4 Best Free Ecommerce Platforms 2024 | Save and Sell Today
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Our methodology
Our unique and in-depth research methodology focuses on key areas such as ease of use, and sales features, to bring you the top free ecommerce platforms.
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While many website builders offer free elements to help you get set up online, it’s difficult to find ecommerce platforms that’ll allow you to actually sell online for free — and when you do, you’ll still have to pay some unavoidable charges, such as processing fees. That said, you can still find some good savings by using a free ecommerce builder, if you know where to look. That’s where we come in!
We’ve used our extensive experience in building websites and selling online to pinpoint the four best free ecommerce platforms. In this article, we’ll explain why each one made the list and help you find the best fit for your business.
The 4 Best Free Ecommerce Platforms
- Square Online – (For stores wanting to sell in-person and online for free) – Free plan
- Shopify – (For the cheapest upgrade cost) – Free trial
- Wix – (For stores needing time to create their website) – Free to build, not to sell
- WooCommerce – (For extensive storefront customization) – Free to install
Compare the Best Free Ecommerce Website Builders
Need to see the provider side-by-side? Look through our helpful comparison table:
| SELL ON FREE PLAN  | BEST IN TEST  |  |  |
| Square Online | Shopify | Wix | WooCommerce |
| Overall rating 3.8 | Overall rating 4.8 | Overall rating 4.8 | Overall rating 4.2 |
| Starting Price $29 | Starting Price $29 | Starting Price | Starting Price Depends on web host |
| Transaction Fees 2.9% + $0.30 | Transaction Fees 2.9% + $0.30 | Transaction Fees 2.9% + $0.30 | Transaction Fees 2.9% + $0.30 (+1% for non-US customers) |
| Free plan or free trial Free plan | Free plan or free trial | Free plan or free trial Free plan | Free plan or free trial Free to install |
| Sales features 3.3 | Sales features 4.8 | Sales features 4.2 | Sales features 4.1 |
| Visit Square | Visit Shopify | Visit Wix | View WooCommerce |
All the builders on this list will give you some kind of free access. However, only Square Online will allow you to actually sell online for free.
Here’s a breakdown of what you can get with each builder without paying:
| Free trial? | Free plan? | Free selling? | Cost of plan needed to sell online (billed annually) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square Online | N/A | ✔️ | ✔️ | Free |
| Shopify | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | $29/ month |
| Wix | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | $29/ month |
| WooCommerce | ✔️ * | ✔️ * | ❌ * | Necessary add-ons for your website will cost between $79 to $299/ year |
*WooCommerce is free to download and use, but only in conjunction with paying for WordPress.
Can You Sell for Free?
Short answer: Yes!
Long answer: It’s not that simple… while Square Online does indeed have a free plan which you can sell on, you will have to pay a fee of 2.9% + 30¢ on every transaction. There are also limited features to deal with, as you’ll have no access to vital ecommerce features like taking PayPal payments or abandoned cart recovery unless you upgrade to a paid plan.
All the builders on this list give you some kind of free access, but to sell and reach each provider’s true ecommerce potential will require paying. There are four different variations of what can be described as a ‘free ecommerce platform’:
Selling for Free
With Square Online, you can sell on its free plan.
Free Trial
Shopify, our best-rated ecommerce provider, offers a 3-day free trial in which you can test out all its features and build your store – but you won’t be able to actually sell till you choose a plan. Shopify also offers a 3-month paid trial of only $1 per month for new customers which you will be able to sell.
Free To Build
Wix allows you to build your online store for free for as long as you want, but cannot accept any payments till you upgrade to a plan.
Free To Install
WooCommerce is an ecommerce plugin for WordPress, which means you can download and install it for free – however, you will have to be responsible for things like hosting and integration of any third-party features you need, all of which have subscription fees.
Sell for Free – Square Online
Best for food businesses wanting to sell on a free plan
Upgrade Cost: $29 per month
Square Online
Best for food-related online stores
- Quick setup
- Easy to use
- Not very scalable
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $12 - $79 / month
Pros
-
Easy to track sales and abandoned carts - Responsive help and support
- Seamless payments system
Cons
-
Limited design freedom - Few payment processing options
- Not great for large volume selling
Square Online is the most affordable option on this list because, to take payments, you’ll only need to pay transaction and processing fees. This is a major advantage for those starting a new online business or wanting a fresh start, as the money saved on start-up costs can now be put wherever else it may be needed.
What also sets Square Online apart is its range of POS systems, providing seamless synchronization between online and offline sales. For this reason, Square Online is perfect for food-related businesses, allowing you to sell your products in person in a store or market stall while still advertising your website.
While Square Online does indeed let you sell for free, in our testing, it fell short of Shopify and Wix in other important areas, with less comprehensive website features and little design flexibility. For instance, it’s difficult to create a unique storefront on Square Online’s free plan because it doesn’t let you choose a store theme unless you upgrade. While you can sell unlimited items on the free plan, you have processing fees to pay on each sale – 2.9% + $0.30 on each card payment. Though the plan is advertised as free, there’s always some cost.
Who Do We Recommend Square Online For?
- Square Online is recommended if you run a restaurant or business in the food industry. You can use its POS integrations to sync your online and offline sales, making it easy to keep track of all your payments in one place
- However, avoid Square Online if you run a very large store. Compared to platforms like Shopify, you’ll have fewer ways to sync your store across multiple sales channels
Limitations
- Ads – Large, unmovable footer at the bottom of your website.
- No custom domain – On the free plan, your site’s URL will have a .square.site/ following your website’s name.
- No website themes
- No PayPal integration
- No abandoned cart recovery
- No product reviews
Upgrade Cost: $29 per month
Square Online’s pricing has two paid plans available:
- Plus – $29 per month billed annually
- Premium – $79 per month billed annually
The Plus plan gives you everything the free plan lacks, like PayPal access and the removal of ads, as well as a custom domain name (free for one year). It also includes important sales features like product reviews, subscriptions, item badges, and gifting options – making it ideal for small businesses.
The Premium plan is meant for larger stores and has all the features the Plus plan offers but with additional customer support, real-time shipping rates, and a lower processing fee of 2.6% + $0.30.
Read our full Square Online Review for more.
More Information
Let us walk you through How to Customize a Square Online Website so you can your online store up and running
Free Trial – Shopify
For the cheapest upgrade cost
Trial Length: 3 Days (free), 1 Month (paid)
Upgrade Cost: $5 per month to sell on social media, $29 per month to sell on a website
Shopify
Best for fast-growing stores
- Built for large stores
- Great inventory tools
- Recommended by real users
Free trial available
Paid Plans: $29 - $299 / month
Pros
- Sell across many social media channels
- Abandoned cart recovery on all plans
- Easily track stock levels and orders
Cons
- Some features come separately as apps
- Transaction fees for most payment tools
- Switching themes is a hassle
Shopify has the highest sales feature score in our research with 4.7 out of 5. If you are looking for the ultimate ecommerce solution – Shopify may well be it. While it does not have a free plan, Shopify does have two trials new customers can use: one free and one paid.
The free trial lasts for three days, and users will get access to all of Shopify’s store-building features, but you won’t be able to sell till you upgrade. The other trial lasts for one month and only costs $1. With this trial, you’ll get full Shopify access and be able to sell, which in our recommendation makes it the better of the two. You should try to complete a full store set up during this time, including personalizing your template, creating product pages using Shopify Magic, and configuring shipping. This will help you test both website building and sales features.
When you’re on the trial, you’ll get to choose a well-designed and ecommerce-optimized Shopify template. Be warned that most of them cost a one-off payment ranging between $100 – $500 – but there are 13 free themes.
Shopify’s internal sales and product features are some of the best we’ve tested, with unlimited products, abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, currency conversions, POS systems, marketing automation, and many, many more. If that’s not enough, you will also get access to over 8,000 Shopify apps to add to your store to cover any blind spots you may have.
In summary, Shopify is a one-stop platform for all online stores, though can sometimes be overkill if your store isn’t big enough.
Who Do We Recommend Shopify For?
- Shopify is ideal if you’re at the helm of a large or scaling business that sells manufactured products online. Its key sales features, from inventory management tools to integrations across multiple sales channels, will help you manage your store
- Avoid Shopify if you’re only selling a few products. Paying for an upgraded plan will be a waste of money if you don’t need the powerful sales features offered to run your store
Limitations
- Free on trial only – Free trial ends after three days and paid after one month
- No selling for free – You cannot sell on Shopify’s free trial and must choose the paid trial or upgrade
- No custom domain – Your free trial store will have a .myshopify.com at the end of it
Upgrade Cost: $29 per month
Shopify’s pricing has three paid plans, plus the social media-only Starter plan:
- Starter – $5 per month billed annually
- Shopify Basic – $29 per month billed annually
- Shopify – $79 per month billed annually
- Shopify Advanced – $299 per month billed annually
The Starter plan is the cheapest option. If you only want to sell on social media, it’s an affordable entry point. However, if you want an online store to design and run your business out of, we recommend the Basic plan as it offers all the essential quality features you get to use during the trial.
The Basic plan is perfect for small businesses, and if you find your store getting larger, the Shopify and Shopify Advanced plans await, bringing further support and stronger features.
Read our full Shopify Review for more.
More Information
- Wix and Shopify both score similarly in our research, but which is truly better? Find out in our Wix vs Shopify article
- See which ecommerce platform comes on top with our Square Online vs Shopify article
- Got your store but don’t know how to ship? Read our Shopify Dropshipping guide for a full breakdown
Free to Build – Wix
For busy ecommerce store owners who need time to create their website
Free forever plan for building but not selling
Upgrade Cost: $29 per month (or $26.10 with our TAKE10 code at checkout)
Wix
Best for smaller stores
- Plenty of design freedom
- Powerful features
- Easy to use
Free trial available
Paid Plans: $17 - $159 / month
Pros
- Can sell Wix products on Instagram
- Product videos add credibility
- Mobile editor for on-the-go changes
Cons
- No automated low stock alerts
- Not the best for very large stores
- Can’t change templates once site is live
Like Shopify, you cannot sell on Wix without upgrading to a paid plan. However, Wix differs in that it allows you to have a free website for an indefinite period of time. The Wix free plan will let you create and design an online store for as long as you want, which is great for really hammering out those final branding choices.
You can choose from over 800 free templates across a range of industries, or use Wix’s ADI to let its AI website builder design a template for you. In our research, Wix scored the highest for design functionality for online stores with 4.3 out of 5.
However, while you can have a free website with Wix, the free plan is beset with limitations. Your site will have Wix ads and a Wix domain, plus a 500MB storage limit – not to mention no selling till you upgrade.
Once you do upgrade, Wix has a solid range of sales features, and you’ll be able to sell up to 50,000 products, send abandoned cart recovery emails, send out branded gift cards, and dropship up to 25 items thanks to Wix’s integration with Modalyst.
Who Do We Recommend Wix For?
- With its flexible design customization tools, Wix is a great option if you’re selling hand-crafted products online. You can use the editor to design a site that matches your unique style as an artisan
- Avoid Wix if it’s likely that you’ll want to switch templates further down the line. You can’t switch designs once your website has gone live
Limitations
- Ads – On the free plan, Wix places a banner ad at the top of your website, which is quite distracting and looks unprofessional
- No custom domain – You can’t have a personal domain unless you upgrade. Your site’s URL will follow a yourusername.wixsite.com/yoursite domain instead
- No selling for free – You can’t sell on Wix unless you upgrade to one of its ecommerce plans
- Limited storage – Wix only gives you 500MB of storage on its free plan, reducing the amount of images you can have. This is especially a problem for online stores that need many product photos.
Upgrade Cost: $29 per month
Wix’s pricing has three commerce plans to choose from:
- Core – $29 per month billed annually
- Business – $36 per month billed annually
- Business Elite – $159 per month billed annually
Upgrading to a Wix plan will let you sell, as well as remove ads, use a custom domain, and raise your storage allowance to 50GB on the Core plan. Each plan increases in size and support to accommodate larger and larger businesses, so we recommend the Core plan to begin with if you are starting a new business.
If you just can’t wait to try out the premium plans, then Wix does offer a 14-day money-back guarantee, meaning you can test out some of the ecommerce features, but you can only receive payments once you upgrade. Additionally, if Wix’s plans seem too expensive, then we’re proud to reveal that you can get 10% off Wix if you use our exclusive code TAKE10 at checkout.
Read our full Wix Ecommerce Review to find out more.
More Information
- See our best tips for building a Wix site with our How to Use Wix guide
- Take a look at our best Wix Website Examples for some inspiration
Free to Install – WooCommerce
For extensive storefront customization
Upgrade Cost: $9.95 per month for hosting with Bluehost, plugins cost an estimated $50 per month and annual $10-$15 for a domain name
WooCommerce
Best for large online businesses
- Very WordPress-compatible
- Extremely scalable
- Helpful setup wizard
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $12.95 / month
Pros
- Huge variety of plugins
- Lots of payment options
- Tools for selling internationally
Cons
- Have to install most features yourself
- Cost of plugins and tools can add up
- Only works with WordPress
WooCommerce is an ecommerce plugin for WordPress, meaning you will need to build your site on WordPress in order to use it. Like WordPress, it is free to download and use… theoretically. The truth is that you will have to find a hosting provider, obtain security licenses, and download whatever themes and features you will need for your website – WooCommerce doesn’t even come with abandoned cart recovery.
In regards to a hosting provider, we (and WordPress) recommend Bluehost for any WooCommerce online stores, as it has WooCommerce-specific hosting plans that take care of a lot of site management, making it perfect for beginners.
Online store-wise, WooCommerce can be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it’s the most versatile builder on this list. If you know a bit of code you can endlessly edit and add specific features you want to your store down to the finest detail. This makes it especially good for selling internationally, as you get access to tools like automatic currency calculators and multilingual options.
On the other hand, WordPress and WooCommerce require subscriptions for many of the features and plugins you’ll need to create your store. This level of choice and control may be overwhelming, especially if you’re switching from a platform that automatically included these features with your plan. On average, you could be spending $79 to $299 per year for a website.
Who Do We Recommend WooCommerce For?
- Opening an international store? WooCommerce is a strong fit, since it gives you multilingual capabilities alongside automatic currency converters, making it much easier to sell to global audiences
- If you’re comfortable with coding, you’ll be able to customize your WooCommerce store extensively. That said, you can still create an attractive and functional website without coding experience!
Limitations
- No built-in hosting – You will have to provide your own hosting for your online store from a hosting provider like Bluehost
- No security – Most website builders include an SSL certificate in their plans. For WooCommerce, you may have to buy it yourself
- No storage – When choosing a hosting provider, you will have to decide how much storage to allocate to your store
- No help and support – WordPress doesn’t have a formal help center like Shopify or Wix. You will have to rely on third-party guides or forums for help
- Complicated editor – WordPress is not a drag-and-drop builder like Wix or Shopify. Users must use code to edit their site
Upgrade Cost: $6.99 per month
Bluehost’s pricing has two plans for WooCommerce-specific plans:
- Online Store: $6.99 per month billed annually
- Online Store + Marketplace: $12.95 per month billed annually
The Online Store plan comes with WooCommerce, analytics, 40GB storage, a free domain, a free SSL certificate plus Yoast SEO. With the +Marketplace plan, users get 100GB of storage and multichannel selling.
While both these plans seem great value, remember that a WooCommerce store is not only more work to make but more work to upkeep than a regular website builder.
There’s also the cost of securing your own domain name and all the plugins you’ll need. While a domain can be relatively cheap, only costing $10 – $15 per year, some domains can cost up to the thousands if they’re highly sought after. Plugins can be free to use, but if you are looking for quality then a monthly subscription of around $10 – $20 will be expected, and that’s just for one. In total, your WordPress store could cost nearly $200 per month.
Read our full WooCommerce Review for more.
More Information
- See who’s the better ecommerce platform with our Shopify vs WooCommerce article
How To Choose the Best Free Ecommerce Platform
Before we summarize this list and you can make your verdict, let’s go over what the most important factors are for picking a free commerce platform. We’ve condensed all the factors to look for into three vital questions you need to ask yourself before making your decision:
- Can I sell for free?
- Do its limitations outweigh its benefits?
- Is it suited for the products I want to sell?
While these questions can help inform your choice of a free ecommerce website builder, a free ecommerce plan is not really sustainable for long-term growth or profit. Most of the builders on this list don’t even let you sell till you’ve upgraded your plan. And if you are committed to only selling for free, you’ll find the limitations will start to cause frustration as your business picks up.
Most users would benefit from choosing the platform that best suits their products and then upgrading to a paid plan. Selling for free is a great tagline, but in actuality, it tends to not work out as intended.
Is It Worth Upgrading?
Upgrading to a paid plan will upgrade your business. Like any subscription, if you pay more, you get more. Below, we’ve listed five of the best features you can get on a paid plan:
1. No Ads
You may have a really small or totally new business, but customers don’t have to know you’re on a budget. They’ll only suspect you’re a newbie if you’re using a free plan as your site will be plastered with ads. There’s an element of ‘fake it till you make it’ as a new business, and an unprofessional website isn’t going to give off the right signals.
2. Better Sales Tools
A paid plan won’t just make you a website that looks more professional – it will make you a website that acts more professional, too. Ecommerce platforms withhold premium features, like the ability to send abandoned cart recovery emails, for paying members – and with good reason. In fact, 70% of online carts are abandoned (i.e. the customer leaves the site without paying for the items they have collected in their cart). Emails sent to these customers can have an impressive open rate of 45% and are hugely effective in re-engaging these customers.
3. Sell More Products
Most free ecommerce plans put a cap on the number of items you can sell. By opting for a paid plan, you’re giving yourself more freedom, and offering your customers more choice.
4. Get Better Support
Paying customers tend to be able to access support in more ways, such as over the phone. Even if you get the same help and support options as premium customers, you better believe you’re not going to be on top of the priority queue when you need help. Don’t wait until your site is down, or until you can’t get an answer to something that’s driving you nuts before you upgrade – do it now, and your future self (and site) will thank you!
5. Increase Payment Methods
Paid plans typically allow you to connect more payment methods. This, in turn, makes for an easier shopping experience for your customers, increasing the likelihood that they’ll come back.
4 Best Free Ecommerce Platforms: Summary
While free plans make perfect sense for money-conscious business owners, they do have their limitations. Square Online provides the best deal by letting you sell for free, but you are cut off from a lot of essential features and have to feature ads with no custom domain. This will make your site look unprofessional to consumers.
With other platforms like Wix or Shopify, you can only build your store for free, but to actually make money through your online store, you’ll need to spend some money. Overall, we recommend signing up for a free ecommerce plan today – or testing a free trial – to really get the most out of selling your products online.
That’s all from us! We wish you well on your ecommerce journey!
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