E-Commerce Software Resources

Articles, Glossary Terms, Discussions, and Reports to expand your knowledge on E-Commerce Software

Resource pages are designed to give you a cross-section of information we have on specific categories. You'll find articles from our experts, feature definitions, discussions from users like you, and reports from industry data.

Contents

E-Commerce Software Articles

What Is Social Commerce, and Why We Created a New Category for It

The fact that social media is critical for e-commerce is obvious. There are billions of users on social media platforms, and many of them buy online. It is estimated that the number of social media users worldwide will reach 5.85 billion by 2027. In addition, sellers also use social media to share and promote their products—the value of social commerce sales worldwide is estimated at 2.9 trillion dollars by 2026.

by Gabriel Gheorghiu

COVID-19 Drives E-Commerce Growth for Brick and Mortar Retailers

The coronavirus pandemic has compelled consumers to stay home in quarantine, driving some brick and mortar stores to either move online or adopt a combination of both in-store (curbside pickup) and online sales methods for the first time.

by Nathan Calabrese

E-Commerce Software Glossary Terms

Customer Experience Management

Customer experience management (CXM) prioritizes personalized experiences at every customer interaction. Learn more about its benefits for businesses.

by Holly Landis

Headless CMS

A headless content management system is back-end software that allows connection to any presentation layer via application programming interfaces (APIs.)

by Kelly Fiorini

Go-to-Market Strategy

A go-to-market strategy is an all-encompassing plan for launching a new product or service. Learn how to create a GTM strategy and why it’s important.

by Holly Landis

E-Commerce Software Discussions

How do visual customization platforms protect customer design data and intellectual property?

For anyone here who reviews e-commerce tools with a legal team in the loop: how do visual customization platforms actually protect customer design data and intellectual property, on both sides of the transaction?

Two kinds of IP pass through a customizer, and they pull in opposite directions. The shopper uploads a photo or artwork they own. The brand supplies 3D models, fonts and templates it doesn't want copied. And a third party, the vendor, hosts both. Most security pages talk about encryption and skip the ownership question. What I'd want answered in writing:

Who owns a shopper's uploaded design, and can the vendor reuse it, including for training AI features?
Are 3D models and brand assets stored in the vendor's asset manager, and what happens to them at contract end?
Security certification from the vendor itself, ISO 27001 or SOC 2, not inherited from Shopify
Where uploads are hosted, for GDPR and residency
Retention: how long a shopper's design file lives after the order ships

From the Visual Product Customization Software category on G2, how three different kinds of vendor answer:

Threekit (4.4/5, 60+ reviews): ISO 27001 certified, API-first, and built for manufacturers whose 3D models are the product. The only vendor in the category stating a security certification on its profile. Trade-off: enterprise scope and pricing.
ServiceNow CPQ (4.2/5, 75+ reviews): Configuration data lives inside the ServiceNow platform, so it inherits enterprise-grade controls and audit trails. Highest Market Presence in the category at 98. Trade-off: it's a CPQ platform, not a shopper-facing customizer.
Zakeke (4.6/5, 85+ reviews): A cloud platform with a 3D digital asset manager holding brand models and shopper designs for 10,000+ retailers. Trade-off: that centralisation is convenient and is exactly where the ownership terms matter most.

What's the one clause, or the one missing certification, that made you drop a customization vendor from your shortlist?

Contract end is the part I’d dig into. Encryption protects an asset while you’re a customer; it doesn’t answer what happens when you leave. With a platform like Zakeke holding both brand models and shopper designs, I’d want deletion timelines and export rights spelled out before uploading the first production asset.

Answered: Barkha Bali on September 1, 2026

Your answer

Which visual customization software is highest rated for personalized product sales and order integration, like Zakeke?

Selling personalized products only works when custom orders flow into the store and out to production without hand-holding. So which visual customization software is highest rated for personalized product sales and order integration, in the mold of Zakeke?

Based on current reviews in G2's Visual Product Customization category:

Zakeke: 4.6 stars, 85+ reviews. The benchmark for this use case: G2 reviewers rate its ecommerce integration at 95% and website integration at 94%, and it leads the category's small-business grid. Personalized orders come through with production-ready files attached.
Kickflip: Rated 5.0 on G2, holding the highest satisfaction score (97) in the category's overall grid. Reviewers rate its ecommerce integration at 90%, with a design experience built for merchants who want customization live quickly.
LiveArt: Rated 4.5 on G2. Its ecommerce integration score of 96% is the highest in the category's feature data, with APIs rated 94% for teams connecting custom orders to their own systems.
Customily: Rated 4.0 on G2. Reviewers score its APIs at 98% and real-time preview at 96%, and it is aimed squarely at personalization sellers, including print-on-demand workflows.

The integration detail that separates these in practice: whether the order arrives as a picture of what the customer made or as a production file your fulfillment process can use directly. The second is what makes personalized sales scale.

For stores selling personalized products, which of these handled order flow the most cleanly in your evaluation?

Zakeke would be the one I’d lean toward if clean order flow is the priority. The big advantage is having production-ready files attached to the order, because that removes a manual handoff that gets painful fast as volume grows.

Answered: Preksha Buttan on August 27, 2026

Your answer

How does a visual customization workflow flow from design through production and fulfillment?

Letting a customer design their own product is the easy part to picture; what happens after they click buy is where evaluations get vague. So how does a visual customization workflow actually run from design through production and fulfillment?

The short version: it moves through four stages. A customer designs the product in a configurator with a real-time preview; the software validates the design against rules so nothing unbuildable gets ordered; a production-ready file or spec is generated automatically; and the order syncs into the store or ERP so fulfillment starts without manual rework. Products in G2's Visual Product Customization category cover that chain differently:

Zakeke: 4.6 stars, 85+ reviews. Covers the full ecommerce chain: G2 reviewers rate its real-time preview at 93% and its ecommerce integration at 95%, and it generates print-ready files so personalized orders arrive at production ready to make.
Brikl: 4.3 stars, 25+ reviews. Built for custom apparel and team stores, where the workflow includes group ordering and decoration specs; reviewers rate its ecommerce integration at 93%.
Kickflip: Rated 5.0 on G2, with the highest satisfaction score (97) in the category's overall grid. Strongest at the front of the chain: a real-time design experience (rated 92%) that plugs into the store.
Configure One Cloud: The manufacturing end of the spectrum; its 3D configurator is rated 92% by G2 users, and it is built to turn configurations into the bills of materials and routings a factory works from.

The evaluation question hiding in the workflow: everything before the order is marketing, everything after is operations, and the file handoff between them is where tools differ most.

For anyone selling customized products, which stage of this chain caused the most manual work before software took it over?

Good question, and it's more of a pipeline than a single tool. Roughly, it flows like this. First, the design and customization step: the customer or a designer configures the visual on a product configurator or web-to-print front end, with a live preview so they see exactly what they're getting. Second, that configuration automatically generates a print-ready output, the artwork file plus the specs and any bill of materials, so nothing is re-created by hand. Third, the order and those production files hand off to production, ideally as a job ticket that routes straight into your print or manufacturing system without manual re-entry. Fourth, production actually makes the item. And fifth, fulfillment ships it, with tracking flowing back to the customer. The whole thing lives or dies on that handoff between the configurator and production, if the print-ready file and order data flow automatically, it's smooth; if someone re-keys specs, that's where errors and delays creep in. This maps to product configurator and web-to-print software on the front end tied into a production or MIS system on the back. Where's your current friction, the customization front end or the production handoff?