Ecommerce sites are being developed more frequently than ever before. We’re starting to see that consumers simply will not purchase goods with their credit cards online. There are a number of reasons for this, including concerns about data security and privacy, but the primary one is just ease of use. Consumers do not like filling out forms on their computer screens because it’s time consuming, which is where an ecommerce platform uk can be helpful.
Do you want to create an online shop and start selling products around the globe? Millions of merchants around the world already sold their products online, this trend will only grow in the future. Best Free Ecommerce Website Builder Uk is a free platform that offers all the tools needed for creating your own online store – with no ecommerce skills required.
Looking for best free ecommerce platform? Free ecommerce website builder uk is an ultimate solution for creating and running an online store at no cost. At the same time, our platform is easy to use. No programming skills or technical experience required. Create an online store without writing a single line of code
If you are thinking of how to build a ecommerce website, you are going to need an online store. This is not a surprise to anyone; people go online in search of products. The best ecommerce website builder uk can help you to create an online store that has a seamless experience for the visitors. Free ecommerce website builder uk is a great way to take the plunge into the business world and get started on your own company. There are so many benefits to using an ecommerce platform. We will discuss them below.
How to make an ecommerce website for free
Learning how to build a free commerce website is simple enough, as long as you know which platforms to use. A few platforms such as Square Online and BigCartel offer free plans which allow you to build a free ecommerce website and sell a limited number of products, at no cost.
However, these plans are limited in terms of features, and usually offer underwhelming templates – which can make it hard for your business to stand out online.
That’s why we strongly recommend opting for an affordable paid plan instead – they come with premium features to help take your website to the next level. Platforms such as Wix and Squarespace (which scored highly in our research) offer a free trial period rather than a free plan. This means you can build an entire online store and test the platform’s tools at no cost.
If you enjoy using it, you’ll then need to sign up to a monthly subscription. When billed annually, Wix’s ecommerce plans start from just £13 per month and Squarespace’s start from £20 per month – the price as one takeaway pizza per month.
Square Online
Square isn’t only a payment platform for stores and restaurants, but their latest addition is a newly created online store builder. There’s no monthly fee, just a 2.9% plus 30c credit card processing fee per transaction. Square Online (read our Square Online review) allows you to sell online, in person and syncs your sales for your brick and mortar shop and your online store sales.
Like other sites, there are paid for packages too. The free bundle offers up to 500MB storage, but you can, for example, list unlimited products, manage your inventory and arrange for store pickups. You can’t however, accept payments through PayPal or list product reviews.
There’s a community forum, chat, phone and email support for free customers and integration with Instagram.
Square includes a POS solution in its base service, and WooCommerce and Ecwid both offer integration with Square to fulfill that need.
What are the features that make Square Online so special?
Here’s a quick list:
- Square Online offers a free URL and unlimited hosting
- All of their paid plans include unlimited storage for files of any size
- You can arrange in-store pickups and manage and automatically update the inventory for both your online and brick and mortar stores.
- No coding experience is required
What are the drawbacks to Square Online?
- You’ll have to purchase one of their paid-for plans to enjoy added features.
- Setting shipment prices can be a problem as you need to decide on either free shipping or a flat rate for all your products. This is sometimes inappropriate if you’re selling items of different weights and sizes and varying price ranges.
- Issues with account stability are common.
Who should use this free Ecommerce Builder?
The Square Online is a go-to ecommerce builder if you need to manage and overview many products, both online and in-store. It’s, therefore, a good option for established brick and mortar retailers who want to start selling online without any programming hassle.
But, if you’re looking for reasonable control over your shipment prices, or a low-cost option for highly complex needs, this probably isn’t the solution for you. Square Online is one of the more expensive options on this list.
Ecwid
Ecwid‘s suitable for digital store owners wanting to add a free ecommerce store to their existing website. At the time of writing, this platform boasts as many as 1.6 million small businesses as clients.
There’s a free version, and three paid for packages all of which offer mobile compatibility and unlimited bandwidth. However, the paid for solutions provide a better standard of customer support and an abandoned cart option that you don’t get with the free basic version.
Ecwid (read our Ecwid review) works across multiple platforms including WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace (read our Squarespace review). There’s also a limit to just ten products you can sell for free, so if you have a broad product range, this isn’t the website builder for you.
What makes Ecwid special?
- No transaction fees besides payment processing
- You can easily plug an Ecwid store into an existing website.
- Plenty of integrations are available
- Ecwid stores boast mobile-friendly designs
- The next tier up from their free program, the ‘Venture’ plan, only costs $15 a month. This is much cheaper than some of its competitors and offers an impressive array of features.
- Ecwid’s interface was redesigned in 2018 and is now much easier to use.
- You can present your storefront in up to 45 languages
- Ecwid lets you publish your store as a mobile app if the rest of your site isn’t already mobile-friendly.
A few reasons why you might pass on Ecwid:
- Ecwid’s free ecommerce plan is essentially only a trial for its paid plans. On the free program, you can only add ten items to your store, which severely limits its functionality.
- Only one store theme is available on the free site
- Limited SEO and GDPR options compared to other sites
Who uses Ecwid as an ecommerce builder?
Ecwid is primarily intended to be used as a plugin store to complement an existing site. So, if you’re building an ecommerce store from scratch, this might not be the option for you.
But, it’s an alright free service for attaching a small business to a website you already have up and running. However, shelling out for one of their paid plans will soon become a necessity for using this solution longer-term. But, in fairness to Ewid, their premium plans are affordable and come with a good number of features — so it’s swings and roundabouts really!
WooCommerce
This is an open source shopping cart that works with WordPress sites, so if you’re already a WordPress user, this is a highly popular choice. WooCommerce (read our full WooCommerce review) has been going since 2001, has 48 million downloads and powers about 30% of online stores.
Best of all, WooCommerce is free to download, and it doesn’t charge any transaction fees. However, for you to maintain your WooCommerce site, you’ll have to pay for WordPress hosting (if you haven’t already) because WooCommerce isn’t a standalone ecommerce site, it’s a plugin. Also, if you want to access WooCommerce’s add ons, you’ll have to pay a fee.
The upside to using WooCommerce is that you can list an unlimited number of products for sale, take payments via PayPal or credit/debit cards, and choose from four mobile-friendly templates.
There’s also stock tracking to help ensure you never accidentally make a sale you can’t deliver. Last but not least, WooCommerce offers online support staff to help you hit the ground running.
It’s an ideal option for someone wanting to launch an online store and implement top-notch content marketing strategies.
What’s so great about WooCommerce? Well…
- WooCommerce is an open-source solution, so it’s highly customizable with many integrations.
- It’s a great ecommerce builder for those already using WordPress as it’s built especially for that market.
- There’s an active community of developers and experts for you to get advice from.
The main drawbacks of this ecommerce builder:
- While the plugin’s free, costs for maintenance, development, and hosting can run high
- It requires a lot of upfront research to get used to. Using WooCommerce can be a steep learning curve for newbies.
- WooCommerce requires a bit of knowledge and experience using WordPress
- It’s self-hosted, so updates and maintenance are down to you
Who should use WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is the right free ecommerce website builder for you if you’re already an avid WordPress user looking to expand your WordPress site. It’s also an excellent option if you have any experience programming and customizing web pages and don’t mind doing some extra research to familiarize yourself with their sophisticated features and customization options. Once you’re proficient in WooCommerce, scaling your ecommerce business should be a breeze!
Sellfy
Founded in 2011, Sellfy’s mission is “to empower creators from around the world to earn a living doing what they love.” Their offering is unique in that you can sell everything from physical to digital products, as well as ‘print on-demand’. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to sell digital products on the free plan, but there are plenty of great features you can benefit from.
What we like:
- Unlimited sales: Some builders limit the number of sales you can make a day/month/year, not Sellfy. Accept payments online via PayPal or Stripe
- No transaction fees: None of the Sellfy plans charge transaction fees, not even the free plan
- Print-on-demand products: This is quite a niche feature from Sellfy. Those who need this service will be hard-pressed to find it in other website builders. Note that you will be charged only when you make a sale
- Discount codes: It’s great to have this option since they can help to boost sales and reward loyal customers
- SEO options available: You can add a meta description for each product
What we don’t like:
- 10 product limit: Depending on what you’re selling, this may not be enough for you, even if you’re just starting out
- No digital products on free plan: If you wish to sell digital products such as ebooks, music and photography files, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid plan ($29/month)
- No custom domain: You’ll have to use the sellfy.store domain
- Requires card details: You’ll need to give Sellfy your credit card details upon sign up to cover charges for print on-demand order fulfillment
Weebly
This US-based website builder is one of the most popular free website builders as they power over 50 million websites. Weebly’s ecommerce features are excellent, for example, you get taxes automatically calculated, a powerful inventory management system and coupon codes.
A few years ago Weebly was acquired by Square, the online payment giant, and they decided to offer (most of) Weebly’s slick ecommerce features in their free plans too – very generous.
What we like:
- Unlimited products: With the free plan, you can list as many products as you wish.
- SSL included: Accept payments safely.
- Easy to use: Weebly is one of the easiest to use store builders out there. Its drag and drop editor makes it simple and intuitive.
- Superb blog: If you’d like to create a blog to complement your online store, Weebly offers one of the best ones out there.
- Scalability: Weebly’s ecommerce capabilities are top-notch, so if your online store grows, they’ll be able to accommodate it.
What we don’t like:
- No offline payments: Unfortunately you won’t be able to offer any offline payment methods such as cash on delivery.
- Not free outside of the US: We’ve heard reports from users outside of the US, who didn’t see the free ecommerce option.
Webstarts
Known primarily for their website builder, Webstarts also lets you add an online store for free. It is, in general, a very generous free plan. This is probably why 4M users rely on it for their online presence.
Now, creating the store is also a pretty smooth experience. If you’ve ever used Wix, the feeling is very similar, as you can move items easily on the page. You can also adapt them for mobile screens, as templates aren’t automatically responsive. The interface is a bit dated, but it’s not bad for a free offer.
What we like:
- 1Gb of space: enough for a decent selection of items.
- Sell everything: you can sell digital items and physical goods.
- Generous free plan: sell 10 products and make up to 20 sales a day. More than most small stores will need.
- Unintrusive advert: it’s in the footer and doesn’t look obnoxious.
- Good payment options: Stripe, WePay, Authorize.Net and PayPal are supported.
What we don’t like:
- No SKU: but you can track your inventory.
- No SEO options: title tags, descriptions & personalized URLs for products and categories are missing.
Wix 4.6/5
Best overall free ecommerce website builder
Jumping up from 4.3/5 to 4.6/5 in our research, Wix has massively improved its sales features. For instance, you can now sell via Facebook and use drop shipping services.
You can build a full Wix ecommerce website at no cost with no limited trial, with access to its templates, intuitive design tools, and some customer support.
However, to actually start selling products and taking payments, you’ll need to sign up to at least the Business Basic plan (£13 per month). Its price plans are still very affordable, though, making it one of the best platforms for small businesses.
Don’t be put off, though – you can first enjoy a free trial of your ecommerce store for 14 days to see if you like the platform. We were certainly impressed by Wix’s ecommerce features, value for money, and help and support.
Pros:
- Makes it really easy to build your brand image with its intuitive design interface
- Add product videos (but only on the ecommerce plans, starting from £13 per month)
- 14-day free trial and affordable premium plans
Cons:
- The amount of creative freedom can feel overwhelming at first
- Only offers multi-channel integration with Instagram as an in-built feature, unlike Square which offers more in-built integrations
Wix is one of the most popular and user-friendly ecommerce platforms in the world
How to Create a Website Free of Cost in 6 easy steps
To create a website for free, follow these 6 simple steps:
- Decide on the kind of website you want to create.
- Signup with a free website builder platform to build your website. Choose from any of the best free website builder for creating a website free of cost, click “Get Started” choose the type of website you want to create and signup for free.
- Select a suitable website template.
- Customize your site template & design to suit your style. Add design features, text, galleries, videos & more.
- Choose a free site hosting plan. You can connect your custom domain name if you like.
- Publish your website and go live. Start building your online presence.
The process explained in detail to guide you if you are a beginner looking to create your own website for free of charge.
Conclusion
Ecommerce is an emerging market where you can start a business that can be easily scaled. This benefit makes ecommerce a lucrative market to get into. There are many ecommerce sites already present. But to showcase the products you will have to set up a website. Ecommerce Website Builder helps you do just that.
Ecommerce has become a very profitable business and many businesses are now looking to enter this online business as they see it as a gateway to great revenue. This is perhaps true indeed as the market is huge and lucrative. However, you cannot just start with a website and expect to make sales. You need an ecommerce solution for your business and there are various kinds available today so you have a lot of different options when it comes to choosing one.