E-commerce websites are a real necessity these days. Whether you are selling products, services or any other types of content, you need to have your website build right. If you do not make it right, it will be troublesome for you to reach customers, attract buyers or start earning revenue online. That is why e-commerce website builder is so popular. And in this guide I will tell you all about the best free ecommerce site builders which are currently available on the market today.
Any free Ecommerce site on this list can help you get online quickly and launch your own store in no time. As a bonus, many of these platforms offer free trials and include key features like unlimited products and secure shopping carts.
What makes a good eCommerce website? Well, it is matchless features and designs, user friendly experiences and of course the lots of free ecommerce templates to choose from. The way to be competitive in this business is by having your own unique eCommerce theme design to serve your every single customer’s shopping needs. There are many good free ecommerce themes are available on the market that you could customize with.
If you want to sell either digital goods or physical goods, or both, then our best-in-class ecommerce platform can help. With features like unlimited number of products, product reviews and ratings, and discounts by customer group (for example: students), it’s easy to sell online and watch your business grow.
Major trends to expect for 2022 and beyond
Quite a few trends may occur as the ecommerce market lunges forward. For example, according to data, 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase via their mobile device in the last six months [5]. Okay, this isn’t the most mind-blowing news, but it’s important to remember that the trend of mobile commerce is most likely going to continue.
Another trend to look at is the lessening reliance on Google. The search engine has made it more difficult for small to mid-size brands to move up the ranks over the past few years, and many merchants are finding that it’s more plausible to find customers through different outlets like Amazon (considering most Google results show Amazon anyways), social media and email marketing.
What this means for your ecommerce website builder of choice is that you need features that allow for some integration with those third-party tools, marketplaces and social media platforms.
Fair enough…the trends may change. Some will stick, while others we’ll never hear about again. However, looking at these things provides good indication of the types of actions you should take with your store.
Coupler.io
Coupler.io is a data integration tool that will help you streamline the data management of your business. In ecommerce, collecting data about your store is important to build a data-driven business, adjust growth and marketing strategy, and simply improve business data analytics and reporting.
To use Coupler.io, choose a needed connection, and your ecommerce data will be synchronized automatically between platforms or exported to one destination. For instance, if you’re using Shopify, connect Shopify to Google Sheets and export information about products, SKUs, orders, customers data, and other records.
Key Features
- Data export/import on a schedule
- Automatic data refresh
- 15+ ready to use integrations
- JSON API support to build a custom integration
- Unlimited users and custom integrations
Pricing
- Free plan: full functionality but with limitations in the number of imports (runs) and import sizes in a run.
- Professional: $24/month
- Squad: $49/month
- Business: $99/month
Pros
- Intuitive UI/UX
- No coding skills needed
- Customer onboarding and responsive support
Cons
- Currently, only 3 destinations are available
- No data visualization and live dashboard creation
Image via Coupler.io
Tool Level
Online store owners, high-volume merchants, ecommerce marketers
Usability
Ecommerce, inventory management, finance, marketing
Pro Tip: It’s never too late to start gathering all the data about your ecommerce business performance, inventory, marketing to get valuable insights for growth.
Antavo
Anything that makes shopping and interacting with your brand fun is going to drive sales. That’s the principle behind the gamification mindset, and you’ll find it echoed in Antavo’s app. Used by top retailers and small brands alike, Antavo will work to manage loyalty for your ecommerce store online and via mobile with more than 40 loyalty schemes. Pricing is quoted individually, based on your ecommerce store’s needs.
Smile.io
An alternative to Antovo, Smile.io offers points and rewards, encourages referrals from your customers, and helps you shower extra goodies on your top customers. The app is the new incarnation of Sweet Tooth, and has more than 15,000 active stores using it. Plans are available for ecommerce shops of all sizes, from single-person, single-product stores to massive ecommerce enterprises. The open API allows developers to integrate the app with any platform, and integrations with BigCommerce and Shopify are included right out of the box. Basic membership is $59/month, Small Business membership is $199/month, and Professional membership is $399/month. Enterprise clients are given custom quotes.
User Testing
Designed to give ecommerce businesses insight into their target market’s reactions to their store and site, User Testing is an invaluable tool. Pooling viewers from across the globe who fit target market segments, the app asks audience members to provide live video reactions to your site. Uncensored and honest, they can be tough to listen to, but they’re worth it. Mobile apps can also be reviewed, and if you don’t like the standard User Testing 20-minute review, you can set up custom questions. Pricing information is provided in custom quotes.
Wish Pond
Capturing and converting leads is the function of this powerful app. Using contests, popups, and landing pages, it helps you to identify and segment your leads. The app also allows you to target email campaigns to these newly captured leads. User-friendly features like a drag-and-drop editor make it easy to customize your campaigns. Relatively new, Wish Pond is still working on some internal bugs, and customer service isn’t as good as it could be, however. A 14-day free trial is available and the app’s pricing options are monthly charges of $49, $99, or $199. The $49 plan does not have access to the app’s API.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a one-stop digital marketing tool to handle everything from A/B testing to email autoresponders. If you’re a novice in ecommerce and don’t have the budget to hire a full-time digital marketer to help you start drawing traffic, this app is a solid option. You can use Klaviyo’s API to integrate with any app you want, or work with one of their myriad integrations, including CRMs and top ecommerce platforms. The app is free for up to 250 contacts and increases gradually with your number of contacts, reaching $1,700/month for 150,000 contacts and custom quotes for businesses beyond that size.
Buzzstream
A personal touch goes a long way in ecommerce, something Buzzstream exists to facilitate. By targeting influencers directly, building personal relationships, and tracking conversations, you can extend your ecommerce store’s visibility and rack up a little good karma in the process. Teamwork on BuzzStream is easy, as the platform provides one centralized database for your organization’s members to work from. Work on link building, drive buzz, get PR exposure, and promote your store’s blog content from one platform. Pricing ranges from $99-$999/month; free trials and some free tools are also available.
Exit Bee
Using behavioral psychology to target customers at the right moment, Exit Bee’s popups increase conversion and email subscription rates, decrease cart abandonment, and provide site visitors with the carefully targeted messaging. Pricing plans start at $22/month for three campaigns. Basic, Pro, Starter, and Enterprise options are also available, and pricing varies based on the number of campaigns, site visitors, and websites you want to address. Installation is fast and easy, taking less than 2 minutes – even without tech expertise. The UX is nice and performance is smooth, but faster exit-intent pop-up delivery might be more effective.
Metrilo
Metrilo is a combined growth platform for ecommerce brands. It tracks customer behavior on site and delivers marketing and sales performance insights to be used for optimizing marketing spend and ROI, CRO, product management. The customer database offers a comprehensive look into individual customer journeys and segmentation to identify particular customer groups. All this data is integrated with the email functionalities for relevant engagement and driving repeat sales (no limit on contact lists and emails sent). Pricing depends on the features used starting with an Essential plan, analytics only, at $119. Metrilo integrates fully with shops on Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento and doesn’t need any setup to start processing data.
Store Ya
Offering a full suite of ecommerce apps, Store Ya makes this list for the app developers’ creativity and friendly UX. Top apps include the Facebook Shop and the Traffic Booster. Designed to marry social media and digital marketing functions, most of Store Ya’s apps are free – a boon for ecommerce store owners on a tight budget. The most expensive app, Facebook Shop, is $79.99/month.
Instasize
Brands, no matter how big or small, need to create a consistent aesthetic that lets people easily identify with the lifestyle of the brand. Instasize is a mobile app that puts all the editing tools content creators need to ensure that their images are cohesive and on-brand. It’s an all-in-one photo and video editor that lets you play around with a variety of professionally-designed filters, themed borders, collages and customized text styles for a more personalized Instagram feed. The basic version is free to download on iOS and Android, but one can also opt to upgrade to Premium for $4.99 a month to access all the new filters and borders Instasize releases every month for their premium members.
Shopify
Shopify has everything you need and more to start an ecommerce website from scratch. It’s an all-in-one ecommerce solution for website creation and shopping cart software.
Regardless of your technical skill level, Shopify is easy for anyone to set up and use right out of the box.
Shopify makes it possible for you to sell from anywhere. In addition to your own ecommerce store, Shopify supports third-party marketplaces, social media selling, and in-person sales with Shopify POS (point of sale) software.
Every Shopify theme is optimized for mobile devices. Additionally, with tools like BuildFire, you could always build a Shopify mobile app to take your mobile sales strategy to the next level.
One of the most significant standouts of Shopify is its versatility. From startups to small businesses and large-scale operations, this ecommerce tool can fit the needs of any organization.
Pricing: Shopify has three different plans — Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. These plans start at $29, $79, and $299 per month, respectively. You can try Shopify for free with a 14-day trial.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is unique compared to some of the other ecommerce tools on our list. That’s because it’s not an all-in-one ecommerce solution.
If you already have a WordPress website, you can add ecommerce functionality by installing the WooCommerce plugin.
From selling products to subscriptions and memberships, WooCommerce has everything you need to add ecommerce capabilities to WordPress.
The tool is fully customizable. It integrates with popular payment platforms like Stripe, Square, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and more. WooCommerce has other extensions for things like printing shipping labels and integrating with your email marketing platform.
For those of you who have an existing WordPress site, WooCommerce is the best way to start selling online without doing a complete rebuild. Simply install the plugin, and customize your settings from there.
Pricing: WooCommerce is free to install on your WordPress site. But other extensions to customize the WooCommerce plugin do cost money. Tons of extensions are free like the HubSpot for WooCommerce integration, while others range up to $300 per installation.
What are tools of ecommerce?
Ecommerce tools are the tools that can make it easier to run your online shop. These tools simplify and automate online commerce activities such as website design and customer onboarding.
Conclusion
Gone are the days when people had to build their own store in order to sell their products online. We are now living in an era where there’s a new e-commerce platform popping up every day to cater to a variety of niches. From customizing colors, fonts and also choosing templates, your shopping website will be ready to use, with minimal customization.
Ecommerce websites come in different forms. There are some businesses that prefer not to deal with payments on their own and outsource payments to a third party payment gateway. However, there are also businesses that provide the entire ecommerce store solution. So it all boils down to what your business needs.