E-Commerce for Farmers: 5 Top Platforms and Providers

These days, retailers aren’t relying solely on newspaper advertisements, and vacuum manufacturers aren’t resting their hopes on door-to-door sales. If your family farm still relies on local markets for sales, you fall similarly behind.

Gone are the days when farmers had to rely solely on word-of-mouth to sell their products. If you want to grow your farm and reach new customers, you need to explore a new approach: e-commerce for farmers.

This post covers the basics of e-commerce for farmers. After reading, you’ll have the information to help you understand and choose the right e-commerce platform for your farm.

E-Commerce for Farmers: The Basics

E-commerce and online shopping have been rising for decades, and this trend isn’t going away anytime soon. Customers are purchasing everything from groceries to new cars online in the modern age, and if you want to break into a new market and reach new customers, opening up an online store is the way to go.

Let's explore the basics of e-commerce for farmers and how you can get started. You need to nail down five key areas before selling your farm products online.

Understanding online marketplaces: First, what are online marketplaces, and why are they important for businesses like yours? E-commerce platforms allow you to showcase your products to a wider audience. Online sales can help you diversify income streams and reduce your dependence on word-of-mouth referrals and other traditional sales channels.
Setting up an online store: When setting up an online store, remember to choose a memorable and relevant domain name. Find one that reflects your brand and will be easy for your ideal customers to remember. Next, you’ll want to select an e-commerce platform that suits your needs and design a user-friendly website for your online customers. Last, regularly update your website with fresh content, product updates, and seasonal offerings.
Managing your product listings: Once your farm website is up, you need to write clear and compelling product descriptions highlighting your products’ unique features and benefits. You’ll also want to take high-quality photos from multiple angles, giving the customer a clear picture of what they’re buying. Finally, find a technical solution that helps you manage inventory across in-person and online sales to ensure you never run out of stock or have inaccurate product information on your site.
Understanding payment processing options: Managing secure, convenient online payments is critical to the success of any e-commerce business. Offer secure payment options to build customer trust and encourage online sales. Integrate popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, or Square to accept credit card payments. You should also consider offering digital wallet options like Apple Pay or Google Pay. Above all, ensure your payment processing system is PCI compliant to protect sensitive customer data.
Shipping and fulfillment: One common hurdle of opening an online store is managing shipping and fulfillment. Start your business on the right foot by choosing reliable shipping partners offering competitive rates and fast delivery times. Implement the right tools to calculate shipping costs and timelines accurately, and take steps to communicate that information to your customer. You’ll also want to implement proper storage and packaging. This step is especially important when you’re shipping perishable goods like raw meats and other agricultural products.

By following these basic guidelines, you'll be well on your way to setting up a successful online store for your farm products. But this is just the beginning of your journey! Let’s now discuss the tools and platforms you can use to help make your journey into e-commerce smoother and more successful.

Be sure to view the Perishable Shipping Course

1. GrazeCart

Best for: Online meat sales

GrazeCart is a comprehensive e-commerce solution designed specifically for farmers and butchers looking to sell their products online, focusing on meat sales. Our platform offers a user-friendly, code-free website builder, allowing you to create a professional and engaging online store without extensive technical knowledge or costly design services.

Key features for farmers looking to get into e-commerce:

Catch-weight item support: GrazeCart makes selling catch-weight items, like hand-cut meats, seafood, and produce, easier by letting you charge customers based on the actual weight of the product rather than standard quantities.
Optimized for perishables: The platform is designed to handle the unique challenges of selling perishable goods online. Customize products, prices, and fees by different areas, offer free delivery thresholds to increase average order value, and save on shipping costs through our partnerships.
Code-free website editor: GrazeCart's drag-and-drop website builder allows you to create a stunning online store without any coding knowledge. Add banner images, customer testimonials, and video players to showcase your products and farm.
Unique and optimized pages: Create high-converting sales pages with embedded product feeds, host promotional sales events with unique URLs, and easily set up private wholesale stores. GrazeCart also provides access to SEO tools, allowing you to customize page listings and metadata for each page to improve your search engine rankings. As a bonus, all our pages are mobile-optimized.
Flexible checkout and fulfillment: Our checkout process validates and saves customer card information without charging until after fulfillment. Easily update actual product weights before shipping or delivery and automatically send customers an email receipt with the final price of each item. We also offer delivery estimates, free delivery thresholds, pricing rules, product rules, shipping discounts, and custom fees to optimize your e-commerce operations.
Subscriptions: Offer your customers the option of getting fresh products delivered on a regular basis with ongoing subscription boxes built into the GrazeCart software. Leverage our built-in customer portal, gain insights when customers cancel their subscriptions, and manage inventory for repeat orders with ease.

Pricing: GrazeCart offers a 14-day free trial, make your free account today.

2. Shopify

Best for: Generic e-commerce solutions

Shopify is a widely used e-commerce platform offering comprehensive tools for businesses to create online stores and sell their products across various channels. While not explicitly designed for farmers or agricultural companies, Shopify has an extensive feature set, making it a popular choice for retailers in many industries.

Some key Shopify features include:

Multiple sales channels: Shopify allows you to sell your products through various channels, including online marketplaces, social media platforms, and online search.
Global selling capabilities: Shopify makes it easier for businesses to scale internationally and streamline cross-border sales. With Shopify Markets, farmers can explore new markets and expand their customer base beyond their local area, all from a single Shopify store.
B2B e-commerce: For farmers looking to sell wholesale, Shopify Plus offers the ability to sell to both B2B and DTC customers through a single platform and store.

Pricing: Shopify for Small Teams starts at $79 per month.

3. Barn2Door

Best for: Subscription services

Barn2Door is an all-in-one e-commerce solution designed specifically for farmers looking to sell their products directly to consumers. The platform offers a range of features tailored to the unique needs of agricultural businesses, with a particular focus on subscription services.

Some of Barn2Door’s top features include:

Subscriptions: Barn2Door enables farmers to lock in monthly recurring sales with seasonal or ongoing subscriptions. Customers can skip, pay upfront, or pay as they go, providing a predictable revenue stream for farmers.
Sell-by-weight: Many farmers, particularly those selling meat, need the ability to price their products by weight (price per pound or by hanging weight). Barn2Door accommodates this need, letting farmers choose between selling items for a set price or by weight online and in person.
Dedicated support and services: Barn2Door has a large support team dedicated to providing one-on-one coaching, real-time support, design services, and tactical strategies to help farmers get started with online sales.

Pricing: Barn2Door’s Business package starts at $129 per month plus $499 upfront.

4. Freshline

Best for: Online produce sales

Freshline is an e-commerce platform designed specifically for farmers and producers looking to sell their products online. The platform offers a range of tools tailored to the unique needs of agricultural businesses, with a particular focus on online produce sales.

Critical features for farmers looking to get into e-commerce:

Flexible picking and packing sheets: Freshline automates processing and packing operations with auto-generated pick lists by date, customers, orders, or aggregate products.
Item-specific rules and automated cutoffs: Freshline allows farmers to align their online store with their product schedules by setting specific delivery dates and availability by item. The platform also enables automatic computation of available fulfillment dates based on customer addresses and the schedules of items in the cart, as well as the ability to set and enforce cutoffs and lead times by location.
Bulk editing and custom discount codes: Farmers can save time by bulk adjusting inventory and pricing with Freshline's quick edit functionality. The platform also allows custom discount codes with expiration dates, redemption requirements, and usage rules for individual users or the entire store.

Pricing: Freshline’s pricing is available only through contacting their sales team.

5. Farmbrite

Best for: Enterprise farm management

Farmbrite is an all-in-one farm management software designed to help farmers and producers streamline their operations, manage various aspects of their business, and sell their products online.

The platform offers features that cater to the diverse needs of agricultural enterprises, from crop planning and livestock management to financial tracking and e-commerce.

Some key features of Farmbrite include:

Automated sales, orders, and inventory: Farmers can quickly create their product catalog and easily integrate it with existing crops. Farmbrite streamlines inventory management by synchronizing with harvests and automating revenue and order reporting.
Flexible listing and inventory options: The platform lets farmers automatically limit quantity, manage variable retail and wholesale prices, apply custom tax, discount, and delivery fees, and specify custom pickup times and locations. Farmers can also offer pickup or delivery options to their customers.
Comprehensive farm management features: Besides e-commerce capabilities, Farmbrite offers a wide range of farm management features, including task and work management, livestock management and record-keeping, crop planning and tracking, and farm accounting.

Pricing: Farmbrite’s Plus package starts at $79 per month.

Mastering E-Commerce for Farmers: The Easy Way

If you want to keep up with the changing times and get ahead of the competition, it's time to explore the world of e-commerce and online selling. The platforms and providers discussed in this post all offer strong features that can help set you up for success in this industry.

But how can you choose the right solution for your farm?

If you're an independent farm looking to sell meat products online, you need a platform that offers delivery, selling by weight, and advanced inventory management solutions. Does this sound like you? Then, you'll definitely want to check out GrazeCart.

GrazeCart is explicitly designed for farmers like you. With features tailored to meet sellers' needs, you'll streamline your online sales process and reach a wider audience than ever before.

See for yourself how GrazeCart can take the headaches out of online selling. Check out our free 14-day trial today.