What is the Best Free eCommerce Builder Software?
ECommerce can be a back-breaking journey ending with strained eyes and neck. The number of things you have to take care, even before you make your first sale is astronomical. From hosting to payment gateways to logistics and taxation, building an eCommerce website is no child’s play. However, you can always use some online tools and downloadable software, which can streamline all your work into one comprehensive platform. But with over 100+ eCommerce building software currently available, it can be quite hard to pick one. So, what is the best free eCommerce Builder software?
The coding
The first thing that you check for the best eCommerce builder is the coding. Always go for open-source software, and it will help you a lot in the long run. You may ignore the programming titbits now, but later you will need it once you want customizations. So always choose the one which gives you the source code to work on. The other factors to look out for are costs, marketing, product cataloguing, customer support, payment gateways, store credits, etc. We have evaluated a lot of top-rating platforms and software, based on various parameters, and chose Magneto as the best free eCommerce builder software. Let’s explore our logic.
Magento – Pricing
First and foremost is its pricing. Magento doesn’t charge you a dime for its basic services. And you can create a beautiful classic website with just the basic features. The free version is supported by a Magento user’s community, and a platform to engage with other merchants. You can expect a lot of help from here, mostly free of cost. If you are a small-scale business or just stepped into mid-scale, you can expect to run things for free.
However, if you want to upgrade at some point, there is an enterprise plan for which you shell out money, and it’s a very personalized and professional web page. If you are not satisfied with Magento, you can easily change it to different software, as its open-source. We will say that Magento gives you the best in both its free and paid editions. The free Community Edition is currently used by more than 200,000 websites. Magento develops a website, but it’s also quite mobile-friendly and works seamlessly with every screen size.
Magento is user-friendly
Now coming to the technical aspects, Magento gives you a very user-friendly experience. It’s designed for people with a non-tech background, and you can create your website with just a few clicks rather than programming codes. You can use the Magneto provided themes (totally free), or use a third-party theme which is also downloadable for free. If you have any specific question on any theme, you can seek help from the Magento Community, where users help out each other.
Magento is neat and clean
The store set-up is neat and clean. You can design your brand, logo, and colour from outside and then import it into your theme. Uploading new products is easy and so is managing your inventory. You can upload pictures and unlimited products details and later categorize them easily. However, if you have many products, it may be a bit confusing. Your logistics department is pretty integrated and works out as smooth as melted butter. After you get an order, you need just 2 clicks to verify and ship out the product. Tax is evaluated according to an online database, and any additional shipping charges are calculated automatically. You can even give credit to your customers under “pay-bill-on-behalf” feature and reward loyal customers with coupons and discounts.
Magento is very simple to use
The Shopping cart is easy to set up and even easier to buy from. Your customers can sign in as a guest and order products without much hassle. Magneto doesn’t use third-party carts, and so it ranks well in terms of security. It directly links you with a payment gateway like PayPal or Google Wallet. It allows your customers to save their shipping info and use it later for ordering again. A customer support tab is a place where you can view your order history and engage with your customers on complaints and returns. It’s very simple to use, and all you need is a click. You can use the admin panel to overlook your transactions, make easy shipping and issue automated invoice.
Magento has great marketing capabilities
The biggest advantage of Magento is its marketing capabilities. It has a very dedicated team working on the nitty-gritty of SEO, which is automatically taken care off. You can create a blog inside your store, and Magento will automatically fit in valuable SEO. Magento Connect is a splendid way to integrate your social media and target specific crowd. Email marketing is another classic feature, where you can send bulk emails to your existing customers or new recipients. It even lets you integrate your store with eBay.
With Magento you can manage your accounts effortlessly
Another remarkable thing about Magento is you can create multiple stores through just one account and then manage them all effortlessly. If you are in search of analytics, take a look at the Magento community where you can find helpful tools developed by other users. From customer behavior to revenue analytics to holiday season tracking, you can find pretty much everything about your website and industry.
Magento is a self-hosting website, meaning you have to find your hosting services. Don’t be scared by that because it’s incredibly easy. Most popular hosting service providers offer Magento compatible hosting, and it will cost you less than $100 a year.
Magento is highly customizable
The customer’s rating section rates Magento as a big win. It’s 100% customizable, and you can design it anyway and put it anywhere you like. You can administer your reviews section and block unethical ones. The use of Permalinks lets your viewers open multiple reviews at once.
Cons
But there are a few cons as nothing is perfect. The biggest is the pricing difference as you expand your business. It goes from free to almost $20,000 a year. The main reason is you have to hire a developer who is experienced with the Magento platform and he will take away a significant share of your investments. You can hire web developers from websites like freelancer.com, who can do it for a lot less, but you do have better options elsewhere altogether. However, the free version is excellent and worth a try. It will help you set up a mid-sized store with lots of cool features to customize your website. To get started Magento is totally the best eCommerce building software. You can always shift your website to another platform; that’s the biggest advantage of using open-source software.
Conclusion
It’s very easy to create an eCommerce store with Magento but equally complex when you want to customize it to give a personal touch. This is a steep learning curve that you need to scale before you can get familiar with the system. Other than these, Magento is flexible, scalable, and perfect for beginners. We won’t recommend their Enterprise Version unless you are making a sale of at least a million. But the free version is hard to ignore if you want to make a website with an impact. After all, the websites it built clocks in a sale of $50 billion annually and serves stores like Toms Shoes and Oneida.
