If you are here, it means that ecommerce website building is on your mind. We all wanna make that first sale! So we need to have a professional “look” for our store and that requires a proper ecommerce website builder or online store builder in order to set up the best online store we can with little effort.
There are a lot of “free” ecommerce website builders out there which is exciting. But deciding which one is best for you can be challenging. With all of the free ecommerce template options available, this can lead to information overload. I was in your shoes just months ago. There was so much information, and I decided to set up a personal site to test various platforms You see, I had a dream of creating my own web store but didn’t have any capital. To get around this I knew I would have to find the best free ecommerce website builder, that way I could act as an affiliate. I could have at least looked good doing it! However, this required A LOT of research before finding everything that was needed…
Entering the ecommerce world is a choice many new website owners have made. You’ve chosen to create your own website, to join the bandwagon and to shop online—which is great. There are many aspects that contribute to an online purchase. Conversion rates depend on images and descriptions, but there also needs to be a secure payment gateway where people can pay with any online payment system they like to use.
Top Free Ecommerce Website Builders Compared
| Our Rating (out of 5) | 4.38 | 4.11 | 4.04 | 3.36 | 2.47 | 2.35 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product limit | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | 10 | 5 | 5 |
| Connect a custom domain | – | ✔ | ✔ | – | ✔ | – |
| Free shipping calculator | – | ✔USPS | – | ✔USPS, UPS, and FedEx | – | – |
| Developer skills required | – | ✔ | ✔ | – | – | – |
| Payment Gateways | Built-in / native | Stripe, PayPal, and 100 others | Stripe, PayPal, and 50 others | Stripe, PayPal, and 60 others | Stripe or PayPal | PayPal |
| Visit Square Online | Visit WooCommerce | Visit PrestaShop | Visit Ecwid | Visit Big Cartel | Visit Mozello |
Not sure which free ecommerce website builder is right for you? Take this four-question quiz for our recommendation (you won’t be redirected to another screen):
Square Online: Best Overall Free Ecommerce Website Builder
Overall Score: 4.38 OUT OF 5
Pros
- Custom website with brand logo and colors
- Unlimited products with variants
- Includes POS software for in-person sales
Cons
- No shipping integrations without upgrade
- Square branding on footer
- Multiple languages not supported
Included in Free Plan:
- Unlimited products (physical and digital variants)
- Full website with essential pages (contact form and some more)
- Coupon codes
- Subdomain (square.site subdomain)
- Square branded footer
- Customer support: Phone and live chat support available weekdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time and weekends from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time
When we say finding good free ecommerce software is tricky, we mean free plans often involve a lot of limitations. You might need to compromise and miss obvious features, sell only so many products, or display ads on your website pages. What we like about Square Online is that it has shockingly few limitations. It’s the closest you can get to creating a complete and professional web store without even needing to enter a credit card.
Square Online’s forever-free plan lets you list an unlimited number of products (physical or digital), track inventory, manage SEO, and integrate marketing software like Mailchimp—things you might not need right away but are very nice to have as you grow.
Based on our evaluation, Square Online earned 4.38 out of 5. It earned perfect points on having no product limits on its free plan, as well as having one-click checkout options and the ability to sell digital products. It is also the only platform that allows you to sell online or mobile through its POS products, even on a free plan. The main downside to Square is that you cannot connect a custom domain with a free account. However, the yourstore.square.site subdomain that’s provided for free is still more professional than most.
Example of a free Square website template (Source: Square)
What’s Included in Square Online’s Free Plan
- Unlimited products: List and sell unlimited physical and digital (like e-books and videos) products with no website storage or photo upload limits.
- Full website: You can create a complete website with the essential pages (such as contact forms, an email sign-up, and more) and customize it with your logo and colors. However, you cannot fully edit the layout or add integrations compared with other platforms like WooCommerce and PrestaShop.
- Coupon codes: Create coupon codes that visitors can enter to receive a percentage or dollar amount discount or free shipping. Coupons can be valid for all orders, orders over a certain amount, or specific items.
- Subdomain: Free plans come with a customizable square.site subdomain, so your website will appear as yourstore.square.site on the address bar.
- Square branded footer: Free websites also display “Powered by Square” on the footer of each page. It’s subtle and doesn’t look too bad compared to other free websites. However, to remove it, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Professional edition ($12 per month).
- Customer support: Support for Square Online is a little tricky to reach. You have to chat with its support robot and request to speak with a representative. Phone and live chat support are available weekdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time and weekends from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. During my evaluation, it took about 30 minutes to connect to a live support agent and one business day to respond through email.
This “Powered by Square” footer is displayed on all free websites.
Discover all the great features Square Online has to offer in our review.
When to Upgrade Square Online
- Use a custom domain: One of the main reasons to upgrade from the free plan is to use your domain name, www.yourstore.com, instead of yourstore.square.site. To do this, you’ll need to upgrade to Square Online’s Professional plan ($12 per month), which includes a free custom domain that’s good for a year.
- Shipping tools: Upgrading to the Performance plan ($26 per month) allows you to purchase discounted shipping labels for FedEx, UPS, USPS, and DHL straight from Square Online. With a Premium account ($72 per month), you can use a shipping calculator that charges customers real-time shipping rates based on their location and order weight. If you aren’t ready to upgrade yet, note that with WooCommerce and Ecwid, you can access some of these shipping tools for free.
- Customer reviews: If you want to give customers the ability to leave reviews of your products, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Performance plan ($26 per month).
If you’re ready to get started, create a free Square account and follow our guide on setting up a Free Square Online Store.
WooCommerce: Best for WordPress Users
Overall Score: 4.11 OUT OF 5
Pros
- Most feature-packed free ecommerce platform
- Charge real-time USPS shipping rates
- Expansive design control and variety
Cons
- Hosting not included
- Lengthy setup time
- No free customer support
Included in Free Plan:
- Unlimited products (physical and digital goods)
- USPS integration
- Coupon codes
- Product reviews
- Customer support: Not available, but there is a comprehensive help forum and an active WooCommerce community
WooCommerce is one of the few free ecommerce platforms that offer jam-packed features. It lets you sell unlimited digital and/or physical products, manage inventory, set up coupons, handle customer reviews, and use a USPS shipping calculator—and that’s just scratching the surface.
In our evaluation, WooCommerce came in right behind Square Online, with a score of 4.11 out of 5. WooCommerce’s extensive third-party integrations and unlimited storage earned this high software marks. However, the need to pay for customer support and an SSL certificate prevented it from reaching a perfect score.
WooCommerce requires you to use WordPress, which is free but can be complicated to set up and requires hosting. Square Online and Big Cartel are simpler options if you’re looking for something you can set up quickly. However, for tech-oriented people that don’t mind getting their hands dirty, WooCommerce offers unparalleled options.
What’s Included in WooCommerce’s Free Plan
How to set up coupons in a WooCommerce store
(Source: WooCommerce)
- Unlimited products: You can list an unlimited number of products, including physical and digital goods (like e-books and videos). WooCommerce also includes tools to manage your inventory, such as low stock alerts.
- USPS integration: Calculate the shipping price in real time when a customer checks out, then print discounted USPS postage straight from WooCommerce with the customer’s name and address already filled in. You can integrate other carriers like UPS and FedEx for an additional fee.
- Coupon codes: WooCommerce lets you create coupon codes for discounts on the customer’s order. You can also create special rules such as requiring a minimum spend and excluding certain items.
- Product reviews: Allow customers to rate and submit reviews of your products.
- Support: WooCommerce does not have customer support available to free users, although there is a help forum where you can ask other users questions.
Product management options (Source: WooCommerce)
Read our WooCommerce review to discover more about what it can do for your ecommerce business. If you are keen on using WordPress to build your ecommerce store, we have outlined how to set up WooCommerce and how much it costs to launch and operate.
When to Upgrade WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin and offers several third-party integrations. You can choose to pay for the following integrations:
- SEO: WooCommerce does not include great SEO tools out-of-the-box, so many users will install an SEO plugin like Yoast to help them edit search engine titles and descriptions for their products and pages.
- Multilanguage capability: An extension is required to display your site in multiple languages, and this can cost around $200 per year.
- Marketing: Another common way users upgrade WooCommerce is by installing one of the dozens of marketing extensions. You can sell on Facebook, start an affiliate program, or create targeted email campaigns with unique offers based on a customer’s previous purchases. Prices range from $0 to hundreds of dollars per year.
PrestaShop: Best Open Source Platform for Developers
Overall Score: 4.04 OUT OF 5
Pros
- Highly customizable
- Has a strong and helpful community forum
- Supports over 75 languages
Cons
- Expensive customer support
- Developer skills required
- Limited scalability
Included in Free Plan:
- Inventory management (basic and advanced inventory management solutions)
- Payment processing (invoice, cash on delivery COD, check, bank transfers, credit cards, subscriptions, and POS or payment via physical stores)
- Marketing (promo codes, price rules, abandonment cart recovery, and engagement emails)
- Customer support: Support is a premium (paid) service.
PrestaShop provides features for store customization, inventory management, payment processing, and marketing campaigns. Its software is free to download and install as long as your computer and hosting meet its minimum requirements. Extensions are available in its official marketplace, PrestaShop Add-ons, with extension apps costing anywhere between $50 and $150 per module.
PrestaShop earned a 4.04 out of 5 in our evaluation. It earned perfect marks for the quality of its native integrations—most features are already available in the software, eliminating the need for paid add-ons from its app marketplace. However, PrestaShop’s steep learning curve and the need to pay for customer support prevented it from earning a perfect score.
An example of a premium template in PrestaShop (Source: Prestashop.com)
What’s Included in PrestaShop’s Free Plan
- Inventory management: PrestaShop offers basic and advanced inventory management solutions. Once you enable advanced stock management, you can specify quantities for every product (or combination) in your store, select the warehouse in which the product is stored (with multiple carriers), track inventory movements, current product status, and more.
- Payment processing: You can set up payment methods such as payments by invoice, cash on delivery (COD), check, bank transfers, credit cards, subscriptions, and POS or payment via physical stores.
- Marketing: You can enable features for promo codes, coupons, and discounts, as well as have price rules (special offers based on product, customer, or order). You can also make abandoned cart recovery and engagement emails.
- Customer support: Support is a premium (paid) service. However, PrestaShop has a large and supportive community that contributes to its forum or help center.
This is a view on how to enable the Advanced Stock Management Option in PrestaShop. (Source: PrestaShop Manager)
Read our review to learn more about PrestaShop’s features.
When to Upgrade PrestaShop
- Customized website themes: While PrestaShop offers free website templates, most free offerings have limited customization abilities or unappealing designs.
- Marketplace selling: If you want to connect your store to common marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Google Shopping, you’d need to pay for an extension module.
Ecwid: Best for Wix, Squarespace & Blogger Users
Overall Score: 3.36 OUT OF 5
Pros
- No ads shown on free sites
- Free USPS, UPS, and FedEx shipping calculator
- Works on Wix, Squarespace, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, and more
Con
- Limited to 10 products
- No coupon codes
- No inventory tracking
Incsluded in Free Plan:
- Up to 10 products
- Payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe, Square, and more than 60 other payment gateways)
- Official integrations with Wix, Weebly, and WordPress
- Shipping calculators
- Customer support: Email support is available for free users, while live chat and phone support are available to paying customers.
Ecwid lets you sell online—through its storefront, an existing site, social media channels, and marketplaces—and in person through its mobile app. You can create a new online store or integrate a checkout into existing Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and GoDaddy sites. This option makes it a good fit to add an affordable checkout to your existing website. Ecwid can be integrated with these platforms and any other website builders where you can insert custom code.
Based on our evaluation, Ecwid scored 3.36 out of 5. Free shipping calculators and the ability to sell anywhere contributed to Ecwid’s high score. Ecwid’s free plan, unfortunately, is limited to 10 products and doesn’t provide the ability to track inventory or offer coupon codes. These features are unlocked when you upgrade to any of its paid tiers.
Ecwid can also be used as a free standalone website, although we have found that this is less commonly used.
What’s Included in Ecwid’s Free Plan
- Up to 10 products: Free users can list up to 10 unique products at a time. Customers can pay with a credit card, which can be processed through PayPal, Stripe, Square, and more than 60 other payment gateways. Free users cannot sell digital items like e-books and videos.
- Link to website: While Ecwid can be set up as a free standalone site, most users integrate it with their existing website. Ecwid has official integrations with Wix, Weebly, and WordPress, allowing you to add your free Ecwid store with just a few clicks. For other website builders like Squarespace, you can integrate Ecwid by copy/pasting HTML code.
- Shipping calculators: Ecwid is the only free ecommerce website builder that has free shipping calculators for all the major US carriers, Canada Post, Royal Mail, and more. This means you can charge customers actual shipping rates based on their location and package weight. However, you cannot purchase shipping labels straight from Ecwid unless you integrate an app like ShipStation.
- Support: For free users, there is only email support available. Live chat and phone support are available to paying customers.
An Ecwid store being added to Wix website
(Source: Ecwid.com)
Get more details about what Ecwid can do for your business. Read our review. And if you have a WordPress website, follow our guide on how to use Ecwid to sell on WordPress.
When to Upgrade Ecwid
- List more products: A Venture plan ($12.50 per month) lets you list up to 100 products at a time, whereas a Business plan ($29.17 per month) allows you up to 2,500. Meanwhile, an Unlimited plan ($83.30 per month) enables you to post unlimited products.
- Custom domain: If you’re using Ecwid to host your website, you can use a custom domain (e.g., www.yourstore.com) instead of the storename.company.site domain that’s included for free.
- Multichannel selling: One of the big perks of using Ecwid is that you can integrate your online store with more than one website—and you can do that even with a free account. However, with a Business account ($29.17 per month), you can also list your products on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, and Instagram. Some additional fees may apply.
- Multilanguage: Ecwid offers a multilanguage functionality for users on the Business plan ($29.17 per month).
- Coupon codes: Another perk for paid users is creating promotional coupons for customers to use at their store. Ecwid gives you a lot of control over coupons—you can specify the number of times a coupon can be used, require a minimum order amount, only allow it for certain customers, or only allow it for certain items/item categories.
Big Cartel: Best for Artists
Overall Score: 2.47 OUT OF 5
Pros
- Connect a custom domain
- Design control
- Stylish themes with no ads or branding
Cons
- Limited to only five products
- No inventory tracking without upgrade
- Limited SEO tools
Included in Free Plan:
- Use a custom domain
- Up to five products
- Full website
- Customer support: Big Cartel has email support available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time, including weekends.
Big Cartel is the only free ecommerce platform we reviewed that allows you to connect to a custom domain. Big Cartel’s simple platform with aesthetically pleasing templates contributed to its high marks. However, product limitations and lack of inventory tracking (no SKU management) hindered it from getting a perfect score.
Its templates are stylish and modern and, unlike many competitors, don’t include pesky ads. There’s typically just a subtle Big Cartel logo on the footer, which you can remove using code.
Big Cartel was originally designed for artists and artisans and, as a result, it works best for businesses with a relatively small inventory. If you only need to sell a few products at a time, Big Cartel is tough to beat.
Its product limit and nonexistent inventory tracking resulted in Big Cartel only earning a 2.47 out of 5 in our evaluation. While Big Cartel is not ideal for scaling an ecommerce business, it’s an ideal and popular choice for selling limited product runs or unique art pieces as you create them.
Example of a Big Cartel website. For this particular theme, the gray “Big Cartel” logo in the lower-left corner is the only branding displayed. (Source: Big Cartel)
What’s Included in Big Cartel’s Free Plan
- Use a custom domain: Besides WooCommerce and PrestaShop, Big Cartel is the only free ecommerce website builder we’re aware of that lets you connect a custom domain, such as www.yourstore.com. If you don’t own a custom domain, you can use a Big Cartel subdomain, like yourstore.BigCartel.com, for free.
- Up to five products: Free plans list up to five unique products at a time, with one photo per item. Customers can check out using a credit card, which is processed through PayPal or Stripe. Free users cannot sell digital items, like e-books and videos.
- Full website: Create a complete website with multiple pages and a contact form. Big Cartel lets you choose from many stylish themes that you can customize with your own logo and colors. Big Cartel gives you a surprising amount of control over your website’s layout and lets you integrate a small but solid set of apps, including Mailchimp, ShipStation, and live chat apps.
- Support: Big Cartel has email support available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time, including weekends. During my evaluation, I submitted a question after-hours and received a helpful response first thing in the morning.
Big Cartel offers more than what’s covered here. Learn more in our review.
When to Upgrade Big Cartel
- More products and photos: The most prominent reason to upgrade Big Cartel is to add more than five products and upload more than one photo per item. The $10 per month edition lets you sell up to 50 products, with the $20 per month edition 250 and the $30 per month up to 500. All paid versions of Big Cartel also let you sell digital items.
- Coupons: All paid versions of Big Cartel allow you to create digital coupons for customers. This can be a percentage or dollar amount discount or free shipping.
- More SEO options: Neither free nor paid versions of Big Cartel allow you to edit the SEO title and description of products. For most users, this won’t be an issue since Big Cartel simply generates them automatically. However, those looking for more SEO control should consider Square or WooCommerce instead.
Mozello: Best for International Sellers
Overall Score: 2.35 OUT OF 5
Pros
- Ability to create a multilanguage site
- Extremely easy to use
- Inexpensive upgrades
Cons
- Limited to only five products
- No coupon codes
- No SSL (except during checkout)
Included in Free Plan:
- Up to five products
- Full website
- Multilanguage (more than 60 languages supported)
- Subdomain
- Mozello footer
- Customer support: Mozello has free email support in English.
Mozello is one of the few free ecommerce platforms that lets you display your website in multiple languages. Choose from over 60 languages and let your customers change the language by clicking a link at the top of your site.
Based on our evaluation, Mozello earned a 2.35 out of 5 score. Mozello is extremely easy to use and is a solid website builder; however, this also translates to limitations on more advanced ecommerce features—related products and marketing integrations, for example, are not available.
Users can change the language using the links on the top-right. Also, a Mozello ad is displayed on the footer. (Source: Mozello)
What’s Included in Mozello’s Free Plan
- Up to five products: Free users can list up to five unique products at a time. Unlike Big Cartel, you aren’t limited by how many photos you can upload, but there is an overall storage limit of 500MB for free accounts.
- Full website: Mozello makes it easy to create a full website with multiple pages and a contact form. Along with Square and Big Cartel, it’s easily the fastest ecommerce website to get up and running. That said, its design options are considerably more limited, and it has very few integrations.
- Multilanguage: Mozello is the only free ecommerce website builder on our list that supports multilanguage sites, and it’s the only one we’re aware of that covers more than 60 languages worldwide. Simply choose which languages you want to support, and write your website content (like product titles and descriptions) for each language. At the top of your site, visitors will click which language they want to see.
- Subdomain: Free websites come with a customizable mozello.com subdomain, so your website will appear as yourstore.mozello.com on the address bar.
- Mozello footer: Free websites also display a small message on the footer that reads, “Created with Mozello—the world’s easiest to use website builder.” While it doesn’t stand out too bad, it makes the website a bit less classy than the others on this list—particularly Big Cartel, Ecwid, and WooCommerce.
- Support: Mozello has free email support in English. I sent a few questions during my evaluation and received a detailed and personalized response three hours later. While there is a phone support line, the office is based in Eastern Europe, so you will have to call early in the morning to reach them and may incur international charges.
Find out if Mozello is the right fit for your business by reading our review.
When to Upgrade Mozello
- More products and storage: One of the main reasons to upgrade is to add more products and increase your storage for photos, videos, and other types of files. The $7 per month plan allows up to 15 items and 50GB of storage, while the $14 per month plan allows unlimited items and unlimited storage.
- Custom domain: Another key reason to upgrade is to use a custom domain instead of the yourstore.mozello.com subdomain, which is provided free. All paid users can do this (starting at $7 per month), and a custom domain is even provided for free for one year. However, you can also connect a domain purchased from an outside registrar.
- SSL certificate: Paid users (starting at $7 per month) can enable SSL encryption, make your website more secure, and change your URL from HTTP to HTTPS. This makes your website more appealing to search engines and can help you rank higher in the results. Free accounts automatically get HTTPS during checkout to secure credit card information, but the rest of the site is HTTP.
- Coupon codes: Paid users can create promotional coupons for customers to use at their store.
How We Evaluated Free Ecommerce Website Builders
Similar to how we evaluated ecommerce software, we compared seven ecommerce platforms based on on-site builder tools, sales and product features, and ease of use. However, we also considered each system’s limitations and only considered features available in forever-free plans. Our retail and ecommerce experts also weighed in and gave their evaluation for each software.
Based on the above criteria, Square Online is the best free ecommerce platform for small businesses. Square Online received the highest overall score (4.38 out of 5) according to our grading system. We have also personally found that Square Online is one of the most straightforward solutions to use, allowing you to create an online store in just a few minutes.
Click through the tabs below for a more detailed breakdown of our evaluation criteria. Note that we only evaluated the free plans of each software:
- Breakdown
- Pricing
- Site Builder and Maintenance Features
- Sales and Product Features
- Ease of Use
- Expert Score
40% Pricing 15% Site Builder and Maintenance Features 15% Sales and Product Features 20% Ease of Use 10% Expert Score *Percentages of overall score
CONCLUSION
Although most e-commerce entrepreneurs start their journey on a shoestring budget, this doesn’t mean that all of them intend to do so. Some entrepreneurs understand that creating and conceptualizing a business is a very expensive venture, but also see the value in getting the right tools at hand in order to be able to get their online business up and running as quickly as possible.
As a business owner, you want everything to be done for you. That’s why people want to create an online store of their own, because of the appearance of simplicity. As it is, building a website is a lot more complicated than that. But if someone tells you that you can create your own online store for free and make millions within a year or two, run away!