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Our top recommendation for a free ecommerce website builder is Wix, following our extensive research examining the best website builders on the market. We focused on the quality of various providers’ free plans and free trial periods and their sales tools, website features, design functions, and customer support.
Wix scored highly for its intuitive design and a generous 14-day free trial period. If you’re looking for a more sales-ready platform, you may consider Squarespace as a worthy alternative.
Below you’ll find a full breakdown of the six top free e-commerce website builders as well as guidance on how to choose the right provider.
The Six Best Free Ecommerce Website Builders:
| Best Overall Wix | Best for sales-specific features Shopify | Best value for money Square Online | Best for design Squarespace | Best for building a website quickly GoDaddy | Best for artists Big Cartel |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
| Score 4.7 | Score 4.6 | Score 3.7 | Score 4.7 | Score 4.2 | Score 3.1 |
| Price Range Paying for one year upfront | Price Range Paying for one year upfront | Price Range Paying for one year upfront £0-64/month (Enterprise pricing available) | Price Range Paying for one year upfront
| Price Range Paying for one year upfront £12.99 – £19.99/month | Price Range Paying for one year upfront $0 – $19.99 |
| Free Plan | Free Plan | Free Plan | Free Plan | Free Plan | Free Plan |
| Free Trial | Free Trial | Free Trial | Free Trial | Free Trial | Free Trial |
| Try Wix | Try Shopify | Try Square | Try Squarespace | Try GoDaddy | Try Now |
What is an ecommerce website builder?
An ecommerce website builder is a tool to create and manage an online store without needing to manually code. Some key features of ecommerce website builders include:
- Drag and drop interface to build pages and add products, images, text etc. This makes building a store much easier compared to coding it from scratch.
- Pre-set templates and themes to choose from to get your store up and running quickly.
- Integration with payment gateways to accept payments.
- Inventory management system to track product quantities, sales and orders.
- SEO tools to help your site’s rankings.
- Built-in analytics to view traffic sources, sales reports and other stats.
1. Wix – Best overall free ecommerce website builder
Makes it really easy to build your brand image with its intuitive design interface
Add product videos (but only on the ecommerce plans, starting from £13 per month)
14-day free trial and affordable premium plans
The amount of creative freedom can feel overwhelming at first
Only offers multi-channel integration with Instagram as an in-built feature, unlike Square which offers more in-built integrations
Jumping up from 4.3/5 to 4.9/5 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 Core plan (£14 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.
Get 10% off when you sign up for Wix today with code ‘TAKE10’
2. Shopify – Best for sales-specific features
Sell on all the big social media channels, plus Amazon, eBay, and Buzzfeed
Offers most sales-specific features of any platform we tested
Very easy to customise your features and online store
You’ll need to reformat your entire site if you decide to switch templates
It imposes transaction fees if you don’t use its own payment processor
Shopify is one of the leading ecommerce platforms, offering a 3-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 £5 per month, once the free trial ends, it’s not the cheapest platform we tested, which puts it against platforms like Woocommerce (as discussed in-depth in our Woocommerce vs. Shopify comparison). 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.
Get you first month for £1!
3. Square Online – Best value for money
Generous free plan offering multi-channel integration
Access to even more features for just £20 per month on the Plus plan
Quick and easy to set up your free ecommerce website
Free plan comes with Square ads on every page
Very limited creative freedom when designing your site
Lacks the helpful prompts and support found on Wix when setting up your site
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.
4. Squarespace – Best for design features
Best-designed templates of any platform we tested, helping your products stand out
14-day free trial and great value for money premium plans
Impressive ecommerce features, including multi-channel integration
Harder to use than Wix
Supports very few payment processors (only PayPal and Stripe)
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.
Get 10% off with code ‘EM10’
5. GoDaddy – Best for building a website quickly
Fastest and easiest-to-use platform we tested
Create up to five backup copies of your online store
Flat-fee price after the free trial to help you organise your budget
Very limited creative control due to the ADI function building everything for you
Scored 2.5/5 for website features
Cannot sell digital products
With a free trial of 7 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 decent free trial period, then GoDaddy should suffice.
6. Big Cartel – Best for artists
Generous free plan, enabling you to sell up to five products
Lots of user-friendly prompts to help you navigate the interface
One of the best free ecommerce website builders for artists
Very basic template designs with little creative flexibility
Coding is required for building a beautiful Big Cartel website (unlike on Squarespace)
Big Cartel’s biggest draw is its generous free plan, which enables you to sell up to five products.
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 for its Platinum plan for just $9.99 (USD) 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.
Buying Guide: How to choose an ecommerce web builder
Learning how to build a free commerce website is simple enough, as long as you know which platforms to use. A few platforms such as Square Online and BigCartel offer free plans which allow you to build a free ecommerce website and sell a limited number of products, at no cost.
However, these plans are limited in terms of features, and usually offer underwhelming templates – which can make it hard for your business to stand out online.
That’s why we strongly recommend opting for an affordable paid plan instead – they come with premium features to help take your website to the next level. Platforms such as Wix and Squarespace (which scored highly in our research) offer a free trial period rather than a free plan. This means you can build an entire online store and test the platform’s tools at no cost.
If you enjoy using it, you’ll then need to sign up to a monthly subscription. When billed annually, Wix’s ecommerce plans start from just £14 per month and Squarespace’s start from £23 per month – the price as one takeaway pizza per month.
How We Test Ecommerce Website Builders for Businesses
We've tested and researched 16 market-leading website builders, evaluating their functionality, usability, integrations and customer support so we can make the most useful recommendations to businesses
Our rigorous testing process means these products have been scored and rated in seven main categories of investigation and 33 subcategories. We then gave each category score a ‘relevance weighting' to ensure the product's final score perfectly reflects the needs and requirements of Expert Market readers.
Our main testing categories for website builders are:
- Sales features: the sales capabilities and sales functionalities offered by an ecommerce platform, including shipping, product capacity, payment options, tools for in-person selling, and more.
- Website features: the capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, marketing capacity, and AI tools.
- Design functionality: the aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates, customisable themes, and content display tools (accordions, tabs, etc.)
- Ease of use: how user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Value for money: the balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
- Reputation: external customer opinion; the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder – the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
- Help and support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder. This can include tutorials, knowledge bases, and email or chat support.
Expert verdict
Based on our revisited research, Wix is now our top rated free ecommerce website builder thanks to its improved user-experience and stronger sales features.
We understand the free plans are an excellent way to cut costs, but they do make it difficult for your business to stand out online and grow due to their lack of features.
That’s why we’d recommend signing up for a more premium plan, on platforms like Wix or Shopify, in order to start selling more products through a website that stands out from the competition. Thankfully, the website builder plans are still very affordable.
