platform is for you? The answer depends on your requirements, budget, future goals and current condition. For example, Odoo is perfect for larger organization who want to maintain their large catalog of products. Odoo is also cheap compared to other platforms. The costliest implementation is Magento.

If you have eCommerce experience, Prestashop is the best possible solution for your business. It dev/integration costs are nil for moderate scale implementation and offers good customization.

To conclude, if you are looking for a versatile platform and free licensing, Odoo is the platform of your choice.