10 Best Free Ecommerce Platforms In 2023

Ecwid is a super easy to use, free ecommerce platform with instant site-building boasting over 70 different website templates to choose from. On the free plan, you have the ability to add a store to any website as well as to sell simultaneously on multiple sites.

You can connect directly to popular social media advertising suites for promotions and marketing; although actual selling through Instagram and Facebook is limited to paid plan subscribers only. For website hosting options, Ecwid works on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, Blogger, and Tumblr. You can also connect it to Facebook Pixel and/or Apple Pay (via Stripe) for additional functionality. Additional integrations unlock with a paid plan.

It comes with a mobile responsive shopping cart so customers can shop from their phones.

Ecwid is free to use for 10 products and a website store (no social media).

Square Online is the product of the payment processing giant Square, which also offers a (paid!) mobile-ready POS service. The product’s free version lets you do a lot of things you need to get your feet off the ground as an ecommerce business. It lets you sync inventory from all other channels and accept payment using the Square POS solution (for a cost) or other payment processing methods.

The product dashboard is clear and precise with no unnecessary clutter. It lets you track product sales, customer journeys, and abandoned cart recovery. In terms of customization, the product feels limited. Square Online integrates with WooCommerce, Magento, WordPress, BigCommerce, and Shopify.

Support is available via phone, email, and live chat. The knowledge base also covers a vast aspect of problems with over 180 articles.

Square Online’s free forever plan lets you start your project with an option to upgrade to the paid plan at $16/month for additional features.

Square POS will charge you per transaction but you are not obligated to use their system for payment processing.

NopCommerce is a beginner-friendly, open-source ecommerce platform that is based on ASP.NET. The product can be hosted with the user’s web hosting service or a product partner of NopCommerce. In terms of inventory management, the product has abandoned cart recovery, product catalog, and listings.

NopCommerce integrates with apps like Amazon and eBay. The checkout experience comes with tax and shipping calculators, along with a single-click checkout. In terms of support, the free plan comes with a knowledge base and a forum community. The product also has video tutorials and webinars.

NopCommerce is free to download either with or without the source code.

PrestaShop enables startups to test their MVP with a fully-functional online store for free. The product allows you to edit the software according to your custom needs. It covers all basics like customizing the store, processing payments, managing the store, and more. It is a great fit for small businesses looking to get into ecommerce.

PrestaShop integrates with apps like Mailchimp, Zendesk, LiveChat, LiveAgent, ActiveCampaign, and other popular apps. Customer support is a bit on the slower side but is backed by good and comprehensive documentation.

PrestaShop is free to download and use.

OpenCart is a free, open-source platform for your ecommerce business with a marketplace of 13 000+ additional extensions (some free and some paid). This tool lets you manage multiple store locations through one interface with the ability to customize each site and pricing schema. You can upload product images and tag variants, whether it’s according to size, color, or other differentiating indicators.

OpenCart can handle discounts, coupons, specials, and affiliates for purchase processing. They connect with PayPal, eBay, Amazon, MailChimp, GoogleAnalytics, Facebook, WordPress, and Microsoft Excel. For support, they have a comprehensive community forum.

OpenCart is free to use and open source.

Magento, now Adobe Commerce, is an open-source ecommerce platform from Adobe. It comes with features like catalog management, integrated checkout, shipping, payment, site search, and other important features needed to take your ecommerce business off the ground. Magento also gives you the ability to create multilingual sites.

The Adobe Commerce open source edition can handle all of your ecommerce basics and you can level up to their (paid) commercial plan if you ever find yourself needing to scale quickly. One downside of the app is that the more customizations/add-ons you implement, the slower your site tends to run.

For a free ecommerce platform, that’s not a dealbreaker—just keep your extensions lean!

Adobe Commerce open source is free to use with some feature limitations compared to their commercial plan.

IM Creator offers highly professional and sleek-looking templates supported by a building block-based interface. It offers a seamless process of choosing a design, customizing it according to your brand aesthetics, connecting to a domain, and publishing it. It comes with automatic text resizing (look, mom, no hands!), free custom email solution, and more. The templates provide you with sleek UX which can be great for SEO.

In terms of inventory management, it has cataloging, data import/export, and order management. In terms of support, there is a knowledge base and documentation to get your queries answered. IM Creator integrates with Mailchimp, Paypal, and other common ecommerce operations software. Overall, this can be a good upgrade from your existing website if you focus on ecommerce operations.

IM Creator is free to use for students, artists, and nonprofits. Apply on their site to see if you qualify.

CubeCart is a free ecommerce script with a full list of features to sell online with ease. Its open-source software license comes with unlimited orders, products, and categories. The ecommerce script also has features like coupons, gift certificates, gift cards, quick shipping, and quotes.

CubeCart comes with bulk product price updates, bulk product category management, catalog search with advanced search, stock control on product options with SKUs, and other nuanced features needed for efficient product management. Cube Cart works out of the box with PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, LiveChat, Smarttarget, and other similar apps.

CubeCart is free to use and open source, except if you go for its cubecart store product. Professional technical support costs money but you can get around this using their community forums and knowledge base.

Zendrop connects online merchants and drop shippers with reliable suppliers. Use this to filter out unreliable suppliers in platforms like AliExpress that burden merchants with long shipping times and nonexistent customer support.

Zendrop promises fast and trackable shipping as well as custom branding on packages based on your brand aesthetics. The product enables auto-fulfillment of orders. The US fulfillment allows ordering in bulk and fulfillment of physical products via US warehouses.

This cuts down shipping time by 2-5 days. Ecommerce analytics can be studied via a real-time reporting dashboard. Support is available via live chat and email.

Zendrop is free forever. Certain advanced functionality is limited to their paid plan.

WooCommerce is a fully customizable ecommerce platform that’s built-in WordPress. It offers product listing, catalog management, and configurable shipping options. Since it’s completely open-source, there are no limits to your bandwidth. You can add unlimited products and take unlimited users. The catch is that it does not provide hosting on its own—you will have to choose from a free or paid WordPress plan.

WooCommerce works out of the box with different payment gateways and payment methods like Stripe, PayPal, and ShipStation. This gives customers the option to buy from you using their debit or credit card. Support is available via extensive step guide documentation.

WooCommerce is completely free to use with a WordPress.com domain name. A non-WP URL will cost you extra (through WordPress, not WooCommerce).