It’s really not too hard to get online with your store these days, not with so many helpful options on the internet. In case you’re looking for free eCommerce platforms, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we share the five best tools for creating free eCommerce websites.
Some of these tools let you create a store and start selling 100% for free, while others will let you set up your store for free but charge you to start selling.
We’ll examine each of them on the following aspects:
- Free plan features
- Limitations of free plan
- Other key features
- Price for the paid plans when applicable
- Transaction fees
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 store that sells up to 10 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
Limitations of free plan
You won’t get access to digital goods, staff accounts, and promo codes. These features along with many more are available only in the 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 charged directly by Ecwid, but your chosen payment processor will likely charge fees.
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 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.
Wix packs in a website builder to help you build a website with mere drag and drop. What’s more, you can even customize it greatly, without knowing a thing about code.
Note: Wix 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
- 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 solutions
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
- Ad-free pages and customized favicon
- 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 design and layout
- Unlimited bandwidth and 10 GB storage
- Hassle-free coding for advanced functionality
- Mobile-friendly and SEO-friendly
- Google Analytics included
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 $29 per month. There are four premium plans that are usable by small and medium business owners – Combo, Unlimited, Pro and VIP.
All these plans allow you to connect to your own domain and are ad-free. They vary in the storage and bandwidth offered, as well as the level of support and apps available.
While these website plans allow you to set up a store, to accept payments and view detailed Analytics, for access to other advanced Wix Business applications, you’ll have to pick from their separate business and eCommerce plans.
Transaction fees:
Wix Payments lets Wix business and eCommerce plan subscribers accept card payments 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 processors charge.
Learn how to create a website with Wix ?
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 free 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 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 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 comes through browsing Gumroad.
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.
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 business, it has something for everyone.
Price & transaction fees
Four plans with varying features and monthly charges 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 ?
Final thoughts on free eCommerce platforms
If you want something that will let you create a working store for free, your best options are Ecwid or Big Cartel. Gumroad is also an option if you’re willing to put up with transaction fees.
Shopify and Wix will also let you create a free eCommerce website, but you’ll need to subscribe to a paid plan once you’re ready to start selling publicly.
Finally, if you’re willing to go the DIY route, you can create an affordable eCommerce store with WooCommerce. Learn how to create your WooCommerce store.
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Keep reading the article at ThemeIsle Blog. The article was originally written by Priya on 2020-02-11 05:14:24.
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