Today ecommerce platform is among most popular types of websites. More and more people start using ecommerce software as tools for running their online business. They’re interested in free ecommerce software, free shopping cart, free store templates and other website features. E-store owners use multiple options to build best free ecommerce websites , apps or online stores.
Ecommerce business is booming online these days. People are attracted to the convenience of shopping online, not to mention the available wide range of products and choices. In short, free ecommerce website platforms have become a very popular choice for people looking to launch their online businesses.
Why spend money on a free ecommerce website when you can create one for yourself. The ability to build your own shop without spending a single penny. This has to be one of the best kept secrets in the industry, most people don’t know you can actually create your own free ecommerce website and succeed.
There are plenty of free ecommerce platforms. Some are freemium, meaning they come with a set of features and you can add more features by paying a certain fee per month. While others…are totally free. Whether you want to start an online store for selling personal items, or something big like Amazon, there are plenty of options available to choose from. As for the ecommerce website templates, there are also lots to choose from. When it comes to choosing the best platform for your online business, especially if it is your first time building one, then read the following list of top recommended platforms.
Is there any free e-commerce platform?
Yes, many ecommerce platforms provide free trial for some days like Shopify or Bigcommerce. However, if you are looking for ecommerce platforms that are free forever then the names are few. I am here sharing you the list of top free ecommerce platforms:
Wix
Wix packs in a user-friendly website builder (similarly to Weebly or Squarespace) to help you create a website in one of two easy ways: with mere drag and drop or by using Wix’s ADI artificial intelligence designer. What’s more, you can even customize it greatly without knowing a thing about code.
Note: Wix is also a perfect store builder that will let you create an eCommerce website – but you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to start selling to customers.
Free plan
- Online presence with free and secure web hosting
- Up to 500 MB bandwidth and up to 500 MB storage
- Hundreds of fully customizable templates, mobile-optimized website
- Access to an extensive collection of icons, images, clip art, and free apps
- Free Wix domain – (
username.wixsite.com/siteaddress) - Email marketing, SEO assistance, and other marketing tools
Free plan limitations
Your site address will carry the Wix favicon. Further, you’ll find Wix ads on every page. You cannot have a custom domain or change templates.
Most importantly, you cannot accept payments under the free plan. Again, while you can create your store for free, you need to pay once you’re ready to start selling.
Other key features
- Easy-to-use tools in a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor
- Assistance of Wix Artificial Design Intelligence to build personalized websites
- 500+ design templates covering any and every type of website
- Built-in tools to customize the design and layout
- Unlimited bandwidth and 10 GB storage
- Hassle-free coding for advanced functionality
- Mobile-friendly and SEO-friendly
- Google Analytics included
- Great ecommerce website builder
Among the free eCommerce platforms, Wix is ideal for websites that want everything taken care of and need only regular website features.
Price & transaction fees
The Premium plans start at $17 per month. There are three premium plans that are usable by small businesses, startups, and medium-sized eCommerce business owners – Basic, Unlimited, and VIP.
All these plans allow you to connect to your own domain and are ad-free. They vary in the amount of storage as well as the level of support and apps available. All three plans provide unlimited bandwidth.
While these business and eCommerce plans allow you to set up a store, accept payments, and view detailed Analytics, you’ll have to pick from their Unlimited or VIP business and eCommerce plans to get access to other advanced Wix Business applications, such as currency converter, automated sales tax, etc. They cost $25 and $35 per month, respectively.
Transaction fees:
Wix Payments lets Wix business and eCommerce plan subscribers accept card payments, digital wallets, and more without having to integrate third-party payment gateways.
It’s available only in some countries, and in the US, there’s a fee of 30¢ plus 2.9% for each transaction. It’s lower in EU countries, at 1.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 EUR. These are similar to the fees that other payment processing software options charge.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform. It’s a completely free software that you can download and run on any web hosting provider.
Since WooCommerce doesn’t provide hosting for you, you’ll need to buy web hosting and a domain name to make sure your website can be accessed by users worldwide.
We recommend using either Bluehost or SiteGround. They are both among the largest hosting companies in the world and are officially recommended by WooCommerce.
Bluehost is even offering WPBeginner users a free domain name + SSL certificate, and a generous 60% discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.
Pros
- It’s easy to get started with WooCommerce. You can create an online store quickly even if you’re a total beginner.
- You’ll be hosting your website yourself, which gives you full control. Although you’ll need to pay for WooCommerce hosting, but this doesn’t have to cost a lot.
- There are loads of WooCommerce themes (designs), giving you the opportunity to create a store that truly reflects your brand.
- There are thousands of WooCommerce plugins that you can use to add new features and grow your business.
- You can sell anything with WooCommerce whether its physical products, digital downloads, membership plans, dropshipping store, or affiliate products.
- WooCommerce doesn’t charge you any transaction fees at all. You’ll only have to pay your payment service provider like PayPal or Stripe, or your bank.
Cons
- If you’re a total beginner, WooCommerce is a bit trickier to get started with than some other options. You’ll need to buy hosting and a domain name, for instance.
- You’ll be responsible for maintaining your online store as it grows. This might mean upgrading your hosting plan or paying for a security plugin for WordPress.
To help beginners get started, we have the most detailed WooCommerce tutorial on the web that helps you build an eCommerce website with WooCommerce.
Square Online
Most generous free ecommerce plan
Square Online
Most generous free ecommerce planVERY GOOD
4.2out of 5
- Quick setup
- Easy to use
- Not very scalable
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $16 – $79 / monthSEE PROS & CONS
Overview of Square Online
As far as free online stores go, you can’t beat Square. It’s easy to manage inventory and design a professional site. Square templates aren’t super customizable, but that means you can get online quickly with a template that’s guaranteed to look good. Plus, Square offers a remarkable amount of features on its free plan. We recommend Square if you want to grow your business as much as possible before you start paying for a website.
Ecwid
Want a store that plugs into your existing site? If that’s a yes, it’s Ecwid for you. No website? Not to worry, you’ll get an instant starter site too for free.
Free plan
Ecwid has a free plan that’s very usable. Once you sign up, you can set up a fully functional free eCommerce website that sells up to ten products in two categories. Here’s what you get:
- Mobile responsive customizable online store with product options
- Mobile responsive shopping cart
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Add it easily to WordPress or any other website
- Sell simultaneously on multiple sites
- Facebook Pixel
- Built-in support for SSL certification, security, server configuration, and hosting
- 40+ payment methods in multiple currencies
- Real-time shipping rates from some carriers
- Built-in Google Analytics integration
Free plan limitations
You won’t get access to digital goods, staff accounts, or promo codes. These features, along with many more, are available only in premium plans.
Other key features
- Sell on the go with Ecwid mobile
- Store management app
- Multiple sales channels like Facebook, Instagram, or other POS
- Unlimited products, including digital goods
- Inventory management, automated tax calculation
- Order creation, product filters, and variations
In short, Ecwid’s free plan can be a fine option for small merchants who have basic selling requirements.
Price & transaction fees
Beyond the free plan, three paid plans are available:
- Venture – $15 per month
- Business – $35 per month
- Unlimited – $99 per month
Transaction fees:
None of them are charged directly by Ecwid, but your chosen payment processor will likely charge fees.
Big Cartel
If you’ve got T-shirts, paintings, jewelry, or other crazy stuff to sell, you’ll feel at home with Big Cartel.
Free plan
With the free Gold plan, you can:
- Start your free store with up to five products
- Pick a theme and customize
- Add one image per product with product options and categories
- Sell in person and on Facebook
- Choose to accept credit card or PayPal payments, or both
- SSL encryption
- Basic order management via the Big Cartel dashboard
- Email support
Free plan limitations
On the free plan, it’s not possible to have a custom domain. Nor will you be able to add multiple images per product or track inventory.
Other key features
- Enable inventory tracking
- Offer discount codes
- Google Analytics
- Full code customization
Since minimalism is Big Cartel’s forte, you won’t find the platform weighed down by too many features. At the same time, the free plan gives you enough to set up a shop, sell, and receive payments.
Price & transaction fees:
Three premium plans are available that allow you to sell different numbers of products
- Platinum – you can sell up to 25 products at $9.99 per month
- Diamond – 100 products at $19.99 per month
- Titanium – 300 products at $29.99 per month
Transaction fees:
None charged directly by BigCartel, but your chosen payment processor will likely charge fees.
The True Cost Of Using A Free Ecommerce Platform?
If you are considering an open source ecommerce platform like WooCommerce or OpenCart, here are the disadvantages.
The main downside of running on an open source ecommerce platform is that you are responsible for maintaining your server and applying the appropriate patches to keep your software up to date.
One of the reasons that I’m writing this post today is because I just went through a MAJOR update of my website which took me 4 full days to perform. And I had to stumble through the entire upgrade by reading online tutorials and browsing the forums.
In case you are curious, this is the major surgery that I performed this past week.
- I migrated my server to the latest Linux operating system – The OS version that I was using was no longer supported so I was forced to switch. And moving to a new upgraded OS caused a few compatibility problems that I had to deal with.
- I upgraded to the latest PHP version – PHP is the programming language that my website is written in. My old PHP version was no longer supported so I was forced to upgrade. And newer versions of PHP removed certain features from my cart so I had to rewrite parts of the code
- I upgraded my database software to the latest – This process was relatively painless though once again, I had to replace some obsolete code
- I upgraded a bunch of plugins – This was mostly due to the PHP version upgrade
Does any of the above scare you?
In reality, what I just went through with my online store is probably the worse case scenario.
Here’s the thing when it comes to running an open source shopping cart.
If the open source platform that you are using is popular and well maintained, then keeping your software up to date is pretty straightforward.
For example, WordPress (which is what this blog runs on) is extremely well supported. As a result, upgrading from version to version is push button and seamless.
Occasionally, there are some hiccups but there are so many helpful users out there that you can usually figure out the problem fairly quickly.
However if your open source software platform falls out of the favor of developers and they decide to stop maintaining the code, then you are on your own.
This is exactly what happened with my store and OSCommerce.
Once upon a time, OSCommerce was one of the BEST open source shopping carts around. But many years ago, the developers started dragging their feet when it came to upgrading the software.
New versions were slow to be released and the developers failed to keep up with the cutting edge features of paid platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.
Conclusion
Ecommerce is a form of selling products or services over the Internet. It’s growing rapidly around the globe and has become accessible to anyone with a computer, internet connection and a little know-how. The largest share of ecommerce platforms operate on a paying system. There are free solutions as well which require a startup investment but are free thereafter.
There are lots of ecommerce websites that you can use to build an online store completely free. One of the best methods is starting up an online store using a Wix website builder or Weebly website builder. You do not need any prior knowledge about how to make an online store as these website builders will provide you with all the features and templates that are needed for your online store. All of these sites will enable you to pick and choose which type of products that you want to sell, which payment systems you want to add and also enable you to create discount codes that can be used on your website.