The ecommerce industry is fast moving and there are many technologies being introduced each day. An ecommerce website is basically an online website build specifically for the purpose of selling items or services to the public. It is also generally referred to as an online business or web store. It has several obvious benefits such as making it simple to buy and sell effectively, providing you with a larger range of products and services to choose from, lower distribution costs, better resource management and more.
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If you are in the early stages of a business or just thinking about starting your own online business, you may be wondering what the best free ecommerce shopping cart is. There are many platforms to run an online store on. Some require monthly fees and others are free to use. This can be confusing so I decided to find the best free ecommerce shopping cart software and provide you with my findings.
As an ecommerce store owner, you probably already know that your shopping cart is one of the most important parts of your business. Your ecommerce website wouldn’t be able to take transactions or even make a profit if it didn’t have a convenient checkout process and a powerful shopping cart system. So choosing the best free ecommerce shopping cart for your site is an essential first step in building your online commerce presence.
What’s the Best Platform for Building an Ecommerce Website?
Although there are a number of seemingly dominant options you might have heard about, the ecommerce platform market is quite extensive. There are numerous options offering varying features, and some of them come with tools that have been optimized for specific types of stores.
Needless to say, there’s no ultimate platform for building an ecommerce website. Rather, the suitability of a platform depends on your particular needs.
OpenCart
OpenCart is an open-source eCommerce app that both beginners and seasoned online entrepreneurs can use to launch an online store. Right now, it’s probably the most popular open-source shopping cart with a large community of developers and users behind it who are always ready to help.
There are hundreds of both free and paid plugins in its marketplace, ranging from reporting tools, import/export, payment gateway integration, themes, SEO tools, and the like. The only downside OpenCart has is that it relies on plugins for it to fully work, so the setup might take some time.
That said, the developers of OpenCart regularly release software updates, and if you are technical enough to do your own customization, then you might just discover that it’s a really powerful tool.
As it is, it has a really good administrator dashboard that will give you a quick overview of what is happening in your store. Sales, customers, active visitors, and other widgets that you want to see on your dashboard.
Pros:
- Multilingual.
- Supports product reviews and product ratings.
- Supports more than 20 payment gateways.
- Strong integration between OpenCart and external applications.
Cons:
- Lags behind in marketing-related features.
- Customization is limited to technically-savvy users.
- Takes a bit of time to setup.
AbanteCart
AbanteCart is another open-source shopping cart with a very active community behind it. Both users and developers are actively exchanging ideas to develop the software further. While it’s not the number one pick for many, AbanteCart has been around since 2011 and has seen its fair share of updates – and it’s still being constantly updated depending on the users’ needs.
In Tagalog (a major language in the Philippines), Abante means “to move forward”, so the developers are literally telling its users that AbanteCart was built to lead. And rightly so, it is 100% open-source, with accessible code that developers can use to customize online stores.
One surprising thing about AbanteCart is it has its own digital personal assistant like Siri – it features a voice-controlled dashboard…for some reason. Which is surprising!
Pros:
- Supports multi-store functionality.
- Stock tracking and management.
- API integration.
- Good marketing tools like discounts, promo pricing, coupons, custom shipping rates, etc.
- Has a Siri-like assistant in the admin dashboard.
Cons:
- Regular users will find it difficult to setup.
- Documentation is not made for regular users.
- The UI is not exactly stellar.
WooCommerce
People who have used WordPress and are into online selling most likely have heard of WooCommerce at some point. It’s an all-in-one suite of tools that can be integrated with any WordPress blog so you can launch an online store.
At its default setup, you can already run your online store. It will probably take you around 30 minutes to set it up – products, shipping rate, attributes, and the like.
The only downside I can see with WooCommerce is that it only works on WordPress and heavily relies on paid plugins for advanced features. If you need to customize the attributes of products for variants, then you might end up needing to spend more and more money as you go along.
On the plus side, there are also a lot of free plugins and themes from external developers. Some work fine, some don’t, so it’s kind of a hit or miss. But that said, WooCommerce is easily one of the top open-source shopping carts.
Pros:
- Great for SEO.
- Great sales management.
- Easy to install, no need to be tech-savvy.
- There are an abundance of custom-made plugins (free and paid).
Cons:
- No built-in abandoned cart saver.
- A lot of advanced functions are paid, this could easily pile up.
- Some support inquiries are for premium users only.
Square Online Store
Since the establishment in 2009, Square has become a household name in payment processing and technology for small businesses. With the relaunch of the Square Online Store in early 2019, Square has allowed merchants to sell their products online.
What are the advantages of Square Online Store?
- Developed POS system
Square possesses many renowned products, one of which is the free and powerful Square POS. Therefore, Square Online Store can take great advantage of this. It is easy to integrate your store with a robust point of sale system. Orders, items, and inventory stay in sync between your online and physical stores to ensure streamlined inventory management.
Especially, if you are already using Square POS, you can just sign in to your account and your items will be automatically transferred to your online store. Then, you’ll be able to select which items you want to sell online.
- Ease of use
It is really quite simple to start an eCommerce business using Square Online Store. The platform makes eCommerce approachable for business owners of all backgrounds, you don’t need any technical experience to get started. On the whole, the interface is intuitive, clean, and gives you the prompts necessary to edit, customize, and publish your online store.
See this video to learn more about how easy it is to get around with Square Online Store.
- SEO & marketing
Square has abundant marketing features to help your business grow. It provides built-in SEO functionality with basic options such as permalink, and SEO title and description, both of which will improve your appearance in search engine results.
You can also create online coupons and utilize pop-ups for advertisements and gather a lot of email sign-ups. One of the most fantastic tools the platform offers is emailing, which gives users a number of options to optimize their sales process and promotion campaigns. Sellers can set up automatic emails with custom content and templates for order confirmation, shipment, cancellation or refund.
What are the weaknesses of Square Online Store?
- Shipping
Some people find this aspect of the Square Online Store to be the most frustrating. You’ll have to choose either free shipping for every item in your store or set a flat rate for all of your products upon setup. That’s a major problem if you’re selling pieces of a different weight or size, where the price may vary.
- Limited customization
With Square Online Store, when you go to edit each content block, you’ll notice some limitations. For example, you cannot adjust the size, shape, or location of text boxes. That makes it very difficult to fit text into your site in the exact way you had in mind. There will also be times that you probably want to bold the text, but you won’t be allowed to.
There are a few other limitations that you should keep in mind as you consider Square Online Store. To add a piece of content to your site, you have to select one of Square Online Store’s premade content blocks. You can’t simply add a text box to your website; you have to add an entire block. Also, there are no tools available for editing HTML or CSS. That means you cannot use web developers or designers to adjust the code of your site. You need to make all of the changes in the design tool.
Who should use Square Online Store?
Square Online Store is suitable for those who want to build an eCommerce store for free but still love to experience the most basic eCommerce features. The platform is not only able to offer them but also excels at a POS system and SEO & marketing tools. The gentle learning curve of this platform also helps you start your eCommerce experience easier, within a breeze.
LightSpeed
LightSpeed is the world’s most dominant POS (Point Of Sale) and eCommerce software. You can create an omnichannel shopping experience for your customers and bring them back frequently. Customers will enjoy this reliable and spontaneous POS system and eCommerce solution.
LightSpeed OnSite gives the leverage to all the retailers to have command over their physical as well as online store. You can also manage functions, enjoy multi linguistic options choosing default language as per your choice, handle sales & customers from your system.
Here are some advantages and disadvantages of Lightspeed you should know:
Advantages
- The initial level of editing and customization is very easy in Lightspeed.
- Lightspeed gives you unlimited bandwidth usage.
- Lightspeed comes with great SEO and social media marketing features.
Disadvantages
- There’s only one plan available in Lightspeed and may not be a good option for small businesses.
- Lightspeed themes are billed monthly, and that might be a problem for a lot of small businesses out there (in terms of cost).
- If you make edits in the theme codes & CSS, Lightspeed will not give you any support services.
- The payment integrations are very limited compared to other eCommerce platforms that we’ve seen.
Criteria To Choose The Best Free Shopping Cart Softwares
Most people looking for free shopping cart softwares usually put their thoughts into several indispensable criteria. In this article, we will introduce the best free shopping cart softwares that have already undergone thorough research and been proven to hold eCommerce must-have features:
- Customization: Customization is important if you do not want to pay so much for third-party plugins. If a platform allows customization, you can design your store as you wish and create any function you want, but of course, technical skills will be required in this case. In view of the fact that most of the platforms we chose are open-source softwares, they are able to deliver a high level of customization.
- Product types: These free shopping cart softwares allow you to easily sell both digital and physical products.
- Various payment gateways and shipping methods: They integrate with various online payment gateways (Square, Stripe, or PayPal, etc.) and shipping methods which makes the paying and shipping process more efficient.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities: All chosen platforms offer you built-in SEO tools that help to enhance your Google ranking.
- Multichannel selling: Merchants can sell on different channels, which helps diversify the marketplace.
- Multilingual websites: These website builders enable merchants to display their store in various languages, which is a great approach to attract customers from all over the globe.
These aforementioned features have sketched an overarching picture of what these free shopping cart softwares have in common. However, we all know that each of them comes with its own ins and outs. Without looking into it, your decision won’t probably hit all the right spots.
Conclusion
Ecommerce shopping has become more and more popular over the years. This is largely because of the convenience that they provide customers. The ability to be able to make a purchase from any location that has an internet connection,…
If you have read the article on the best ecommerce platforms, then you know that each has its own benefits and disadvantages. One of the main business requirements that are often overlooked is to have a good software for your website. Free ecommerce shopping cart software has made it easier for such businesses and brands to come out with merchant accounts and carry out their operations online. These tools have enabled them to get the best of online marketing.