The 6 Best Free Ecommerce Website Builders

Best overall free ecommerce website builder

Jumping up from 4.3/5 to 4.6/5 in our research, Wix has massively improved its sales features. For instance, you can now sell via Facebook and use drop shipping services.

You can build a full Wix ecommerce website at no cost with no limited trial, with access to its templates, intuitive design tools, and some customer support.

However, to actually start selling products and taking payments, you’ll need to sign up to at least the Business Basic plan (£15 per month).  Its price plans are still very affordable, though, making it one of the best platforms for small businesses.

Don’t be put off, though – you can first enjoy a free trial of your ecommerce store for 14 days to see if you like the platform. We were certainly impressed by Wix’s ecommerce features, value for money, and help and support.

Read full Wix Ecommerce Review

Shopify is one of the leading ecommerce platforms, offering a 14-day free trial period in which you can test its powerful sales features.

Those features are powerful and plentiful in equal measure, with Shopify scoring 4.7/5 for sales features (the highest of any platform). You’ll also have access to 1,200+ apps.

With plans starting at £24 per month once the free trial ends, it’s not the cheapest platform we tested, which puts against platforms like Woocommerce (as discussed in-depth in our comparison between the two). It also enforces transaction fees if you don’t use Shopify Payments, but it remains great value for money overall thanks to its range of tools and generous free trial period.

Read Full Shopify Review

Best for combining design with impressive sales features

During your 14-day free trial period, you can use Squarespace’s stunning templates and powerful design tools to build a free ecommerce website that truly stands out. It now scores 4.3/5 (up from 4.1/5 in our previous research period), thanks to its improved app store, ease of use, and customer support. What's more, it now supports five payment processors, rather than just two.

We’re sure you’ll be impressed by Squarespace (we definitely were), so you’ll need to then sign up to an ecommerce price plan if you’d like to continue selling products online through its platform. Starting from £23 per month, it’s more expensive than Square Online and Wix – however, you’re paying for superb features, and a beautiful website that can truly stand out from the competition.

Using Squarespace is the closest you can get to a professionally designed ecommerce website, which will help boost your brand image and attract more sales. Lastly, don't forget Expert Market readers can save 10% on Squarespace by entering EM10 at the checkout.

Read Full Squarespace Ecommerce Review

Best value for money

Square Online provides everything you need to start selling products – for free! Well, you do pay 1.9% per transaction instead, but it’s still your best option for creating a free ecommerce website.

It has the most generous free plan of any platform we tested, offering multi-channel integration with Instagram and Pinterest, the ability to sell unlimited products (most other platforms allow you to sell three to five products on their free plans), and automatic inventory syncing.

As with all free website builder plans, the only slight catch is that you have the platform’s branding on each of your web pages, plus a subdomain on your URL. These risk your site appearing unprofessional (or worse, untrustworthy), which can lead to lost sales.

If that’s something of concern, then you can sign up to the Professional plan at just £9 per month instead. This will connect your own website domain name, and remove the Square branding.

Best for building a website quickly

Offering the longest free trial period of them all (30 days), GoDaddy is also the quickest ecommerce platform out there.

It uses ADI (artificial design intelligence) to create a website for you in a matter of minutes, first asking you a few questions about what you’d like.

Speed isn’t everything, though – GoDaddy scored poorly during our research, gaining 3.5/5 for sales features and 2.7/5 for design functionalities. 

However, if you’re looking to get a website up and running within an hour, and a long free trial period, then GoDaddy should suffice.

Best for artists

Big Cartel’s biggest draw is its generous free plan, which enables you to sell up to five products (compared to Constant Contact’s three).

Also offering the ability to promote your products through Facebook and Instagram, Big Cartel is well suited to artists selling prints or individual items that don’t require different colour or size variants.

Like most other platforms, though, its free plan is very limited in terms of features. It also comes with a subdomain (‘.bigcartel.com’ in this case) rather than your own personalised URL, which can make your website look unprofessional. To avoid these problems, you can sign up to its Platinum plan for just £7 per month.

You’ll also need to know how to code – assuming you want to grow your Big Cartel store into something more than just a basic, forgettable website.