The ecommerce business industry is exploding. Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal all showed us that ecommerce truly is the future. In the early stage, eCommerce platforms used to cost lacs which kept many small businesses from creating an online store. Luckily now there are several popular eCommerce platforms that offer free or low cost options.
Whether you’re launching an online-only business or you’re expanding your brick-and-mortar business into digital territory, you need an ecommerce platform to do it. Better yet, take advantage of one of the best free ecommerce platforms. They’ll enable you to build, manage, and grow your online store for a zero-dollar monthly fee.
The ecommerce industry is assisting in the next wave for change in the Indian economy as well and if you’ve been thinking about putting forward a foot into its world of infinite profits, then the clock is running, the time is opportune to start your own ecommerce business in India.
If you’re new to the world of online retail and are looking to step into ecommerce for the first time, there can be a lot of learning required. It’s not immediately obvious what’s required to get a new online business off the drawing board and into production.
This Picture shows that how rapidly Ecommerce Business is Growing.
Here’s a step that will guide on how to start your own E-Commerce business in India.
Step 1: Decide on a brand
Step 2: Secure your domain name
Step 3: Choose the right ecommerce platform
Step 4: A secure (SSL) certificate is a must
Step 5: Choose the right hosting package
Step 6: Secure an internet merchant account (IMA)
Step 7: Choose a payment service provider (PSP)
Step 8: GDPR, terms and conditions
Step 9: Ongoing digital marketing
Now let’s take a look at the best E-Commerce platforms that you can use to make money online and grow your business.
- BigCommerce
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Weebly
- Wix E-Commerce
- Square online
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is the best overall E-Commerce platform. BigCommerce is another extremely popular ecommerce store builder among small and enterprise-level business owners alike, and it’s the platform of choice for major companies like Skullcandy, Ben & Jerry’s, and Camelbak. Its vigorous product search engine makes it ideal for larger retail brands. It’s also a good choice for people who want to start an ecommerce store, or who have a brick and mortar store and want to expand their operations to include online orders. Its available tools make it possible for any niche or industry to be successful.
The interface allows you to customize your online shop without having to know how to code by using any of the customizable templates to design your store, sell and market your products. It’s aimed at those without so much web development skills, but it also allows tech-known people to tweak the HTML and CSS.
BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial plan. But they’re currently running an offer that gives new users their first three months for free. That gives you more than enough time to build your store, get your bearings, start selling, and decide whether you want to move forward with a paid plan.
BigCommerce’s plans grow according to sales volume, rather than product limits, as all three plans (plus a fourth, customized plan, which is suitable for large businesses) allow unlimited products. Something to keep in mind when you’re considering which of their plans to sign up for.
- Standard: $29.95 per month
- Plus: $79.95 per month
- Pro: $299.95 per month
- Customized Plan: They charge prize according to Featured utilization
Shopify
Shopify is a software solution that allows you to build an online store quickly and easily. It has all the functionality you need to design a store, Display products online, Track inventory, Accept payments, Calculate shipping as well as tax rates, and a lot more. This service is what you, as a user, pay for and get.
Shopify is the best platform at selling. If you plan to drop ship, rely on Facebook Ads or Instagram marketing – this is the best choice.
It’s easy to set up the online store with Shopify’s drag and drop interface. Most beginners to website development can get the hang of it in a few minutes.
The biggest Disadvantage is that they had rated poorly in SEO in consecutive studies.
Subscription: Shopify offers three subscription plans. All of them are paid, but they also all offer a fairly generous 14-day free trial period. During that time, you can build a website, get a feel for the interface, and explore Shopify’s many features without spending a single cent.
- Basic Shopify: $29 per month
- Shopify: $79 per month
- Advanced Shopify: $299 per month
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform. It’s a completely free software that you can download and run on any web hosting provider. It is a free, open-source ecommerce plugin that enables WordPress users to sell both digital and physical items on their websites. But you’ll need to have an existing WordPress website (or build one first) in order to use WooCommerce. Since it’s open-source, it’s infinitely customizable and scalable, though that also means that you need to have some programming experience to fully take advantage of this option.
Since it fully works with WordPress to turn any website into a functional ecommerce store. Also, there are extensions available for integrating payment gateways, social media, email marketing, 1-click selling, and shipping.
WooCommerce uses their own payment processor, WooCommerce Payments, to facilitate online payments. Though you can also choose among other popular payment gateways (think Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.Net) through the platform’s extensive add-on library.
Since WooCommerce doesn’t provide hosting for you, you’ll need to buy web hosting and a domain name to make sure your website can be accessed by users worldwide. WooCommerce officially recommend using either Bluehost or SiteGround. They are both among the largest hosting companies in the world.
Subscription: WooCommerce’s free plugin offers thousands of free themes and free add-ons. You can also expect things like automatic tax calculation, discounts and coupons, inventory management, analytics, shipping options, and the ability to add a blog to help boost your SEO (though all WooCommerce stores come with built-in SEO tools). Perhaps most importantly, their free plan enables you to sell unlimited products and include unlimited pictures in your product listings, so it’s a much more scalable option than most other free ecommerce platforms out there.
Weebly
Another great free ecommerce platform is Weebly. It was Founded in 2006 and with about 40 million customers, Weebly is a great option for someone focusing for a simple store with marketing automation built in. That will cost you $38 per month vs. using Shopify and Active Campaign ($29 + $17). But if you plan to do any type of marketing, you’ll quickly outgrow Weebly. Don’t use Weebly if SEO is important to you.
There’s a drag and drop editing tool and an option to use HTML and CSS to customize your template. About that, there are many free themes with premium themes at around $45. Not all are mobile responsive though so choose carefully.
Weebly offers a completely free ecommerce plan, it won’t allow you to connect your own domain name and will display Weebly ads—which isn’t the most professional look for a small business. However, you will still have a beautifully designed website with ecommerce functionality, marketing tools, and more.
Subscription:
Free plan include shopping cart functionality, items (including badges and options), quick shop, automatic tax calculator, in-store pickup option, inventory management, coupons, and gift cards.
Weebly offers greater functionality with their Personal, Professional, and Performance plans, which cost $5, $12, or $25 per month when billed annually, respectively. For more info visit Weebly.
Wix E-Commerce
Wix ecommerce has come a long way in a few years. Wix is a major potency in the ecommerce space and they deliver incredible value for soloprenuers and small ecommerce businesses. Wix’s ecommerce features have evolved overly in a few years, they now offer multi channels integration, abandoned cart recovery, dropship and print on demand capabilities.
The best thing about this specific platform is this- even free users can take benefits of its inborn drag-and-drop website builder to design an entire site without knowing coding. As a fact, you should be able to complete a basic free website within a couple of minutes.
Wix comes with a boundless collection of ingenious site themes and templates. They are all designed by professionals for extra responsiveness and mobile optimization.
The free plan is particularly ideal for beginners who need powerful tools for building and hosting a standard business website. It gives access to a wide array of customizable predesigned templates plus additional icons, clip arts, and images.
Subscription: They offer four types of plans (in India):
Free plan: includes free templates, clip arts.
Business Basic: $4 per month if billed annually.
Business Unlimited: $5 per month if billed annually.
Business VIP: $8 per month if billed annually.
Square Online
This website suite for small business owners. They enables users to sell digital and physical goods—and, it’s free to use. The only costs you’re responsible for here are Square’s payment processing fees, which cost 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. (But you can choose Stripe or PayPal as your payment processor instead.)
In addition, the platform offers a countless extensive features plus integrations that not only support brick and mortar businesses, but also ecommerce websites.
Like others on this list, Square’s ecommerce platform offers paid plans for more advanced features, though their free plan offers very small ecommerce business owners all the tools they need to get their online stores up and running.
Square Online Store offers users to download free templates to build their stores, which are built-in with SEO tools and optimized for mobile. Their online shopping cart is fully integrated out with features like an automatic tax calculator, shipping and pickup options, and the option to offer discounts and gift cards.
Other features available with Square Online Store’s free plan include an Instagram and Pinterest integration, free SSL security, and tons of marketing and analytics tools. Also important: Their free plan allows you to sell unlimited products, so it can grow with you.
Subscription:
Free plan: The only costs you’re responsible for here are Square’s payment processing fees, which cost 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Professional Plan: $12 per month and transaction cost.
Performance Plan: $26 per month and transaction cost.
Premium Plan: $72 per month and transaction cost.
Bottom Line
So which is the best free eCommerce platform for you? That depends on what you’re looking for.
If you want to start cheap and have full freedom to grow your business, then WooCommerce is the best option.
These all of the mentioned ecommerce platforms are some of the best ecommerce platforms out there. We hope this article helped you learn about the best free eCommerce platforms to get started with. Instead, you’ll need to consider which features you want or need, the type of business you’re running, and, of course, how much you’re willing to spend.
The good thing about free platforms or trial periods, of course, is the lack of financial risk. So if you’re not yet sure which of these ecommerce platforms is right for you, then I would recommend you to go for trial period.
