Start An Ecommerce Website For FREE With These 3 Little Known Platforms

if you want to start a successful ecommerce business you need the ability to process transactions on your own website and choosing the right ecommerce platform is one of the biggest decisions that you'll have to make and right now shopify and bigcommerce are the two main shopping carts that most people recommend and they are both fantastic platforms to base your business on but did you know that there are free e-commerce platforms out there that are as powerful as shopify or bigcommerce and did you know that these open source platforms are 100 free to use and well supported by the community well in this video i'll discuss my experiences with free e-commerce software solutions and how they compare to the most popular fully hosted platforms like shopify and bigcommerce and just a quick note i've been running my seven-figure ecommerce store on a free open source platform for over 10 years now if you enjoyed this video don't forget to hit the subscribe button and be sure to hit the bell button to be notified when new videos come out so first off when it comes to selecting the right shopping cart your main criteria should be low monthly costs how much does a shopping cart cost to run on a monthly basis including all plugins it needs to have a high level of extensibility if there is a feature that you need can you easily add functionality to your site does it have third party support are there companies actively developing plugins for your shopping cart high level of control do you have the freedom to change the shopping cart and tailor it to your own needs and then finally there's ease of use is a shopping cart easy to use and maintain now unfortunately there's no single shopping cart that meets all the requirements that i just described so as a result i'm going to break down the trade-offs of going with a free open source ecommerce platform versus paid solutions like shopify and bigcommerce so let's start with the free options first option number one is shift4shop now shift4shop is a fully hosted ecommerce platform that is as powerful as shopify and bigcommerce and it's 100 free to use for store owners in the united states now similar to shopify shift4shop handles all the technical aspects of selling online and you can get up and running right away they also provide free technical support for all subscribers now you can actually read my full review of shift workshop over here but what is the catch while shift for shop is 100 free you must use their payment processing solution which costs 2.9 plus 30 cents per transaction credit card processing is how shift4shop makes money but they do not charge any monthly fees to use their ecommerce platform now overall shift4shop is just as powerful as shopify or bigcommerce but it's not as easy to use in addition shiftworkshop does not have as strong of a third-party ecosystem so there are far less apps on the platform but you can't beat free so here's how i rate ship for shop on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the best startup cost i give it a 9 out of the box features i give it an eight third-party supply i give it a five platform control and extensibility i give it a five ease of use i give it a seven now if you live in the united states it's pretty much a no-brainer to sign up for ship four shop now the next free e-commerce platform i wanna talk about is woocommerce woocommerce is one of the most widely used ecommerce platforms in the world because it's based on the popular open source platform wordpress and it's 100 free to use now similar to ship4shop you can build a fully featured shopping cart on woocommerce that rivals shopify or bigcommerce now quick note you can watch my full review of woocommerce versus shopify here but the main disadvantage is that woocommerce is an open source ecommerce platform that requires you to be a little bit tech savvy now what is an open source platform an open source ecommerce platform is software that allows you to create your own ecommerce store website for free the software is often maintained by an active community of developers who volunteer their time because they're just so passionate about the project now the most famous example of open source software is linux and today linux is maintained by tens of thousands of developers and is one of the most widely used server operating systems in the world now when it comes to websites the most well-known open source platform is called wordpress which is a content management system that powers over 30 percent of the web now open source software is free to use and you can modify it as how you see fit and not only that but it's extremely powerful and can often perform better than paid solutions if you know what you're doing so if the software is free then what is the catch well the caveat is that you have to host the software on your own server and maintain it yourself so for example my ecommerce store bumblebee linens uses the open source shopping cart os commerce and i host my store on a server run by liquid web and i'm in charge of maintaining the machine applying patches and keeping the software up to date now my only costs are renting the server which is very cheap compared to paying for a fully hosted platform like shopify or bigcommerce now if you don't mind maintaining your own website then woocommerce is easily the most popular open source ecommerce solution on the market with a bunch of third-party developer support now while the base shopping cart is free woocommerce makes money by charging for extra functionality in the form of wordpress plugins some plugins carry a one-time fee whereas others incur a recurring charge now when deciding between woocommerce and paid solutions like shopify or bigcommerce you must also factor in server maintenance costs into the equation now the number one reason to go with woocommerce is if you want full control over your website and source code or if you already have a wordpress blog and would like to sell products directly from your website or if you want access to a large third-party developer community now here's a video that walks you through how to install woocommerce for less than three bucks a month using bluehost now here's how i rate woocommerce on a scale of one to ten startup costs i give it an eight out of the box features i give it a six third party support i give it a nine platform control and extensibility i give it a nine and ease of use i give it a six now the final free e-commerce platform that i wanna talk about is open cart opencart is an open source ecommerce platform that is extremely fast well supported and 100 free now this platform is well coded easy to understand and plugins can be purchased very cheaply for a one-time fee unlike plug-ins on shopify or bigcommerce which require a monthly recurring fee now opencards plug-in library is also quite large and you can find add-ons that do practically anything that you need and many third-party e-commerce service companies also offer out-of-the-box support for opencart however opencart is much less popular than woocommerce and carries a greater risk of obsolescence now if opencar's small team of developers were ever to lose interest then you could be stuck with a dead end platform but so far opencart has had a pretty good track record of community support now overall opencart is a much faster ecommerce platform than woocommerce because it was developed from the ground up for ecommerce and doesn't carry the extra baggage of wordpress now here's a quick video that will show you how to install opencart on siteground which is my recommended shared web host for opencart it's also important to note that fully hosted platforms like shopify are not immune to platform risk either for example if shopify were to lose its popularity or go bankrupt then your ecommerce store would still be in jeopardy now in the best case scenario you'd be forced to perform a very painful migration and at worst you could lose everything so in other words paid ecommerce platforms do not make your website necessarily future-proof and in fact i've seen a bunch of fully hosted shopping carts languish over the years with very little developer support so for example back in the day yahoo merchant solutions was actually the best platform out there but today it's a platform on life support and there haven't been any new features for a very long time so here's how i write opencart on a scale of one to ten startup costs i give it an eight out of the box features i give it a seven third party support i give it a five platform control and extensibility i give it a 7.5 and ease of use i give it a 7.5 now the real question is how much money can you save with a free e-commerce platform well by using a free commerce platform you can save anywhere from 300 to 5000 per year on costs and here's a real world example now i started my online store back in 2007 using an open source platform called oscommerce and i've been on this platform for over a decade now now just quick note i don't recommend os commerce today and i'll explain why in just a little bit but when i first launched my website i hosted my store on an inexpensive web host called bluehost and back then i paid seven dollars a month to rent a server but today you can sign up for as little as three dollars a month anyway when i first started out my site had very little traffic and at the time it would have cost me 29 a month to host my store on shopify bigcommerce now all told i saved roughly 26 dollars a month by going with an open source platform now 26 a month may not seem like a lot of money but paying three dollars a month versus 29 a month gave me peace of mind when i was a total noob because i wasn't sure if my store was gonna succeed but sales ended up growing exponentially and over the next two years i quickly outgrew my server on bluehost and moved all my operations to a virtual private server on liquid web and today i pay about a hundred dollars a month to host my store on liquid web along with five other sites on the same box now what if my online store was on a fully hosted shopping cart platform like shopify or bigcommerce today how much more money would i be paying first off calculating the true cost of running an ecommerce store on shopify or bigcommerce is highly dependent on the number of plugins that you use now in other words the base price of a fully hosted cart can be misleading now for example if i were on shopify i'd probably be paying about 400 a month to run bumblebee linens if you take into account all the plugins that i would have to pay for and that's a savings of 300 a month now if you also factor in the fact that i have six websites on the same server i could theoretically just pay 50 a month to run my online store alone which would save me over 350 a month and over the course of a year that's 4 200. and if you multiply that by 10 years that is 42 000 now just a quick note this doesn't even take into account third party services which i've replaced with free open source plugins to save hundreds or more per month and in addition some cards charge transaction fees which you avoid paying when you own your own platform now as you can see the savings can quickly add up over time and not only that but i have full control over the source code and i can make any modifications that i want if there's a feature that i don't have i can simply implement it myself in addition i can easily move my website to any arbitrary host as i demonstrated when i migrated my store from bluehost to liquid web so as a result i have full autonomy and no one can ever shut me down meanwhile with shopify and bigcommerce you are beholden to their platform they can raise prices at any time or change their policies and it's a pain to switch shopping carts and if you haven't guessed by now my favorite fully hosted shopping carts are shopify and becomers both companies especially shopify have large war chests of cash and they are highly unlikely to go out of business in addition both carts are well supported are constantly adding new features and are considered cutting-edge e-commerce platforms now when it comes to new e-commerce features developers are first to create plugins for shopify and bigcommerce because they have the largest installed customer base and in fact if you look at the app store for both platforms you'll find plugins that do practically anything that you need now the only downside is that these plugins usually carry a monthly recurring fee which can quickly add up so if you don't want to deal with maintaining your own server and your own ecommerce platform then you can't go wrong with either shopify or bigcommerce now the main downside is that it will cost you more money but you'll avoid all the headaches of managing the technical aspects of your site now just a quick note if you're trying to choose between shopify and bigcommerce watch this video now the million dollar question is which e-commerce platform should you use now before you jump on board with a free or fully hosted e-commerce platform you have to ask yourself what you need if you reside in the united states and you don't mind using a free fully hosted ecommerce platform with a steeper learning curve than shopify or bigcommerce then go with shift4shop if you want maximum control flexibility and lower cost at the expense of having to manage a server or your software then go with an open source platform like woocommerce or opencart if you'd rather focus on selling and nothing else then outsource all the tech issues away with a fully hosted platform like shopify or bigcommerce in general free open source ecommerce platforms are for those who are more technically inclined and demand the maximum level of control hope you enjoyed this video now if you like what you saw there's actually a lot more where that came from if you subscribe to my channel below and if you are interested in learning how to sell physical products online then click over here and take my free six day mini course where i'll walk you through everything that you need to know to get started in e-commerce thanks for watching

Channel: MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel

Views: 36,009

Keywords: ecommerce platforms, ecommerce, best ecommerce platform, top ecommerce platform, free ecommerce platform, shopify, bigcommerce, woocommerce, opencart, ecommerce business, ecommerce website, top ecommerce platforms, free ecommerce platforms, best ecommerce platforms, ecommerce business for beginners, how to start an online business, how to make an online store, create ecommerce website, best website builders, shift4shop, how to start a business, how to make an ecommerce website

Id: PnOXEC_DUgw

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2022