Best Free Solution Ecommerce

Big business is quickly realizing the benefits of ecommerce solutions. More and more customers prefer to use their computers to buy a product rather than going to a shop and plucking something off a shelf. With this trend in mind, the number of businesses looking for an online solution continues to increase, meaning there’s never been a better time to start an ecommerce shop. There are many outstanding free solutions available, but solutions with features and options abound on the Ecommerce market, so how are you supposed to know what’s worth investing time and money into? Let’s find out…

Ecommerce is the hottest business model on the planet, and for smart companies, it’s a critical piece of their long-term growth strategy. No matter your product or industry, ecommerce is changing how you do business. It’s one of the simplest and most effective solutions to a squeeze on profit margins from rising customer acquisition costs and sales taxes. But before you can begin building an ecommerce site, you need an ecommerce platform. This article explores your best options for a free solution based on our research and testing of some solutions in an exhaustive study.

One of the most important success factors for any business is its revenue. Revenue is the amount of money that people spend on your products and services. After all, it’s not hard to figure out what’s the main purpose of your company if you have to provide some sort of service or deliver a product. The main question here is how to make the money. Of course, you can do it by selling your own products, but if you don’t have a strong brand name and an extensive customer base, this will take a lot of time and effort – which you might not want to spend right away. As an alternative, you can use ready-made solutions such as best free solution ecommerce

I don’t know about you, but the idea of building and maintaining a full-fledged ecommerce solution seemed daunting to me when I first started out. Not only would I have to build and maintain my own web application, but I would have to learn how to accept credit card payments, set up my own payment gateway and fulfill orders.

Advantages of free eCommerce platforms

1. You have more creative control over the design and the features of your store.
2. Open source solutions usually come with unique features earlier than the paid platforms because they are continually being developed and improved by the community.
3. You have your control over things like hosting, plugins and themes that would go into your store.

 BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a fully hosted (or all-in-one) eCommerce platform that you can use to create your eCommerce store. There’s also a WordPress plugin available, if you have an existing site that you want to use with BigCommerce.

While they don’t have a free plan available, there is a free trial which lets you set up your shop and get started without paying anything.

Pros

• You don’t have to enter any credit card details to take the free trial.
• BigCommerce is really easy to get started with. You can just sign up, enter details about your store, and start adding products.
• You can get a free domain like mystore.mybigcommerce.com if you don’t want to pay for a custom domain name.
• BigCommerce gives you plenty of different ways to take payments. It has built-in integration with lots of payment platforms, including PayPal powered by Braintree, Stripe, Authorize.net and more.
• There are lots of third-party apps that you can add to your BigCommerce store to extend its functionality.

Cons

• The free trial only lasts for 15 days, which doesn’t give you long to start making money from your store. After that, you’ll need to pay $29.95/month or more to keep your store going.
• BigCommerce is an all-in-one platform, which means you’re limited to using their addons and themes. You won’t have the range of choice that you’d have with some other eCommerce options.

Shopify

Shopify is another fully hosted eCommerce platform. Shopify also offers a 14 day free trial and, like BigCommerce’s free trial, this doesn’t require a credit card.

Pros

• It’s really easy to get started with Shopify. Their website builder has a drag and drop interface that means even total beginners can create a great looking online store.
• If you want to add extra features to your store, there’s an app marketplace with lots of add-ons that you can buy.
• There’s 24/7 support available, through live chat, phone, email, and Twitter.
• Shopify Payments (Shopify’s built-in payment gateway) charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. Since this is a built-in feature which has the same price as Stripe or other gateways, this makes it easier for users to get started.

Cons

• If you use other payment gateways, like PayPal or Stripe, Shopify charges a 2% transaction fee. This is on top of the fee charged by the third-party payment gateway.
• The free trial only lasts 14 days. After that, you’ll need to move onto a paid plan. The cheapest is $29/month.

Weebly

Weebly isn’t quite so well known as some other eCommerce platforms, like Shopify and WooCommerce, but they offer a free trial where you can test out the platform.

Pros

• You can add any kind of physical or digital products to your store
• The drag and drop interface is easy to use to build your site and manage items in your store.
• There are around 100 different themes (designs) you can choose from, so you should be able to find something that’s just right for your site.
• Built-in inventory, shipping, taxes management features.
• As well as the community forum, the free plan gives you access to live chat, email, and even phone support.
• If you do want to upgrade to a paid plan, these are affordable even for very small businesses. Ecommerce starter plan starts at $12 per month paid annually.

Cons

• Weebly charges a 3% transaction fee. That’s in addition to the transaction fee that your payment gateway charges.
• If you’re on the free or Personal ($9/month) plans, Weebly will show ads and branding from Square, Weebly’s parent company.
• Even with the paid starter plan you are limited to sell only 25 products at a time.

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:

1. Log into your WordPress site.
2. Go to: Plugins > Add New.
3. Search for ‘WooCommerce’.
4. Select Install Now.
5. 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.

 CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Well, if you haven’t read our CS-Cart review yet, here’s the gist of it- CS-Cart is a renowned Russian software company that has served ecommerce merchants since 2005.

Now, I’ve purposely left out the “Multi-Vendor” part because the company happens to distribute two different CS-Cart ecommerce applications.

For starters, there’s the “CS-Cart” platform, which is basically a shopping cart software with the essential features for getting a typical online store up and running.

Then secondly, we have the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor platform, which is also an ecommerce software, but a little bit different compared to its CS-Cart sibling.

You see, CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is not for online merchants seeking to set up ecommerce stores. Rather, it targets the big players (mostly enterprises) that would like to build marketplaces. I’m talking about creating websites like eBay or Etsy, which usually host numerous merchants under one roof.

So, in short, CS-Cart Multi-Vendor can help you build your own marketplace, complete with the corresponding features that small merchants might need to create their storefronts on your website.

The solution itself is self-hosted and comes with an open-source framework, which features over 500 ecommerce functionalities, as well as themes, and extra integrations.

The problem is, however, that CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is not entirely free. In fact, there’s nothing much you’ll be getting for free. The far CS-Cart Multi-Vendor goes is offering you a 15-day free trial, followed by a 30-day risk-free purchase period. That means they’ll refund all your money if you don’t like their software product.

Now, on the bright side, you won’t be paying for the service on a monthly basis. CS-Cart Mult-Vendor is provided at a one-off cost of either $1,450, $3,500, or $7,500. What you pay, in the end, depends on the features you’re looking for.

But, if you ask me, it’s totally worth the price since it offers everything you can think of. It even comes with its own layout editor, along with great SEO and marketing tools, an in-built content management system, a user-friendly admin panel, a responsive mobile-friendly structure, plus integrations for more than 80 payment and shipping services.

Then considering it’s an open-source application, you can, of course, build your own custom functionalities and integrations. The possibilities here are limitless.

Ultimately, you, as the purchaser, become the head of the marketplace. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor allows you to host vendors, all of whom you’ll coordinate from the primary admin panel.

In other words, the admin panel gives you the power to control everything about the marketplace – from its vendors and their accompanying payouts, to the overall marketplace architecture and design. It’s just like building an online mall from the ground up, and subsequently managing its merchants.

Well, the vendors, on the other hand, are required to register like they would on any other marketplace platform. Then once you approve their details, they can proceed to set up their own marketplace storefronts.

The storefronts themselves can sell different types of products and services. Both physical and digital products are allowed here. So, in the end, it all depends on what you choose to have your vendors dealing in.

That said, CS-Cart Multi-Vendors will give your vendors their own admin panels for managing their stores, as well as configuring features such as product categories, filters, search, shipping options, etc. Then in the meantime, you can have them pay via a monthly subscription schedule, sales commissions, or possibly both. The choice is yours, so be wise about it.

PrestaShop

PrestaShop boasts that more than 250,000 stores use their ecommerce platform. The forum for PrestaShop has more than 850,000 members and customers include Zippo Lighters and Fashion Stork, among others. The popularity of this open source ecommerce platform extends to more than 200 countries and as a result, PrestaShop has been translated into 65 languages.

PrestaShop is so well liked by developers and users, the platform has racked up awards around the world:

• Packt Publishing’s Best Open Source Business Application (two times)
• 2013 BSOCO Award in the CMS category
• 2013 #1 Open Source Shopping Cart Software by EcommerceBytes Seller’s Choice Awards

Who’s Using PrestaShop?

• Timefy
• Zippo
• Fashion Stork
• Eleven Paris

Disadvantages of free ecommerce platforms –

1. You must have the technical knowledge to build the store from scratch or even just to customise themes.
2. You don’t get customer support. So, you have to rely on the community for help.
3. Site maintenance like hosting, speed optimisation, security will be your headache.
4. It can be expensive if you have to hire a developer to build your store.

Conclusion

Ecommerce solutions are available on demand, but they don’t come free. On the other hand, there are free ecommerce platforms that you can use instead of spending thousands of dollars on some enterprise-level products.

The ecommerce industry is changing every day and the current trends are far beyond imagination. Since most of the internet users love to shop online for various products, new budding entrepreneurs are thinking about making the most out of this opportunity. After all, business is booming and so many companies are showing their interest in new technologies for their advancement.