E-commerce is a digital business where customers can buy and sell products or services online. It is providing a lot of people with the facility of online shopping. And since the main purpose of any digital business is to make money, e-business owners want to get the maximum profit from their e-commerce website.
There are a number of solutions that you should consider, but first, it’s important to understand what free ecommerce platforms have to offer. Many free ecommerce platforms are open source, meaning they offer the code used to run their software so that you or someone else can tweak it and make changes.
Ecommerce industry is ever evolving, and online business owners are under constant pressure to adapt to the fast paced environment. If you are starting an online store and wondering what are the best shopping cart software these days, then this article will definitely be useful to you. We’ll look into some of the most popular ecommerce platforms and see which one suits your needs.
No matter you are looking for best ecommerce platform or best free ecommerce platform, here you will find some details about it. These are the important points to consider while choosing an ecommerce platform and we will discuss them in detail.
Best Ecommerce Platforms for Beginners
If you’re taking the first steps into launching your online store, you need a solution that’s straightforward, intuitive, and easy to understand. This doesn’t always mean choosing the cheapest product, crucially. Instead, your focus should be on finding something that gives you freedom and scalability, without a huge learning curve.
As small businesses, beginners will be best suited to solutions that require minimal initial education. If you don’t already have developer knowledge, this will generally mean staying away from any open-source tools you’ll need to code yourself.
BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce are all excellent for ease of use, as are Wix and Squarespace. If possible, it’s worth trying out a free version of a few different stores to see which one you feel most comfortable with. Remember, it also helps to have excellent customer support if you’re a beginner in the sales space -just in case.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel is a hosted eCommerce platform that’s designed especially for artists and creatives. If you want to have a store selling handmade products or similar, it could be a great option for you.
Pros
- The free plan doesn’t have any transaction fees. You will need to pay Stripe or PayPal fees, though (these are the only options Big Cartel offers for payment processing).
- Your free shop URL can be customized. It has to be in the format name.bigcartel.com, but you can choose whatever you want for the name. Many other platforms assign you a specific URL based on your username or store name and you can’t change it.
- You can have up to 5 products on your free plan, which makes it more generous than other hosted free plans.
- It’s quick to get your store set up and it’s easy to add your products. Big Cartel walks you step by step through the process.
Cons
- If you want to customize your website theme, you’ll need to edit the theme’s HTML. This definitely isn’t as beginner-friendly as most other eCommerce platforms.
- The free plan only has limited features. You need to upgrade to a paid plan if you want to use things like inventory tracking or discount codes.
Wix Ecommerce
I bet you’ve heard about it already. Wix is undoubtedly one of the most renowned cloud-based online store builders. You can check out our detailed Wix review.
Although the bulk its packages are premium, it turns out Wix also offers an extra option that you can take advantage of to set up an attractive free website.
The best thing about this specific platform is this- even free users can take advantage of its intuitive drag-and-drop website builder to design an entire site without coding. As a matter of fact, you should be able to complete a basic free website within a couple of minutes.
The free plan is particularly ideal for beginners who need powerful tools for building and hosting a standard business website. It grants access to a wide array of customizable predesigned templates plus supplementary icons, clip arts, and images.
Then you know what? You also get to promote your free business site, thanks to the simple SEO and email marketing capabilities that Wix offers at no charge. You can combine that with many other free applications from the Wix App Market to form a dynamic marketing framework.
And in case you’re worried about space, you should rest easy because it’ll probably take you quite some time to exhaust 500MBs of free site storage. The corresponding bandwidth, on the other hand, extends to 1GB on a domain that rides on the Wix platform. In other words, your free domain name will be something like username.wixsite.com/site address.
But, here’s the thing. You still get secure web hosting, 24/7 unlimited support, plus automatic mobile optimization. So, of course, your visitors will be able to surf conveniently from any device.
Unfortunately, Wix will bombard your free website with ads. The only way you can avoid that is upgrading to one of the premium plans, which start at $4.50 a month. And that comes with a host of advanced features like form builder, custom favicons, email campaigns, etc.
That said, real ecommerce website tools are not accessible until you subscribe to the Wix eCommerce plan for $16.50 a month. And if you need superior online selling functionalities, you can scale further and settle for the VIP plan at $24.50 a month. This specific one is essentially optimized for growing ecommerce sites.
PrestaShop – Best Open Source Ecommerce Platform for Startups
PrestaShop is somewhat new in the ecommerce platform game, but it’s made a name for itself with its ease of use and the beautiful interface it provides. Another thing to consider is that it doesn’t take much experience to install the plugin and get started on building your store.
Therefore, small start-up businesses will find it pretty easy to get started.
nopCommerce
nopCommerce is yet another ecommerce platform with a Russian origin. But, unlike CS-Cart Multi-Vendor, it’s a completely free open-source ecommerce platform built for online stores.
Since 2008, nopCommerce has so far attracted over 2.5 million downloads and for good reasons. If you want to join the bandwagon, you can go ahead and acquire the Microsft ASP.NET-based platform directly from its company website. There’s even a one-click install version available for download, and it comes without the source code.
But, if you’re a developer, it goes without saying that the alternative source code version is the best. You can rework it whichever way you want. Otherwise, you could also download the source code from GitHub.
Now, the subsequent setup process shouldn’t take you long, particularly if you choose to proceed with the one-click installer. Large enterprises, however, would probably take longer as they need time for tweaking nopCommerce’s underlying hood.
Whichever route you pick, you’ll ultimately discover the good reasons that have won nopCommerce many users.
Once you have it up and running, you’ll notice that it’s structured to support both beginner merchants and demanding ecommerce experts. In other words, nopCommerce is capable of serving all types of establishments- from startups and small businesses to medium-sized businesses and large enterprises.
Its comprehensive toolset includes a flexible shopping cart (complete with all the corresponding ecommerce features), an administration panel for managing and tracking your online business, as well as a storefront-end for hosting customers.
The default nopCommerce platform also comes with a host of SEO-friendly features to make your online marketing easy. Its product pages, for instance, are well-optimized for SEO URLs and search engine-friendly content.
Moving forward, it turns out nopCommerce doesn’t restrict you to just one online store. It’s flexible enough to support multiple stores across different domains, all of which are managed from one central admin panel. That essentially means it’s perfect for large enterprises handling an extensive portfolio of ecommerce stores.
Interestingly, nopCommerce doesn’t stop there. It goes ahead and offers marketplace integrations that basically transform your store into a virtual online mall- very much like CS-Cart Multi-Vendor. Consequently, all your vendors’ products are displayed collectively, with the subsequent sales proceeds being directed to the respective merchant accounts.
OpenCart
Well aware that appearances matter, OpenCart offers more than 2,700 themes. The platform is used by 576,862 ecommerce sites, but 4,841 of these are in the top 1 million sites on Alexa.com – not a bad number for a relatively small ecommerce platform.
The OpenCart community is welcoming and very active. Although the platform was created in Hong Kong, the majority of users are in the United States. OpenCart is multicurrency, multilingual, and offers more than 20 payment gateways as well as eight shipping methods.
One feature many OpenCart users enjoy is the turnkey nature of this open source ecommerce platform – there’s no need to mess with code at the start.
Who’s Using OpenCart?
- Cilantro: The Cook’s Shop
- British Red Cross (UK)
osCommerce
The frontend of this open source ecommerce platform’s demo feels a bit like a dated version of Amazon. After 16 years in business, osCommerce should be performing stronger in the market than it is – especially considering the availability of more than 7,000 add-ons and two spinoff projects that have claimed a strong place in the ecommerce platform field.
Maybe os stands for old-school?
Unfortunately for osCommerce, only 13,300 stores currently use this platform, despite an active community with more than 285,720 members and more than 1.6 million posts. In major need of an update, osCommerce has a loyal open source developer following but little ability to compete in the modern ecommerce field without some major changes.
Who’s Using osCommerce?
- Ubuntu Shop
- Melbourne Kitchen Renovations (Australia)
- SoundControl4Less
- Parsiaco (Iran)
Zen Cart
Originally based on osCommerce’s code, the two parted ways in 2003 when Zen Cart decided to place a heavier focus on templates. Today, this free ecommerce platform provides users with a 390+ page user’s manual and a host of features – not to mention more than 1800 add-ons in 16 different categories. The related community is large, too. There are more than 150,000 members in the Zen Cart community.
Who’s Using Zen Cart?
- US Armorment
- Health Cabin
- The Hobby Shop
- Pipe Divan
VirtueMart (Joomla)
Designed for use with Joomla 2.5 and 3 (with a version for Joomla 4 on the way soon!), VirtueMart boasts more than 500 features, stores around the globe, and an engaged and active developer community. The platform boasts 348, 487 users, of which only 995 are in the top 1 million sites. The vast majority of ecommerce websites using VirtueMart are based in the United States or Russia.
The core system of VirtueMart is very small, with only 3-5 developers working actively on it. On the other hand, input from the developer community is openly accepted and there are 316,371 members. This open source PHP ecommerce solution isn’t a newcomer to ecommerce – VirtueMart is a German company that’s been around since 2004. The platform isn’t friendly to the nontech crowd – you’ll need a developer who is well-versed in the Joomla CMS system and PHP software to really be able to use this platform. It’s also easy to spend a small fortune on plug-ins and add-ons for this platform. Watch your wallet.
Who’s Using VirtueMart?
- Produtti Herbalife (Italy)
- DPModa (Bulgaria)
- 3D Puzzle Welt (Europe)
- U Can Fix It (Canada)
Which eCommerce platform is worth using?
We can admit that all of these platforms are quite good to create your first online shop, to get experience, to understand how it works. After you gain an experience it will become obvious for you what exact tools you need and what is missed, what aspects you would like to edit and improve. A software development company can definitely help you to create the eCommerce platform regarding your strict requirements and needs.
Conclusion
An ecommerce platform is a tool that allows startup entrepreneurs and business owners to sell their products and services online. Setting up an online store has never been easier and more affordable thanks to the many cloud solutions available today.
Ecommerce is the new buzzword we all hear about. And regardless of whether you’re a small online shop trying to make a start in this business, or are already an established player, none of us can ignore the impact ecommerce has on modern-day business and how it has changed how we do business.