Last Updated Date 18th June, 2025
Confused between free and paid eCommerce software? Not sure whether you should choose a SaaS-based solution or a self-hosted software?
On one hand, free eCommerce software initially attracts users. At the same time, it limits users with features, customization flexibility, scalability, entails hidden charges and other additional costs. On the other hand, paid software seems expensive to start with. Yet, the paid option brings all essential features, supports scalability, is flexible with extensive customization and transparent with pricing. However, before we dive deep into the blog to find the best eCommerce software for an online store, let’s take a look at the eCommerce industry stats.
The eCommerce landscape is growing rapidly. Especially, the technological advancements and the adoption of online shopping have significantly impacted its growth. People are more likely to shop online due to a wide range of options, competitive pricing, convenience of shopping, and of course option to access products anytime and anywhere. This is how eCommerce is relentlessly reshaping and transforming.
According to Statista, the global retail eCommerce sales reached $6 trillion and are expected to surpass $8 trillion by 2028. Therefore, businesses are increasingly looking for solutions to build online stores and marketplaces to improve customer experiences, expand their reach, generate more revenue, reduce operational costs, ensure availability 24/7 and drive business success.
If you’re planning to build an eCommerce store, you’ll find a wide range of software options available. While many come with a price tag, a few are completely free with no hidden costs. Choosing the right eCommerce software depends on your business needs, budget, and long-term goals.
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Role of Turnkey Free eCommerce Software Solutions in Digital Transformation
Selling online necessitates a contemporary website. Popular online retail stores like Walmart.com continue to push the limits of the shopping experience that they offer, setting a bar for customer expectations.
For startups and SMBs considering launching an online store, an apparent solution today is turnkey eCommerce store software. They are viable and help businesses save time and money by a considerable margin when launching an eCommerce platform. These turnkey eCommerce software come with all essential features and functionality. You can easily operate an online store and sell your inventory through a thriving platform.
Tribe is a turnkey white-label eCommerce software that enables businesses to build their online store with minimal investment. It is engineered for simplicity and operational efficiency, reducing manual effort, time, and costs.
The solution is self-hosted, making it possible to use reliable and cost-effective hosting providers like AWS. Tribe’s 3 months of free technical support for any bugs and errors associated with the system further extends the value benefit.
Tribe is built with the dependable web framework Laravel, making it secure, scalable, and extensible. It comes with all out-of-the-box features, functionality, pre-integrated APIs and more.
In addition, with Tribe, you retain source code ownership, offering you complete control over your online store.
2. WooCommerce
Woocommerce is a self-hosted, open-source eCommerce solution. Statistics indicate that it is a more popular eCommerce software compared to its peers. It is integrated with its WordPress site and is customizable with themes, both free and paid. The Woocommerce plugin itself is free but other plugins that you may need can be paid. The learning curve for using Woocommerce can be stiff, The user needs to be acquainted with WordPress to be able to use Woocommerce.
3. nopCommerce
nopCommerce is a free open-source eCommerce platform famous for its powerful ecommerce features, customization and scalability. It is based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET technology that allows it to be in line with modern requirements for cross-platform development, performance and security.
nopCommerce supports all necessary eCommerce features like popular payment and shipping methods, one-page and anonymous online checkout, advanced SEO and marketing features. Moreover, one of the biggest advantages of nopCommerce is its free deployment of the powerful out-of-the-box functionality, including such enterprise-level features as multi-vendor, multi-store, and omnichannel.
The out-of-the-box functionality of nopCommerce can be expanded with 1,500 integrations, including PayPal, Amazon, FedEx, Stripe, Google, and more.
4. PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a free open-source eCommerce software. It can be downloaded but you will have to set it up yourself. To set it up first, the PrestaShop installation file has to be downloaded, a database has to be created and for its installation, the file has to be uploaded via an FTP client.
5. Wix
Wix is another popular online store software. It allows businesses to start an online store for free. But at the same time, the limitations of free plans force you to choose premium plans. Wix supports recurring monthly/yearly pricing plans. You can choose according to your business’s requirements. Its drag-and-drop features enable businesses to craft tailored experiences for their customers.
6. Bagisto
Bagisto is an eCommerce software built using the open-source Laravel framework. It is scalable, secure, and customizable. It offers numerous eCommerce features by way of eCommerce integrations. Bagisto is free and open-source and can be used to develop quality eCommerce stores.
All of these eCommerce software assist in accomplishing the same goal of setting up an eCommerce website. Examined below, are the underlying differences between them.
Comparison of Top eCommerce Platforms: WooCommerce vs Tribe vs Wix vs PrestaShop vs OpenCart vs Bagisto
| Parameters To Compare |
Tribe |
WooCommerce |
PrestaShop |
Shopify |
Wix |
Bagisto |
| Built With |
Laravel |
PHP |
PHP |
PHP |
JavaScript |
Laravel |
| TRANSACTION FEE |
Zero |
2.9% + $0.30 |
Zero |
$0.95 on COD and 2.5% on PayPal Transactions |
Zero |
Zero |
| EASE OF USE |
In-built Drag & Drop CMS Editor |
Simple (Drag & Drop via PAID plugin) |
Simple (Drag and Drop via PAID modules) |
Simple Page Editor (PAID Drag & Drop extension) |
In-built (Drag and Drop Editor |
Simple CMS Editor (No Drag & Drop option) |
| MOBILE APPS |
Available |
Available |
Available |
Available |
Available |
Available |
| SECURITY |
High |
High (uses 2FA) |
Medium |
Medium |
Medium |
High |
| TECHNICAL SUPPORT |
FREE(3 months Tech Support |
Paid |
Paid |
Paid |
Paid |
Paid |
Launch a Fully Customizable and Scalable eCommerce Store with Tribe
Challenges You May Encounter with Free Online Store Software
Everything available for free brings hidden challenges or expenses that might be missed until you experience them. Similarly, with free eCommerce software, you may encounter several challenges that can impact customer experience, business growth and more. Let’s figure out why free eCommerce software might not be the best choice:
- Lack of Features and Functionality: Free eCommerce store builders often lack the advanced features and functionality required to make the platform for smooth and seamless business transactions.
- Limited Customization: Due to limitations with customization, free eCommerce software can force you to operate your store without tailoring it to your business needs.
- Hidden Charges: You may be charged extra for hosting, payment processing, the number of listings, transactional charges, and several more.
- Challenging when Scaling: You may encounter downtime or potential performance issues, as most of the free solutions don’t support scalability.
- Dependency on Third-party Integrations: Free software are more likely to rely on third-party tools and APIs for most of its features. It may impact your store performance or increase costs due to paid integrations.
- Technical Support: Free solutions often provide minimal or no support which is another significant challenge when dealing with unexpected issues.
- Security Issues: Software available for free are easy targets for cyberattacks and are at high risk of data breaches. Because they often ignore security parameters or might not heavily invest in security features.
Key Parameters To Help You Choose The Right eCommerce Software For Your Business
All eCommerce software mentioned in this blog are popular and offer nifty eCommerce tools. However, they do vary on some parameters and each of them has its own strong points. Discussed hereunder are factors that can be a part of the research process to arrive at the decision of selecting the right eCommerce software for one’s needs.
- Front-End Features: Intuitive user journey
The look and feel of your e-store come under the front-end features. These are the features that determine the UI and UX of your website. The customer experience will impact the buyer’s journey and decide the sales conversion of the e-store. Features like navigation, search results, and many more come under this category. Squarespace and Magento offer the best design and theme options.
- Back-end features: Seamless business operations
Scalability, security, integrations, store management features, marketing and reporting are some of the essential back-end features of an eCommerce store. These help market, manage and plan the business.
One of the most important factors that determine the back-end usability of an eCommerce software is the technology stack the software is built on. Woocommerce offers the best eCommerce functionalities while Tribe has most features out of the box.
Pricing can be a hindrance that can result in hesitation from the business to set up their very own eCommerce store. A software price is an expenditure even before the business has started. This is the reason why businesses need software that is free. They can launch their own e-store to test the waters, without spending on the software itself. Once the business is up and running, they can spend on customizations if they find it necessary. Tribe is the most affordable option among eCommerce software. It’s free to start, with no hidden costs, and is backed by affordable services.
- Technical support: To assist a smooth eCommerce transition
The idea of turnkey eCommerce software is to let you start your e-Store without the need to code a website from scratch. This enables anyone and everyone to start their own e-store, regardless of their technical acumen.
That is why technical support is a critical component in the eCommerce software package.
Among free solutions, Tribe offers 3-month tech support and has an Agile team for any kind of customization or enhancements.
- Customizability – An integral Feature of an eCommerce Store Software
The customizability of the online website is key to offering a tailored shopping experience. A buyer-focused online business with niche and business model-specific functionalities can drive eCommerce success.
– Front-end customizability changes the design elements, look, and feel of the e-store via themes.
– Back-end customizability adds functionalities to the e-store
Different e-stores need to have distinct functionalities that cater to that specific industry and product category. Also, businesses can be flexible to adopt a suitable business model.
There are more reasons why only a customizable eCommerce solution can provide the right answers to an e-business’ needs. It allows a business to be creative with their online store and offer a unique experience to the buyer.
The open-source web framework Laravel is ideally suited for customizable solutions. Bagisto and Tribe, based on Laravel, are flexible eCommerce software.
Hesitations With Online Business Adoption
The statistics reveal that the eCommerce business is undoubtedly a lucrative option for startups. The future for the sector is bright as well. Speculative analysis by experts predict the eCommerce sector to continue its good run post the pandemic as well.
That said, the sector being relatively new, has some unknown variables attached to it. Startups may be apprehensive about treading an unknown path. Similarly, for legacy retailers, the transition to eCommerce requires progressive steps that may make them apprehensive about the transition process.
Some such concerns are discussed below
- Apprehensions related to adopting unfamiliar technology
eCommerce businesses are based on dynamic websites that require a team of developers to build. This development process indeed requires both time and resources.
Moreover, once the website has been developed, it has to be deployed over a server.
For someone unfamiliar with coding, or someone short on time and resources, this process will seem like a mountain to climb.
- eCommerce marketing entails a different approach
Marketing an eCommerce store requires a slightly different approach. An eCommerce store has to be promoted in the digital ecosystem. It can be a little challenging to find the starting point. To be precise and measured in your marketing approach, a detailed go-to-market strategy has to be formulated.
- Business processes associated specifically with eCommerce
Selling via an online channel involves most business processes of offline commerce like accounting, inventory management, and others. Additionally some unique processes like shipping management, logistics might be a part of an eCommerce business.
- Govt regulations pertaining to the products to be sold or the target market
Just like a brick and mortar store, there is a need to understand the government regulations when an eCommerce store begins its operations. Unlike physical stores, online stores are not bound by geographical location. The internet enables their access to as far as the business desires to operate.
Since the e-store will sell inter-state and might even do business internationally, factoring in all the government regulations of the target market will be required. For instance, varying tax structure in all states
- Costs involved in setting up & running an eCommerce website
One of the most important part of any business, especially in the conception stage, is financial forecasting. Accurate calculation of costs involved will ascertain funding requirements, appropriate allocation of investment capital, and determine the possibility of competitor product prices.
With a host of unknown variables involved, entrepreneurs might find this crucial imperative to be challenging.
“Startups will be inhibited by these impediments. But there is a solution. A lot of these apprehensions can be cleared with some insight into the process of setting up an eCommerce business.”
The Solution To These Challenges
“Startups can use turnkey eCommerce platforms to launch an impressive online store in a short time span. Most of these software are ready-made solutions and don’t require any website development knowledge.”
Modern eCommerce platforms provide features and functionalities that assist in the seamless functioning of the online store built using them.
Empowering businesses with robust and reliable eCommerce solutions
One such progressive software that enables a business to launch a contemporary eCommerce store with the necessary tools to facilitate business operations, is Tribe.
The reasons that make Tribe a software that provides an ideal foundation for a quality eCommerce store are discussed hereunder.
Tribe – A Powerful eCommerce Software Solution Built for Today’s Businesses
Tribe is a popular single-vendor store software. The solution is powered by FATbit Technologies, a company behind the success of Yo!Kart, a multi-vendor marketplace platform. Tribe helps businesses of all sizes including startups, SMBs, enterprises and offline stores to build, manage and grow their online stores.
Tribe is a solution engineered to maximize and ease the eCommerce transition.
| Tribe is a great alternative for retailers & businesses who are using a SaaS platform like Shopify or BigCommerce for online selling. Shopify or other SaaS solutions charge hefty fees on every sale, along with monthly recurring and setup costs. |
Therefore, to help people get an alternative to SaaS, the team FATbit introduced Tribe. This readymade online store software is available at a one-time payment with a lifetime license. The solution doesn’t charge recurring, subscription, or transaction fees.
This online store software has been engineered by following Agile practices, with the endeavor to address the pain points faced by businesses. The solution is easily customizable and has an intuitive user interface
Additionally, the software stays true to its promise with no additional costs. The businesses don’t have to factor in any costs that technical help (regarding bugs) entails, as they also get 3 months of free technical support..
Key Features Of Tribe eCommerce Software
Tribe offers all the necessary and popular features needed for an eCommerce store. Check out the list of some essential features that facilitate ease of doing business with Tribe:
Tribe has a drag-and-drop content management system (CMS) enabling store owners to create and manage the eCommerce website with ease. The usability of the CMS helps you in designing your own unique storefront easily..
- Shipping management and tax module
The tax module supports single and combined tax structures to help you effortlessly do business across all states. Shipping management enables you to control the shipping process via the Aftership API.
Maximize product conversion by offering multiple secure payment options with your online store. Tribe has all favored payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal pre-integrated into it.
- Multilingual and multi-currency support
Don’t restrict your eCommerce store to a specific location. Tribe is a multilingual software that supports multiple languages. Moreover, it also enables the customer to view the product prices in their local currency. Therefore, with Tribe, you can launch and operate your online store globally.
- SEO and marketing features
The eCommerce space is a competitive market, you will need to market your online store effectively. SEO features such as meta tag management, URL-rewriting, 301 redirects, and marketing features help to rank your e-store and bring it in front of the customer.
- Elastic product search options and product listing
Tribe features an elastic search bar that returns relevant product searches based on Keywords, Brand, Category, Options, product description, ISBN, HSN, SAC, UPC and SKU.
The product list can also be filtered based on multiple parameters by the user.
- Easy checkout process and effortless buyer journey
Tribe simplifies the buyer journey and checkout process to build a successful sales funnel.
Get all features to launch a powerful eCommerce store with Tribe
Along with Tribe, there are other popular eCommerce platforms that enable entrepreneurs to launch their eCommerce store at a reasonable cost. Some oshopifycf these eCommerce solutions are discussed below
To Sum It Up
Amidst the increasing trend and need to start an online sales channel, the top online store software provides an option to launch a contemporary eCommerce platform at lower costs.
Open-source solutions like PrestaShop and Opencart offer the freedom to customize the software and build a website as per the needs. But high development costs and expensive technical support undermine the value proposition and make these solutions ideally suited to enterprises.
Woocommerce offers excellent functionalities but levies transaction charges.
Tribe is easy to use and offers 3 months of free technical support. Moreover, many features that are only available via paid plugins or modules in other eCommerce software, are offered out of the box in Tribe. Additionally, Tribe is backed by an Agile team with eCommerce expertise that provides affordable services.
These reasons make Tribe a good choice for today’s businesses to start their own online store.
Free eCommerce Software FAQs
What is an online store?
An online store is just like a physical store, albeit over the internet. Buyers can browse through the products they want to purchase from the comfort and safety of their homes just like https://www.apple.com/store. They can even pay for the products and request them to be shipped to their location.
Is an online store different from an eCommerce website?
Yes, an online store typically just sells products to its customers. On the other hand, eCommerce is a much broader term that includes the marketing and sale of products or services over an online platform. The sale could be B2C, B2B, B2B2C, P2P or via any other business model. There could be one seller or multiple sellers on a single platform. Amazon, Etsy are examples of eCommerce websites that are not just online shops but much more. Moreover, there are additional revenue streams in eCommerce.
What is an eCommerce software solution?
Developing eCommerce websites entails substantial time and resources, making it an unsuitable process. The increased go-to-market time further adds on to the disadvantages.
eCommerce store software are turnkey solutions that can be used to build eCommerce websites. These ready-made eCommerce software also allows customizations to help tailor the website exactly to the specific needs of a business. This is a faster process with significantly fewer resources involved.
Can I build an online store for free?
A number of eCommerce software options are available that allow you to start your eCommerce journey for free. However, to make the marketplace operational, you need various tools and paid plugins. Ultimately, free solutions incur indirect costs. You cannot operate your online store at absolutely no cost. You need to pay operational costs, which vary depending on the eCommerce store software you select.
Which eCommerce software solution is best for beginners?
For beginners, the ideal eCommerce software should be easy to set up and manage, affordable, and backed by reliable support during the early stages.
Tribe is a beginner-friendly eCommerce software solution with no hidden costs. It combines powerful, modern features with a user-friendly interface that’s easy to learn and use. Plus, it includes three months of free technical support from an Agile team with proven eCommerce expertise — making your startup journey smoother and more efficient.
What is the meaning of Open-Source eCommerce Software?
As the name itself implies, open-source software are offered with access to the source code. The advantage of choosing open-source software is that you can get your software customized from the developers of your choice.
Is Shopify a Free eCommerce Software?
No, Shopify is a SaaS based software. Most SaaS based software are cloud-hosted and levy recurring charges. The billing cycle can be monthly or otherwise. This implies that you don’t “own” the software; rather, you are paying to use the software as a service.
Does WooCommerce or Tribe offer hosting?
No, both Woocommerce and Tribe are self-hosted solutions that give the freedom to choose the hosting provider. The business is not bound by any specific hosting service provider.
Which Free eCommerce Software Comes with Mobile Apps?
Top eCommerce software like Tribe, Bagisto, Prestashop, and others offer mobile apps.
What are the benefits of Laravel eCommerce platforms?
Laravel is an open-source web framework and a top choice for building contemporary eCommerce websites. Laravel features unique features such as the Artisan tool and aids modular programming, both leading to a shorter development timeframe. Customizations on the website are easy due to the model-view architecture. Enhanced cookie protection and more augmented security of the website.
