Ecommerce platforms are the backbone of a successful online shop. That’s why it is important to find the best ecommerce platform but not necessarily the most expensive one. We will go over the various pricing models and what options you have in order to choose the best free ecommerce platform for your needs.
If you are a shopper surfing online shopping stores then one question that might come to your mind is “what is the best free ecommerce platform?” or “are there any free ecommerce solutions available?”. In both cases, the response is affirmative. There are some decent ecommerce solutions for those who live on a shoestring budget. These doesn’t mean it won’t cost you anything but the expenses will be at bare minimum.
Ecommerce platforms seem to be everywhere these days. Last I checked there were 89,700 ecommerce frameworks listed on the internet. But not all of them are worth your time or should you rely on them for building your online store. In this article, I’m going to give you some of the best ecommerce platforms available today and I’ll also show you how I built my own ecommerce site with a free ecommerce platform.
If you want to start selling online or want to change your existing ecommerce solution, you must go through a certain decision making process. What ecommerce platform is the best? It’s a common question that comes to many online retailers’ minds. It is important to understand what are your needs and how much money you are ready to invest in your future business.
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.
Learn how to create a website with Wix 👈 Get started with WixGo to top
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.
Learn how to create an eCommerce store with WooCommerce 👈 Get started with WooCommerce on BluehostGo to top
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.
Learn how to create a store with Shopify 👈 Get started with ShopifyGo to top
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
9. Solidus
Solidus works a bit differently from the majority of eCommerce solutions on the market. It’s a fully customizable open-source eCommerce platform based on the Ruby on Rails framework. It also utilizes headless eCommerce architecture that’s regularly maintained by its developer community. For the uninitiated, this just means that your eCommerce website’s front-end is separate from its backend.
Unlike other eCommerce solutions that hand you premade designs, web design is left entirely in the hands of your software team. At a basic level, you’ll use an API from Solidus’s framework to create custom features and designs while also being able to benefit from Soldius’s in-built eCommerce functionality. All without affecting the design or user interface with any updates or edits you make.
Solidus’s basic eCommerce features focus on product management, payment options, and logistics. This functionality is packed into coding modules that you can import into your site.
For example, you can control your online and physical store inventories using the product module.
Soldius also enables you to organize how products appear on your website and within your database because Solidus provides coding options for both your store’s aesthetics and administration. In fact, you can even use Solidus to build your own backend user interface. This is especially useful for designing something specifically for your team and implementing whatever workflows/processes/UX you think would serve your teammates best.
Solidus is extensive in the sense that not only can you create an online store, but it’s also a complete management system with payment processing and resources that control:
- Shipping
- Postage
- Transactions
On top of all the modules available, you can also integrate with third-party logistics providers, payment services, and marketing platforms.
There are plenty of free extensions available that are designed and updated by other Solidus community members. However, you can also find official third-party add-ons if you want extra assurances about the integration’s validity.Solidus Pros and Cons
Benefits of Solidus
- You can create a fully customizable store. This goes a lot further than simply tinkering with color schemes and text boxes. Instead, Soldius offers you to create an entirely custom design with whatever features and aesthetics you and your team decide upon. Rest assured, you’ll be able to create a thoroughly unique and personalized customer experience.
- Solidus is free. Thanks to Soldius’s open-source nature, you have completely free access to Soldius’s framework.
- Solidus is an incredibly flexible tool: Whether you’re looking to create a standalone eCommerce store or an entire marketplace. You can manage all your site’s features and functions, including payment, logistics, product management, etc., from one unified backend. Needless to say, this makes managing your store a lot easier. What’s more, with Solidus’s integration options, you can streamline your workflow with the help of your preferred third-party service providers to carry out everyday business tasks.
- Automation: You can automate all the features that might traditionally slow your business down, such as inventory, stock, and product management.
Downsides of Solidus:
- Although Solidus is free, as you may have guessed, the framework requires extensive knowledge of Ruby and Ruby on Rails’ coding and framework. If you don’t have this know-how, you’ll need to hire a software engineer to help get you and running.
- Similarly, as Solidus is designed for those coding websites from scratch, it takes much longer to set up a basic eCommerce store than a traditional drag-and-drop eCommerce platform. In that same vein, you’ll also need to meticulously plan out your website before you waste your time coding or money hiring a web developer.
- Though there are many online resources and a community on-hand to answer questions, there isn’t a customer support system to manage issues that crop up when things go wrong. Instead, you’ll have to rely on your software engineer to get you back up and running.
10. Zen Cart
The whole reason Zen Cart was created was so that people without development degrees could build their own online stores.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you don’t need any coding knowledge, but it’s pretty close.
But, I can assure you this, Zen Cart is more user-friendly than many of the other open source ecommerce platforms, so it might be worth looking into if you want to scale up quickly but you don’t have advanced developer skills.Zen Cart Pros and Cons
Benefits of Zen Cart:
- Zen Cart is known as a rather secure software, so you know that your site and customer information is protected. Zen Cart knows that security is important and have provided some great security documentation.
- Zen Cart is also great for scaling up a store because of its wide range of features and full customization options. There are modules which developers have already created on Zen Cart which you can download and add to your store
- You can send out HTML emails directly from your website to leads and customers that you have already gathered.
- The Zen Cart community has been going strong for over a decade now which means there is a fantastic experience on hand to help you
- Zen Cart has some great multilingual options available if you are an enterprise store and you are looking to sell internationally
Downsides of Zen Cart:
- The platform doesn’t provide any dedicated support. The only way you will receive support is by hiring a dedicated third party.
- It can sometimes be difficult to upgrade your software, also customers have complained in the past that they have lost some of the custom options of their store as a result.
- Although there is a SEO out of the box tool, you need to purchase the more advanced features that other companies would offer for free such as sitemaps and meta tags
- There aren’t many add-ons or extensions and there have been reported issues of how they talk to each other. It’s likely you will run multiple plugins and some times they don’t play ball.
- The templates are far from impressive, but you can still find some made by third parties.
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.
Conclusion
If you are looking to setup an ecommerce store and wondering what is the best free ecommerce platform to use then you will be glad to know there are several good options available. There are also plenty of things that should be considered before deciding on a platform such as cost, availability, support and ease of use.
If you have ever toyed with the idea of starting an ecommerce business, you might have already discovered that it’s not that easy. Compared to creating simple websites, the logistics of running an ecommerce store makes it even more difficult. You have to take care of inventory management, shipping and delivery, different payment options, etc. This is where ecommerce platforms come in handy.