Ecommerce is the best way to boost up the business. Free ecommerce platform is the best option for startups and small businesses. Because running website is not an easy task to handle. If you are a startup then you should use free ecommerce platform to gain more business from the customers.
If you are starting an online business and don’t have a lot of money for investment, the last thing you need is to invest in an expensive eCommerce platform. There are a lot of platforms out there that promise to change the way you do your shopping online, but not all of them can fit your needs and budget.
With the so called ecommerce boom, thousands of startups have created a business selling products over the internet. Product selling is still a popular way to startup a business and ecommerce platforms are now becoming more affordable with new models such as Shopify offering online small business software for free.
So, if you already have an online store, you may be interested in a free version. And maybe, you are new and looking for a tool that will not cost a lot when you are just starting out. Whatever your reason, there is an amazing collection of tools that can help you to develop your own platform to sell products. It’s very likely that one of them suits your needs perfectly!
How to Find the Best Email Marketing Service for You
The best available email marketing service is going to be unique to you. After all, the multi-million dollar info product business is going to have very different needs than the humble blogger.
But there are specific factors that we took into consideration, because we believe that they tend to be the most important ones for most businesses.
I’ll break down the details of our process for making this list and explain what matters, what doesn’t, and what you need to know to find the best option for you.
Use our methodology to help guide your ultimate decision.
1. 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.
→ Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Deal ←
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.
2. Web.com Website Builder
Web.com website builder doesn’t have a free plan, but it offers a very affordable plan that allows you to create an online store without spending a lot of money.
Web.com will host the store and even provide you with a free custom domain and free SSL certificate.
You’ll be able to have up to 500 products in your store, accept credit cards, track & manage your orders, link to Facebook marketplace, and more.
Pros
- You can build an online store for with Web.com drag & drop website builder. You can get a free custom domain name of your choosing.
- You can sell both physical and digital products through your store. You can use Web.com to track your inventory.
- There’s 24/7 email and live chat support available.
- You can add a blog to your store’s website for free, though the blogging software is very basic and doesn’t offer the same features as a blogging platform like WordPress.
- Pricing is very affordable starting only at $3.95 per month for eCommerce plan.
Cons
- The eCommerce features are not as powerful as WooCommerce or Shopify.
3. BuyNow Plus
BuyNow Plus is not a full eCommerce platform. Instead, it lets you create “buy now” buttons that you can put on any website.
You’ll need to create a free Stripe account in order to use BuyNow Plus.
Pros
- The transaction fee is pretty low at just 2% per transaction. Keep in mind that Stripe charges its own transaction fees on top of this, though.
- You can use BuyNow Plus to handle recurring payments on credit cards without your customers needing to set up an account. If you’re selling recurring memberships for offline items, then this is a really handy feature.
- You can put the button links on social media as well as on your website, or you can even use them in emails.
- There’s no limit to how many different products you can sell using BuyNow Plus.
Cons
- BuyNow Plus doesn’t offer anything extra, like inventory tracking or website creation.
- You could do something similar by using Stripe directly on your website. That way, you wouldn’t need to pay BuyNow Plus’s transaction fee. You’d need your own SSL certificate, but it’s possible to get an SSL certificate for free.
4. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a fully hosted (or all-in-one) eCommerce platform that you can use to create your eCommerce store. There’s also a WordPress plugin available, if you have an existing site that you want to use with BigCommerce.
While they don’t have a free plan available, there is a free trial which lets you set up your shop and get started without paying anything.
Pros
- You don’t have to enter any credit card details to take the free trial.
- BigCommerce is really easy to get started with. You can just sign up, enter details about your store, and start adding products.
- You can get a free domain like mystore.mybigcommerce.com if you don’t want to pay for a custom domain name.
- BigCommerce gives you plenty of different ways to take payments. It has built-in integration with lots of payment platforms, including PayPal powered by Braintree, Stripe, Authorize.net and more.
- There are lots of third-party apps that you can add to your BigCommerce store to extend its functionality.
Cons
- The free trial only lasts for 15 days, which doesn’t give you long to start making money from your store. After that, you’ll need to pay $29.95/month or more to keep your store going.
- BigCommerce is an all-in-one platform, which means you’re limited to using their addons and themes. You won’t have the range of choice that you’d have with some other eCommerce options.
Related: See our comparison of WooCommerce vs BigCommerce for more details.
5. Shopify
Shopify is another fully hosted eCommerce platform. Shopify also offers a 14 day free trial and, like BigCommerce’s free trial, this doesn’t require a credit card.
Pros
- It’s really easy to get started with Shopify. Their website builder has a drag and drop interface that means even total beginners can create a great looking online store.
- If you want to add extra features to your store, there’s an app marketplace with lots of add-ons that you can buy.
- There’s 24/7 support available, through live chat, phone, email, and Twitter.
- Shopify Payments (Shopify’s built-in payment gateway) charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. Since this is a built-in feature which has the same price as Stripe or other gateways, this makes it easier for users to get started.
Cons
- If you use other payment gateways, like PayPal or Stripe, Shopify charges a 2% transaction fee. This is on top of the fee charged by the third-party payment gateway.
- The free trial only lasts 14 days. After that, you’ll need to move onto a paid plan. The cheapest is $29/month.
Related: For more details see our comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce.
6. Weebly
Weebly isn’t quite so well known as some other eCommerce platforms, like Shopify and WooCommerce, but they offer a free trial where you can test out the platform.
Pros
- You can add any kind of physical or digital products to your store
- The drag and drop interface is easy to use to build your site and manage items in your store.
- There are around 100 different themes (designs) you can choose from, so you should be able to find something that’s just right for your site.
- Built-in inventory, shipping, taxes management features.
- As well as the community forum, the free plan gives you access to live chat, email, and even phone support.
- If you do want to upgrade to a paid plan, these are affordable even for very small businesses. Ecommerce starter plan starts at $12 per month paid annually.
Cons
- Weebly charges a 3% transaction fee. That’s in addition to the transaction fee that your payment gateway charges.
- If you’re on the free or Personal ($9/month) plans, Weebly will show ads and branding from Square, Weebly’s parent company.
- Even with the paid starter plan you are limited to sell only 25 products at a time
7. Strikingly
Strikingly’s mission is to let you “build your brand” and “conquer the world”. Apart from that, there’s not much information about them online, except that their product is free and includes a web store.
The main catch is that you can only sell one product for free. Also, they only let you create single-page layouts. This isn’t bad if you want a minimalist website, but not great for SEO. Let’s see more of their pros and cons below.
What we like:
- Good designs: they are modern and responsive.
- Numerous online payment processors: PayPal, Stripe, and offline payments are accepted.
What we don’t like:
- Only sell one product: you have to pay to sell more.
- Limited template choice: limited for the websites, and there are even fewer for ecommerces.
- SEO-limitations: mostly due to the one-page template.
Sign up free here: www.strikingly.com
Find out more in our Strikingly Review.
8. MyOnlineStore
A young Dutch provider in the ecommerce scene, MyOnlineStore has a small staff of 24 and around 40 000 stores to their name.
We published our test store without problem, but the backend did mention that it was in the Beta stage at this point. Aside from that, the pros and cons are as follows:
What we like:
- Good designs: modern and responsive.
- Payment options: online and offline are supported. Even Bitcoins!
- Multilingual system: to create your site in your preferred language.
What we don’t like:
- No SSL included.
- Limited template choice.
- Expensive premium plans.
- Still in Beta stage: maybe MyOnlineStore needs a bit of time to grow.
9. Ecwid
Something a little different here, as the strangely named Ecwid is actually an ecommerce plugin you can add to any website. It’s a very interesting proposition that has won nearly 1M people over.
The free option lets you sell 10 items, and the plugin is available in 50 languages. As you can read in our complete review, it’s a perfect mix between a dedicated ecommerce solution and a budget online store. Indeed, the premium prices are reasonable if you choose to upgrade from the free option.
What we like:
- Powerful features: even the free option lets you set taxes, manage articles and create coupons, amongst others.
- 20+ payment processors: PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net and many more.
- Intuitive and easy to use: the interface and user experience are top-notch.
- SSL integration.
- Sleek product presentation: carousels, galleries, you get tons of options to display your wares.
What we don’t like:
- You need an existing website: you need to take that into account for your costs and ease of use.
- SEO could be cleaner: for example, Ecwid adds product IDs to the URLs.
Sign up free here: www.ecwid.com
10. WooCommerce + WordPress with free hosting
You might already know that you can use WordPress for free, and the good news is that their most popular plugin for online stores is also gratis. WooCommerce is a fantastic tool that lets you do everything that big online stores can.
One thing to mention is that WordPress doesn’t come with free hosting, so you might still have to pay a bit. It is possible to find free hosting providers (like 000webhost), but don’t expect the best uptime and speeds from them.
You can read our complete review of WooCommerce here, but the main takeaways are that it’s incredibly powerful, but not exactly a cinch for beginners.
What we like:
- Powerful features: there isn’t much you can’t do with WooCommerce.
- Great for SEO: all the options you could want here too.
- Works well for large stores.
- SSL integration (if your web host allows it).
- Sleek product presentation: carousels, galleries, you get tons of options to display your wares.
What we don’t like:
- Very technical: WooCommerce isn’t exactly easy to set up.
- Need to use WordPress: and be fairly proficient at it. That also means finding your own hosting provider.
- No support: you only have the forums to trawl for information.
- Can become costly: WordPress in general can be a money pit if you buy extra themes, plugins and developer time.
Conclusion:
When looking for the best free ecommerce platform for small business, it can be quickly overwhelming. There are dozens of different platforms all claiming to be simple, to have a low learning curve, and to have the best features. As a new entrepreneur who is trying to figure everything out, it can get overwhelming trying to figure out which platform will work best for you. Maybe you’ve tried other platforms in the past and have gotten frustrated with them. Or maybe you’re completely new to building an online shop and need something that is easy to use and will help you get up and running quickly.
E-commerce refers to the online sale of goods over a network such as the Internet. In this effort, more and more people are going the e-commerce way because it is an easier and less time-consuming way to do business. Thus, e-tailers were born and two of the leading players in this industry are OS commerce and X-cart. However, there are other platforms too which are useful for small businesses looking for more ecommerce solutions. For instance, CubeCart being one of them is worth considering because it can be used for free if you want to focus on your startup business.