7 Best Free Ecommerce Website Builders for 2022

Building a free ecommerce website can be difficult. You want an online store that looks professional and includes essential features like inventory management and marketing integrations. However, you don’t want to spend hours setting up your store, only to realize your free ecommerce website will have pesky ads unless you pay for a $15-per-month “upgrade.”

We took a close look at all the free ecommerce website builders on the market and picked out seven that genuinely offer a great set of tools for free, and by that, we mean free forever.

Based on our evaluations, the best free ecommerce website builders for 2022 are:

• Best overall: Square Online
• Best for WordPress users: WooCommerce
• Best free Shopify alternative: Shift4Shop
• Best for developers: PrestaShop
• Best for Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace users: Ecwid
• Best for artists and creatives: Big Cartel
• Best for international sellers: Mozello

While all of the above are free to use, you will have to pay a credit card processing fee, typically 2.9% plus 30 cents, when you make a sale. Besides that, none of these charge commission or have any hidden fees. There are optional paid upgrades, and we’ll cover those in more detail below.

Best Free Ecommerce Website Builders Compared

Note: The above features reflect the forever-free plans only.

Quiz: Find Out Which Free Ecommerce Platform Fits Your Business Needs

Are you not sure which free ecommerce website builder is right for you? Take this four-question quiz for our recommendation (you won’t be redirected to another screen):

Square Online: Best Overall Free Ecommerce Website Builder

During our evaluation, we tested a lot of free ecommerce website builders and realized most of them were riddled with limitations, whether missing features, product limits, or ad displays on website pages. What we like about Square Online is that it has shockingly few limitations. It’s the closest you can get to creating a complete and professional web store without even needing to enter a credit card, making Square Online the best free ecommerce website builder for small businesses.

Square Online’s forever-free plan lets you list an unlimited number of products (physical or digital), track inventory, manage SEO, and integrate marketing software like Mailchimp—things you might not need right away but are very nice to have as you grow.

Square Online earned 4.4 out of 5 in our evaluation. It earned perfect points for having no product limits, one-click checkout options, and the ability to sell digital products. It is also the only platform that allows you to sell online or mobile through its POS products, even on a free plan. The main downside to Square is that you cannot connect a custom domain with a free account. However, the yourstore.square.site subdomain that’s provided for free is still more professional than most.

What’s Included in Square Online’s Free Plan

• Unlimited products: List and sell unlimited physical and digital products like e-books and videos with no website storage or photo upload limits.
• Full website: You can create a complete website with the essential pages, such as contact forms, an email sign-up, and more, and customize it with your logo and colors. The setup is intuitive and quick; we were able to build a demo site in a few hours when we tested its platform. However, you cannot edit the layout or add integrations compared with other platforms like WooCommerce and PrestaShop. What Square Online lacks in layout customization, it makes up for in speed. You can add blank pages, a gallery, and the usual main navigation pages a website has, such as a Contact Us page.

• Coupon codes: Create coupon codes that visitors can enter to receive a percentage or dollar amount discount or free shipping. Coupons can be valid for all orders, orders over a certain amount, or specific items.
• Subdomain: Free plans come with a customizable square.site subdomain, so your website will appear as yourstore.square.site on the address bar.
• Square branded footer: Free websites also display “Powered by Square” on the footer of each page. It’s subtle and doesn’t look too bad compared to other free websites. However, to remove it, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Professional edition ($12 per month).
• Customer support: Support for Square Online is a little tricky to reach. You have to chat with its support robot and request to speak with a representative. Phone and live chat support are available weekdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time and weekends from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. During my evaluation, it took about 30 minutes to connect to a live support agent and one business day to respond through email.

When to Upgrade Square Online

• Use a custom domain: One of the main reasons to upgrade from the free plan is to use your domain name, www.yourstore.com, instead of yourstore.square.site. To do this, you’ll need to upgrade to Square Online’s Professional plan ($12 per month), which includes a free custom domain that’s good for a year.
• Shipping tools: Upgrading to the Performance plan ($26 per month) allows you to purchase discounted shipping labels for FedEx, UPS, USPS, and DHL straight from Square Online. With a Premium account ($72 per month), you can use a shipping calculator that charges customers real-time shipping rates based on their location and order weight. If you aren’t ready to upgrade yet, note that with WooCommerce and Ecwid, you can access some of these shipping tools for free.
• Customer reviews: If you want to give customers the ability to leave reviews of your products, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Performance plan ($26 per month).

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WooCommerce: Best for WordPress Users

WooCommerce is one of the few free ecommerce platforms that offer jam-packed features. It lets you sell unlimited digital and/or physical products, manage inventory, set up coupons, handle customer reviews, and use a USPS shipping calculator—and that’s just scratching the surface.

In our evaluation, WooCommerce came in right behind Square Online, with a score of 4.14 out of 5. WooCommerce’s extensive third-party integrations and unlimited storage earned this high software marks. However, the need to pay for customer support and a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate prevented it from reaching a perfect score.

WooCommerce requires you to use WordPress, which is free but can be complicated to set up and requires hosting. Square Online and Big Cartel are simpler options if you’re looking for something you can set up quickly. However, for tech-oriented people that don’t mind getting their hands dirty, WooCommerce offers unparalleled options.

When we tested WooCommerce’s platform, we found that the possibilities are endless when it comes to building your online store. Whatever you might need as your store grows, WooCommerce can accommodate with a feature, but it comes usually as a paid extension. It can also be overwhelming if you’re unfamiliar with WordPress, installing plugins, and coding.

What’s Included in WooCommerce’s Free Plan

• Unlimited products: You can list an unlimited number of products, including physical and digital goods (like e-books and videos). WooCommerce also includes tools to manage your inventory, such as low stock alerts.
• USPS integration: Calculate the shipping price in real time when a customer checks out, then print discounted USPS postage straight from WooCommerce with the customer’s name and address already filled in. You can integrate other carriers like UPS and FedEx for an additional fee.
• Coupon codes: WooCommerce lets you create coupon codes for discounts on the customer’s order. You can also create special rules, such as requiring a minimum spend and excluding certain items.
• Product reviews: Allow customers to rate and submit reviews of your products.
• Support: WooCommerce does not have customer support available to free users, although there is a help forum where you can ask other users questions.

When to Upgrade WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin and offers several third-party integrations. You can choose to pay for the following integrations:

• SEO: WooCommerce does not include great SEO tools out-of-the-box, so many users will install an SEO plugin like Yoast to help them edit search engine titles and descriptions for their products and pages.
• Multilanguage capability: An extension is required to display your site in multiple languages and this can cost around $200 per year.
• Marketing: Another common way users upgrade WooCommerce is by installing one of the dozens of marketing extensions. You can sell on Facebook, start an affiliate program, or create targeted email campaigns with unique offers based on a customer’s previous purchases. Prices range from $0 to hundreds of dollars per year.

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Shift4Shop: Best Free Shopify Alternative

Shift4Shop (formerly known as 3dcart), is a new addition to our best free ecommerce platform roster. During our evaluation, we were surprised that it offers several advanced ecommerce features, which are available in Shopify’s higher tiers, for free. Some of its features include search engine optimization, mobile website templates, sales tracking, and free domain name registration.

While its free plan sounds too good to be true, don’t worry—Shift4Shop doesn’t have any hidden charges. Note, though, that Shift4Shop’s free End-to-End plan is only available for US merchants provided they use its built-in payment provider, Shift4Payments.

Shift4Shop scored a 4.14 out of 5 in our evaluation. It earned high marks in almost all of our criteria—pricing and payments, features, and web builder—but missed a lot of points because of mixed reviews about its customer service and a complicated user interface. When setting up our own account, we also ran into issues such as error messages and pages not responding.

What’s Included in Shift4Shop’s Free Plan

• Free domain
• Website builder: 50-plus mobile-ready website themes with a built-in blog.
• Product management features: Sell an unlimited number of products—even digital goods—categories and images. You can also set up upsell and cross-sell for your products and create waiting lists.
• Multichannel selling: Sell your products on sales channels, such as Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, eBay, and Google Shopping Feed.
• Marketing tools: There is a wealth of marketing tools available on the free plan including product reviews, Google customer reviews, wish lists, gift certificates, affiliate programs, coupons and discounts, and Mailchimp or Aweber integrations.
• SEO: This is an area where the software excels. It lets you set up 301 redirects, navigation and breadcrumb links, customizable meta descriptions, and more. Integration with Google analytics is also available. What we like is that it has pop-ups and prompts that remind you to fill in fields like image alt tags and meta descriptions.

When to Upgrade Shift4Shop

• More payment provider options: If you would like to have the freedom to choose another payment provider that is a better fit for your business, you need to upgrade to a paid tier.
• Automation features: Shift4Shop’s highest plan, Pro ($229/month), unlocks automations features, such as auto-shipping, autoresponder email campaigns, pre-orders, and back-in-stock notifications.

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PrestaShop: Best Open-source Platform for Developers

PrestaShop provides features for store customization, inventory management, payment processing, and marketing campaigns. You can build your features as needed but will need to code them yourself or use a developer since most of its features are open-sourced—specifically built for developers.

Its software is free to download and install as long as your computer and hosting meet its minimum requirements. Extensions are available in its official marketplace, PrestaShop Add-ons, with extension apps costing anywhere between $50 and $150 per module.

PrestaShop earned a 4.04 out of 5 in our evaluation. It earned perfect marks for the quality of its native integrations—most features are already available in the software, eliminating the need for paid add-ons from its app marketplace. However, PrestaShop’s steep learning curve and the need to pay for customer support prevented it from earning a perfect score.

What’s Included in PrestaShop’s Free Plan

• Inventory management: PrestaShop offers basic and advanced inventory management solutions. Once you enable advanced stock management, you can specify quantities for every product (or combination) in your store, select the warehouse in which the product is stored (with multiple carriers), track inventory movements, current product status, and more.
• Payment processing: You can set up payment methods such as payments by invoice, COD, check, bank transfers, credit cards, subscriptions, and POS or payment via physical stores.
• Marketing: You can enable features for promo codes, coupons, and discounts, as well as have price rules like special offers based on product, customer, or order. You can also make abandoned cart recovery and engagement emails.
• Customer support: Support is a premium (paid) service. However, PrestaShop has a large and supportive community that contributes to its forum or help center.

When to Upgrade PrestaShop

• Customized website themes: While PrestaShop offers free website templates, most free offerings have limited customization abilities or unappealing designs.
• Marketplace selling: If you want to connect your store to common marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Google Shopping, you’d need to pay for an extension module.

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Ecwid: Best for Wix, Squarespace & Blogger Users

Ecwid lets you sell online—through its storefront, an existing site, social media channels, and marketplaces—and in person through its mobile app. You can create a new online store or integrate a checkout into existing Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and GoDaddy sites. This option makes it a good fit to add an affordable checkout to your existing website. Ecwid can be integrated with these platforms and any other website builders where you can insert custom code.

Based on our evaluation, Ecwid scored 3.36 out of 5. Free shipping calculators and the ability to sell anywhere contributed to Ecwid’s high score. Ecwid’s free plan, unfortunately, is limited to 10 products and doesn’t provide the ability to track inventory or offer coupon codes. These features are unlocked when you upgrade to any of its paid tiers.

We found Ecwid’s interface very easy to use. You can set up product variations and related products despite the product limit. It has detailed instructions on how to embed the Ecwid store depending on the website platform you are already using. Its free standalone website, Instant Site, lacks a lot of customization options but can do a decent job if you are less concerned about additional design features and just want to sell products.

What’s Included in Ecwid’s Free Plan

• Up to 10 products: Free users can list up to 10 unique products at a time. Customers can pay with a credit card, which can be processed through PayPal, Stripe, Square, and more than 60 other payment gateways. Free users cannot sell digital items like e-books and videos.
• Link to website: While Ecwid can be set up as a free standalone site, most users integrate it with their existing website. Ecwid has official integrations with Wix, Weebly, and WordPress, allowing you to add your free Ecwid store with just a few clicks. For other website builders like Squarespace, you can integrate Ecwid by copying and pasting HTML code.
• Shipping calculators: Ecwid is the only free ecommerce website builder that has free shipping calculators for all the major US carriers, Canada Post, Royal Mail, and more. This means you can charge customers actual shipping rates based on their location and package weight. However, you cannot purchase shipping labels straight from Ecwid unless you integrate an app like ShipStation.
• Support: For free users, there is only email support available. Live chat and phone support are available to paying customers.

When to Upgrade Ecwid

• List more products: A Venture plan ($12.50 per month) lets you list up to 100 products at a time, whereas a Business plan ($29.17 per month) allows you up to 2,500. Meanwhile, an Unlimited plan ($83.30 per month) enables you to post unlimited products.
• Custom domain: If you’re using Ecwid to host your website, you can use a custom domain such as www.yourstore.com, instead of the storename.company.site domain that’s included for free.
• Multichannel selling: One of the big perks of using Ecwid is that you can integrate your online store with more than one website—and you can do that even with a free account. However, with a Business account ($29.17 per month), you can also list your products on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, and Instagram. Some additional fees may apply.
• Multilanguage: Ecwid offers multilanguage functionality for users on the Business plan ($29.17 per month).
• Coupon codes: Another perk for paid users is creating promotional coupons for customers to use at their store. Ecwid gives you a lot of control over coupons as you can specify the number of times a coupon can be used, require a minimum order amount, only allow it for certain customers, or only allow it for certain items/item categories.

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Big Cartel: Best for Artists

Big Cartel was originally designed for artists and artisans and, as a result, it works best for businesses with a relatively small inventory. If you only need to sell a few products at a time, Big Cartel is tough to beat. Its templates are stylish and modern and, unlike many competitors, don’t include pesky ads. Typically, there’s a subtle Big Cartel logo on the footer, which you can remove using code.

Its product limit and nonexistent inventory tracking resulted in Big Cartel only earning a 2.62 out of 5 in our evaluation. While Big Cartel is not ideal for scaling an ecommerce business, it’s an ideal and popular choice for selling limited product runs or unique art pieces as you create them.

What’s Included in Big Cartel’s Free Plan

• Use a custom domain: Besides WooCommerce and PrestaShop, Big Cartel is the only free ecommerce website builder we’re aware of that lets you connect a custom domain, such as www.yourstore.com. If you don’t own a custom domain, you can use a Big Cartel subdomain, like yourstore.BigCartel.com, for free.
• Up to five products: Free plans list up to five unique products at a time, with one photo per item. Customers can check out using a credit card, which is processed through PayPal or Stripe. Free users cannot sell digital items like e-books and videos.
• Full website: Create a complete website with multiple pages and a contact form. Big Cartel lets you choose from many stylish themes that you can customize with your own logo and colors. Big Cartel gives you a surprising amount of control over your website’s layout and lets you integrate a small but solid set of apps, including Mailchimp, ShipStation, and live chat apps.
• Support: Big Cartel has email support available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.Eastern time, including weekends. During my evaluation, I submitted a question after hours and received a helpful response first thing in the morning.

When to Upgrade Big Cartel

• More products and photos: The most prominent reason to upgrade Big Cartel is to add more than five products and upload more than one photo per item. The $10 per month edition lets you sell up to 50 products, with the $20 per month edition 250 and the $30 per month up to 500. All paid versions of Big Cartel also let you sell digital items.
• Coupons: All paid versions of Big Cartel allow you to create digital coupons for customers. This can be a percentage or dollar amount discount or free shipping.
• More SEO options: Neither free nor paid versions of Big Cartel allow you to edit the SEO title and description of products. For most users, this won’t be an issue since Big Cartel simply generates them automatically. However, those looking for more SEO control should consider Square or WooCommerce instead.

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Mozello: Best for International Sellers

Mozello is one of the few free ecommerce platforms that let you display your website in multiple languages. Choose from more than 60 languages and let your customers change the language by clicking a link at the top of your site.

Based on our evaluation, Mozello earned a 2.35 out of 5 score. Mozello is extremely easy to use and is a solid website builder; however, this also translates to limitations on more advanced ecommerce features—related products and marketing integrations, for example, are not available.

What’s Included in Mozello’s Free Plan

• Up to five products: Free users can list up to five unique products at a time. Unlike Big Cartel, you aren’t limited by how many photos you can upload, but there is an overall storage limit of 500MB for free accounts.
• Full website: Mozello makes it easy to create a full website with multiple pages and a contact form. Along with Square and Big Cartel, it’s easily the fastest ecommerce website to get up and running. That said, its design options are considerably more limited, and it has very few integrations.
• Multilanguage: Mozello is the only free ecommerce website builder on our list that supports multilanguage sites, and it’s the only one we’re aware of that covers more than 60 languages worldwide. Simply choose which languages you want to support and write your website content like product titles and descriptions for each language. At the top of your site, visitors will click which language they want to see.
• Subdomain: Free websites come with a customizable mozello.com subdomain, so your website will appear as yourstore.mozello.com on the address bar.
• Mozello footer: Free websites also display a small message on the footer that reads, “Created with Mozello—the world’s easiest to use website builder.” While it doesn’t stand out too bad, it makes the website a bit less classy than the others on this list—particularly Big Cartel, Ecwid, and WooCommerce.
• Support: Mozello has free email support in English. I sent a few questions during my evaluation and received a detailed and personalized response three hours later. While there is a phone support line, the office is based in Eastern Europe, so you will have to call early in the morning to reach them and may incur international charges.

When to Upgrade Mozello

• More products and storage: One of the main reasons to upgrade is to add more products and increase your storage for photos, videos, and other types of files. The $7 per month plan allows up to 15 items and 50GB of storage, while the $14 per month plan allows unlimited items and unlimited storage.
• Custom domain: Another key reason to upgrade is to use a custom domain instead of the yourstore.mozello.com subdomain, which is provided for free. All paid users can do this (starting at $7 per month), and a custom domain is even provided for free for one year. However, you can also connect a domain purchased from an outside registrar.
• SSL certificate: Paid users (starting at $7 per month) can enable SSL encryption, make your website more secure, and change your URL from HTTP to HTTPS. This makes your website more appealing to search engines and can help you rank higher in the results. Free accounts get HTTPS during checkout automatically to secure credit card information, but the rest of the site is HTTP.
• Coupon codes: Paid users can create promotional coupons for customers to use at their store.

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How We Evaluated Free Ecommerce Website Builders

Similar to how we evaluated ecommerce software, we compared these seven ecommerce platforms based on on-site builder tools, sales and product features, and ease of use. However, we also considered each system’s limitations and only considered features available in forever-free plans. Our retail and ecommerce experts also weighed in and gave their evaluation of each software.

Based on the above criteria, Square Online is the best free ecommerce platform for small businesses. Square Online received the highest overall score (4.38 out of 5) according to our grading system. We have also personally found that Square Online is one of the most straightforward solutions to use, allowing you to create an online store in a few minutes.

Click through the tabs below for a more detailed breakdown of our evaluation criteria. Note that we only evaluated the free plans of each software:

Bottom Line

All free website builders come with limitations, such as only allowing the sale of a certain number of products or certain features being “locked” until you upgrade. These limitations might not be a problem when you start out, but they can present significant challenges as your online store grows and your business needs to scale.

Among the free ecommerce platforms we have reviewed, Square Online has the fewest limitations while also being completely free with no hosting fees or commission. This is why we recommend using Square Online as the best free ecommerce website builder. To start setting up your Square store, click the button below. There’s no credit card required.

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