Ecommerce is becoming an essential part of modern business. If you are thinking about starting a business, then choosing the right ecommerce platform is very crucial. Ecommerce platforms are different by pricing and features they offer. The benefit of free ecommerce platforms is that anyone can set up their ecommerce website at no cost and start making revenues right away. However, not every free ecommerce platform out there can be trusted and there are some scam websites who claim to be free but do not deliver what they promise.
Consumers are going online to buy things they need. The ones that aren’t selling their products online are losing out. Big time! But how do you get started? How do you set up an online store and sell your products online? You came to the right place. I’m going to share with you the best free ecommerce builder and my personal experience with each one. You’re welcome in advance!
Clients tend to ask me a lot of questions about the best free ecommerce platform they could use when they are looking to build their own ecommerce website. From the beginning I try to direct them towards what’s right for their business and not push them towards a paid solution.
When exploring different options for your ecommerce site, one of the most important factors is the platform. There are so many different choices and each have different features and limitations. If you’re looking for a free platform, it’s likely that you’ll find only a few options that are designed specifically for ecommerce. Here, we reviewed some of the best free ecommerce builders to help you understand what they do well and what they don’t offer so you can choose the right one for your business.
Are free ecommerce platforms always completely free?
There are very few ecommerce platforms that are completely free. You can sell products on Square Online’s free plan, but you will be charged a transaction fee. On most of the other ecommerce platforms we’ve reviewed you can’t take payments until you upgrade to a premium plan.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop was launched in 2007 and gained tremendous popularity in these years because of its customization features. PrestaShop is responsible for over 2,70,000 stores worldwide today. It’s an open source shopping cart, that means you can download it for free. That doesn’t mean it’s a zero cost shopping cart; you still have to pay for web hosting, dedicated servers and other modules to complete your online store.
PrestaShop can be a good alternative for those who have an in-depth knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP or who can hire someone who has. Apart from downloadable version, PrestaShop also introduced a hosted version called “PrestaShop Ready” couple of years back. If you’re thinking PrestaShop as one of your options, here are some advantages and disadvantages you should know.
Advantages
- PrestaShop is an easy to install software; there’s no hassle involved.
- PrestaShop is very easy to use and has a very friendly interface.
- PrestaShop is a popular platform hence the support is available for many languages in many countries.
- It is an open source resource that means anybody can start with it.
Disadvantages
- Even though the platform is open source, it is dependant on HTML, CSS, and PHP. Small businesses may not find PrestaShop as a good fit as they have to hire resources.
- The free version is okay to set up a basic store, but you have to purchase some modules to set up a decent store.
X-Cart
X-Cart provides an all-in-one solution for building and scaling an enterprise eCommerce business. The offer includes, but is not limited to an eCommerce platform, 400+ add-ons and integrations extending its capabilities, and a variety of in-house services like hosting, design, data management, site migration, and more.
The platform is scalable, flexible, and affordable. The volume of integrations include advanced analytics, accounting, marketing, shipping, taxes, and more. X-Cart is a base for thousands of successful eCommerce businesses that have grown from the ground up. X-Cart offers the opportunity to build a webstore exactly to match your business needs instead of having to adjust your business to fit into a particular system. X-Cart enterprise software provides greater scalability for expanding business.
Advantages
- Provides eCommerce solution for all types of businesses including small business, enterprise, B2B, Retail, WordPress eCommerce
- Mobile-ready by defult
- Effective SEO and marketing tools
- Ready for international sales
- PCI level 1 certified payment application
BigCommerce
It’s hard to miss out BigCommerce when we’re even mentioning the term “best eCommerce platforms.” BigCommerce is among those big sharks that rule the sea of eCommerce today. It’s a SaaS-based shopping cart software providing an insanely easy interface to its users. The online stores built on BigCommerce have witnessed excellent user experience, and that means pretty numbers in revenue!
BigCommerce is among the apex choices because users can customize the entire online stores without getting into coding too much. BigCommerce has a buyer-centric approach that reflects in various integrations like PayPal, FraudLabs, and tons of other apps.
BigCommerce has developed a broad community of designers, developers, marketers, consultants, and much more. The BigCommerce partner directory helps you in finding the best experts out there to get things done. You can hire these experts for additional designing, development or marketing services.
Now, something important.
BigCommerce is widely popular for so many reasons, but one of the reasons is- BigCommerce Themes. They are advanced, buyer-centric, and have every feature a buyer needs. You can also add various add-ons to enhance your store with additional features.
BigCommerce has its own theme store where you can get free and premium themes and start with your online store. BigCommerce certified partners (as we discussed BigCommerce has a huge community now) can also help in developing your custom themes.
PSDCenter is a proud partner with BigCommerce and has done some remarkable works in the last 10 years. You can check out the collection of our BigCommerce themes & add-ons from our very own theme store.
In this article, we will also have a quick look at the pros and cons of each platform, just to give a clear picture.
Advantages
- You will find a lot of learning material with BigCommerce itself from customizing to marketing your store.
- BigCommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms for security purpose. It offers multi-layer security to its stores. BigCommerce is also very significant when it comes to speed. Your BigCommerce store will load at the fastest speed for sure.
- All necessary features to customize and market your store are built-in.
- BigCommerce offers great features in terms of SEO.
- BigCommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms to start a full-fledged online store. There won’t be any need to migrate to another platform in the future.
- There are tons of BigCommerce add-ons you can use to emphasize your online store.
Disadvantages
- You need to upgrade to bigger plans if your revenue crosses the limit.
- Unlike Shopify, there’s no Lite version of BigCommerce. (But Shopify Lite has limited features and can be used for a very few use cases.)
If you’re planning to build an online shop and sell across multiple platforms and channels, then BigCommerce could be just the tool for you. Ideal for smaller companies that are in the process of growing larger, BigCommerce is a scalable solution for online selling. However, the advanced features and functionality of this tool mean that it can be quite difficult to use.
BigCommerce comes with a huge selection of features to explore. That means that most of the functionality you need will already be build into your software. You won’t have to rely as heavily on app platforms like with Shopify. Whether you’re selling on Amazon, Instagram, Square, eBay, Facebook, or Pinterest, BigCommerce can help your business grow, while keeping expenses relatively low.
BigCommerce offers a wide selection of sales features to choose from; you just need to make sure that you have the skill or the talent in your team to help you to take advantage of all the benefits that this platform has to offer. You can even unlock some great SEO tools for helping your site to get found through Google.
Pricing: The cheapest BigCommerce pricing plans start at $29.95 per month. This is a relatively cost-effective price when you consider the number of features that you get.
Pros
- In-built visual merchandising tool
- No transaction fees
- Unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth
- Product rating and review options
- Large selection of free applications to choose from
- Excellent for selling across multiple channels.
Cons
- Pricing can be a little difficult to understand
- Not as easy as some tools to get set up
- Small selection of free themes available
Zyro
Zyro is a convenient and attractive website builder with quite a lot of heritage in the market. The company initially started as a product by Hostinger and later evolved into a new platform. This now fully-independent website builder comes with everything a brand needs to get started online, with no coding or design skills necessary.
You can build a website in a matter of minutes with a series of fantastic designs already available from the Zyro team. Additionally, the drag and drop builder comes with an intuitive grid function. This means that you’re less likely to end up with elements that don’t totally line up.
Zyro benefits from a lightning fast performance on all devices, so you can give your customers the amazing experience that they expect. If you’re having trouble creating content for your website, then you can even use the AI content creator tool to help you get started.
Pricing: There’s a free plan to get you started, although the features are a little basic, with 500 MB of bandwidth, and 500 MB of storage. You do get a free SSL certificate and SEO support, however. The eCommerce plan is available for $19.99, with unlimited storage and bandwidth. You also get to remove Zyro ads and get a free domain for a year. There’s also a basic plan for $2.99 per month, or an Unleashed plan for business use for $4.99 per month. The eCommerce + plan is available for $28.99
Pros
- Easy to use and responsive
- Drag-and-drop builder with grid
- Excellent for creating speedy website
- AI content creator
- Free domain for a year
- Free SSL certificate
- Unlimited storage on all paid plans
- Excellent designer-crafted templates
Cons
- Not a lot of blogging features
- No live customer support feature
- No option for editing code
- Limited design customization choices
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that’s used to add ecommerce functions to the popular content management system available in the market i.e WordPress. It is one of the more popular open-source ecommerce platforms available. An open-source ecommerce platform is free to download and use on your website.
While that may sound good at first, know that it also means you have to pay for your own web hosting solution and domain name. You’re also responsible for all the technical aspects of your ecommerce site, like your SSL certificate. If you know all of this already or can afford to hire someone to help you, then it may be worth it.
In the past, we weren’t big fans of Woocommerce because it lagged behind the competition. However, they’ve done a lot of work with the platform over the years. Now it competes with the major ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce.
Design and Ease of Use
Because it’s not a turnkey ecommerce platform like Shopify, Wix, or BigCommerce, it’s a little harder to use. Also, if you’re not already familiar with WordPress, it will be more challenging to use. That said, if you want the freedom and flexibility to tweak even the smallest details on your ecommerce website, you’ll enjoy learning to use WooCommerce.
You can always hire an expert to help you build your WooCommerce store, too. Since WordPress powers nearly 40% of the web, it’s a widely respected platform. WordPress is also open source. There are plenty of developers and experts willing to help.
Features and Integrations
WooCommerce offers a variety of extensions to add features to your commerce website. The problem is that many of these extensions are not free. So by the time you pay for the extensions, you need to implement features like email marketing, one-click selling, real-time shipping, and tracking, you may end up better off with one of the top ecommerce platforms that include these features.
It works with a variety of payment gateways, like PayPal, Amazon Pay, etc.
Pros
- WordPress is best for SEO since it was built with search engine optimization in mind.
- There are plenty of WordPress experts available to help you if you need it.
- You can match your budget to only the tools you need. Some people spend $200 or less per year. It’s possible to end up with a bill of $1,000 or more.
Cons
- Investing in good quality web hosting solution can be expensive
- Little to no support
- Troubleshooting can be difficult
- Extensions are necessary for many functions, even simple ones.
WooCommerce is best for small to medium stores. It is the best ecommerce platform for content-driven brands since it is built for WordPress.
Is my SEO going to be OK with a free ecommerce builder?
In all likelihood, your SEO will suffer. Non-custom domain names are a big problem with search engines like Google.
We can’t guarantee that you won’t rank with a free solution for a very specific niche, but if you’re set on acquiring customers via Google, you’re better off paying for a custom domain at least.
Conclusion
Ecommerce has become more than just a trend, but an integral part of every successful business strategy. It’s poised to unleash unprecedented opportunities for merchants and customers alike. At the same time, with the explosion of marketplace giants such as Amazon, Etsy and eBay, it’s never been easier to start an online business. This is why you need an ecommerce website builder that will help you create your own ecommerce store in no time!
Building your own eCommerce website can be daunting, but if you’re looking for an affordable and easy way to launch a new online store, the right eCommerce platform can help you achieve your goals.