By now you know that ecommerce is a popular business style, and perhaps you may have even considered starting your own shop. If you are considering it, you are certainly not alone. There are tons of people going into ecommerce every day due to its growing popularity and ease of use. I’ve also considered it in the past myself, so I wanted to present a review of free ecommerce website platforms for anyone wondering about that option.
If you wish to start an online business or setup a website to sell your product or services, then there are wide range of platforms available in the marketplace. This article will inform you best Ecommerce platforms and give suggestions regarding ecommerce platform fees.
Some of these tools let you create a store and start selling 100% for free, while others let you set up your store for free but charge you to start selling. What’s more, some of them are pretty easy to use, while others involve some learning curve.
Still wondering about the best ecommerce platform? Overwhelmed by the number of available ecommerce platforms to build your website? Take a deep breath, step back and have a look at some of the most popular enterprise platforms…
Ecommerce Platforms
Let’s get the list started. Here’s the final lineup of the best free eCommerce platforms on the market:
1. Wix
Wix packs in a user-friendly website builder (similarly to Weebly or Squarespace) to help you create a website in one of two easy ways: with mere drag and drop or by using Wix’s ADI artificial intelligence designer. What’s more, you can even customize it greatly without knowing a thing about code.
Note: Wix is also a perfect store builder that will let you create an eCommerce website – but you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to start selling to customers.
Free plan
- Online presence with free and secure web hosting
- Up to 500 MB bandwidth and up to 500 MB storage
- Hundreds of fully customizable templates, mobile-optimized website
- Access to an extensive collection of icons, images, clip art, and free apps
- Free Wix domain – (
username.wixsite.com/siteaddress) - Email marketing, SEO assistance, and other marketing tools
Free plan limitations
Your site address will carry the Wix favicon. Further, you’ll find Wix ads on every page. You cannot have a custom domain or change templates.
Most importantly, you cannot accept payments under the free plan. Again, while you can create your store for free, you need to pay once you’re ready to start selling.
Other key features
- Easy-to-use tools in a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor
- Assistance of Wix Artificial Design Intelligence to build personalized websites
- 500+ design templates covering any and every type of website
- Built-in tools to customize the design and layout
- Unlimited bandwidth and 10 GB storage
- Hassle-free coding for advanced functionality
- Mobile-friendly and SEO-friendly
- Google Analytics included
- Great ecommerce website builder
Among the free eCommerce platforms, Wix is ideal for websites that want everything taken care of and need only regular website features.
Price & transaction fees
The Premium plans start at $17 per month. There are three premium plans that are usable by small businesses, startups, and medium-sized eCommerce business owners – Basic, Unlimited, and VIP.
All these plans allow you to connect to your own domain and are ad-free. They vary in the amount of storage as well as the level of support and apps available. All three plans provide unlimited bandwidth.
While these business and eCommerce plans allow you to set up a store, accept payments, and view detailed Analytics, you’ll have to pick from their Unlimited or VIP business and eCommerce plans to get access to other advanced Wix Business applications, such as currency converter, automated sales tax, etc. They cost $25 and $35 per month, respectively.
Transaction fees:
Wix Payments lets Wix business and eCommerce plan subscribers accept card payments, digital wallets, and more without having to integrate third-party payment gateways.
It’s available only in some countries, and in the US, there’s a fee of 30¢ plus 2.9% for each transaction. It’s lower in EU countries, at 1.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 EUR. These are similar to the fees that other payment processing software options charge.
2. WooCommerce via Bluehost
Right up at the top among the best eCommerce platforms is WooCommerce. It is a free and open source ecommerce plugin that integrates perfectly with WordPress (both WordPress sites and most WordPress plugins). Even though “a plugin” might not sound like much, WooCommerce is actually a fully-featured tool that has all the eCommerce features you might need. Plus, there’s also a huge ecosystem of extensions that let you build on top of WooCommerce’s main offering and make it fit your needs perfectly.
Free plan
There’s a lot you can do with the free WooCommerce plugin:
- Sell anything: physical or digital goods, including subscriptions
- Easy installation and use
- Adding your products is straightforward
- There are many free WooCommerce themes to help you design your store the way you want it
- Flexible and secure payments
- Multiple currencies to sell globally
- Integrates with multi-channel shipping options
- Stripe plugin available if needed
WooCommerce is a delight for advanced users as it gives you complete control over your eCommerce platform. As for beginners, it’s a complete solution to start your online store, scaling up and learning as you grow.
Free plan limitations
The base plugin with free add-ons should more than suffice for most online stores that are just starting out. However, if you want to use additional payment gateways, integrate with certain shipping solutions directly, or have WooCommerce help you with handling taxes, then this will require additional investments in some extensions. There are a lot of those available.
Price & transaction fees
Here’s something important to note – WooCommerce, by itself, is totally free; so is WordPress – the CMS that WooCommerce works with. However, as with setting up any website, there are other costs involved – mainly web hosting and domain name. That being said, there are some very budget-friendly options to choose from for those who want to minimize the costs as much as possible. For example, Bluehost will give you an optimized web hosting space, a free domain name for the first year, and a quick single-click WordPress and WooCommerce installation. All of that for the price of $2.75 / month.
Transaction fees:
If you end up using the native WooCommerce Payments module, the transaction fees are 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction made with U.S.-issued credit or debit cards. For cards issued outside the U.S., there’s an additional 1% fee.
If you choose to use PayPal, that is also around 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction. Other payment methods have their own rates and fees.
3. Ecwid
Want a store that plugs into your existing site? If that’s a yes, it’s Ecwid for you. No website? Not to worry, you’ll get an instant starter site too for free.
Free plan
Ecwid has a free plan that’s very usable. Once you sign up, you can set up a fully functional free eCommerce website that sells up to ten products in two categories. Here’s what you get:
- Mobile responsive customizable online store with product options
- Mobile responsive shopping cart
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Add it easily to WordPress or any other website
- Sell simultaneously on multiple sites
- Facebook Pixel
- Built-in support for SSL certification, security, server configuration, and hosting
- 40+ payment methods in multiple currencies
- Real-time shipping rates from some carriers
- Built-in Google Analytics integration
Free plan limitations
You won’t get access to digital goods, staff accounts, or promo codes. These features, along with many more, are available only in premium plans.
Other key features
- Sell on the go with Ecwid mobile
- Store management app
- Multiple sales channels like Facebook, Instagram, or other POS
- Unlimited products, including digital goods
- Inventory management, automated tax calculation
- Order creation, product filters, and variations
In short, Ecwid’s free plan can be a fine option for small merchants who have basic selling requirements.
Price & transaction fees
Beyond the free plan, three paid plans are available:
- Venture – $15 per month
- Business – $35 per month
- Unlimited – $99 per month
Transaction fees:
None of them are charged directly by Ecwid, but your chosen payment processor will likely charge fees. Get started with EcwidGo to top
4. Big Cartel
If you’ve got T-shirts, paintings, jewelry, or other crazy stuff to sell, you’ll feel at home with Big Cartel.
Free plan
With the free Gold plan, you can:
- Start your free store with up to five products
- Pick a theme and customize
- Add one image per product with product options and categories
- Sell in person and on Facebook
- Choose to accept credit card or PayPal payments, or both
- SSL encryption
- Basic order management via the Big Cartel dashboard
- Email support
Free plan limitations
On the free plan, it’s not possible to have a custom domain. Nor will you be able to add multiple images per product or track inventory.
Other key features
- Enable inventory tracking
- Offer discount codes
- Google Analytics
- Full code customization
Since minimalism is Big Cartel’s forte, you won’t find the platform weighed down by too many features. At the same time, the free plan gives you enough to set up a shop, sell, and receive payments.
Price & transaction fees:
Three premium plans are available that allow you to sell different numbers of products
- Platinum – you can sell up to 25 products at $9.99 per month
- Diamond – 100 products at $19.99 per month
- Titanium – 300 products at $29.99 per month
Transaction fees:
None charged directly by BigCartel, but your chosen payment processor will likely charge fees. Get started with BigCartel
5. Gumroad
Gumroad is a suitable platform to sell digital, physical, and creative goods, though the emphasis is more on digital products and creative stuff, like photographs, writing, podcasts, and designs.
It lets you create a free eCommerce website upfront, but they charge a commission on everything that you sell, unlike the other open-source eCommerce platforms on this list.
Free plan
- Create and customize your storefront
- Sell as many products as you want
- Send out four updates each month
- Setup one automated workflow
Free plan limitations
Besides missing out on some key premium features, you’ll also pay a higher transaction fee in a free account.
Other key features
- Import email lists and rely on powerful analytics
- Sell physical product variants, track inventory, manage shipping, and restrict to countries
- Digital products sellers have a lot going – multiple versions, generate license keys, and offer discount codes
- With a simple ‘+’ sign, ask customers to pay what they wish
- Built-in abuse prevention with PDF stamping or turning off downloads
- Sell goods before they are ready and schedule future payment receipt
- Support for recurring subscriptions and membership plans that offer access to content libraries and license keys for software
- Multiple payment options and easy checkout
- Customers can create an account and keep all content in one place
Moreover, Gumroad promotes product branding with custom URLs and markets your products with customized previews for social channels like Facebook and Twitter. Thank you notes and updates in automatic workflows help you stay engaged with your customers.
Price & transaction fees
Professional features will cost you just $10 per month.
Transaction fees:
The fee on each sale for free accounts is 8.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale.
It’s lower on premium plans at 3.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale. There’s an additional 10% charge on first-time purchasers for sales that come through browsing Gumroad. Get started with GumroadGo to top
6. Shopify
Shopify is a full-fledged eCommerce platform, hosting included. It’s rather popular among free eCommerce platforms and takes care of everything – marketing, payments, shipping, and secure checkout, and is easy to set up.
Note: Like Wix, Shopify will let you create a free eCommerce website – but you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to start selling to customers.
Free plan
While there’s no fully free plan, you can subscribe to Shopify’s free trial for 14 days, without submitting credit card details.
Free plan limitations
During your free trial period, you can set up your store and explore features. But before you sell products or services, you’ll need to pay up for one of the plans.
Key features
- Online store with customizable themes, Shopify POS apps, multiple sales channels are part of Basic Plan
- Also in Basic Plan, unlimited products, manage products and inventory, track sales, and growth trends
- Shopify includes a dashboard with a complete eCommerce builder
- Hosting, domain names, design, themes, and marketing – all included
- 100+ mobile-ready themes and hundreds of apps to enhance store functions
- Integrates with most social media forums
- Possible to create regular web content as well — static pages, blog posts, contact forms, and so on
- Downtime is minimum with round the clock support
Shopify is a delight for anyone who wants a hands-off approach to online store setup and maintenance. With a range of plans to suit every need and type of online business, it has something for everyone.
Price & transaction fees
Four plans with varying features and monthly fees are available:
- Lite – $9 per month
- Basic – $29 per month
- Shopify – $79 per month
- Advanced – $299 per month
All plans, except the Lite, allow you to create fully-functional Shopify stores. The Lite plan only allows you to sell on Facebook and in physical locations, as well as integrate a Buy Button on an existing site.
Transaction fees:
There are no separate transaction fees when you use Shopify Payments (available in some countries). If you choose an external payment gateway, there’ll be an additional fee of 2%, 1%, or 0.5% for the Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans, respectively.
7. 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.
With that, you can find out more about the platform through our detailed nopCommerce review.nopCommerce Pros and Cons
Benefits of nopCommerce
- nopCommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform that’s available free of charge. You won’t pay anything to acquire and use it for the long haul.
- There are two main nopCommerce download options. Online merchants who are not familiar with programming can download the simplified one-click install version that doesn’t come with the source code. Developers, on the other hand, could choose to proceed with the source code version for its extensive customization capabilities.
- nopCommerce comes with all the essential features you’d need for setting up a fully-functional online store. Hence, you should be able to sell different types of products and services, configure SEO settings, manage all the ecommerce parameters, integrate additional third-party apps, as well as rework the underlying code.
- nopCommerce is capable of facilitating numerous ecommerce stores on a single admin interface. You could also build a marketplace where small vendors could collectively sell their stuff.
- nopCommerce is supported by a large, vibrant community of developers who are spread out across the world. They are consistently improving the platform to make it better, faster, and more secure.
- nopCommerce now boasts of thousands of prebuilt integrations. All that comes from various developers who’ve created integrations with popular shipping, payment, marketing, site building, and hosting solutions. So, of course, you should be able to connect your nopCommerce system to pretty much any popular ecommerce solution right off the bat.
- nopCommerce is not the type of ecommerce platform that suits all merchants. If you don’t have the skills for CSS, HTML, MS SQL, and .NET programming, you might have better luck with a simpler solution. nopCommerce fundamentally targets people who know how to work with Microsoft-based platforms.
- While downloading the nopCommerce software is completely free of charge, you might subsequently incur heavy charges for development services, thrid-party add-ons, themes, web hosting, plus an SSL certificate.
- Customer support is very limited here. Once you download and install nopCommerce, maintaining the whole platform plus troubleshooting any issues is entirely up to you.
8. X-Cart
X-Cart has helped to create over 35,000 online stores, and this has been growing rapidly over the past few years. As with all of these ecommerce platforms on the list, it’s free, open source and self-hosted.
X-Cart is often considered one of the fastest open source platforms on the market, and it also has an incredible number of features for you to sink your teeth into. There’s also a free trial for the premium plan, which goes for $495 (one-time payment).X-Cart Pros and Cons
Benefits of X-Cart:
- It depends on the package you go with, but you can often get full multilingual and multi-currency support. This is especially good if you are running an enterprise store
- You can integrate your shopping cart with the most reputable payment gateways in the world such as PayPal and Sage
- It’s free and open sourced so similarly to WooCommerce there is some great developer support available. It’s PHP code means you can easily add additional integrations manually
- The most advanced developers will have all the control they need with X-Cart. It’s pretty fun to play around with and is very scalable. As your store grows X-Cart can grow alongside you.
- You can also rest easy knowing that X-Cart is completely secure and PCI Compliant.
Downsides of X-Cart:
- You have no access to direct customer support unless you pay an extra fee. Other than that you will just have to rely on X-Carts self-help tools
- You even have to pay for hosting if you opt for one of the paid plans. Again this can cost anything from $5 a month to several thousand.
- Although the premium plan is only $495 for a lifetime, this still looks somewhat high compared to other options. Also if you need a multivendor plan and then continue to grow the price rises considerably
- There’s a good chance you’ll have to utilize some sort of manual coding when setting up your store. If you don’t need PHP code then you will have to outsource development work which will be costly
Advantages of eCommerce Website to your Business
Scalability:
E-commerce websites are great for keeping track of which items are selling well so that you can ensure that the inventory levels of these items stay high. Additionally, how these successful products may be diversified to expand the variety of merchandise available for purchase on your website. This will help you expand your business in terms of sales, client base, and earnings. Amazon’s internet shopping site has thrived due to its ability to scale its product range while maintaining close contact with what is selling with customers.
Businesses Can Operate From Anywhere:
eCommerce websites eliminate any geographical limitations that an office-based company may face. You can operate your e-commerce firm from anywhere in the globe. Having access to emails, the Internet, and phones are all required components for keeping tabs on your e-commerce website from anywhere.
Low Cost Than Offline Business:
Online ordering is less expensive than conventional business models since there are no employees, trucks, warehouses, or distribution facilities to set up and maintain. The entire sales process for your firm will be handled online. As a result, you will save on personnel costs, salaries, and other business expenses such as electricity, rent, and heating.
The funds saved may then be invested in developing your e-commerce website and product line. E-commerce websites can help you develop your product offering faster than traditional brick-and-mortar businesses because they do not require the same overhead costs.
CONCLUSION
With all the popular Ecommerce products now days, it’s vital to find a right platform for your eCommerce site. In order to start an online business with or without product listing or catalogs, you can run this type of business. However, if you want to make you own shop and start selling your own product, I think it’s best for you to choose an eCommerce Platform.
A lot of people may think that small business should stick to the conventional ways of doing business. And while that may be right for some, most people are now turning to e-commerce as a channel to improve their online presence.