The Best Free eCommerce Website Platforms Of 2024

Free eCommerce websites and platforms help bring new ideas to life and allow startups to reach a large audience without heavy investments. But choosing the best one can be tricky, and wrong choices can lead to unsatisfied customers or a loss of reputation. To avoid these pitfalls, join us as we delve into the world of free websites and affordable eCommerce platforms to determine what’s best for your business.

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Before we begin, you must understand that there aren’t truly 100% free eCommerce platforms. Even free or open-source options need you to pay an external payment processing fee or website hosting and domain registration fee. The key is not to look for the free but the cheapest eCommerce platform that helps build your business’s online presence without cutting corners.

Article Roadmap

• Types of Platforms
• SelectHub Top Picks
  • Ecwid
  • Square Online
  • Big Cartel
  • PrestaShop
  • WooCommerce
• Fully Hosted vs. Open-Source Software
• Software Selection Strategy
• FAQs
• Next Steps

Types of Platforms

You’ve many options when you’re looking for free eCommerce platforms or website builders. Some of these tools add eCommerce features like shopping carts and payment gateways to an existing site. While others are fully-hosted free platforms that can manage marketing, inventory and orders on top of website designing and frontend management. Some are intuitive and easy to use, while others have a learning curve.

To better understand, let’s look at the types of solutions you can use to launch a free eCommerce website:

• Ecommerce Tools and Plugins: You can use these tools to convert an existing website or a blog to a storefront. These plugins add a catalog, shopping cart, payment gateway and checkout page to the website, allowing you to sell to its existing audience. A few examples of such plug-and-play software are Ecwid, WooCommerce and WordPress eCommerce plugins.
• Website Builders: These intuitive platforms allow you to design websites using customizable templates, drag-and-drop tools and WYSIWYG editors. But most site builders charge a fee to add eCommerce features and sell. For example, Wix lets you design a website and keep it indefinitely, but you need to upgrade to a paid plan to add a catalog, shopping cart and checkout page. Consider adding a free eCommerce plugin to such websites to start selling at minimal costs.
• Fully-Hosted Platforms: These cloud-hosted solutions don’t require you to host the website and software on personal servers. They offer website hosting, domain registration, and an interface to design sites and facilitate free eCommerce. You can manage marketing, order management and shipping from a centralized platform. Popular examples include Shopify Lite and Square Online.
• Open-Source Platforms: You can download these solutions off the internet and deploy them on your servers. They offer flexibility and scalability as you can access the source code but require expertise to adjust it. Their robustness differs from vendor to vendor. The free version of WooCommerce and PrestaShop lets you design simple websites with free templates and start selling. On the other hand, Magento is a free and open-source enterprise eCommerce software with a headless architecture, multi-branding features, customer experience personalization modules and PWA studio.

Best Free Ecommerce Website Platforms

Now that you know the types, it’s time to determine what’s best for you. You must identify your requirements and look for software that fits your needs. To make the journey simpler, here are our picks for the top five best free eCommerce platforms:

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Ecwid

Ecwid is the best free option when you’re looking to launch an online store quickly without spending time and money on designing storefronts and backends. It’s a fully hosted eCommerce platform allowing you to sell up to five products and two categories without cost.

You can design single-page websites with a built-in shopping cart, payment gateway connection and shipping carrier integrations. Or, you can use the Ecwid (short for eCommerce widget) plugin on custom websites built on WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and other website builders to add eCommerce functionalities.

A standout feature of the free plan is that it doesn’t show ads on sites and allows you to personalize the site’s branding. It also offers a robust mobile app to:

• Edit the storefront using drag-and-drop tools.
• Design apps for customers and choose connections with over 60 popular payment gateways.
• Send push notifications and cart recovery messages to customers.
• Define shipping rules and track deliveries.
• Manage orders, create notes for staff and edit order details.
• Add product images to catalogs using a phone camera.
• Run promotional campaigns.

Top Benefits

• Save Money: Ecwid doesn’t cap the number of sales you can make with a free plan and lets you keep the site indefinitely. On top of that, it doesn’t charge any transaction fees. You don’t need to pay anything other than the payment gateway’s processing fee to run your store.
• Access a Plug-And-Play Store: Don’t get restricted to a single storefront. Save your catalog, pricing and shipping details in the Ecwid plugin and connect it to multiple websites, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and marketplaces like Etsy or Amazon to start selling.
• Streamline Checkouts: It offers a free tax and shipping rate calculator for USPS, UPS and FedEx. Checkout pages support one-tap payments with Apple Pay, and you can connect the system to Stripe POS to enable the feature on Google Pay.
• Reach a Wider Audience: You can create multiple storefronts, products and checkout pages in various languages. It lets you translate SEO descriptions, titles and text blocks to improve relevance and boost local search rankings for different audience segments.
• Increase Repeat Orders: Customers can see their order history and place reorders with a single click from their accounts or apps.

Primary Features

• Instant Site: You can design single-page websites with customizable templates. Use drag-and-drop tools to edit text, images and banners. Websites are mobile-friendly, SSL certified, and can adapt to tablets and widescreens.
• Ecommerce Plugin: Add entire stores, categories, product cards or buy buttons to the widget and connect it to a website or blog. The plugin works on website builders as well as custom-built sites.
• Cataloging: Add multiple attributes to a product variant and define bundles to create catalogs. You can also offer gift wrapping, price modifiers, suggestions and other personalizations.
• Inventory Management: The system automatically translates CSV files to digital catalogs and updates stock levels after each order confirmation.
• Shipping: Connect with multiple shipping carriers across the world and offer customers real-time shipping rates based on weight, product dimensions, origin and delivery address.
• In-Store fulfillment: You can add your physical store’s details to the site and allow customers to buy online and pick up in-store.
• Reporting and Analytics: You can track order sources, Google Analytics reports and performances of Google Ads, Facebook Pixel, TikTok Pixel, Snap Pixel and Pinterest tags.

Limitations

• The platform lacks inventory tracking tools.
• You cannot design multi-page websites.
• It provides SSL certification to the page with the plugin, not the entire website.

Pricing

The free plan doesn’t require credit cards and charges zero transaction fees. You can upgrade to one of the paid plans for features like unlimited products, Amazon and eBay integrations, branded mobile apps, multilingual stores, and priority support.

Venture

• Monthly: $19
• Annual: $168.96 ($14.08/month, billed yearly)

Business

• Monthly: $39
• Annual: $348.96 ($29.08/month, billed yearly)

Unlimited

• Monthly: $99
• Annual: $990 ($82.5/month, billed yearly)

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Square Online

Square Online is a fully-hosted platform that helps you design free eCommerce websites without coding expertise. It lets you sell unlimited products as well as digital assets like music, photography, films and blogs for free. However, it only offers 500MB storage and bandwidth and doesn’t connect to existing custom domains. It charges a transaction and delivery fee as follows:

• Online payments: 2.9% + 30¢
• In-person payments: 2.6% + 10¢
• On-demand delivery: $1.50/order
• In-house delivery: 50¢/order

That said, if you’re looking to design a website from scratch, this can be a better option than Ecwid, as it helps you create multi-page websites and manage more than one site simultaneously.

Its standout feature is the social commerce module that lets you connect your business’s Instagram and Facebook accounts and start selling. You can use the free version of the Square POS mobile app to edit websites, manage catalogs, track payments and perform analytics.

Top Benefits

• Promote Blogs: Use the blogging platform to tell your brand’s story. You can edit titles, subtitles, images, post titles, descriptions and links to improve blog rankings on Google.
• Improve Website Design: Add a buy button to your Instagram account and connect it to Square Online to allow customers to view your entire Instagram feed directly from the website.
• Enhance Visibility on Facebook: Launch and manage targeted Facebook ads and add a Messenger button to your website to enable customers to interact with your business on Facebook.
• Create a Safe Space: Use the risk manager to gain insights into payment fraud patterns and define custom rules to detect and manage risks.
• Add New Revenue Streams: The platform helps accept donations from visitors. You can suggest preset amounts or allow custom donations. It displays a title, description, photo, and donation button. You can accept up to $5,000 using free websites.

Primary Features

• Website Design: You can design multiple websites and pages using drag-and-drop tools and two free templates. It allows you to toggle between websites and locations from a unified dashboard. You can also add age-verification pop-ups to web pages.
• Cataloging: Sell unlimited items and add multiple product attributes and categories to create catalogs. You can import items directly from a PDF or add them from GrubHub, DoorDash, Uber Eats or other delivery service menus.
• Marketing: Use built-in SEO tools to improve search engine rankings and design coupons, promos and discounts to entice new customers. Open graph meta tags help you customize website previews on social media. Create 301 redirects for individual pages and design lead-capture forms to collect information from potential and final customers.
• Checkout and Payments: Define tax rules and give customers an overview of orders before payment. You can either use external digital wallets or the native processor to offer competitive processing rates. Customers can opt to save their checkout and payment information for future use.
• Orders and Fulfillment: The platform prints shipping labels, provides customers with delivery time notifications and allows you to track orders until final delivery. It also supports options like buy now, pay later, curbside pickups, in-store fulfillment and more.

Limitations

• It charges a transaction and delivery processing fee on orders.
• You can’t manage inventory without integrations with Square POS or Square for Retail.
• The system doesn’t offer site analytics, email marketing and cart recovery in the free plan.

Pricing

Free: Create storefronts at no cost and sell unlimited products and digital assets.

Plus: Customer accounts, PayPal integration, free domain for a year and more.

• Annual: $348 ($29/month, billed yearly)

Premium: Lower processing fees and real-time shipping rates.

• Annual: $948 ($79/month, billed yearly)

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Big Cartel

Are you an artist looking to sell art, t-shirts, songs, merch, jewelry or other wacky and wonderful stuff? Big Cartel is a free fully-hosted solution that helps you create single-page storefronts and sell five products. It offers a free custom domain, 18 customizable templates and drag-and-drop editors. You can add one image per product and create groupings to organize storefronts.

Big Cartel doesn’t have transaction fees and allows you to sell just by paying the external payment gateway’s processing fees. However, note that this is a minimalist platform ideal for casual sellers. It has enough features to set up shop and receive payments but might prove inadequate for growing businesses in the future.

For example, its paid plans have limited SEO capabilities, lack sourcing and inventory management features, don’t offer team management tools or role-based staff accounts, and customers don’t get individual profiles.

Top Benefits

• Minimize Costs: Save money with a free plan with no hidden fees. The vendor doesn’t charge listing or transaction fees for up to five products.
• Personalize Domains: Include your brand in the URL to improve visibility. URLs are in “businessname.bigcartel.com” format.
• Streamline Tax Management: Use a free calculator to automate calculations based on location, customers’ addresses, tax rates and shipping profiles. You can also manually set tax rates for international orders.
• Improve Promotional Campaigns: You can create discounts in percentages or flat rates on an order’s total amount or a specific item. It supports free shipping and lets you write custom messages to define promotional campaigns.

Primary Features

• Website: Use 18 free templates to create single-page websites. You can edit layouts, colors, fonts, headers, content, images and links to personalize the site’s branding.
• Product and Catalog Management: Add names, descriptions, categories and a single image to each product. You can import catalogs via CSV files and customize groupings to showcase featured products and bundles.
• Payments: Connect to PayPal and Stripe accounts to directly deposit sales amounts. You only need to pay processing fees for each transaction; everything else is free.
• Order and Shipment: Create shipping profiles based on delivery location, shipping carrier and special product requirements. The system automatically chooses a suitable profile during order confirmation and sends customers order tracking emails per your rules.
• Analytics: You can track online and physical store performances from a centralized dashboard. It tracks conversion rates, visitor trends, product performances and lost sales on a daily, monthly or yearly basis.

Limitations

• It can’t handle more than five products and lets you add limited images per description.
• The software doesn’t offer inventory management, external integrations and theme code editing with the free plan.

Pricing

Gold: Create a single-page storefront and sell up to five products indefinitely for free.

Platinum: Sell up to 50 products and get a custom domain, inventory and shipment tracking, tax calculators, Google Analytics, and more.

• Annual: $119.88 ($9.99 per month, billed annually)

Diamond: Sell up to 500 products and access inventory management, theme code editing, promotional campaigns and more:

• Annual: $239.88 ($19.99 per month, billed annually)

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PrestaShop

PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce platform that adds back-office functionalities like shopping carts, order and inventory management, and checkout pages to an existing website at no cost. Unlike the previous options on our list, PrestaShop only offers on-premise deployment solutions. This means you’re responsible for:

• Hosting the platform on proprietary servers
• Connecting it to your domain
• Maintaining performances

If you don’t have the IT infrastructure and expertise, you can always use the vendor’s paid hosting services. It’s an intuitive platform that lets you customize the storefront and backend to fit your needs. It charges for website templates and adding advanced functionalities via the third-party app marketplace. You can have email marketing, customer-facing mobile apps, backend management mobile apps and business analytics.

Top Benefits

• Improve Shopping Experiences: Design multilingual storefronts in 65 languages. Integrate your store with Messenger to set up automated replies and offer live chat that improves buyers’ journeys.
• Create a Safe Environment: Shoppers can create accounts and choose between five levels of password protection. You can set password rules to include alphanumerics, small case and uppercase letters, special characters, and more. The system shows a color-coded cue to signify a password’s strength.
• Streamline Sessions Management: Track customer and staff sessions with a detailed history of activities. You can delete outdated sessions to reduce clutter and remotely disconnect staff or customers.
• Increase Visibility: Include descriptions at the bottom of each category page to provide context to search engine spiders. Set up “410 Gone” statuses for discontinued products and include page numbers in meta title tags for SEO optimizations.
• Enhance Image Formats: Add images to your site in the WebP format that offers better compression than JPEG and PNG while maintaining the quality and offering fast loading times.

Primary Features

• Website Builder: Use mobile-optimized themes and templates to create websites. Customize the color, content, description, layout and multimedia using drag-and-drop tools. Create terms and conditions, return policies, refund policies, payment security and delivery information pages.
• Product Listings: The platform supports unlimited products and 100 categories. You can import data using CSV files and add attributes like pricing, size, description, EAN code, weight, stock and photos to create product variations and unique bundles and combos.
• Invoicing and Payments: This feature offers a checkout page in partnership with PayPal that supports processing and fraud detection. Customers can choose between payment in installments, credit cards or bank transfers to checkout. The system automatically adds VAT and other regional taxes and sends customer invoices in a PDF.
• Shipping: Connect with multiple carriers and offer customers flexible shipping options, including curbside pickups, in-store fulfillment and more.
• Marketing: List products in organic search results under Google’s shopping tab and launch paid campaigns across Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Personalize, measure and optimize campaign effectiveness with dynamic ads combining Meta Pixel and Conversions API.
• Analytics: You can centralize performance metrics from websites and Google Analytics in a single dashboard. Track multiple KPIs in real time and use visualizations to unearth insights about business processes.
• App Marketplace: Access a wide range of third-party and PrestaShop-developed apps and templates from the marketplace. The system offers both free and paid collections of modules, services, packs, themes and templates.

Limitations

• No complimentary support program is available. All programs are paid and credit-based.

Pricing

You can download the PrestaShop Edition Basic for free. It adds a shopping cart, catalog and checkout page to your site but doesn’t include website hosting and domain registration. Here are the vendor’s plans for website and platform hosting:

• Size M: €250 ($270 approximately) per month, excluding VAT
  • CPU 24 core, Ram 24 GB, Disk 450 GB
  • 50 concurrent users
  • Daily data backup and more
• Size L: €450 ($485 approximately) per month, excluding VAT
  • CPU 24 core, Ram 24 GB, Disk 450 GB
  • 100 concurrent users
  • Daily data backup and more
• Size XL: €650 ($700 approximately) per month, excluding VAT
  • Customizable CPU, Ram and Disk space
  • 200+ concurrent users
  • Hourly data backup
  • Migration and optimization included, and more

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WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a popular open-source plugin you can add to your WordPress site at no cost. You can add a catalog, sell digital and physical items, accept multiple currencies, and integrate with shipping carriers. It’s a great option for beginners and advanced users.

It offers intuitive website design tools and lets you access backend REST API for unlimited customizations. On top of that, it has a huge ecosystem of WordPress and third-party extensions — from shopping carts and cart recovery email campaigns to social media integrations, eCommerce order management tools, analytics, POS systems and more.

Top Benefits

• Easy Customer Logins: Customers can create an account on your homepage or at the checkout page. The system suggests usernames based on email IDs and generates secure passwords. It also sends login reminders to returning customers at the checkout page.
• Improve Guest Experiences: You can detect a customer’s location using geo-location support and automatically select shipping options and regional taxes. Also, enable guest checkouts for customers not willing to reveal personal information.
• Go Mobile: Manage your business on the go with the free WooCommerce mobile app powered by Jetpack. Add the Jetpack plugin to your store and choose a free or paid plan to start adding products, editing storefronts, managing orders and tracking KPIs.
• Streamline Tax Calculations: Define rules to display relevant pricing and taxes based on a customer’s location. Customize prices to show taxes and break down an invoice to display tax and shipping rate calculations before payment.
• Know What Your Customers Want: Add product reviews and allow customers to leave feedback. You can also define rules to accept reviews from verified customers only.

Primary Features

• Customizable Site: Use customizable block themes to edit a website’s layout without coding. Customize your homepage design, menus, site structure, product pages and category descriptions.
• Cataloging: Edit pricing, images, sizes and color codes for each product. The system supports multiple attributes per product and allows you to define unique bundles and groupings to create catalogs.
• Inventory Management: Track inventory levels, hold items during order cancellations, receive notifications, hide out-of-stock items and display inventory levels to entice customers to finalize a purchase.
• Payments: You can use the native payments module to accept multi-currency payments without any setup charge or subscription fee. It charges a 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee for each transaction. Or, you can connect to popular wallets like PayPal and Stripe to accept payments.
• Order Management: The system tracks order numbers, customer names, date of purchases, order statuses, billing addresses, purchase totals and other KPIs to help you manage orders digitally. You can use filters to arrange orders in ascending or descending order by number, date or total. Create role-based staff accounts to delegate order management and picking and packing duties.
• Shipping Management: It has free connections with USPS and DHL to offer discounted shipping rates and allows you to print labels on a PC, laptop or mobile. You can move onto paid extensions for further customizations like real-time rates, ETA calculation and FBA integrations.
• Analytics: You can download data in CSV format and use customizable dashboards to track important metrics. Access templates to automate periodical reporting and use filtering and segmentation tools to dig deep into your data.

Limitations

• It only works on WordPress websites.
• Not ready out-of-the-box. The platform requires configuration and has a longer time-to-market.
• Lacks integration with external solutions due to WordPress’s architectural limitations.

Pricing

WooCommerce is free to use, but the total cost of ownership depends on your website’s size and what it needs. Here are some costs you may incur in launching an online store:

• Hosting: WordPress offers paid website hosting services, or you can purchase hosting from partner providers such as SiteGround, Bluehost, Pressable and Godaddy. You can also use its paid version, Woo Express, an all-in-one eCommerce platform with built-in WordPress hosting.
• Domain registration: You can choose a free domain (if available) from any of the hosts mentioned above or purchase a domain name from domain registrars. The average cost may be around $15 per year for each domain.
• Shipping: WooCommerce provides options for flat-rate shipping, free shipping or local pickup. The average cost to add shipping extensions may lie between $0 – $108 per year.
• Security and SSL: SSL certificates and security features are generally available with hosting providers. If the host doesn’t provide a free option, the SSL cost may lie between $8/year to $65/year. Additional security features might go up to $300 per year.

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Fully Hosted vs. Open-Source Software

Are you confused between fully-hosted and open-source software? The eCommerce jargon may overwhelm a few. Let’s look at critical differences to demystify the ordeal around these two types of software:

Features	Fully-Hosted Ecommerce Platforms	Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms
Deployment	The vendor hosts the software on the cloud and offers it as a SaaS solution.	You host the software on on-premise servers and maintain the architecture.
Customization	Limited scope as the vendor controls the underlying software infrastructure and code.	Extensive customization opportunities as you can modify the source code to meet specific requirements.
Support and Maintenance	Vendors handle maintenance, updates and security measures. They also offer technical assistance and troubleshooting.	You’re responsible for server updates, security patches and other maintenance. And you only have developer communities, forums and documentation for assistance.
Scalability	The vendor defines scalability with predefined plans and limitations on features and server resources.	You can tailor the software to unique requirements to grow your online store without constraints or limitations.
Cost	It involves subscription-based pricing with varying tiers offering advanced features and scalability options.	Free to use but includes additional costs for software hosting, customizations, and third-party extensions and plugins.

To sum it up, open-source solutions offer extensive flexibility but involve the hassle of software hosting and maintenance. On the other hand, fully-hosted solutions are more convenient but provide fewer customization opportunities.

Cost of Open-Source Software

Most open-source eCommerce software is free and lets you download the source code off the internet. But the total cost of ownership isn’t as straightforward, and you will incur additional charges like:

Website Design and Development

You can use free or paid themes and templates to design your website. The cost of paid themes can range between $20 to $100 per year, depending on your store’s design, content and size.

You can also consider hiring developers to build a website from scratch, the cost of which can vary between $1000 and $15,000 based on the site’s robustness. Most developers charge anywhere from $10 to $100+ per hour and can also design custom features for existing sites.

Hosting

A few popular hosting providers are SiteGround, Bluehost, Pressable and Godaddy. WordPress also provides hosting plans like Business and Commerce. Overall, the cost of hosting can be as affordable as $3.95 and as high as $5,000 monthly, depending on your store’s size.

Domain Registration

Domains are the unique digital addresses of a website. Some hosting providers like BlueHost offer a free domain with their plans. In other cases, you need to buy a domain separately from domain registrars, and costs can range from around $15 per year for each domain.

Third-Party Extensions and Features

While the core open-source software is free, additional functionalities often require purchasing or licensing from third-party extensions or plugins. The add-on costs vary among vendors, and it’s essential to consider them when budgeting for an open-source platform.

You must carefully evaluate available extensions and their costs to ensure choosing the ideal platform that meets your functional requirements within your budgetary constraints.

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Choosing the Best Ecommerce Platform

Now that you know the ins and outs of free and cheap eCommerce platforms, it’s time to form a software selection strategy. Start by preparing an eCommerce system requirements checklist outlining everything you need in detail.

Important Factors

Consider these factors when making the checklist:

• Deployment: Compare the TCO of using a fully-hosted eCommerce platform versus an open-source solution for the next five years based on your business’s IT infrastructure and expertise.
• Customizations: Assess the flexibility of the software architecture and the frontend’s branding. You need software that fits your operations like a glove and offers branding tools that tell your story and align with your business’s personality.
• Payments: Choose a solution that provides quick payment processing and cheap rates. Some platforms only charge the external payment gateway’s fees, while others have a charge on top of that for each transaction.
• Features: List the essential features you need to manage inventory, marketing, order management and shipping. Look out for platforms that offer you space and opportunities to grow in the future.
• Integrations: Determine the accessibility and flexibility of the platform’s code and API. You need a system that either offers you all the required features or leaves room to connect with external solutions to add features.
• Security: Data encryption, SSL certificates and PCI compliance are crucial to ensure secure backend processes and create a safe environment for customers.
• Mobile Responsiveness: Phones account for 58.33% of global internet traffic, so you must ensure your site offers customers a smooth and fast mobile experience.
• Support and Documentation: Look for vendors that provide adequate documentation, tutorials and support based on your IT expertise.

Key Questions To Ask

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to identify your requirements:

• How many products do we sell and plan to sell in the near future?
• Do we need integrations between an online storefront and a brick-and-mortar shop?
• What’s our in-house IT expertise?
• What’s our sales strategy, and which channels do we use?
• Where’s our target audience and what’s our inventory distribution strategy?
• What are the major pain points in our order fulfillment processes?

Once the requirements checklist is ready, you should contact potential vendors to see how well they fit your needs. Use these questions to start conversations and understand the vendor’s operations:

• Are the websites mobile-optimized?
• What are the payment processing options?
• Which security measures and guidelines does the software comply with?
• What are the software’s integration capabilities?
• Does the vendor provide adequate training and knowledge forums?
• What are their customer support and troubleshooting options?

It may sound like a lot, but we’ve boiled down the entire software selection process to nine easy-to-follow steps. We call it lean selection, and it ensures you identify every requirement and scan the market to pick the best solution for your problems. Give it a try!

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FAQs

What’s the cheapest way to launch an online store?

Are you looking to launch an online store but are on a tight budget? Here are some of the most affordable options you can use to set up your shop:

• Ecwid is the closest you’ll get to an absolutely free eCommerce website. It’s a fully-hosted platform that doesn’t charge subscription and transaction fees. You only need to pay the external processing fee for each transaction.
• Big Cartel is another fully-hosted free platform that allows you to sell only by paying the processing fee. But unlike Ecwid, its paid plan doesn’t have adequate inventory management and marketing features, which can be a problem during business scaling.
• WooCommerce+WordPress is a popular combination for people looking for the cheapest eCommerce platforms. WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin that helps sell products, while WordPress is a free CMS to design and create your website’s content. You can get a cheap website hosting plan for as low as $2.75 per month and buy a domain to launch an online store.
• Magento Open-Source is one of the best options for enterprises looking to create robust eCommerce websites. This free platform allows you to design multi-page storefronts for different web-browsing devices and personalize customer experiences on every channel. But you need in-depth coding knowledge to customize the system to your needs.

What’s the cost of a simple eCommerce website?

An online store costs between $30 and $10,000, based on your business type and size. Here are common factors that can help you gauge the cost of your eCommerce website:

• Amount of Traffic
• Inventory Size
• Business Model
• Audience Location
• Marketing Strategies
• IT Expertise

Which are the best eCommerce platforms offering free trials?

Many eCommerce platforms for small businesses offer a free trial to give you a taste of their platform before the final purchase. Some of the best ones that don’t require your credit card information to start designing are:

• Shopify: It offers a free 14-day trial from the moment you sign up. You can add products and design storefronts and checkout pages.
• BigCommerce: You can start a free 15-day trial period to design your store and backend processes.
• Squarespace: You get a free 14-day trial to try the platform and its interfaces before moving to a paid plan.
• Volusion: It offers a free 14-day trial.
• Shift4Shop: A free 14-day trial helps you connect your domains and start storefront designing.

But remember that none of these options allow you to sell products until you upgrade to a paid plan.

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Next Steps

Choosing the right free eCommerce website builder or platform to build your online business is a crucial choice that demands market research and internal assessment. To simplify the journey, we offer a free comparison report that lets you analyze the industry’s best products based on custom criteria. So don’t wait. Start your eCommerce journey today!

What challenges have you faced in selecting a free eCommerce platform? What factors are most important to you when evaluating these solutions? Share your thoughts and experiences below. We’d love to hear from you!