A free ecommerce platform that actually stays free
No 14-day trial timer. No 'free until 1 sale' gimmicks. No hidden platform fees once you go live. Axnify Starter is genuinely free up to 50 products — and the only fee on top of standard Stripe processing is 0.75%.
Why most 'free' ecommerce platforms aren't really free
Search 'free ecommerce platform' on Google and the top results are platforms that aren't free. Shopify advertises a 3-day free trial and a £1/mo promo for the first three months — at month four you pay £29/mo or lose your store. Wix has a free tier that doesn't accept payments. Squarespace's free tier is a 14-day evaluation period. Big Cartel's free tier caps you at 5 products, which is fewer than most independent makers ship in a single product launch.
The reason 'free' is so commonly oversold in this category is that running an ecommerce store costs money. Servers, payment processing, customer support, fraud detection, infrastructure for image hosting, CDN bandwidth — none of these are free for the platform vendor. So when a platform says 'free,' you should always ask: how is it monetised? The honest answers are (1) it's a time-bounded trial, (2) it's a limited demo with key features removed, (3) it sells your data, (4) it takes a transaction fee, or (5) it's a loss-leader funded by VC that's about to disappear.
Axnify is honest about being option (4). Starter is free up to 50 products and we take a 1.5% platform fee on transactions on top of Stripe's standard processing fees. On a £1,000 sale that's £15 to Axnify — enough to keep the infrastructure running, keep support staffed and keep the lights on. You're not the product, you're not on a clock, and there are no hidden gates: the same theme editor, the same custom domain support, the same multi-locale storefront available on the paid tiers. The cap kicks in only when you hit 50 products.
When does paying make sense? When you outgrow the free tier in a way that materially affects you. More than 50 products means upgrade. More than 1.5% in fees costing you more than the subscription means upgrade. Needing advanced features like abandoned-cart recovery, B2B price lists or multi-location inventory means upgrade. Until one of those bites, stay free. Most stores do.
What 'free' usually means on other platforms
Free trial that ends in 14 days
Shopify's 'free' is a trial. Day 15: pay £29 or lose the store. Most small businesses aren't ready to commit by day 15 — you've spent the first week figuring out the admin UI, the second week sourcing initial product photography, and you haven't taken your first order yet.
Free, but transaction fees eat the profit
Wix and Squarespace 'free' tiers exist — but they either show ads, don't accept payments, or take 3%+ on every sale on top of Stripe's cut. On a £50 sale that's £1.50 extra. Across 200 monthly orders that's £300 — twice the cost of just paying for a real plan.
Free, but you can't use your own domain
If a customer can't type yourshop.com into a browser, you don't have a real business — you have a profile on someone else's website. Free tiers that lock you to a .platformname.com subdomain make it harder to build brand equity and impossible to migrate cleanly later.
Free, but only with a watermark / 'Powered by X'
Your free store shouts 'I'm cheap' to every customer who lands on it. Trust signals plummet; conversion follows. A 2024 study of small-business sites found a 18% conversion drop when a vendor watermark was prominent on the checkout page.
What you get on Axnify Starter — for £0/mo
Everything below is included. Forever. With no trial timer.
Up to 50 products and 500 variants
Plenty of room for a real catalog. When you outgrow it, Pro (£19/mo) lifts the cap to unlimited. The 50-product cap is a soft business decision; we'd rather you upgrade once your store proves itself than gate you out of features that should be standard.
Your own custom domain
Point shop.yourbusiness.com (or any domain you own) at Axnify. Free SSL provisioned automatically within 10 minutes of DNS propagating. No 'powered by Axnify' anywhere on the storefront — your brand, your URL.
Multi-locale storefront
Sell to customers in 26 supported locales. Switch languages and currencies per region. Built-in tax calculation for the EU and US. If you're selling a regional product internationally, the storefront localises automatically based on the visitor's Accept-Language header.
Real Stripe payments
Standard card processing rates (no surprise markup). Apple Pay, Google Pay, BNPL via Klarna/Afterpay — all configurable from day one. Stripe deposits land in your bank account on a 2-7 day rolling cycle.
Inventory, orders, customers, refunds
Everything a real shop needs. Stock tracking per variant. Order workflow with status changes (received → preparing → shipped → delivered → returned). Customer accounts with order history. Partial and full refunds with one click.
Visual theme editor + 5 free themes
Drag-and-drop sections, live preview, mobile/desktop toggles. Five professionally designed themes ready to customise. Add custom CSS for fine-grained tweaks; no developer required for the common adjustments.
From signup to first sale in 60 minutes
Most small-business owners we talk to want to know: how long until I can actually take an order? The honest answer for Axnify is somewhere between 30 minutes and a few hours, depending on how much product photography and copy you have ready.
The fastest path: sign up, pick a theme during onboarding, add your first three products (image, name, description, price, optional variants), connect Stripe (which takes 5 minutes if you already have a UK/US/EU bank account on file), point your domain at Axnify, wait 10 minutes for SSL to provision, and you're live. The whole process is geared around 'launch first, polish later' — you can add more products, refine your theme and write blog content as your store starts to see traffic.
If you don't have your own domain yet, you can launch on a free `.axnify.shop` subdomain and add a custom domain later without losing data. We recommend buying a domain upfront because it's better for SEO and trust, but it's not a hard requirement.
If you're migrating from another platform, the importer accepts CSV from Shopify, Etsy, Big Cartel, Gumroad and Sellfy. Product data, variants and images come across in one upload. Reviews and customer accounts require a separate step. Set up 301 redirects from your old URLs to the new ones via the admin's redirect manager and your existing SEO ranking carries over within a few weeks.
Who runs a free Axnify store
Side hustles validating product-market fit
Launch a real store on a real domain in an afternoon. If sales come, upgrade. If they don't, you've spent £0 finding out. The cost of validating a side-business idea has never been lower.
Local businesses going online for the first time
A bakery, a tutor, a small studio. Real card payments, real inventory, real customer accounts — without committing to a £29/mo platform before the first order ships. Run online ordering in parallel with your physical operation.
Charities and community projects
Selling merch to fund a cause. Free tier covers up to 50 SKUs, which is more than enough for most charity merch tables. The platform fee on Starter is the only cut on top of standard Stripe processing.
When do you need to pay?
Only when one of these applies: you have more than 50 products, you want to lower the 1.5% platform fee on transactions, you need more than 1 staff seat, or you want advanced features (abandoned cart recovery, B2B price lists, multi-location inventory). Until then: £0.
Compare plansCommon questions about the free tier
What's the catch?▾
There isn't one for stores under 50 products. We make money two ways: (1) merchants growing into paid plans, and (2) the 1.5% platform fee on transactions on Starter. That's it. No upsells, no 'pay to remove ads', no data-selling.
Will Axnify still be around in 5 years?▾
We're profitable on the average merchant from day one (the 1.5% fee covers infrastructure). We don't depend on VC runway or aggressive growth to survive. And whichever direction the business takes, your data stays yours — full CSV / JSON exports for products, customers, orders and content are available from the admin at any time, including a Shopify-formatted export if you ever need to migrate elsewhere.
Can I really use my own domain on the free tier?▾
Yes. Add your domain in the admin, follow the DNS instructions, free SSL auto-provisions within ~10 minutes. No upgrade needed. We don't artificially gate custom domain support — it would teach merchants to set up their shop on a temporary URL and then break the URL structure when they upgrade later.
What happens if I hit the 50-product limit?▾
The 51st product creation prompts an upgrade. Your existing 50 products keep working at full functionality; only new product creation is gated. No customer-facing disruption, no surprise downgrade of the storefront.
Is there really no transaction fee?▾
There's a 1.5% platform fee on Starter (on top of standard Stripe processing fees of ~1.5% + 20p). On Pro the platform fee drops to 0.75%; on Business 0.25%; on Enterprise 0%. Nothing hidden.
Can I export my data if I leave?▾
Yes — full CSV / JSON exports for products, customers, orders, and content. We can also generate a Shopify-formatted CSV if you're migrating there. The data is yours.
Can you help me move my data from another platform?▾
Absolutely. Email support@axnify.com with the export file from your current platform — we accept Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, Squarespace, Big Cartel, Gumroad, Sellfy and most other common formats. Our team handles the migration of your products, variants, customers and orders end-to-end, free of charge for standard imports.
Start free. Stay free until you outgrow it.
60 seconds to a real shop on a real domain. No card required.