6 Best Free Ecommerce Platforms 2023 | Save and Sell Today

Other website builders, like Wix, also offer ADI as an option but it’s the main route with Square Online. From our first-hand experience, it tends to be a double-edged sword. While it’s certainly quick and easy to have a site ready for you, Square Online is not tailored to users who want an active role in customizing their store. Square Online also defaults the mobile layout for previews over desktop, which is a first in our experience. 

Overall, we scored Square Online 3.7 out of 5 for ease of use. This -4.6% drop (from last year’s score of 3.9) is due to the lack of customization. It’s admittedly easy to set up a store and add products, but do not expect to put much of a personal stamp on it. As one of our testers said: 

“If someone already had an online business I wouldn’t recommend they switch to Square, they may find the lack of creative control frustrating.”  

This was due to the fact Square Online only offers two layout choices: Shop All and Order Online. The Shop All layout is for ecommerce retail brands that want to set up an online store to sell their products, whereas the Order Online layout is geared towards restaurants and food businesses. We mentioned earlier that Square Online has put a lot of time and effort into its POS system and business packages for restaurants, which makes sense for them in the long run as a company. However, this has led to its design functionalities being less developed, hence the drop in score. 

Despite the limited number of themes, you can still customize Square Online templates in all of the most important ways, like: 

• Changing color schemes 
• Picking fonts 
• Repositioning page elements 
• Importing your brand logo 
• Uploading photos 

We just mean that if you’re really looking to get your hands dirty and create something unique, then you’re better off with Wix or Squarespace (both of which offer free trials for ecommerce). 

Square Online templates are professional, just not completely unique. 

If you’re not already using Square Online products, its free plan comes with some great sales features: 

• Sell unlimited products (rare for a free plan!) 
• Automatic tax calculator (US only) 
• Easily add products with different variations 
• Simple inventory management 
• Set free or flat rate shipping, or customize by weight, quantity, or order cost 

Still, there are a few drawbacks to the free plan. For example, although you can accept payments through Square Online’s in-house payment processing system (as well as Google and Apple Pay), customers won’t be able to use PayPal. Additionally, users won’t be able to leave product reviews, there’s no abandoned cart recovery, and your site analytics will be basic, to say the least. 

However, we do need to give credit where credit is due because Square Online actually increased its sales features in our research by 2% from 2.5 to 3.6 out of 5 since we last tested. It now has a completely customizable checkout page and Risk Manager, which is fraud detection software.  

Additionally, you’ll have Square branding stuck to the bottom of your site. Combined with the domain, this can make your online store look unprofessional and untrustworthy. 

There are also transaction fees to contend with because Square Online charges 2.9% + $0.30 for online payments. We mentioned before how Square Online’s free plan has no limitations on product limits, but you only get 500MB of storage and bandwidth. Too many products and high-quality images will slow your site down tremendously. 

On a positive note, you can sell both physical and digital on the free plan. If you’re worried about security risks, don’t be, as Square Online’s free plan comes with an SSL certificate included. 

Square Online used to top our research as the best value-for-money ecommerce website builder – not only because it allowed you to sell on its free plan, but it also had the cheapest paid plan. Square Online’s Plus plan used to cost $12 per month back in 2022.

However, a changing marketplace and outside factors have caused all ecommerce website builders to raise prices, including Square Online’s cheapest paid plan which now costs $29 per month – an increase of 142%.  

Selling on a free plan is still hugely valuable for entrepreneurs starting their business and, despite this massive price hike, Square Online only fell -6.7% from 4.5 to 4.2 out of 5 in our most recent testing, taking second place for value for money, just behind Wix. 

Setting up your store’s pages and managing your inventory is made as easy as possible, which we really appreciated as, from our experience, this is often an aspect beginners struggle with. We also liked that Shopify’s dashboard is full of useful tips to help you get started. One of our testers said: 

“It’s definitely suited for those with more experience with web design, but this makes it fun to use as you can feel the potential for customization.”

Still, it’s not the easiest builder out there. Users were a little confused by the editor, and some disliked how you had to navigate back to the dashboard to add products separately. However, given the powerful tools it has to offer, we think this is a reasonable trade-off for its ecommerce capabilities. 

Each of Shopify’s free themes comes in multiple styles, so you still get a decent range to choose from. The main difference between a theme’s styles is the color scheme. For example, the Pursuit theme comes in three styles: Vail (blue), Aspen (orange), and Telluride (pink). 

Thanks to improvements to its omnichannel design, Shopify saw a 14.3% rise in design functionality from last year’s testing, making it number one for design functionality in our research. With improved ease of use, it’s now easier for customers to interact with your store and find what they need. We’ve seen how an unorganized site with inconsistent branding can turn away customers, so Shopify fixing this is a major plus for its merchants. 

• Sell in 133 currencies and up to 5 languages 
• Sell unlimited products 
• Set up two staff accounts with access to the Shopify admin 
• Sell on multiple channels (sync with online marketplaces and social media accounts) 

One glance at these features, and it’s clear that Shopify is equipped to handle larger stores. Plus, we were really impressed with its inventory management, which makes it super easy to track stock levels and update product listings. It’s no wonder we awarded it 4.7 out of 5 in our sales features category. 

However, it’s worth noting that you’ll have to check out some third-party apps from the Shopify App Store to really maximize your store’s potential. This is where you’ll find features like email marketing and dropshipping. In short, Shopify can offer tons of features for larger stores, you’ll just have to download some of them yourself! 

A major bonus with Shopify’s free trial is you can connect a custom domian with SSL certificates (if you have them already) to your trial site, meaning if your transferring your store customers will still be able to find you from your original domain name.  

You’ll also have to pay transaction fees unless you use Shopify’s in-house payment processor, Shopify Payments. These are split between accepting online and in-person transactions through Shopify POS: 

• Online transaction fees: 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction 
• In-person transaction fees:  2.7% + 0¢ per transaction 

Popular third-party tools like PayPal will cost you up to 2% of each sale –  these fees can add up and really affect your budget over time, so keep a close eye on these. 

However, Shopify does not allow any sales transactions until you choose a price plan. Your free trial store will open with a storefront password and a freeze on all checkouts. However, you can get rid of the password if you don’t plan on selling.

If you want to use Shopify but don’t think you can afford the $29 per month after the trial period, then Shopify does offer a cheaper plan, but only for social selling. The Shopify Starter plan only costs $5 per month, giving you access to Shopify’s great inventory and sales features, but you won’t have a full online store. Instead, it will be connected to a social media account.  

In fact, there’s so much design freedom that you might feel overwhelmed at first, but you’ll get the hang of Wix’s template editor in no time. Wix also has ADI that will, after a few questions, build a site for you and fill it with text and images. 

Having coding knowledge can come in handy for added personalization, but it’s by no means required to create a unique, professional design. We awarded it 4 out of 5 for ease of use, a non-mover from last year’s testing, making it the second easiest ecommerce builder to use. 

“Wix has so many templates that can be broken down into very niche industries.”  

From our experience, it’s hard to find a builder that offers both a wide range of templates and generous design freedom, which is why we scored Wix 4.2 out of 5 for design functionality. This puts it in second place for this category in our research, just behind Shopify. 

• Sell unlimited products 
• Automatically send abandoned cart recovery emails 
• Let customers create accounts for faster checkout 
• Sell on Facebook and Instagram 

Wix isn’t a dedicated, ecommerce-specific website builder, so it doesn’t have the most scalable features on the market. However, thanks to some really nice sales feature improvements, Wix saw a 1.6% rise in its sales features score, increasing from 4.4 to 4.5 out of 5. 

It recently increased its big data capabilities, meaning it can hold more of your customer’s data and ensure processes like shipping and payment can still go smoothly – even with more customers. It also has an improved stock level functionality, allowing you to better manage your inventories – a vital tool to manage a medium-sized online store. 

From our experience, Wix isn’t quite on the same level as other ecommerce platforms like Shopify, but it does offer all the features needed for small to medium-sized stores.

This can be quite intrusive for your visitors and can make it seem like your site is advertising Wix, not your own products. This is a shame since Wix allows unlimited products and the sale of physical and digital products, SSL protected. 

The major limitation is that while you can sell products with the ecommerce plan on a free trial, you can’t accept payments until you upgrade. Wix will hold on paying you until you upgrade, effectively keeping your sales hostage until you decide to sign up for a paid plan. 

Wix also limits certain key features with the free trial, such as no access to Google Analytics and it will only provide you with up to 500MB in bandwidth. 

• Design a site on Wix’s free plan, then upgrade to a paid plan to start selling 
• Sign up for a paid ecommerce plan, and get all of your money back if you cancel in the first 14 days 

If you finish the 14-day trial period and like what you’ve seen, then you can stay on Wix’s cheapest ecommerce plan for $27 per month. 

“It was smooth as butter. Everything was where I wanted it to be.”

Squarespace’s drag-and-drop template editor is a little different from Shopify, because you can see the changes you make to each page in real time. We also like how Squarespace’s rows add more structure to the design process. This means that, unlike Wix, you can’t just drag and drop anything anywhere, but you’re guaranteed a perfectly constructed store at the end of it all, making it great for users who have never designed a website before.

While Squarespace’s online store templates certainly look stylish, you won’t get quite as much design flexibility for online stores as you would with Wix or Shopify. From our hands-on experience with the platform, the omnichannel design has taken a dip since our previous scores. We found that it was harder to navigate a Squarespace store than its competitors, and the branding implementation was a bit more inconsistent, which affects how customers see you and your products. We scored Squarespace’s omnichannel design  3 out of 5, a huge -40% dip from its previous score of 5 out of 5.  

This had a knock-on effect and dropped Squarespace’s overall design score by -5% from 4 to 3.8 out of 5. While the templates are still top-notch, we’d like to see Squarespace focus more on its ecommerce design to ensure it can keep up with its competitors. 

On the cheapest plan for selling online, which costs $23 per month, you can: 

• Sell unlimited products 
• Sell digital gift cards 
• Accept donations 

Squarespace’s ecommerce plans also come with seamless inventory management. Managing products and variants is super simple, and you can even automatically display “limited availability” labels when your stock levels are low. 

Just note that this plan charges a 3% transaction fee, and you’ll have to upgrade to an advanced ecommerce plan to waive it. 

One of Squarespace’s biggest strengths is its ability to sell digital products. In fact, we think it’s the ideal platform for selling art, because, although its inventory management is good, it’s not built to support very high stock levels. As a result, digital art vendors selling prints will see more of what it offers as an ecommerce platform. 

Your site will be stuck with a randomized .squarespace.com subdomain during this period, though you can pre-register a domain to a parked page and then transfer once you upgrade. Squarespace recently bought Google Domains, meaning you will get much more options for connecting domains, a huge help for online businesses that are starting out and want to experiment with names. 

On the plus side, if your mind is still not made up after the 14-day trial, you are able to extend it by seven days for free. 

However, if you need the advanced capabilities of a WordPress site, then WooCommerce is the simplest of those choices. WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress, meaning you can add it as an additional feature to any WordPress site. It comes with a helpful setup wizard, so you won’t have to worry about learning the ropes on your own. 

If you are worried about how to operate WooCommerce from WordPress, there is a package version of the platform: Woo Express. For $25 per month, you get access to a code-free website builder, themes, and customer support via live chat and email. You will still need to use extensions for most of the features, but this package is an option for those worried about having to use code. 

If you’re willing to go for a paid theme, you can expect to pay between $39 and $79 for one as one time purchase.

The problem is that many of these features are not free. You may end up paying an average of $79-$299 per year for each one. The WooCommerce Extensions Store covers everything, so the sky’s the limit in terms of features. There are over 55,000 plugins available, so it’s best to shop around. If you want a little help, here’s a list of essential sales features that no online store worth its salt should be without: 

• Payment options – integrate your store with Amazon Pay, Stripe, Square, PayPal, Apple Pay, and many more. 
• Promotions – apply discounts to products or the overall cart cost, and offer free shipping .
• Abandoned cart recovery – this enables you to send emails to customers who have left a shopping cart without finalizing the purchase, helping to regain those sales. 
• Customizable checkout – customize everything, from editing the ‘place order’ text on the buttons to setting a preferred contact method for customers. 
• Analytics – built-in reports on site views, recorded clicks, files downloaded, and customers’ regions, plus you can install Google Analytics at no cost for added insights. 
• Multi-channel selling – sell your products through Amazon, eBay, and Instagram for just $79, and sell on Facebook for free, through extensions. 

You still get unlimited products to sell both physically and digitally, but whether your hosting provider can handle it – with enough storage and bandwidth, for example – is up to what plan you have. Bluehost is our recommended hosting provider for WooCommerce because it comes first in our best research. However, there are plenty of other web hosting providers. 

You will also have to purchase an SSL certificate because WooCommerce doesn’t include it as standard. 

Once your store is set up, be wary of transaction fees, too.  While WooCommerce Payments has no setup or monthly fees, it will charge 2.9% + $0.30 on all transactions made with a US credit or debit card. For cards outside the US, an additional 1% is charged. 

We recommend using Bluehost with WooCommerce because it’s an officially recommended provider. Bluehost has plenty of WooCommerce-specific plans that start at $9.95 per month. 

If this all seems complicated and you want less to manage at the cost of freedom, the Woo Express plan comes with hosting and a code-less website builder from $25 per month. We recommend this plan for users who want a website builder experience and don’t mind paying more for the convenience. After all, building a website can be time-consuming and, if your time is needed elsewhere, WooCommerce gives its customers the option. 

If you can’t code, we don’t recommend Magento. It’s aimed at developers and enterprise-level businesses, and it shows. 

If you can code, Magento offers scalability and customization that’s unrivaled by any other ecommerce solution, open source or otherwise – but don’t expect the setup to be easy. In fact, unless you have web development experience, you won’t be able to set it up at all, let alone customize it to your liking. 

If you do choose to go ahead with Magento, you’ll have access to really excellent community support via the Magento Forum. It’s built and upheld by other Magento customers, and you can expect to find user-generated answers and discussions for any Magento issue. This sense of community is so useful when starting out because you’ll find tips and tricks, but it would be better suited for a platform that supports mostly smaller online stores. 

If you’re not super tech-savvy, then the best way to get the most out of your Magento design is to hire a web developer to tweak the theme for you. Just note, you can expect to pay a few hundred dollars for this option! 

The pride of Magento is its inventory system. It supports bulk product imports, revenue reports, multiple product variables, and stock management. If you think that Magento is good enough for Coca-Cola, imagine what it could do for your store!

After its acquisition by Adobe, it has also been given full integration with all Adobe’s Creative Suite. From Photoshop, Premier Pro, After-Effects, Illustrator, and Adobe Stock, you have some of the best creative tools at your disposal to use for your website. Admittedly, they all take some time to learn, but there’s a reason they are used by professionals. 

Magento claims it can hold over a million items comfortably and enables the selling of both physical and digital products. However, like WooCommerce, you will still need to supplement it with plugins, which you can download from the Magento Marketplace. 

You’ll also need to make provision for your own domain name and SSL certificate once your site is live. In addition to your other expenses with the provider, Magento also has transaction fees, charging the usual 2.9% + $0.30. 

There aren’t many hosts that cater for Magento, which is why installation can be so difficult. We recommend A2 Hosting’s Magento hosting plans for easy installation – it’s one of the few hosts with Magento-specific plans.  

These plans range from $59.99 per month (billed annually) for unmanaged VPS at the cheapest and $529.99 per month for managed hosting at the most expensive. We only recommend upgrading Magento if you know you have the funds to support it. 

OpenCart 

If your store is too large for WooCommerce, but too small for Magento, then OpenCart is worth a look. It’s a powerful platform with a ton of scope for customization and additional features. In fact, there are over 13,000 OpenCart integrations available. 

Just keep in mind that OpenCart itself is very light on built-in features, so you’ll need to make use of these add-ons. There’s a fairly steep learning curve though and, unlike WooCommerce, you probably won’t be able to ‘muddle through’ without any developer experience. 

PrestaShop 

PrestaShop is an open-source software that pitches itself as more of a website builder. As you’ve seen with the platforms above, ease of use can be a real sticking point when it comes to using open-source software, so combining open-source power and potential with website builder simplicity sounds like a winning recipe. 

Unfortunately, while a good platform, PrestaShop kind of misses the mark on both fronts. If you’re set on open-source software, pick from one of the platforms above (depending on your business size). If you’re after something that’s as easy to use as a website builder, we’d recommend a website builder! The ones we featured at the very top of this article are a safe bet.