The Best Ecommerce Platforms for Cannabis Dispensaries in 2024

Before we get into the best cannabis ecommerce platforms, we need to be clear on a few key terms which will help us understand the landscape of cannabis ecommerce.

First, there’s your dispensary website. This includes all the web pages under your domain name. Your website will have information about your brand, your company, your location you may include blogs, Instagram feed and links to your social media accounts.

Then there’s the menu. This is the page that shows all the products your cannabis store sells. This is where the customer gets information about those products and can add them to the shopping cart and pay.

Ecommerce, then, is the totality of your website plus a menu that has cannabis business payment functionality.

One key difference between cannabis retail ecommerce and other industries is that the ability to ship cannabis products depends on the law in your area. Most states and provinces don’t allow shipping, since there is no way to prevent selling to minors. Cannabis products, therefore, are either picked up at the physical store or delivered to the customer, when permitted, with an identification check upon delivery.

An ecommerce platform designed for dispensaries may offer a variety of convenient features and functionality, from the way products are displayed to how unique and relevant info—like THC content— is included and filtered. Above all, though, you should look for two major things in a cannabis ecommerce solution: compliance and point of sale integration.

The cannabis industry is a highly regulated industry. When operating ecommerce for your dispensary, you need to have a specialized platform or solution that is able to meet the regulation requirements. Two major compliance needs are:

• Purchase limit. Unlike virtually every other industry, cannabis stores cannot sell more than the legally allowable limit to any one individual at a time.
• Age gate. Cannabis ecommerce platforms must include a gate for customers to identify their age. Anyone who is under the age limit is not able to order cannabis online.

An ecommerce platform for a cannabis store needs to work with a compliant cannabis point of sale system (POS) to ensure the online store shows the correct stock and product information and syncs data automatically with the POS. This is part of providing customers a great omnichannel experience. Cova seamlessly integrates with various established cannabis eCommerce solutions, catering to both startups and established multi-location stores. Book a free consultation now to find the perfect fit for your needs.

Let’s dive into the best platforms, what they do well, and what’s most important for a cannabis-specific ecommerce platform.

We’re strategic and intentional about our recommendations. It’s important to note that we don’t include any ecommerce solutions that use iframe embedded menus connected to cannabis marketplaces. While both marketplaces and iframe menus can be valuable, and we often endorse their use as part of an online strategy, marketplace-hosted iframe menus are not ideal as your long-term ecommerce solution.

Embedded marketplace menus don’t offer SEO needed to help you rank for product searches, and ultimately expose your customers to competitors' products in the marketplace. This means you may lose sales to other retailers who offer discounts. Relying exclusively on this type of iframe solution is bad for your brand and has the potential to drive overall prices down for the industry. Examples include Dutchie, I heart Jane and Weedmaps. You can still get listed on these marketplaces, but using their menus as your ecommerce solution is not recommended.

Here’s our list of the top 5 ecommerce platforms for cannabis stores in 2024 and where they shine brightest:

• Carrot: Best for all-in-one platform with native branded loyalty app
• Mosaic: Best for enhanced SEO functionalities and comprehensive marketing reports
• Dispense: Best for plug & play ecommerce and for multi-location retailers
• Rank Really High: Best for enterprise, full-service website & SEO capability
• Buddi: Best free menu in Canada

Keep reading for a detailed breakdown of ecommerce platforms and reviews of each of our top 5 platforms. Or click below if you'd like a personalized consultation. 

An iframe menu acts like a shopping page, so that customers can view, select and pay for products. Since an iframe menu is actually an HTML document embedded inside of another HTML document (somewhat like a website within a website), it makes it easy to implement, but gains no SEO value. This is because each product cannot be indexed by Google, so customers won’t be able to find your products through Google searches. Or, if they do, it will lead them to the menu-providers site (often a marketplace) instead of yours. This is a major disadvantage of iframe menu ecommerce solutions.

Benefits

• Low cost
• Easy, quick setup, simple shop page
• Suitable for a neighborhood store located in a remote area with no competition.

Drawbacks

• No SEO value as products are not indexed by Google
• Can’t attract new customers from search engines like Google
• Risk of losing customers to other retailers if this iframe is part of a marketplace
• Poor customer experience due to little or no customization
• Poor to zero analytics

Examples of an iframe solution

• Dutchie
• I heart Jane
• Weedmaps

A subdomain is a subsection of a larger domain, utilized to organize and navigate to different sections of a website. In the cannabis industry, subdomains can be leveraged in various ways to enhance online presence, organize content, or target specific audiences. For example, if your domain is ‘yourcannabisstore.com’ your ecommerce store could be ‘shop.cannabisstore.com’. Unlike iframe menus, subdomains allow search engines to index the content, making it discoverable by consumers but must be properly set up to get SEO value.

Benefits

• Easy, quick setup
• Decent analytics capabilities

Drawbacks

• Medium SEO value
• Limited brand customization

Native ecommerce puts the entire ecommerce shopping experience on the same platform and website. This means that with native ecommerce, you have all of your products and inventory on your website and that Google indexes the products and credits your website. This is a big SEO benefit. Native ecommerce has largely become standard for brands online but is relatively new in the cannabis ecosystem.

Benefits

• High SEO value
• Highly customizable
• Excellent analytics capabilities

Drawbacks

• Relatively high start-up cost
• Slow to implement
• Require more ongoing maintenance than simply a shop page

With so many ecommerce platforms out there in the market, how do you know which is right for your cannabis dispensary? The answer starts with the unique nature of cannabis retail.

The highly regulated nature of the cannabis industry means compliance informs virtually all aspects of running a cannabis retail store. You simply need an ecommerce platform designed for cannabis retail in order to account for age gates and quantity limitations (purchase limits). The ecommerce solution must also integrate with your store's POS to accurately reflect inventory and product information.

Compliance isn’t the only issue, however, there are a number of considerations:

• Branding and customization is an important consideration because it is how you tell your story and build a brand that is differentiated in the market. When customers have a relationship with your brand, you are resistant to price wars and can build loyalty.

• Price is always a consideration but it isn’t just up front costs. Consider all costs of ownership—from the cost to build a website, to monthly costs, to maintenance and updates. Also, if you want your website to rank high on search engines like Google and Bing, there may be SEO costs.

• Functionalities: Beyond facilitating sales, an eCommerce solution can offer additional functionalities including CRM, loyalty programs, mobile apps, in-store kiosks, and complaint resolution support. Your specific needs will depend on the customer experience you aim to deliver, your marketing and retail strategy, and the regulations in your state or province

• Support for your company on launch and ongoing support. Consider the effort needed to launch and maintain the website. Does the ecommerce provider offer the support you’ll need? Or do you have an internal team, such as a marketer or web developer? If not, you will need to budget for a freelancer to help maintain it.

• Scalability. Your ecommerce solution should be able to grow with your cannabis business or be able to handle your high volume store or multiple locations right out of the gate.

• Analytics so you can better understand your customer, helping you improve their experience. Here it’s important to consider both Google analytics from SEO perspectives as well as reports that give you visibility to your online businesses. These reports can offer invaluable information such as how many people visit your website, how many bought products, what products people looked at, how long they spent on your website, what is in the average customer shopping cart, how many abandon the carts, demographics and much more.

• SEO is critical for cannabis online retail. SEO is the primary way for customers to find your online store.

The increased importance of ecommerce SEO for cannabis dispensaries is largely due to regulations and compliance. With limited ability to advertise, discovery by search engines like Google and Bing, is the primary way for potential customers to discover your cannabis store online.

Key SEO questions include, can your product and category pages be indexed and discovered on search engines?

The higher your store ranks in specific cannabis searches, the more likely your store is to gain a new customer and a chance to gain a recurring customer.

When we recall the three types of cannabis ecommerce solutions we can rank them in terms of SEO value from lowest to highest:

• iFrame menus (no value)
• Subdomain menus (low value)
• Native ecommerce menus (high value)

Launch fee ranges from $0 for an iframe menu to $2,500 for a custom website.

Monthly fee ranges from $0-$250 for an iframe menu. A subdomain menu or native ecommerce starts at $500-$1000 per month. There will be additional costs for extra website customization, extra landing pages or blog pages and SEO services.

Transaction fees are charged by some ecommerce platforms, including a minimum number of orders that must be met (or your business is responsible for the difference). These transaction fees, however, can be passed on to consumers.

• Professional ecommerce web design can be costly. A marketing agency typically charges $1,000 - $10,000 to create a custom website.

• Website maintenance is a key consideration. To keep your ecommerce running smoothly, you will need a person capable of updating the content for promotions, images, and to ensure inventory is accurate.If this person isn’t already a part of your team you’ll need an external resource or your marketing agency to handle the upkeep. If you only have a shop page, the upkeep will be minimal because your inventory and pricing should be updated automatically through POS integration.

• SEO enhancement can range $1,000 – $5,000/month depending on the number of keywords you want to drive and the number of retail locations you have. It also depends on the competition around your area.

• Integrations with other software can add to development costs. If your ecom doesn't have out-of-the box integration with other tools such as your POS, delivery software or CRM, you may have to pay extra for those development costs.