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.

Social commerce software: What it is and what it isn't

Until recently, there were no software solutions to help companies sell on social media. Sellers needed multiple tools to create, share, and promote their products and services, not to mention platform-specific features such as Facebook Shops or Vimeo live video.

As social commerce grew, some vendors adapted and created a new type of software called Social Commerce Platforms. Since this type of software isn't always clearly defined, let's look at what it is and especially what it isn't (to avoid confusion with other social media tools).

Let's start with the easy part: social commerce isn't about using social media tools to share and promote products or services on Facebook or Instagram. There are thousands of tools for this, which g2 categorizes as Social Media Suites, Social Media Management, or Social Media Marketing. The one thing these tools can't do is allow consumers to buy on social media platforms. This is where social commerce comes into play.

Ideally, social commerce should be similar to e-commerce platforms, but specifically for social media platforms. In other words, it should help sellers in the ways mentioned below.

What reviewers think about social commerce platforms

While the category is still young, users of social commerce platforms had quite a few interesting thoughts and experiences to share on g2. Here are some examples of how reviewers used these features and what benefits they achieved:

A review for the product, Dash Hudson:

“Visualizing data through Dashboard and being able to drive social commerce through Likeshop.”

A review for gen.video:

"We are using social influencers to drag consumers through the purchase funnel to convert top of funnel social media spend into the bottom of funnel social commerce activations."

A review for Later: 

"Great features including their Linkin Bio, which is an Instagram Store that I like to use with e-commerce."

A review for Bazaarvoice: 

"Instagram is the primary platform for one of my brands, and they frequently leverage it for e-commerce. Tagging products is straightforward, and the analytics are pretty robust."

Very few products provide all the above features at this point, which shows that the market is still evolving.

The future of social commerce platforms

The grid of the new category only includes seven products, but the fact that there were enough reviews to generate a grid when we launched it in April shows that the market is in full expansion.

We expect more products to expand their functionality, but some may choose to focus on a specific need like live video selling. We also expect to see mergers and acquisitions in this market, which can be a good alternative to developing new software. Moving forward, we aim to continuously monitor the social commerce software market and update our category accordingly.