Strategies come, strategies go. There are thousands of new platforms and apps being made every day, which makes it hard to keep track. It can be especially difficult for small businesses. However, the truth of the matter is that the best ecommerce platform for most merchants is one that is free.
The best free ecommerce app is one that makes it easy for small businesses to bring their brand online to sell products and services in a free online shop. The best free ecommerce website builder offers a mix of features for beginners and some advanced features for more experienced sellers. It should be easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and cater to the specific needs of the business owner.
Get your free online store up and running. Fast and easy setup, no credit card required. Create your free e-commerce store in a matter of minutes with no risk and no credit card required. We offer the best free ecommerce website builder and solution for small business owners to create an online store with no coding skills. Our free shopify app features a simple setup process that lets you quickly create and launch your own ecommerce website within minutes!
Regardless of the type of business you are running, whether it is a small business or a big corporate, ecommerce platform can really help you to sell products and services. If you are thinking about getting started with this platform for your small business or for your large corporation, here are some free ecommerce platforms you should check out.
Best Free eCommerce Apps
Shopify (Web, iOS, Android)
Shopify has been around for more than 15 years—with more than two million stores built using the platform—and it’s hard to find a better option for most small businesses looking to get an online store up and running quickly.
Sign up for a credit card-free 14-day trial, and within a few minutes, you can have a first build of your store ready to go. The onboarding wizard walks you through adding your products, customizing the look of your store, connecting your own domain, and getting set up to take those all-important payments.
Even if you’ve never built a website before, you’re unlikely to get lost in Shopify’s intuitive web app. Adding a product, for example, is as simple as clicking Products in the sidebar and then the Add Products button. Fill in the name, price, quantity you have on hand, and any other relevant details, change its status to Active, and it’s straight in your online store and ready to be sold.
While Shopify ticks most boxes right out of the gate, its extensibility and app store are what really make it such a powerful option. Take the theme situation: Shopify has 10 free themes and more than 50 paid themes starting from $140. To browse them, go to Themes, and then, under Theme Library, click Visit Theme Store. Not a bad selection, right?
But because Shopify is so popular, you can also find more than 1,300 themes available on ThemeForest or get a professional designer who is already experienced with the platform to make you a custom one.
It’s the same with almost any feature you could want. If it’s not built in to Shopify, you can find an extension, plug-in, or service that does it in the app store. Just go to apps.shopify.com, find the app you need, and click Add App. Head back to your Shopify dashboard and click Apps in the sidebar to manage all the ones you’ve installed.
It should be no surprise that Shopify integrates with Zapier, so if you want to automatically add new customers to your email marketing list, track orders with a project management tool, or connect Shopify to any of the other apps you use, you can do it easily.
Shopify Price: Free for 14 days; from $29/month and 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for Basic Shopify plan with unlimited products
Square (Web, iOS, Android)
If you want the option to sell in-person, like at a farmer’s market or craft fair, as well as through your online store, Square is the best choice. Your online and offline orders are all organized under a single dashboard, so there’s no jumping between apps, trying to track down customer details using random spreadsheets, or having to enter things manually after the fact.
Square bought the website builder app Weebly in 2018, so when you set up your store, that’s what’s running under the hood. If you occasionally see a URL direct to weebly.com, it’s nothing to worry about. (Note: we noticed fewer Weebly URLs popping up in the most recent review.)
Square has some of the best onboarding around. When you sign up, you have to fill in a quick questionnaire about your business and its needs. You’ve got the option to set up a single booking page, a full online store, or simple checkout links, depending on what you’re looking for. The default theme will also be tweaked to match the business category you chose.
In terms of storefront customization, Square is a little more limited than some of the other options. Instead of picking a theme that does most of the work, with Square you have to make your own design using the (admittedly excellent) site builder—or you can hire a designer from $99 to do it for you.
From the Square Dashboard, click Online then click Website > Edit Site to get started. In the sidebar on the left, you can select the different page elements, or you can just click on them directly. For more options, click the three little dots. You can change the colors, fonts, and layout of everything individually and, of course, upload your own images. It works well, but it is a bit constrained.
You can create “items,” what Square calls products or services for sale, through both the regular Square Dashboard and the Square Online Dashboard, and they’ll be synced to a common Item Library. This means that you can sell the same products both online and off, or have some things you just list in one location. Just go to Items > Item Library, and click Create an Item.
When you want to make an in-person sale, open up the menu and select Virtual Terminal, which acts just like a digital cash register. If you have a Square credit card reader (available for free), you can swipe your customers’ cards for a 2.6% + $0.10 fee from Square, and their details will automatically upload to your account. Otherwise, you can type in your customers’ credit card information for a 3.5% + $0.15 fee per charge. Online, Square’s charges are similar. On the free plan, you’re charged 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Square also integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to thousands of other apps to do things like post your in-person transactions to a Slack channel for the rest of the team to see or record the details using Airtable.
Square Price: Free with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for unlimited products and a Square branded site; from $12/month billed annually with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction to use a custom domain and remove ads.
Wix – The Best eCommerce Platform
Wix Pros
+ No transaction fees
+ 500+ free eCommerce templates
+ Unlimited products and accounts
+ USPS shipping discounts
+ In-house payment platform
+ 24/7 support (phone/ticket)
+ Free domain for 1st year
+ 14-day money-back guarantee
Wix Cons
– No live chat
– Very limited features in the cheapest plan
Wix’s main direction is giving its customers a straightforward way of building a website or an online store. In fact, their platform powers over 700,000 businesses worldwide. Wix also provides hosting for your online store and their plans are quite cost-effective starting from $23/month with an annual subscription.
You get to choose from 500+ free mobile-optimized eCommerce themes and create your store in 90+ languages for a global reach. Starting from the cheapest plan, you can add unlimited physical products and accounts. However, subscription selling comes with a higher tier plan (starting from $27/month).
Wix’s eCommerce platform’s main features are abandoned cart recovery, customizable checkout page, instant purchase buttons, add to cart from a gallery, wishlists, loyalty programs, discount codes, and customer accounts. Furthermore, you get $300 worth of online ad credit and some useful online marketing tools. Wix also supports multi-channel sales through Facebook, Instagram, and eBay.
However, you can only access some features with higher-level plans, so make sure to double-check if the essential store elements you’re looking for are coming with the plan you choose.
Payment Options
Wix offers payment integrations with 40+ providers, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square. They also have an in-house developed payment platform, Wix Payments, which you can use to accept credit/debit card payments and integrate with other payment providers. Starting from the Unlimited plan, you also get a multi-currency converter feature that lets you accept foreign currency and sell your products worldwide.
Wix also comes with an automated sales tax calculator, which is pretty handy. However, this feature has transaction count restrictions based on the plan you choose.
Online Store Management and Reports
Wix has a straightforward website and an online store builder. Furthermore, you can do all the store management, refunding, and tracking from Wix’s dashboard. Wix also has a mobile app, where you can add products, fulfill orders, track your inventory, get notifications, and more.
Wix supports both direct and drop shipping, which you can also manage through the dashboard. You can set up shipping rules, add custom shipping rates, and print shipping labels. A great perk is Wix’s partnership with USPS, which gives you discounted rates on shipping costs.
The analytics side is also packed with useful reports. You get access to Google analytics, customizable reports, top products’ reports, and business insights. The availability of different statistics depends again on the subscription plan you choose.
Customer Support
Wix has 24/7 customer support through a ticketing system and a callback function. Unfortunately, they don’t offer support over live chat, which is questionable by today’s standards. They do have an extensive knowledge base where you should find answers to most of your questions.
Also, when you first sign up with Wix, their Launch Experts help you get your store online quickly. That’s a great feature, especially if you’re new to online stores.
Pricing
Wix’s eCommerce viable plans start from $23/month with yearly payments. You also get a free domain for one year when going with the annual payments.
Wix doesn’t charge for transactions when integrating with third-party payment processors or Wix Payments. The standard credit card processing fees still apply to the latter.
Business Basic: $23/month with annual payments
- Free eCommerce templates
- Unlimited accounts and products
- 20 GB of storage
- Integration with Google Analytics
Business Unlimited: $27/month with annual payments
- Everything in the Business Basic plan
- 35 GB of storage
- Subscription selling
- Automated sales tax (100 transactions/month)
- Advanced shipping options
- Currency converter
- Facebook, Instagram, and eBay integrations
Business VIP: $49/month with annual payments
- Everything in the Business Unlimited plan
- 50 GB of storage
- Automated sales tax (500 transactions/month)
- Priority support
- Customized reports
- Loyalty program
Wix’s cheapest plan is rather basic. You miss many great features that can help your online store grow or make managing your shop more efficient. However, the upside is that the next tier plan isn’t that expensive, with only a $4 difference in the monthly expenses. We recommend going with the Business Unlimited plan for those reasons above.
Unfortunately, Wix doesn’t have a free trial other than building a free website without eCommerce capabilities. Still, you get a 14-day money-back guarantee to test it out.
Nexcess StoreBuilder
If you’re considering using WooCommerce, but want a little help making it easier, then Nexcess StoreBuilder can help. It’s not an ecommerce platform, but a service built on WooCommerce. It combines managed hosting, the WooCommerce WordPress plugin, and additional plugins and tools to make it easier for new ecommerce business owners to build and maintain a store.
Pros
- Built on WooCommerce
- Strong SEO
- Managed web hosting included
Cons
- Email accounts aren’t included
- Templates require customization
- No demo available
- No multichannel functionalities on the hosted version
Best Free Ecommerce Platforms: Comparison Criteria
What do I look for when I select the best free ecommerce platforms? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): Is it clean and attractive? Is it straightforward and without complicated options?
- Usability: Is it easy to learn and master? Does the company offer good tech support, user support, tutorials, and training? Is there a community and knowledge base behind the product?
- Integrations: Is it easy to connect with other tools? Any pre-built integrations to improve the ecommerce functionalities? How smoothly does the tool work with other WordPress plugins, tools, and add-ons?
- Value for $: How appropriate is the price for the features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent and flexible?How easily can you get results from it?
Conclusion
We’re working on making your dreams come true every day with the best ecommerce platform. We’re trying to be more than just an “online shop builder” and we’re on our way – we started by helping you process orders, then we automated inventory and shipping management. We’re now helping you run your business with the best free ecommerce app in the app store. We’ve also focused on building a fully customizable ecommerce template that suits everyone’s needs. We do all this to help you reach whatever goal you set for yourself, or your team, or your company. With Best Free Ecommerce App, you build your dream business with all the tools at your disposal – whether you want to start one from scratch or scale up from an existing brick-and-mortar store.
eCommerce business is an easy way to create your own business, but finding the right platform to set up a store can be tricky. There are many platforms with different fees and features. To help you make the best decision we have reviewed some of the ecommerce software platforms that can help you start selling online without spending money on expensive website builder or themes.