11 Best Free Ecommerce Website Builders For Selling Online (2024)

Sell multiple types of products

You can sell any product on your Squarespace store, including physical products, services, digital content, and subscriptions.

Inventory management

Squarespace has an easy-to-use interface that allows you to monitor and manage your inventory levels. The inventory management tool even sends automatic emails to notify you of low stock levels.

Limited availability labels

With this feature, you can notify your customers when in-store stock levels are getting low. Limited availability triggers urgency among your customers, leading to increased conversions.

Mobile-optimized checkout

Squarespace makes the checkout process convenient for your customers by offering a single-page checkout that looks great on all screen sizes.

Store manager permissions

If you have employees, Squarespace allows you to give your employees control over things like orders and inventory while restricting their access to other parts of your ecommerce site.

Point of sale

Squarespace has an iOS point of sale app that lets you sell your products in person while keeping your customers, sales analytics, and inventory in sync with your ecommerce store. However, this feature is only available in the US.

Customer insights

Squarespace gives you numerous insights about your customers, including average order value, total spend, last purchase value, and so on. These insights make it easier to target your customers with relevant offers and discounts.

Multiple payment methods

Squarespace supports multiple payment methods, including PayPal, Stripe, Square, Apple Pay, credit cards, and debit cards. It also accepts over 20 different currencies.

Try Squarespace for free

80+ Professional themes

Shopify gives you a selection of more than 80 professionally designed, mobile-responsive themes. However, only eight themes are available for free. The others will cost you between $150 and $350.

Expert help

Most users will find Shopify very easy to use. However, if you need help, Shopify has a team of experts who can help you build and customize your store.

Free SSL certificate

Shopify provides a free SSL certificate for every store built on the platform, giving your online store the same level of security that financial institutions use.

Automatic carrier shipping rates

You can set up your store to provide customers with real-time shipping rates from major shipping companies, including FedEx, USPS, and UPS.

Abandoned cart recovery

Shopify has an abandoned cart recovery tool that automatically sends email reminders to customers who’ve abandoned their carts. This recovers lost sales and improves conversions.

HTML and CSS editing

Unlike most other ecommerce website builders, Shopify gives you full access to your store’s HTML and access. This allows you to customize your store exactly as you want.

100 payment gateways

Shopify supports over 100 external payment gateways, including credit card, PayPal, iDEAL, and even Bitcoin, making it convenient for your customers to pay for your products.

Dropshipping

If you’re using the dropshipping business model, Shopify allows you to integrate your online store with major dropshipping suppliers, including eCommHub, Inventory Source, and Ordoro.

Facebook selling

With Shopify, you can sell your products directly on Facebook, allowing customers to buy from your store without leaving Facebook.

Try Shopify for free

500+ professional templates

With over 500 ecommerce templates to choose from, you’re assured of getting a template that’s just right for your brand. What’s more, each template is highly customizable, so you can truly make it your own.

Multichannel sales

With Wix, you can sell your products on multiple channels, including Facebook, Instagram, eBay, Google Shopping, and Amazon. The best part is that Wix allows you to manage all your sales channels from a single dashboard.

Wix Payments

This is Wix’s payments dashboard, which lets you manage all your transactions from one place. Wix Payments lets you accept payments, make payouts to suppliers, issue refunds, and so much more.

Social campaigns

Wix makes it easy for you to reach new shoppers by allowing you to set up automated ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Once you set up the ad, Wix automatically tracks and optimizes the ads for you for optimal results.

API customization

Wix gives you access to open APIs that you can use to connect your favorite tools to your online store and build your own custom solutions. There are no limits to what you can achieve with Wix’s API.

50+ payment gateways

You can use Wix’s native payments solution to accept customer payments or connect your store to 50+ third-party payment gateways, such as Stripe, PayPal, and Square.

Inbuilt SEO tools

To make it easy for you to capture organic traffic from search engines, Wix has inbuilt SEO tools that let you optimize your ecommerce site and boost your search rankings. These include optimized site infrastructure, customized structured data markup, flexible URL redirect manager, and Google Search Console integration.

Try Wix for free

Full website

Square Online’s free plan allows you to set up a complete ecommerce site with all the key pages, including product pages, email sign up, and contact forms. You can also customize your website’s logos and colors.

Artificial design intelligence (ADI)

This feature makes it super easy to build your ecommerce site. Simply answer a few questions about your store, and the ADI technology will automatically set up a professional-looking storefront for you.

Unlimited products

Square Online does not limit the number and type of products you can sell on your online store, even on the free plan. You can even sell digital products that customers can download directly from your online store.

In-built payments gateway

Square Online has an inbuilt payments gateway that lets you accept payments from all major credit cards, Cash App Pay, Square Pay, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. The free plan also accepts Afterpay, which allows customers to buy products and pay later. Unfortunately, Square Online doesn’t support PayPal payments on the free plan.

Coupon and discount codes

Under the free plan, you can also create coupon codes to give your customers discounts and free shipping options. You can customize the discount codes to be applicable for specific products, orders exceeding a certain amount, or all orders.

Try Square Online for free

Flexible and secure payments

WooCommerce has an inbuilt payments platform that accepts major credit cards, checks, bank transfers, and cash on delivery. You can also use extensions to integrate WooCommerce with 140 other payment gateways, including PayPal, Amazon Pay, Square, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Stripe.

Sell anything

From physical and digital products to appointments, subscriptions, and bundled products, there are no limits to the kind of products you can sell with WooCommerce.

Extensions marketplace

WooCommerce has an official marketplace with hundreds of free and premium extensions that you can use to add various functionalities and features to your online store. Whether you want to add point-of-sale capabilities to your store or incorporate a new marketing integration, you’ll find the right extension in the WooCommerce marketplace.

Open-source

WooCommerce is an open-source platform, which means you have total freedom to tinker with its source code and modify it to suit your exact needs. If you have the technical skills, this gives you the flexibility to build a truly unique website.

Analytics

WooCommerce has an inbuilt reporting feature that gives you insights about the number of site visitors, visitors’ location, number of clicks, number of downloaded files, and so on. You can also connect your WooCommerce store to Google Analytics for free if you want more customer insights.

Product reviews

You can use extensions to add product review capabilities to your online store and boost conversions.

Try WooCommerce for free

Modern design

Strikingly has sleek, modern-looking design templates that work well on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. The platform even allows you to enhance the mobile experience by adding easy-access actions that only show on mobile devices, such as a “call now” button.

Easy-to-use editor

The platform comes with a simple and focused website editor that is very easy to use. With this editor, you can build and customize your website in as little as 30 minutes.

Payment integration

Strikingly offers native integration with PayPal and Stripe, two of the largest payment gateways, so you’ll be able to accept payments from most of your customers.

Zero transaction fees

Strikingly has no transaction fees, allowing you to maximize your profits. However, you’ll still pay credit card processing fees.

Widgets

You can extend the functionality of your online store with apps and widgets, which are available on Strikingly’s app market. However, some of these widgets only work on paid ecommerce plans. You can also add new features to your store via HTML, though this only works on paid plans.

Mobile app

Strikingly has a mobile app that allows you to make basic edits to your online store from your mobile device. The mobile app also allows you to receive and respond to live chat messages, view site statistics, and manage your orders on the go.

Try Strikingly for free

Visual editor

Despite its strong focus on large ecommerce sites, BigCommerce comes with a simple drag and drop editor that allows you to build a professional ecommerce site without any coding.

High level of customization

All BigCommerce themes come with inbuilt HTML, CSS, and Javascript, giving you a very high level of customization. Besides the themes, BigCommerce also allows you to customize every aspect of your checkout process.

Multiple payment gateways

BigCommerce offers native integration with hundreds of payment processors, including PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Braintree, and so on. You can also configure your ecommerce website to accept checks, bank transfers, and money orders.

Multi-currency

With BigCommerce, you can accept payments in 100 different currencies. This is highly beneficial for entrepreneurs targeting customers from all over the world.

Multichannel selling

BigCommerce has a Channel Manager feature that allows you to list, advertise, optimize, and sell your products on over 100 online marketplaces, including eBay, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Snap, Target, and Walmart.

WordPress integration

If you already have an existing WordPress site on a different web host, BigCommerce has a WordPress plugin that lets you add ecommerce features to the website.

Staging environment

This feature provides you with a local environment where you can develop and test changes to your ecommerce website without causing any site downtime. Once you’re happy with the changes, you can push them to the live site.

Zapier integration

BigCommerce has native integration with Zapier, which lets you connect your online store to all your favorite third-party apps and automate your tasks.

Try BigCommerce for free

Stylish templates

Big Cartel has stylish templates that will give your online store a professional look. What’s more, Big Cartel doesn’t display any ads on your online store, even if you’re on the free plan.

Custom domain

Unlike other ecommerce builders, which force you to use their subdomain on the free plan, Big Cartel lets you buy a custom domain name and connect it to a store built under the free plan. This helps keep your costs low while making your store look professional.

Five products

You can sell up to five different products on Big Cartel’s free plan, which is more than you’ll get on some free plans. Unfortunately, you can’t sell digital products on the free plan.

Order management

Big Cartel has an order dashboard that lets you view and track customer orders, send confirmation emails to clients, export order histories, print shipping labels, and so on.

Search engine optimization

Big Cartel gives you control over elements like your product page URLs, which you can optimize to boost your search rankings. The platform also gives you regular tips on how to improve your site’s rankings.

Mobile app

Big Cartel provides a mobile app that you can use to conveniently access and manage your store on the go.

Try Big Cartel for free

Instant website builder

This feature lets you build a one-page online storefront in just a few minutes. It also comes packed with templates and design elements that will help you create a beautiful storefront.

10 products

Ecwid’s free plan limits you to only ten different products. The free plan doesn’t allow you to sell digital products or subscriptions.

Inbuilt marketing tools

The free plan lets you set up, launch, and monitor ads on Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Ecwid also has inbuilt Mailchimp integration, but it’s not available on the free plan.

Sell on multiple sites

You can use the same account to sell your products on multiple websites, which is a great way to increase your reach and boost your sales.

Mobile responsive shopping cart

Ecwid knows that more people buy on mobile than on desktop, so they offer a mobile-optimized shopping cart, even on the free plan.

Compatible with multiple platforms

You can use Ecwid’s free plan to add ecommerce capabilities on a wide range of website platforms, including WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Joomla, Blogger, Squarespace, Tumblr, and more.

Try Ecwid for free

Easy to use builder

WebStarts has a simple website builder that turns building and customizing your website into a smooth experience. To change the layout of your online store, you simply need to drag elements around the page and place them where you want.

Apps

WebStarts has a wide range of apps that let you add various functionalities and features to your online store. These include form builders, SEO apps, calendars, membership apps, maps, and so on.

Multiple product types

WebStarts supports physical products and downloadable digital products like ebooks, software, videos, and music. For physical products, you can sell different varieties of the same product based on things like material, color, size, and more.

Coupon codes

Boost conversions by offering coupon codes and discounts to your customers. The discount codes can be configured by amount or percentage.

Custom shipping

WebStart doesn’t limit you to a single shipping rate. You can offer free shipping, flat rate shipping, weight-based shipping, and so on.

Product search

If you have a wide selection of products, it can be challenging for your customers to find the right product. WebStart has a product search function that makes it easier for customers to find what they want. Customers can also filter search results by price, relevance, size, and other criteria.

Multiple payment processors

WebStarts is compatible with multiple payment processors, including Stripe, WePay, and Authorize.net.

Try WebStarts for free

Full ecommerce website

Mozello’s free plan allows you to create a full ecommerce website with marketing features, multiple pages, multiple products, product variations, and so much more.

Up to five products

While you can list products and start selling on Mozello’s free plan, the free plan allows you to sell no more than five unique products at a time. You can upload as many product photos as you want. The free store supports 1 product option and up to 5 product variants.

Multilingual support

This is one of Mozella’s best features. The platform supports over 60 languages, even on the free plan. Unfortunately, Mozella doesn’t have an auto-translation feature. You have to translate your website content manually. Mozella then lets your site visitors choose their preferred language.

Rich theme selection

Mozello has a rich selection of themes, which you can customize to match your store’s brand.

Mozello subdomain

When you create an ecommerce site using Mozello’s free plan, you get a customizable mozello.com subdomain for free. Mozello also includes their branding on your website footer.

Mobile optimization

All ecommerce websites created using Mozello, including those under the free plan, are automatically optimized for mobile devices.

Marketing features

The Mozello free online store comes with in-built marketing features, including integration with popular social networks, Facebook Pixel support, Google Analytics support, and customizable SEO features.

Payments support

Mozello’s free plan supports online payments through PayPal, as well as cash and bank transfer payments.

Try Mozello’s for free

Can I create an ecommerce website for free?

Yes, it’s possible to create an ecommerce website for free. You can either do this with free plans on ecommerce site builders like Square Online or by signing up for a free trial on ecommerce platforms like Squarespace and Shopify. However, you should keep in mind that most free online stores have many limitations.

What’s the most affordable ecommerce platform?

The most affordable ecommerce platform is Mozello. It has a free forever plan, while its paid plans start at just $8 per month. Mozello’s most expensive plan costs just $18 per month.

Square Online is another affordable ecommerce site builder that offers great value for money. It has a free forever plan with many useful features, while its lowest plan starts at just $12 per month.

How long does it take to build an ecommerce store?

Will my SEO be okay with free online store builders?

Although some free website builders have some inbuilt SEO tools, these tools are often very limited. In addition, you don’t have much control over these SEO elements, so you’re pretty much stuck with what you get. If you want total control over your store’s SEO, you should consider upgrading to a paid plan.