The world is changing, and so are the ways of working with eCommerce sites. Online stores are getting more popular day by day, and people around the world are spending billions in them every year. There was a time when you had to lay your hands on professional builders to create and maintain
The best free website with ecommerce offers the flexibility to build your own website yet also gives you powerful features such as ecommerce, blog and social media integration. If you are looking for similar features in an easy-to-use platform, ecommerce website builder is a great option to consider.
If you are a small or a large business owner, then you need to create an online presence in order to spread word about your business. Your website will be the place where you can keep all vital information about your company and also sell your product. So choosing the best free ecommerce website builder is very important move for expanding business.
An ecommerce website is a great solution for selling your products or services over the Internet. In this article, we’ll be looking at a few common myths about starting an ecommerce website and how to address these issues.
Best Practices for Building Your eCommerce App
The best practice is to analyze the needs of customers in order to anticipate common customer issues. This means you should put yourself in the place of your customers.
When you take the position of the customer and test the experience of using your own eCommerce website and app, you will see what works for the customer and what doesn’t. This will help you come up with user-centered solutions that will in turn guarantee a smooth shopping experience, high conversions, and high customer retention.
So when building your eCommerce web store and eCommerce app, these best practices should be your guiding points:
- Understand the end user.
- The store design should be beautiful.
- Products should be displayed in a clean and uncluttered manner.
- Clear and straightforward menus make for painless navigation.
- Use call to action (CTA) buttons like Buy Now.
- Provide convenient payment and shipment methods.
- Use clear but creative descriptions of products.
- Use clear language with regards to the shipping, returns, and refund policy.
- Make it easy for users to reach you with any questions and concerns.
- Have a Frequently Asked Questions section.
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 BigCartelGo to top
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.
Webstarts
Known primarily for their website builder, Webstarts also lets you add an online store for free. It is, in general, a very generous free plan. This is probably why 4M users rely on it for their online presence.
Now, creating the store is also a pretty smooth experience. If you’ve ever used Wix, the feeling is very similar, as you can move items easily on the page. You can also adapt them for mobile screens, as templates aren’t automatically responsive. The interface is a bit dated, but it’s not bad for a free offer.
What we like:
- 1Gb of space: enough for a decent selection of items.
- Sell everything: you can sell digital items and physical goods.
- Generous free plan: sell 10 products and make up to 20 sales a day. More than most small stores will need.
- Unintrusive advert: it’s in the footer and doesn’t look obnoxious.
- Good payment options: Stripe, WePay, Authorize.Net and PayPal are supported.
What we don’t like:
- No SKU: but you can track your inventory.
- No SEO options: title tags, descriptions & personalized URLs for products and categories are missing.
Sign up free here: www.webstarts.com
Mozello
Not to be mistaken with Mozilla, this small Latvian company isn’t a household name, but they have one feature that big companies don’t: multilingual websites for free.
The same applies with their online store offer. Free deal, multilingual options. You can sell up to 5 products, which isn’t too bad, but other providers offer more.
Unfortunately, working with their editor isn’t as fun or flexible as we’d like. For instance, you can’t add image galleries to all the pages.
What we like:
- 500MB of storage: good for small stores.
- Multilingual option: you can sell in numerous languages.
- Inventory tracking: good for replenishing stocks.
- Product variant and options available: for example, shoes in different colors, sizes, materials, etc…
- SSL: is included.
What we don’t like:
- Basic system: your ecommerce will be pretty unsophisticated.
- Physical goods only: you can’t sell digital products.
- No credit card payments: Stripe only comes with premium plans.
- Number of products: Unfortunately you can only sell up to 5 products for free.
Sign up free here: www.mozello.com
Squareup
Squareup comes from Square, the famous Point of Sale system available for smartphones, desktops and tablets. It is like a portable version of your store that can be used to sell and manage payments everywhere with Internet.
Since they process online payments (for example Weebly uses them), you can also create an account with Square and open a free online store.
It’s not the most obvious solution, but it works! You can sell your items in person, and also on the web. You don’t have to pay monthly fees, but they take 3% of every transaction.
What we like:
- Great P.O.S: obviously, combining your online store with Square is what makes it appealing. You can sell all kinds of things face to face, from services to concert tickets.
- Sell tickets: Square’s system comes with a feature to sell event tickets.
- Inventory tracking: manage your stock easily.
What we don’t like:
- Digital sales option: there is the option to sell digital products, which in itself is great. However, it’s a bit inconvenient, since you have to send the items to your customers manually.
- Poor SEO options: no title tags or customizable URLs, among others.
- Limited payment options: PayPal isn’t supported, for instance.
Sign up free here: www.squareup.com
Freewebstore
Freewebstore displays the number of store owners who chose their product on their landing page. At the time of writing, it’s around half a million users. Their motto “eCommerce for everyone” seems to make sense for a lot of people.
It’s certainly not a bad deal as you can sell an unlimited number of products for free, and SSL is included. The designs are ok, if a bit dated, but they are responsive for mobile phones and tablets.
What we like:
- Free SSL.
- Numerous online payment processors: Stripe, PayPal, Skrill, 2Checkout and more are included.
- No transaction fees.
- Unlimited number of products
- Advanced features: import / export products via CSV and abandoned cart, amongst others – some of these may be available with paid plans only.
What we don’t like:
- Dated and complex backend: it’s not exactly intuitive or fun to create the site.
- Physical goods only: can’t sell digital products online.
Sign up free here: www.freewebstore.com
Strikingly
Strikingly’s mission is to let you “build your brand” and “conquer the world”. Apart from that, there’s not much information about them online, except that their product is free and includes a web store.
The main catch is that you can only sell one product for free. Also, they only let you create single-page layouts. This isn’t bad if you want a minimalist website, but not great for SEO. Let’s see more of their pros and cons below.
What we like:
- Good designs: they are modern and responsive.
- Numerous online payment processors: PayPal, Stripe, and offline payments are accepted.
What we don’t like:
- Only sell one product: you have to pay to sell more.
- Limited template choice: limited for the websites, and there are even fewer for ecommerces.
- SEO-limitations: mostly due to the one-page template.
Sign up free here: www.strikingly.com
Find out more in our Strikingly Review.
MyOnlineStore
A young Dutch provider in the ecommerce scene, MyOnlineStore has a small staff of 24 and around 40 000 stores to their name.
We published our test store without problem, but the backend did mention that it was in the Beta stage at this point. Aside from that, the pros and cons are as follows:
What we like:
- Good designs: modern and responsive.
- Payment options: online and offline are supported. Even Bitcoins!
- Multilingual system: to create your site in your preferred language.
What we don’t like:
- No SSL included.
- Limited template choice.
- Expensive premium plans.
- Still in Beta stage: maybe MyOnlineStore needs a bit of time to grow.
Conclusion:
A website with ecommerce can be profitable business. Ecommerce website design is a unique solution for selling products and services over the internet. Ecommerce solutions can help to grow your business, increase your revenue and scale business growth.
If you ever used an Android phone, most likely you also have tried some third party app that was developed by someone else. That’s great! They bring more interesting ideas and new creativities to the table. But perhaps there are some new business opportunities we can apply on mobile apps development sphere. Creating a website has become the most important task for entrepreneurs to showcase their businesses online. The website can be an online brochure, online portfolio, e-commerce website, web directory or even an informational site about a particular service. There are many free and paid websites available in the market that provides facilities to build your website.