Ecommerce is hot, and with the rapid rise of online sales, more and more startups are starting e-commerce businesses to get a piece of the pie! But as many in this business know, getting your startup off the ground isn’t going to be easy. There are all kinds of new challenges that small businesses must face: funding, marketing, social media, mobile integration and so on. For most startups, their biggest initial challenge is finding an ecommerce platform that is both free, AND right for them. So we’ve done a lot of research for you and found the best free ecommerce platforms for startups.
As a startup business owner, if you’re passionate about building an online ecommerce store, you will have a lot of options when it comes to selecting the platform for your store. Thousands of platforms are available – WordPress, Magento, Shopify and Bigcommerce. And now a lot of startups are aggressively promoting their own ecommerce platforms as if they are better than the rest of the platforms in market.
There are a bunch of eCommerce platforms available for startups. Many of them offer free plans or have a free option bundled with their paid plans. These are really really wonderful options if you are planning to launch your startup and cannot afford a big budget. So you may wonder which the best ecommerce platforms in the market are.
Choosing the right ecommerce platform for your startup business is critical for success. Free and paid Ecommerce Platforms offer different package of features and functionalities, which can be confusing! In this blog we will see the details of comparison between Shopify, Bigcommerce and Magento. You will find all necessary information such as supported payment gateways, available apps, best and premium theme providers, customization options, shipping rates, delivery prices and much more.
Choosing the best platform to sell your products
There’s no better time to start selling products. The latest stats show that the ecommerce is exploding right now, and that growth is set to continue.
But what is the best platform to sell your products?
There are plenty of great tools that you can use. The key to choosing the right software, is making sure that you know what you need from your platform.
Podia is a great option for those looking to sell digital downloads, courses and membership offerings. It includes the ability to run an affiliate program and will handle email marketing for you. Better yet – they won’t take a cut of your profits.
Volusion
Volusion is a cloud-based ecommerce platform, specializing in no-code web store building. With some useful built-in inventory management, payment collection and marketing features, Volusion is a good option for mid-sized and larger businesses. If you’re considering Volusion for your business, note that the company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2020. While the platform is still open and operates as usual, it might not be the best option for a long-term plan.
Square Online – Best Overall Free Ecommerce Platform
If you’re not particularly eager to join the Wix premium plan bandwagon, you might want to try out Square Online.
Now, for a long time, Square had fundamentally existed as a versatile payment solution. Until it finally decided to spread its wings by setting up a multi-faceted business ecosystem. You can read our full Square Online review.
So far, quite a number of people are aware that Square increasingly facilitates merchants dealing with physical businesses restaurants, coffee shops, and so forth. While that’s fairly accurate, it turns out that Square has now grown to be much more than that.
In essence, the platform offers a myriad of extensive features plus integrations that not only support brick and mortar businesses, but also ecommerce websites.
And no, we’re not only talking about digital payments here. But rather, the entire ecommerce framework. Square offers tools for pretty much all the critical online store functions- from inventory management and sales, to marketing and team coordination.
All things considered, the most outstanding feature here is the ability to set up a fully-functional ecommerce website for free.
You don’t need to pay anything to build an online store. Not even for hosting. In fact, you can proceed without the slightest bit of knowledge about coding.
Creating free ecommerce websites with Square is as easy as 1-2-3. After you select an ideal theme from the array of predesigned customizable options, just make some tweaks, and voila!
Ultimately, you’ll achieve the full online store experience. And in case the default features happen to be inadequate, you can leverage Square’s integrations to link your free ecommerce website with third-party apps for booking and scheduling, employee and inventory management, accounting, plus much more.
But that’s not all. If you have some coding tricks up your sleeve, you can consider capitalizing on the Square Connect API to build your own specialized integrations. Otherwise, it’s also possible to link free ecommerce sites with their corresponding offline brick and mortar counterparts. This feature alone is particularly handy for streamlined multi-store selling and product management.
That said, I can guess what you might be wondering at this point. How the heck does Square generate revenue from this?
Well, interestingly, there are no ecommerce web monthly plans on this platform. Not even one. Instead, it basically charges a fixed rate of 2.9% plus 30¢ for each online transaction. Therefore, ecommerce sites are genuinely free on a permanent basis.
Benefits of Square Online
- Setting up a complete ecommerce website is fairly easy. Simply download the online store app, install it into your computer, and then launch its user-friendly drag-and-drop editor to design a unique site for free.
- While building ecommerce sites is actually free of charge, the subsequent pricing framework is quite straightforward and favorable. You essentially get to pay 2.9% plus 30¢ when you start selling, which is admittedly reasonable compared to the standard transaction fees on other platforms.
- Square shares an exceedingly diverse ecosystem with third-party app integrations. You can take advantage of this to set up additional ecommerce website functionalities. Or otherwise, use the Square Connect API for your own unique integrations.
- If you have a decent social media following, you can consider extending your ecommerce site to sell items on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. Consequently, the entire inventory will be synced in real-time across all the sales channels for streamlined management.
- Square is a comprehensive selling platform that facilitates both online and offline selling.
Downsides of Square Online
- Although excluding comprehensive underwriting from the start makes it incredibly easy to build ecommerce sites, it turns out there’s a caveat. Square Online is apparently infamous for frequently holding funds over transactions it considers suspicious. The platform continues to do so in a bid to protect itself from possible online fraud.
- Square is only ideal when it comes to basic ecommerce websites. Due to the simple nature of its functionalities, you might find it difficult to create or run a complex online store. You can only do that on a dedicated ecommerce platform like WooCommerce.
- Square does not have an entirely reliable customer support system. Although it offers support through phone, social media and email, it mostly prefers using the latter two. Plus, the platform is yet to set up live chat support.
Ecwid
Ecwid essentially translates to “ecommerce widgets”. And just like the name suggests, this is not a distinctive ecommerce platform. Check out the detailed Ecwid review.
Instead, it’s a shopping cart that you can integrate with any site to transform it into a fully-fledged online store. However, as you might have guessed already, you need some lines of code to achieve that.
While Ecwid offers three paid packages, it also provides a free option- which, unlike Jimdo, comes with decent ecommerce capabilities. Apart from unlimited bandwidth, you get a mobile responsive design, two product categories, and support for 10 items.
Sadly, you won’t be able to sell digital products at that level. Plus, your online store functionalities will be limited to a one-page ecommerce website. The only way to escape from that, of course, is subscribing to one of the premium plans, which start at $15 per month.
Benefits of Ecwid
- You can use Ecwid to transform any site into an ecommerce website.
- Its basic online store functionalities are ideal for startups and small businesses.
- The entire shopping cart is automatically optimized for mobile.
- You can take advantage of Ecwid to sell concurrently on multiple websites.
- Ecwid does not charge any transaction fees.
Downsides of Ecwid
- Ecwid does not offer advanced ecommerce features. So, of course, you cannot use it on a large dynamic online store.
- Embedding Ecwid into an existing site requires some coding skills.
Big Cartel: Best for small creative brands
2.9out of 5
- Website features1.5
- Sales features3.0
- Design flexibility2.5
- Help and support1.0
- Value for money3.5
- Ease of use3.7
Big Cartel’s offering is targeted specifically at small creative brands and businesses selling products like t-shirts, art, clothing, merchandise, prints, and jewellery. If you’re a service business, or you sell goods at a higher price point, it probably isn’t the platform for you. Otherwise, read on!
On the free plan, you’re able to list and sell up to five different products. To clarify, you can sell an unlimited number of those five products, not just five products full stop. And, unlike with Square Online, there’s no transaction fee. You can also sell digital products, but you’ll need to add on additional functionality from a third party provider.
The free version also grants you more useful features than would usually be available without a premium plan, including customisable themes, stats, discounts and promotions, and shipping tracking.
However, you’ll need to use the sub.domain ‘.bigcartel’ on your free Big Cartel online store – which doesn’t look very professional – and that five product limit is nowhere near generous enough for serious online sellers. If you do choose to upgrade, ecommerce plans start from a reasonable $9.99 per month.
Big Cartel pricing
| Price | ||
|---|---|---|
 | | |
| Free | Platinum | Diamond |
| £0 per month | $9.99 per month | $19.99 per month |
Big Cartel pros
- If you’re a small creative seller, this ecommerce platform has been created especially for you
- Very affordable if you do upgrade
- No transaction fee
Big Cartel cons
- Not suitable if you’re a larger ecommerce business
- Only allows you to sell five products
WooCommerce (On WordPress) – Best Open Source Ecommerce Platform
WooCommerce (read our review here) is a WordPress plugin, so you’ll have to install WordPress (open source) on your host, then install the WooCommerce plugin onto your site.
You simply just:
- Log into your WordPress site.
- Go to: Plugins > Add New.
- Search for ‘WooCommerce’.
- Select Install Now.
- Select Activate Now and you’re ready for the WooCommerce Wizard!
It automatically turns any WordPress website into a fully functional online store, with inventory management, coupons, and product pages.
Benefits of WooCommerce:
- The plugin is free to download and install. Many stores don’t need anything more than the plugin.
- It connects to all major payment gateways. By default, you are given PayPal and Stripe which are two of the most recognised gateways on the market. Additionally, you can accept payments via Amazon Pay and PayFast
- With a WooCommerce theme, you hardly have to do any work besides adding content. You can get a theme from the official WooCommerce store, additionally, you can use a third party website such as Themeforest which has the largest reposistory of WooCommerce themes on the market.
- You can offer coupons and discounts, along with adding multiple other features with the help of the extension library.
- WooCommerce is a very popular platform which means there is fantastic support available. It’s worth noting that you should always ensure that you are on the latest version of the plugin before requesting any help
Within WooCommerce’s help centre there are 5 options which can provide you with the answer you are looking for.
- WooCommerce 101 – you can watch video material which gives you an explanation in regards to the page you are looking at.
- Help & Support – here you can find links to documentation, the WordPress.org forum as well as the WooCommerce Help Desk where you can submit a ticket.
- Found a bug? – if you spot a bug you can submit these to the WordPress team. You will have to explain in detail what you found and provide screenshots
- Education – WooCommerce has a host of partners which provide customers with courses and training
- Setup Wizard – this wizard puts you back to the beginning and takes you through the process of setting up WooCommerce pages, shipping, taxes and payments.
Downsides of WooCommerce:
- There are plenty of extra expenses such as a WooCommerce theme, extra extensions, hosting, and domain name. It may label itself as free, however, a theme may set you back more than $100 dollars, the domain will be $30 and hosting can be anything from $4 a month to $5,000 for enterprise websites
- WooCommerce has several moving parts. On the surface, it requires hosting + WordPress + the WooCommerce plugin. Beginners can get intimidated by this, especially with tasks like SEO, security, hosting, and caching. There is a big learning curve if you are just starting out which is why new starters opt for something such as Shopify
- You will need some technical knowledge and developer skills for WooCommerce to be cost-effective. If not you will have to outsource to WooCommerce’s selection of ‘WooExperts’ who offer hourly prices and project prices which can be costly
Which is best?
So there you have it! These have been the top ecommerce software platforms in the market. While you really can’t go wrong with either of them, some will be better suited based on the specific online store that you want to launch and your requirements.
Think about what you need for your small business, from an all-in-one backend for managing your products, to enhanced shopping cart software, and a user-friendly interface. Additionally, remember, if you want your online business to be successful, you’ll need to choose an eCommerce platform that offers a good customer experience too.
Take your time to look through the ecommerce site creators we’ve discussed here. Don’t rush into your choice.
Conclusion
No doubt, every startup owner must know what is the best free ecommerce platform for startups. Because the ecommerce store not only helps you to make money online but provides a huge scope for the future growth of your business. Without any hesitation, you can say that the ecommerce platforms are in great demand at the present moment. The best free ecommerce platform for startups has become a boon for the startup community, which is available on this blog post.
Ecommerce is a billion-dollar industry. Each year, entrepreneurs from around the world look to start their own ecommerce business. New ecommerce platforms are emerging every day which makes it challenging for startups to choose the right platform that fits their needs and objectives.