How To Pick The Right Software For Your Online Business

You’ve probably asked it—or seen it asked in every online group: 

“What’s the best software for an online business?” 

What’s my response? 

❌ There is no one right software for everyone.
✅ But there is a right one for you—and that’s what we’re breaking down today. 

In this episode, I’ll walk you through how to stop chasing the latest tools and start choosing the right-fit tech for your business goals, personality, and growth stage. 

Whether you're building a course, running a service, or selling products—this episode will help you get unstuck and finally move forward. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Myth Of The “Best” Tool
• 1:37 Show Intro And Host Creds
• 2:08 Define Goals And Fit Over Popularity
• 3:26 Four Questions To Choose Software
• 5:53 The Platform Hopping Trap
• 7:14 DIY Vs Control: Website Platforms
• 9:02 All‑In‑One For Courses: Pros And Cons
• 11:00 E‑Commerce: SaaS Vs Customizable Stacks
• 14:00 Implementation Beats Tools

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:43

You probably asked it or seen it asked in about every online group. What's the best software for an online business? Wanna know what my response is? There's no one right piece of software. We are very vendor agnostic. But there's usually a right one for you. And that's what we're going to break down to in today's episode. I will walk you through how to stop chasing the latest tools and start choosing the right fit tech for your business goals, personality, and growth stage. When we keep switching tools, we end up being stuck and not moving our business forward. So whether you're building a course, running a service, or selling products, this episode will help you get unstuck and finally move forward. And I'll even share one common trap that keeps business owners stuck in software test mode instead of actually launching it. And you might even recognize it. Let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about what is that right software tool? And as I alluded to in the intro, there's no one right software tool. What we need to do is find the right software tool for you and your business and what you need in your business. So every business has different goals. You could be selling courses, you could be selling products, you could be booking calls. What are your main goals that you need to do for your customers? And what works for a seven-figure influencer may not be right for a scrappy solo entrepreneur. So don't choose based on popularity. Choose based on fit. This is where this question in online social media can drive me a little bit crazy because obviously people are going to respond with what tool they love because they use it. Now there's a few people like myself, and I know there's a few other tech people that I love on the online space. We try to give you, you know, make you think about what you need your tool to use to make you critically think through it so that you're thinking about the best software for you, not what's popular. What's popular is not necessarily the best software for you. So you don't need the best, you need the best for you. I want to reiterate that again. Um, so there are some questions that you can ask before you pick a platform. So, what's the main thing that you want this software to do? And does that software do that well? So that's the first question. What's the main thing do you need this software to do? And does it do it well? And how tech comfortable are you or your team? You need to look at tech debt, is what I like to call it. And Mac agrees, he's over here talking to us too. So you need to look at tech debt. What is the tech um hurdle in trying to learn this software? And if it is a great piece of software and a great fit, but the tech is a little bit harder on it, will the company provide the support you need to get over that tech hurdle? Because sometimes great software out there has a little bit learning more learning curve for tech. And if you find the right person to help you with that tech, or if the company itself helps you with that and get you through it, then that's actually not a big problem. And do you want everything in one place or do you prefer best in class tools? So, do you prefer the best email service provider, the best shopping cart, the best course service, or do you want them all in one place to make the tech debt lower? Apparently, Mac has a lot of opinions on this one. And then this last question I feel is very important, and this is what I work with clients a lot with when I'm doing consultations with them, is trying to figure out where they're going in their business, where is their future? Because this next question is will this grow with me over time or become a limitation? So sometimes we want to take on a piece of software that might be a little bit higher tech debt, but we know it's going to make things easier when we grow and as we go along with our business. So maybe there's a little minor um, you know, disadvantage because it has a little bit higher tech debt, but in the long run, it's going to be the best choice because then we won't have to move software. So let me read those questions again in case you're multitasking or driving or something. And I know I did some explanations in there. So let me read those again. What's the main thing I need to do with this software? How comfortable am I or my team with technology? Do I want everything in one place or do I prefer best in class tools? And will this grow with me over time or become a limitation? One of the biggest traps I see is people endlessly switching platforms, thinking this next one will finally fix it all. I actually had an e-commerce client come to me. They have been with us for, I'd lost track, over 15 years, and they told me years later, they're like, we were about to give up on this shopping cart software till we found you. And you're the one that made it work, that made it do what we needed it to do. And you're the one that helped support it and helped keep us in this platform. We were about to replatform. So sometimes you need the right tech partner behind you and the person that can help strategize with you. And if you don't get clear on these first four questions first, you'll stay in tinkering mode instead of taking action, which holds our businesses back. So since they didn't stay in tinkering mode and they came to us and they had us start helping them, they have blown up their business and it has just astronomically grown in the past 15 years on the online business space, especially. They're actually a retail store too. They have a brick and mortar business. So finding that right software for you, as well as sometimes the right tech partner, can be the great perfect scenario there. So let's talk now about some examples of some right fit tools. And you know, many of these tools we help help clients with and use ourselves. So we have you know a pretty good sense of what they can and cannot do. So if you want to DIY it quickly, Squarespace or Wix might be a good fit. However, it you know, I caution you it may be one that won't grow as well with you. So that's something to consider. Now, if you want full control, you may want WordPress that lets you do all kinds of add-ons and things like that. However, it has a bit more of a security implication behind it. Because as we talk about on some of our really early podcast episodes, if you're not keeping the plugins up to date and you're not keeping WordPress up to date, then that can create a vulnerability in your website. So that's a tech minus on WordPress. But if you know how to manage it or you have a tech person to help you manage it, then it's a great solution. Now, if you're selling digital courses and you want it all in one place, the two most popular platforms are GoHi Level and Kajabi. We have used both software before. We used to be on Kajabi and now we're on Go High Level. We're actually an agency for it, and we have our own package called Course Creator Suite. Now, they are both great software tools. We have we've seen successful people running on both of them, but they do have some pluses and minuses on what they can do for people and how they do them. Now, Course Creator, our version of course creator suite slash go high level is a little bit more of a tech learning curve. So it takes a little bit more to learn it, but has a lot more features built all in one, built all into it versus Kajabi. Kajabi is a little bit easier to figure out, although I still found some tech hurdles in it even for myself and trying to use it. So it really depends upon the features that you need there. And you're always welcome to reach out to us on any of these comparisons to see what's the right fit for you. And then let's go to e-commerce. Some popular ones that we work with are Magento, Xcart, Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Now that's five e-commerce softwares we work for with. So which one's right for you there? Well, if you don't need a whole lot of flexibility, then Shopify and BigCommerce are probably fine. If you're just starting out, Shopify and Big Commerce might still be fine. If you're somewhere in between, that um WooCommerce or Xcart might be a really good fit. Both of those let you fully touch the code and be able to change it if you wanted to. And then the third option of that style of e-commerce would be Magento, where you can completely customize it. Well, it's a bit more on the um towards the enterprise level, in our opinion, of a shopping cart software. So we have basically two buckets for shopping cart. We have Shopify and BigCommerce, which are software as a service type. You cannot edit the code. You can obviously change the look and feel, but you can't really edit the code. You can, you know, purchase plugins to go into it to make it do other things, but you can't do anything else really with it. And then we have the WooCommerce, Xcart, and Magento, which you can completely customize the code or have a developer like us completely customize the code, and that helps you stand out from the crowd. So that's great for the bit more established e-commerce businesses to help you um be able to market to your clients and be able to speak their language versus being stuck in something that can't you can't change very much. So you can see that there's quite a few different things that you need to be thinking about, whether you sell e-commerce or whether you sell courses or um coaching. It just kind of depends, like I said in the beginning of this episode, as to which software is best for you. And the tools don't create the momentum. You do picking the right software and running with it and building from it and you know, refining it really is what gets you somewhere. And your confidence will grow when your tech stack stops being the bottleneck. So if you feel stuck in tech decision fatigue, this is so, so common, and you don't need to be sitting there googling it out because you probably aren't going to find the right best answer for you when you do that. That's one of the things we cover in the converting website my course. We guide you step by step through building a site that's not just functional but profitable, and it's very vendor agnostic. It does not depend upon what software you're using because the software is not as important as the implementation of the website. We just need to make sure the software is growing for us. And in there, we many times get questions about which tool is right for them, and we help you choose the right tool that is right for you, not for everybody. You can always join us at bcsolutions.com forward slash TCW. Or you can hop into our free Facebook group to get help choosing the right platform for your next move. And that link is smarteronline business.com forward slash Facebook. We'll have that in our show notes. And then I want to talk about our bonus tip today. If you've been testing platforms for weeks or months, we see this a lot. Here's my challenge for you. I want you to pick one tool by the end of next week. Commit to it for 90 days. Build something with it, not just on it. Build something with it, build something that works for you, build something that's going to create you momentum. Because clarity comes from doing, not just researching. So I challenge you to do rather than finegling and trying these other new things. Get get something done and you're gonna see momentum in your business.